Writing in Le Figaro, the novelist Michel Houellebecq put it in a nutshell: “A civilisation that legalises euthanasia loses every right to respect.”
A lost cause, Mr Houellebecq, but a noble one
In addition to being correct, this statement is topical. L’Assemblée Nationale, the French parliament, is this week debating this very issue. I don’t know if that body listens to public opinion, but if it does, the motion is likely to pass.
For 96 per cent of France’s population are in favour of legalisation, preferring assisted suicide to physical suffering. The supporters of euthanasia cite ‘compassion’ and ‘dignity’ as arguments in favour, and Houellebecq is merciless to them.
Whenever compassion is invoked, he writes, “the lies are palpable”. And with dignity, “they become even more insidious”.
Dignity is increasingly understood as a capacity to act, with any loss of the latter spelling diminution in the former. This, writes Houellebecq, veers far away from Kant’s definition of dignity as a moral, rather than physical, concept. In fact, morality doesn’t seem to enter into the argument at all.
Fair enough, the Catholics, as well as the Jews and the Muslims, oppose euthanasia, but Mr Houellebecq correctly thinks they’ll lose this argument, as they’ve lost all others. In any case, the media close ranks and refuse to report any religious objections.
With this article, and many others he has written on this subject, Houellebecq has entered into my good books, a distinction his novels failed to earn. In fact, until a few years ago I hadn’t even heard his name, which, according to my French friends, punched a gaping hole in my erudition.
At first, I thought they were talking about the writer’s near homophone, the English centre forward Danny Welbeck. Since none of them was known as an ardent football fan, I was quite taken aback. Having at last realised the depth of my ignorance, I then tried to redeem myself by reading a few of Houellebecq’s novels.
I found out that, on balance, I still preferred Danny Welbeck. The novels struck me as floridly overwritten, rather gynaecological pornography with some astute social observations drowned in pseudo-philosophical musings. Then again, Houellebecq can’t help being French.
However, even in his novels one can only detect lapses of taste, never those of intellect. He is undoubtedly an intelligent man, which he showed yet again in this article, unencumbered as it is by the slightly forced artistry of his novels.
Mr Houellebecq is distinctly unimpressed with the examples of euthanasia provided by the countries where it is already legal, namely Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg. He doesn’t specify what it is in particular that fails to impress him, but such things must be numerous.
Doctors in the Benelux countries have been vested with divine power over life and death. In Holland, some 6,000 people were euthanised last year, and Dutch health officials proudly announced that 92 per cent of them were terminally ill.
However, if my arithmetic serves me right, that means that some 500 people were killed simply because they didn’t feel like living any longer. And even that requirement wasn’t always observed.
One woman, for example, first stated her desire to die, but then changed her mind. She was killed anyway – no self-reprieves are allowed. The doctor involved actually went on trial, but the tendency is unmistakable. In any case, the doctor was only charged with not following proper bureaucratic procedure, not murder.
Houellebecq realises that in due course any restrictions on euthanasia will disappear one by one. It’s clear to him, as it should be to any sensible person, that, once euthanasia has become legal, sooner or later it’ll become compulsory, with the state deciding who deserves to live and who must die.
This is what happens when man no longer recognises absolute morality given by an authority infinitely higher than any human institution. Kant’s categorical imperative is a poor substitute, and the humanist morality of anthropocentrism is no substitute at all.
It’s a harrowing thought that the birthplace of Catholic scholasticism, a country whose landscape is punctuated by thousands of glorious Romanesque and Gothic churches, is being sucked into the moral mire of modernity so rapidly and irretrievably.
One just hopes that those French parliamentarians for once ignore vox populi and listen instead to vox dei. Nothing in recent history suggests they will.
An ability to write on unfamiliar subjects with supreme confidence seems to be a job requirement for today’s journalists.
