Did you know that 15,000 inconvenient old people died last year in France, and it was completely preventable? It was a hot summer last year, and unfortunately, the country (meaning: the French government) was unprepared for the heat. Family members, who were on their extended summer vacations, couldn't be bothered to retrieve their parents' corpses, so morgues were overflowing with bodies.
This was in the most civilized country on the planet, without whose permission the U.S. cannot act in the world. It might happen again this year, according to a French doctor who was disturbed at the mass death, which received almost no coverage in America. Yet even if it does, you won't hear much about it.
Under a regime where the state (supposedly) takes care of everyone, nobody will take care of their neighbor. Why, when your high taxes are paying for somebody else to do it?
Socialism isn't contrary to the culture of death. Socialism is the culture of death.
So much for the govt taking care of the poor...
Yeah, I was trying to reinforce your post from yesterday. Throwing money at social programs doesn't mean society will be any better.
Wow ... and they don't even have "the Germans made us do it" excuse this time.
Proper!
Actually, the Angel of Death may be visiting.
The Angel of the Culture of Death already has a villa in Provence and a 3 bedroom condo in Paris.
What's horrifying about this episode is how *personally uncaring* so many French people were towards their own inconvenient elders. That's the distinction between welfare and charity. Welfare is what the state does while you're off soaking up the sun in Palma de Mallorca or Gran Canaria, charity is what you show to your own aged parents. Apparently the enlightened and peaceful French come up a more than a little short regarding the latter.
I've long had little patience for the moral preening of Europeans. Episodes like this suggest that Sartrian amorality doesn't make for a truly charitable society where the inconvenient matter as much as the healthy and gainfully employed.
"Episodes like this suggest that Sartrian amorality doesn't make for a truly charitable society where the inconvenient matter as much as the healthy and gainfully employed."
(sarcasm on) Wait a minute...I thought it was American capitalists and unilateralist neocons whose thinking led to a society that didn't care for the poor, that deifies the individual and his or her appetites, and undermines true human community. Now I'm really confused. (sarcasm off)
C'est la vie!!!
Now that everyone's jeered and felt really good about their coolness. Why not take the time and pray for the French? They're the canary in the coal mine. And least we North Americans pump our fists in the air about our moral superiority, we might remember the Amy Richards' interview.
Prayer to change souls is far more sublime and pleasing to the Lord than erudite sneering.
xavier
I agree completely, Xavier, that it is important to pray for the French and the rest of our European neighbors. And yes, the United States is far from perfect; but I don't recall anyone here saying that it is. The Casey decision (which comes up frequently here) seems to me the worst political sin of our generation; the Amy Richards interview manifests its Nietzschean religion in an especially venal and callow way.
However, it is very important for Catholics to firmly and regularly critique secular-autonomist ideology pitched at us by engines of cultural power such as the media, Hollywood, and the professions. The constant portrayal of general European cultural superiority is an especially galling aspect of this Gospel of Autonomy.
I for one don't feel "cool" or "pumped" about pointing out these the gross hypocrises of our alleged European cultural betters. But I will do so as long as it seems needed.
Nearly one million in this country last year died to easily preventable medical 'accidents'. Something like 40% of these victims were elderly.
Can you say 'nothing by mouth', 'do not resucitate', and the cost of beds to insurance companies?
I know allegedly Christian nurses who think all of this is just fine and proper, and who am I to speak on ethics, when they are -nurses-.
I wasn't attempting to show the moral superiority of the United States -- although I believe that, on balance, we are morally superior to the French, especially their thoroughly amoral foreign policy. I was discussing France and its treatment of its citizens. Western Europeans and Canadians love to lecture the U.S. about our lack of socialized medicine, yet these are the fruits it bears.
You won't find me defending medical insurance in the U.S., because it manages to reproduce many of socialized medicine's worst aspects, and then we still have to directly pay for it.
The summer dip in govt. medication cost allows everyone to get health care, its all in the plan eh.
Eric:
I'm not opposed to socialized medicine but I'm very well aware of its shortcoming. My own modest view is to a 2 tier system- put lots of money in preventative medicine, ensure that the poor and families have access to the medicines, treatments etc etc they require. In Canada we have to get the feds completely out of health care, the provinces need to be far more flexible with how health care is dispensed. I'm fed up with being treated like an irresponsible, immature pupil who requires a tutorship. Except when it's time to pay my taxes.
With respect to American healthcare, I think standardizing the insurance forms, imposing some sort of extracontractual responibility reforms, encouraging HMOs to compete, allowing portability if people move from state to state would be useful reforms
xavier