{"id":29797,"date":"2023-10-31T20:01:01","date_gmt":"2023-10-31T20:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cincinnatirighttolife.org\/?p=29797"},"modified":"2024-03-01T18:25:08","modified_gmt":"2024-03-01T18:25:08","slug":"on-the-necessary-murder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cincinnatirighttolife.org\/on-the-necessary-murder\/","title":{"rendered":"On the ‘Necessary Murder’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By: John M. Grondelski, author at The Catholic Thing<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1937, the British poet W.H. Auden wrote a tribute to the Left that was then in the middle of the Spanish Civil War.  Like many intellectuals of that day, Auden rooted for the \u201cRepublic,\u201d highlighting crimes of the Nationalists while ignoring or excusing the Republic\u2019s brutality and its record \u2013 before and during the War \u2013 persecuting Catholics who are, even today, the majority of Spaniards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His poem, \u201cSpain,\u201d is his tribute to the Left.  But there\u2019s one line in it that stands out for me.  Auden acknowledges:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cToday. . .The conscious acceptance of guilt in the necessary murder\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The necessary murder.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If there\u2019s a distinguishing characteristic of the 20th<\/sup>\u00a0century, it was mass murder.\u00a0 A century that began with illusions that human \u201cprogress\u201d made armed conflict a thing of the past (an illusion still perpetuated as late as 1928 in the Kellogg-Briand Pact) perpetrated not one but two world wars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It also gave birth to two of the most barbaric and murderous totalitarianisms that not only murdered millions of people, but they also accepted murder as a political policy.  The \u201ccivilized\u201d world had sanctioned murder as a tool of statecraft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By 1937, Nazism had already embraced \u201cthe necessary murder\u201d as a way of saving the Third Reich.  Dachau had already been in business for four years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That same year, Russian Communism was in the middle of Stalin\u2019s Great Purge.\u00a0 But it was not just Stalin. By 1937, Russians had suffered two decades of murder: the Bolshevik Revolution, the Civil War, and Leninist cleansing.\u00a0 \u201cNecessary murder\u201d was vital to the Soviet state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And \u201cnecessary murder\u201d was necessary to the Spanish Left\u2019s Republic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do we truly appreciate the inflection points represented by the idea that (a) murder can be \u201cnecessary\u201d and (b) even made a part of state policy?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does it say about civilization when the keepers of culture \u2013 like great poets \u2013 write about \u201cnecessary murder\u201d and are praised for it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Auden later turned to Christianity and was embarrassed enough by the early line to omit the poem from anthologies of his work during his lifetime.  It eventually came back with the desire for an intact opera omnia<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it wasn\u2019t just Auden who was corrupted.  Anna Swir (ne\u00e9<\/em> Anna \u015awirszczy\u0144ska) was a Polish writer who has enjoyed something of a posthumous renaissance in the West thanks to Nobel laureate Czes\u0142aw Mi\u0142osz\u2019s promotion of and interest in her poetry (e.g., Building the Barricade, Talking to My Body<\/em>). In her later years in Poland (she died in 1984), she was primarily a children\u2019s author.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back in the 1950s, \u015awirszczy\u0144ska was a communist hack.\u00a0 Her first postwar dramas were paeans to the dictatorship of the proletariat.\u00a0 Some might excuse that as a necessity of survival. \u00a0But, in February 1953, \u015awirszczy\u0144ska was one of 53 signatories of a declaration by the Krak\u00f3w chapter of the Union of Polish Literary Writers against three priests sentenced to death after a show trial that framed them as American spies.\u00a0 The capital sentences were later commuted to life imprisonment, but the fact remains \u2013 53 writers, including \u015awirszczy\u0144ska and Nobel laureate Wis\u0142awa Szymborska \u2013 signed a politically-induced declaration supporting calls to execute people for political reasons.\u00a0 Necessary judicial murder?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And no need to go back to the 20th<\/sup>\u00a0century to find such examples.\u00a0 David Benatar is a South African philosopher who has written\u00a0Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>an Oxford University Press book published in 2006 that argues human extinction would be a good thing.\u00a0 Unlike Auden and Swir, Benatar does not advocate \u201cnecessary murder.\u201d\u00a0 In fact, he admits the barrier to his idyllic world of non-human existence is that you\u2019d need murder to achieve human extinction and he can\u2019t overcome that moral hurdle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I believe it was Princeton\u2019s Robert George who refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the \u201cdebate\u201d engendered by Benatar or by Francesca Minerva and Alberto Giubilini in their 2013 Journal of Medical Ethics <\/em>article advocating for post-birth euthanasia of some newborns.  The authors were branded \u201cbarbarians,\u201d much to the chagrin of votaries of \u201cacademic freedom\u201d votaries for whom murder is now a legitimate topic for discussion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Polish philosopher Zbigniew Stawrowski has rightly observed that we live in a world of \u201csleek barbarians,\u201d barbarians who wear power suits instead of animal skins, using \u201crights\u201d and \u201claw\u201d rather than clubs to kill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the wake of the Dobbs<\/em> decision, <\/em>pressures to \u201cshout your abortion,\u201d and efforts to exclude in principle any discussion of reasons<\/em> why abortion should or should not be legal, show that the concept of the \u201cnecessary murder\u201d is alive and well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem for the advocates is not the concept but the open admission.  Some killings are \u201cnecessary\u201d but calling things by their right names is just so complicating: \u201cnecessary evacuations\u201d or \u201cnecessary surgical interventions\u201d is so much more palatable, and even provides a patina of \u201cscientific\u201d or \u201cmedical\u201d respectability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Murders for socio-economic reasons pose no insurmountable barrier: just redefine \u201chealth\u201d (as Proposition 1, soon to be voted on in Ohio does).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s only the bravest of the brave or the tenured partisans who are honest enough to admit abortion ends a life, but then argue that murder is \u201cnecessary\u201d just because the child\u2019s mother wants it.  Most find such candor alienates the ambivalent middle and so prefer the \u201csemantic gymnastics\u201d required for the wholesale justification of abortion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In one sense, who knew how far ahead of his time the young W.H. Auden was, in concept if not in language? The \u201cnecessary murder\u201d could also be called the Caiaphas Principle. (John 11:50)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

John Grondelski (Ph.D., Fordham) is a former associate dean of the School of Theology, Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey. All views herein are exclusively his.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By: John M. Grondelski, author at The Catholic Thing In 1937, the British poet W.H. Auden wrote a tribute to the Left that was then in the middle of the Spanish Civil War.  Like many intellectuals of that day, Auden rooted for the \u201cRepublic,\u201d highlighting crimes of the Nationalists while ignoring or excusing the Republic\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29798,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nOn the 'Necessary Murder' - Cincinnati Right to Life<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cincinnatirighttolife.org\/on-the-necessary-murder\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"On the 'Necessary Murder' - Cincinnati Right to Life\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By: John M. Grondelski, author at The Catholic Thing In 1937, the British poet W.H. 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