Comrades-at-arms: Gen. Guderian and Brig. Krovoshein receiving a joint Nazi-Soviet parade at Brest-Litovsk
As if to prove this point, David Aaronovitch reviews Sean McMeekin’s book Stalin’s War with avuncular condescension. Looking down on the historian’s work from the vertiginous height of his own ignorance, Aaronovitch describes McMeekin’s take on his subject as “nuts”.
Ideally a reviewer of an expert’s book should himself be an expert on the subject. Barring that, he at least ought to be an enlightened layman familiar with a broad range of current scholarship.
Even a relatively uninformed reviewer may still write a decent piece, provided he sticks to generalities. What he must never do on pain of coming across as an arrogant ignoramus is mock the author’s research and conclusions.
Aaronovitch treats this requirement with blithe disregard. He correctly identifies McMeekin’s book as “an argument” and then tries to establish his own credentials to engage it. Alas, he only establishes his lack thereof.
“For a layperson I know quite a lot about this war,” writes Aaronovitch, “but even so there was something in almost every chapter that I hadn’t seen before, whether it was the 1926 occupation by the Red Army of Tannu Tuva, …or the reliance of the young Soviet Union on the sale of artworks to finance its debt.”
I submit that no one who didn’t know those two facts, especially the second, is qualified to review a book on Soviet history. That’s not being “a layperson”; that’s being ignorant.
And, out of interest, what debts was “the young Soviet Union” trying to finance? One of the first things the victorious Bolsheviks did was repudiate all the debts incurred by the Russian Empire. The sales of artworks that started under Lenin and proceeded apace under Stalin, pursued quite different ends. Their purpose was to produce another source of hard currency, to be used as an aggressive weapon.
Lenin swore by a world revolution, with the Soviet Union acting as the catalyst of simultaneous workers’ uprisings in all ‘capitalist’ countries. The Bolsheviks didn’t believe they could hang on in Russia and were preparing to decamp to European countries, which Lenin believed to be ripe for a revolutionary outburst.
To that end, the Bolsheviks quickly robbed Russia of all her wealth accumulated over centuries – not just numerous artworks from museums, churches and private collections, but also the gold, jewels and hard currency kept in institutional and private accounts in Russian and foreign banks.
The money was supposed to grease the wheels of the impending revolution to be fomented by the Bolshevik immigrants. (McMeekin described this wholesale robbery in his earlier, brilliant, book History’s Greatest Heist.)
It was then that the Soviets developed their unmatched expertise in money laundering that still stands them in good stead. They were creating various brassplates and offshore havens for parking their loot. Yet neither did they mind eschewing laundering and using their personal accounts.
The New York Times revealed at the time that in 1920 alone 75 million Swiss francs was sent to Lenin’s account in a Swiss bank. Trotsky had $11 million in just one US bank, plus 90 million francs in his Swiss accounts. Zinoviev kept 80 million Swiss francs in Switzerland, Dzerzhinsky had 80 million francs, while Hanecki had 60 million francs and $10 million – the list went on and on.
However, by the time Stalin took over, two things had become clear. First, workers of the world didn’t wish to unite under Soviet banners: communist uprisings in Germany and Hungary were quashed with ease, while the greatly outnumbered Poles uncooperatively stopped the early Soviet thrust at the gates of Warsaw. But, on the plus side, the Bolsheviks unexpectedly got entrenched in the Soviet Union.
Hence Stalin revised Lenin’s doctrine. If Lenin believed that a communist revolution would succeed either everywhere or nowhere, Stalin came up with the theory of a communist victory in a single country, namely Russia.
Yet, contrary to what Aaronovitch thinks, he didn’t abandon the idea of a world revolution. Stalin merely switched from reliance on indigenous forces to the strategy of imposing communism by direct conquest. To that end he had to create an unstoppable military juggernaut capable of rolling over Europe.
That’s why, rather than sitting in foreign banks, the hard currency had to be used to finance history’s greatest construction project: turning Russia into a unique combination of a boot camp, concentration camp and armament factory.
