The Symptom Of A Death Wish

Excerpt from this piece:

Abortion is a symptom of a corrupted liberalism. Liberal visions formerly had some nobility, however wrongheaded the ideology may have been when taken as a whole. But even their limited virtue has been obliterated by the insistence that we must be allowed to murder our progeny to create a better world for them.

This contradiction arises because liberalism is a dying faith. All the various liberal catechisms that were formed in the Western world were attempts to fill the vacancy left by a receding Christianity. They attempted to solve the problem of sin, each promising that if we followed their social program, the wrongs of the world would be removed.

But wickedness has not been so easily vanquished, and thus the West has become ever more hopeless. The abandonment of ideals, even wrong ones, leaves each to define his own existence, which leads to a miserable narcissism that turns to hedonism. Having found that heaven on earth is elusive, modernity seeks consolation in pleasure; if we can’t achieve utopia, we can at least have many toys and orgasms before death.

The callous disregard for others that allows abortion to be accepted, despite its immorality, flows naturally from this. Abortion is allowed because it is expedient. However, there is another factor that is often overlooked: the death-wish that comes from accepting the narcissism of modernity. If we may modify the words of Lady Galadriel, the unspoken mantra of today is, “I shall love me and despair!”

Existence without meaning is a horror, and it is now accepted that man is but an animal, and an animal is but atoms assembled by random chance. Those who believe this may still seek to gratify themselves, but they haven’t the will to procreate. Reproduction is a defiance issued against ennui. To welcome children is to assert that life is meaningful and worth living; voluntary sterility consummates the opposite.

The culture of contraception and abortion bespeaks Western civilization’s belief that it neither deserves nor wishes to exist. Like Ivan in "The Brothers Karamazov", we shall squeeze what we can from this life, and then “dash the cup to the ground.” The difference is that the West does not contemplate suicide with violence, but with the caresses of impotent copulation. The dream of barren sexuality is a dream of death.