Deception and disposable people
by Father Terrence P. Ryan, CSP
August 11, 2015

There is a long history of saying something or someone is not human so that we can be rid of it. When the first settlers came, Native Americans were a surprise but simply different. They were OK to have around, even helpful. Ask Lewis and Clark. But they were not capitalists. They did not have private property to expand their capital base. So the Native Americans became “savages,” not human. This allowed nice Christians to kill them or drive them off to reservations and to later break treaties.

The southern plantations, now private property, needed some one to work the land in a hot climate. Free labor would be even better. The dark skinned western African fit the bill. We said they were not human. The looked like monkeys. Nice Christians could enslave them.

When the British were OK about the potato famine, the Irish were painted as less than human, or at least less than the British. When the Teddy Roosevelt regime wanted to make the Philippines a Banana Republic for military purposes in that part of the world, we painted the native people as dark skinned monkeys. If it worked for Africa, it will work for the Philippines. It was OK to take lots of Mexico, North of the Rio Grande since they were not so human and Catholic or worse, Indian.

So be careful when you say the fetus is not human. There is a long line of deception there that eases us into disposal for “good reasons.”