The wealth flowing out of Russia now had to come back in the shape of Western technologies, turnkey factories, machinery and weapons. Rather than financing some mythical debts, the money was now used for that purpose only.
Having thus established his ignorance, Aaronovitch forged right ahead to prove his effrontery as well. Here he invoked the authority of popular TV comedies to take issue with McMeekin’s version of events:
“The Second World War is usually characterised as being Hitler’s war, because as we and Basil Fawlty all know the Führer started it by invading Poland. Sean McMeekin’s contention … is that in fact it was Stalin’s war. The murderous Soviet dictator wanted there to be a conflict between Germany and the other capitalist powers, connived to bring it about and succeeded; planned to invade Germany before Germany invaded him…”
This notion “provoked in me the greatest number of NOs I’ve ever scribbled on the pages of a proof. The first of which came on p50 with McMeekin’s assertion that by 1938 ‘the ultimate aim of Soviet foreign policy – the weakening of capitalist regimes by any means necessary and the concomitant global expansion of Communism – remained the same’ as in the revolutionary days of Lenin.
“This is questionable, to say the least. I am reasonably certain that a consensus of historians of the Soviet Union in this period would argue that Stalin’s doctrine of socialism in one country subordinated everything – world revolution included – to the survival of the Soviet Union, with him at its helm…”
Aaronovitch knows next to nothing about the subject on which he is enlarging with his reasonable certainty. In fact, McMeekin is supported by all historians who have no vested interest in peddling Stalin’s version of the war.
This was that of a Soviet Union quietly going about its peaceful business, only to be treacherously attacked by the Nazis. In their naivety the Soviets didn’t even prepare for the war properly, which explains their initial setbacks. However, the heroism of the Soviet people and their devotion to the cause of Lenin and Stalin eventually prevailed, if at a great cost.
In reality, the Soviet Union was militarised to an extent never before seen in history. It wasn’t for peaceful – nor indeed merely defensive – purposes that by 1941 Russia could field a greater force than the rest of the world combined: 303 divisions, 23,000 tanks (some without analogues anywhere), 17,000 warplanes, 220 submarines, 40,000 artillery pieces plus mobile rocket launchers kept in strict secrecy.
It wasn’t for defensive purposes that the entire Soviet industry had been working in a wartime three-shift mode since the early 1930s, something Nazi Germany began to do only three years into the war.
It wasn’t for defence that Stalin pushed through his 1939 Non-Aggression Pact with Hitler, effectively an alliance dividing Europe between two totalitarian dictatorships. It wasn’t for defence that the Soviets pounced on the former Russian territories of Finland, East Poland, the Baltics and Bessarabia – and also Bukovina that had never belonged to the Russian Empire.
It wasn’t for defensive purposes that Stalin supplied Hitler with all the raw materials without which Germany wouldn’t even have been able to defeat Poland. Nor was it for defence that Stalin replenished the dwindling Nazi supply of bombs raining on London.
As to Stalin’s intention to attack Germany once she got bogged down in a European war, ideally after landing a force in the British Isles, this is amply documented in current histories, those produced after the Soviet archives were opened ajar. On this a consensus of historians, even such conventional ones as John Erickson, does exist – irrespective of Aaronovitch’s ignorance of it.
Historians only argue about the planned timing of the Soviet onslaught and the length of time by which the Nazi strike beat the Soviets to the punch. The range varies from one day (Mel’tuhov) to a couple of weeks (Suvorov, Hoffmann, Bunich) to a month (Solonin) to several months (Erickson et al.).
In the past few weeks the Russians have reclassified all the war archives, barring historians’ access to tens of millions of documents. What does Aaronovitch think they have to hide? If those documents proved Stalin’s – and Aaronovitch’s – mendacious version, the Russians would be advertising them in every media.
As an ex-communist, Aaronovitch must feel some residual affection for his former spiritual beacon. He refuses to accept that Stalin’s role in history’s most devastating war was at least as pernicious as Hitler’s – and nor is he familiar with the scholarship proving this fact.
