So Much for Civilized Culture

Ah, Western civilization. Humanity’s finished product. Leaving behind the savagery of ancient cultures with their unenlightened thinking, archaic superstitions, and horrific practices. Indeed, we are the educated and enlightened ones, the tolerant and progressive ones, the civilized ones who prize human dignity and the value of individual lives.

Then there’s this video…

I don’t care who you are or what your political persuasion happens to be, that is utterly abhorrent. It is an edited video clearly produced in a sensational way, and I really wish they just released the video unedited to let the content speak for itself. But political manipulations aside, you can’t get past what this is. Casually enjoying dinner, sipping wine, chatting about techniques to crush a fetus without harming the more profitable commodities such as liver, heart, lungs, and if we can position the child just right, perhaps even a head (sorry, a calvarium).

Do not be deceived, America. Lurking in the shadows of our smug culture is one of the cruelest practices this world has ever known. Perhaps we aren’t sacrificing our children to the sun god, but we are sacrificing our children to the god of profit, convenience, secular ideology, and whatever other motivations have given way to this barbaric practice.

How can we possibly call ourselves champions of human rights with this in our land? How can we possibly think the world needs to be westernized when the most vulnerable and helpless westerners are being slaughtered?

The hypocrisy is disgraceful. Or perhaps it is sheer blindness. Whatever it is, we have a log in our own eye, and it needs to be removed before we can go lecture other cultures about their issues.

But this much is true of our culture: when we want something changed, it will change. And what has happened over the past few weeks in South Carolina is the latest example.

That flag didn’t stand a chance once we set our facebook and twitter accounts against it. It literally took less than a month for a seemingly untouchable tradition to come undone. Ask any citizen of South Carolina a month ago if they thought the Confederate Flag would come down any time soon, and they would have laughed at you, but now I pity any public figure who shows even a hint of support for it.

Why not Planned Parenthood? Why can’t this unjust tax-supported institution come down? I know what PP supporters are going to say: This is a vital organization that provides important health care to women in need. Do you know what that sounds like? Lovers of the Confederacy trying to convince us that the war wasn’t about slavery by pointing out the more noble ambitions of antebellum South. We all know what the Confederacy was fighting for, and that is why the flag still stings. And we all know what Planned Parenthood is doing, and that is why it too must come down.

What is hidden in the dark has come to light. Do not let it retreat once again. Do not let us forget that this evil is happening all around us. Keep it exposed. Keep it trending. Keep it ever before the face of our uncivilized culture until our uncivilized culture is forced to respond.