How the New York Times inverts morality in the Charlie Gard case
It takes real skill for the New York Times' progressive propagandists to frame the case of baby Charlie Gard in terms that comfort the sensibilities of their readers. After all, the state requiring the death of an infant whose parents dearly love him and have the means to seek experimental treatment (thanks to donations) looks really, really bad. Even worse, the underlying logic justifying state intervention to kill the baby is utterly unpalatable if spoken aloud, as Daren Jonescu explains today elsewhere on these pages.
This Times news article by Dan Bilefsky and Sewell Chan demonstrates expert moral inversion. Behold the jiu-jitsu executed in the first two paragraphs:
The long journey for Connie Yates and Chris Gard, whose infant son, Charlie, cannot breathe or move on his own, appeared to have come to an end last week. The courts had ruled that the baby's rare genetic condition was incurable and that the only humane option was to take him off life support. The couple announced that they were getting ready "to say the final goodbye."
Then Pope Francis and President Trump weighed in, offering statements of support and thrusting a global spotlight onto a heart-rending case that has become a cause célèbre in Britain.
Get it? The parents were doing fine, on their road to emotional recovery, "getting ready 'to say the final goodbye.'" All was swell until the pope and the president stuck their noses in. The problem isn't the state wanting little Charlie to die; the problem is the outside interference ruining the wise path chosen by representatives of the all-seeing, all-knowing infallible state.
Their last-minute interventions drew attention to a profoundly difficult bioethical matter, but, experts said, they may have made a tragic situation even worse.
This is the most repulsive logic justifying violence since the immortal phrase "We had to destroy the village to save it" was uttered in the Vietnam War.
Check out the phrasing an "expert" uses:
"The case has gone through the courts, and it is over," said Claire Fenton-Glynn, a legal scholar at the University of Cambridge who has studied the case. "This is prolonging the agony of a devastating situation."
Once again, some genuine verbal craftsmanship is being demonstrated here. As a pal of mine remarked:
I wasn't aware that a "situation" was able to experience agony. Live and learn.
Of course, one of the people that the New York Times would turn to for an opinion on such a topic is "legal scholar."
Will the baby experience pain is, I would have thought, the only relevant question.
So we have cheerleaders for a state that is taking a child away from his parents to kill him, and telling the victims that it is in their own best interest, because experts say so.
At least these people are leaving no doubt as to who they really are and what they have in mind for us once they have the power to carry out their aims.