However, his reservoir of youthful communist aggression hasn’t been depleted. Hence he has the effrontery to describe as “nuts” a historian who has forgotten more about that war than Aaranovitch will ever know.
I’m surprised he used such a restrained term. How about “hireling of Wall Street”, “jackal”, “parasite”, “scum” and other terms of scholarly debate straight out of the communist lexicon? I’ll be pleased to provide a full list.
Easter is a happy holiday, a time for laughter and joy unsullied by troubles, problems and annoyances. So let’s rejoice together, laugh together and celebrate together – let’s be together.
For on this day in particular, we ought to remind ourselves that: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Happy Easter, wherever you are, whatever you believe and whatever language you speak!
Denise Coates, the CEO of the online betting service Bet365, paid herself £469 million last year, a decent wage any way you look at it. More decent, in fact, than the combined incomes of the remaining 99 CEOs of the FTSE 100 companies, and they are no paupers.
Bet wesponsibly? Who do you think you’re kidding, mate?
Comments on that record pay are replete with words like ‘obscene’, ‘undeserved’ and even ‘criminal’. Yet libertarians among us won’t cede their ground to egalitarians quite so easily.
They argue that the company has made its profits legally, and it’s nobody’s business how much its founder paid herself. Miss Coates is an icon of free enterprise. Her company paid taxes on billions last year, and it employs 5,000 people. If anyone deserves a lifetime statue, it’s Denise, not Greta.
If I had to come down on either side of the argument, I’d probably go with the libertarians. Their views partly overlap with mine, which is more than I can say for the egalitarians.
However, ‘partly’ is the key word there. I find doctrinaire libertarianism almost as objectionable as its opposite.
Unwavering commitment to free enterprise über alles often takes morality out of the argument, reducing it to unvarnished utilitarianism. Yet utilitarianism tends to refute itself even on its own terms.
For example, libertarians wish to legalise drugs, first marijuana, then even the hard ones. They insist on people’s right to control their own destiny and health. If a chap has no fear of addiction, then by all means he should be allowed to mainline heroin or smoke crack if he so wishes.
Yet the social consequences of decriminalisation are unpredictable and therefore frightening. It’s possible that drug use would increase so much that herds of addicts would be roaming the streets, making them well-nigh uninhabitable. This isn’t the kind of possibility that conservative, which is to say intelligent, people are happy to bet against.
Proponents of legalising drugs argue that levels of addiction wouldn’t increase, while organised crime would be crippled. But gambling, which used to be another mafia pursuit, punches this argument full of holes.
Organised crime is flexible: if one income source goes legal, it intensifies the other sources, or explores new ones. As to the volume of the activity decreasing once it’s legalised, there are 469 strong arguments against this. That’s how many millions the online bookie Denise could afford to pay herself last year.
Our secular world equates morality with legality. If, say, necrophilia were legalised tomorrow, we’ll be expected to welcome morgues advertising on TV, with slogans like “Bed the dead”.
Similarly, because online betting companies like Bet365 are allowed to inundate the box with their publicity, no moral objections are ever raised. Yet I for one regard habitual gambling as morally reprehensible – and it’s habitual gamblers who keep Miss Coates in country estates.
W.C. Fields inadvertently came up with the core principle of the gambling industry: never give a sucker an even break. The industry lives by that maxim, and everyone knows that. Yet suckers keep coming back for more, making one wonder which side to such transactions is more immoral. About a toss-up, I’d suggest.
Most punters are driven by greed, a base hope to get something for nothing. Yes, the house always wins in the end. But that’s in the end, when large-number statistics come into play. This doesn’t mean someone won’t walk away with the jackpot along the way. Hit me again!
It’s not just greed that drives suckers, but also hunger for cheap thrills. Yet many find out that cheap thrills can be dear at the price.
