Introducing: The Party Afraid Of Death

28 April, 2006. 275 words.

I was reading this yesterday: A Q&A with Ramesh Ponnuru on The Party of Death. While perusing the author’s pro-life remarks, a complementary Republican party nickname occurred to me: The Party Afraid Of Death. It seems fitting. Ponnuru appears to be against anything that might result in death, as if death is somehow unnatural and beneath human dignity. Almost like he believes we’ve evolved to the point where death, like the flintlock rifle, is obsolete.

I’m not advocating death as something to take lightly or have a party about (I’m certainly not looking forward to it myself), but I think modern society tends too far in the other extreme — we try awfully hard to avoid dealing with death altogether. In previous centuries, death was an integral part of family life. Before modern medicine came along, infants, children, parents, and grandparents died all the time. Now it’s like society thinks it’s “immoral” to die.

This part of the interview in particular baffled me:

[RedState:] Why do you think so many Americans are comfortable with abortion as an option for potentially handicapped children?

[Ponnuru:] It’s a misguided form of compassion, I think. We don’t want kids or their parents to suffer, and we want to eliminate disease and affliction. But because of the way abortion has changed our cultural assumptions, we let those sentiments pull us in the direction of eliminating children with diseases and afflictions.

I just can’t make any sense out of that. It sure sounds like he’s saying that not wanting people to suffer is misguided. Which is sort of a roundabout way of saying that it’s morally superior to let people suffer.

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