In a society that extols egotism as a virtue, many people lack natural mechanisms restraining their appetites. That’s why in both Britain and the US personal indebtedness far exceeds personal income. People don’t mind using one pack of credit cards to pay off the debts incurred on another, and they apply for bank loans to pay for a holiday without too many second thoughts.
Such rapacity extends to their gambling. Since every vice is these days medicalised, it’s fashionable to talk about ‘gambling addiction’, a disease that supposedly absolves the sufferer of any guilt. Yet gambling beyond one’s means isn’t an addiction in any physiological sense.
It’s a deficit of self-control, responsibility, foresight and – consequently – morality. It’s putting either greed or hedonism or both before reason, prudence and moral restraint.
Catering to, and profiting from, such human frailties is immoral even if legal. That’s why, much as I love to hear Ray Winstone’s rich London accent as he intones “Please gamble wesponsibly” in Bet365 commercials, the company is being dishonest there.
All such businesses depend on what’s called ‘heavy users’. Be it alcohol, cigarettes, fast food or gambling, the old 80-20 split is always at work: 20 per cent of the customers account for 80 per cent of the consumption.
A chap who bets the odd tenner on a football match a couple of times a season isn’t going to keep Denise in personal jets. It takes millions of suckers irresponsibly betting away their rent money because they find Ray Winstone oh so seductive.
Anyone who has ever seen people go for it at a casino, on a race course or in a betting shop is unlikely to describe the emotions contorting their faces as laudable. One sees tasteless, unbridled joy over winning and often real grief over losing, both preceded by unsightly gesticulation and incoherent shrieks.
Would I ban gambling? Probably not. But I’d certainly make it less accessible. Ideally, it should be contained within private clubs charging high membership fees, which would perform a useful vetting function. A chap gambling at Aspinall’s is less likely to become destitute than one doing so on line.
What I would definitely ban is TV advertising for online betting, even at the risk of knocking a zero or two off Miss Coates’s income. After all, we do ban cigarette advertising, so such paternalism is nothing new – and in this case it would be more justified.
The unveiling of a statue to Greta Thunberg at Winchester University made me feel ashamed of myself, for two reasons.
First, I didn’t realise the poor girl had died, which she must have done – after all, even saints only merit statues posthumously.
Actually, I’m cross with our news media for failing to inform us of Greta’s tragic demise. This conspiracy of silence testifies to the wicked nature of our establishment, even though it fulsomely claimed to accept the validity of the cause Greta championed so passionately.
And then I’m mortified at the abuse to which I subjected Greta while she was still alive. I called her retarded, hysterical, strident, devil’s spawn, ignorant – even an evil child with learning difficulties. Mea culpa!
Numerous were the occasions when I thus besmirched the girl’s character, while describing her cause as a hoax lacking any scientific justification and only propagated by the enemies of our civilisation specifically for the purpose of destroying it.
Now, I must admit I still have some residual misgivings about global warming and those who take it up as a cause. However, Greta’s untimely death is akin to martyrdom, and that, as we know, can redeem…
Hold on a second… Oh dear. Penelope has just looked over my shoulder and said I should really read the whole article before jumping to premature assumptions. This, she says, is typical of my tendency to reach conclusions on the basis of slapdash research.
Turns out Greta is very much alive, and the monument is Winchester University’s way of casting in bronze her status as the immortal legend in her own time.
So sorry I’ve misled you. I’m hereby taking back everything I’ve taken back that I ever said about Greta. By this process of double negation, we arrive at my true position:
Great Thunberg is indeed a retarded, ignorant, strident and genuinely evil child with learning difficulties. And her cause is indeed a shamanistic crusade drawing under its banners every manner of malcontent on a wicked mission to destroy our civilisation — which group manifestly includes the administration and faculty of Winchester University.
I’m glad we’ve sorted this out – thanks, Penelope. Please remind me to abuse the statue mingently next time we’re in Winchester.
