Comments on: Unevenly Yoked http://www.ficml.org/jemimap/wordpress/2003/04/01/unevenly-yoked/ Cheating on the Kobayashi Maru since 2001 Thu, 14 May 2026 14:47:04 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.11 by: Jemima http://www.ficml.org/jemimap/wordpress/2003/04/01/unevenly-yoked/#comment-293 Wed, 09 Apr 2003 15:50:15 +0000 http://www.ficml.org/jemimap/wordpress/2003/04/01/unevenly-yoked/#comment-293 Soldiers get killed in wars all over the world. Europe's wars are no worse than those elsewhere, morally speaking, though atrocities like the Holocaust get more press than, say, the Armenian holocaust or Japanese offenses in Korea. As for the indigenous population of the Americas, disease did more towards exterminating them than Europeans did. Europeans had the technology to kill more people, and to extend the African slave trade beyond Africa and the Middle East (which, nevertheless, still consumed more human chattel than Europeans did <i>and</i> still continues today), but that doesn't translate immediately into a wholesale disregard for human life, the way Communist starvation of millions of peasants does. The quote wasn't about a headcount of the dead, but philosophical differences between civilizations. Chesterton doesn't mention Europeans as having a total disregard for human life because they <i>didn't</i>, not in the way he meant it. His social background is no excuse, because he needs none. He would have stood by his opinion, whether or not you considered yours more enlightened. Soldiers get killed in wars all over the world. Europe’s wars are no worse than those elsewhere, morally speaking, though atrocities like the Holocaust get more press than, say, the Armenian holocaust or Japanese offenses in Korea.

As for the indigenous population of the Americas, disease did more towards exterminating them than Europeans did. Europeans had the technology to kill more people, and to extend the African slave trade beyond Africa and the Middle East (which, nevertheless, still consumed more human chattel than Europeans did and still continues today), but that doesn’t translate immediately into a wholesale disregard for human life, the way Communist starvation of millions of peasants does. The quote wasn’t about a headcount of the dead, but philosophical differences between civilizations.

Chesterton doesn’t mention Europeans as having a total disregard for human life because they didn’t, not in the way he meant it. His social background is no excuse, because he needs none. He would have stood by his opinion, whether or not you considered yours more enlightened.

]]> by: Yonmei http://www.ficml.org/jemimap/wordpress/2003/04/01/unevenly-yoked/#comment-292 Tue, 08 Apr 2003 10:20:53 +0000 http://www.ficml.org/jemimap/wordpress/2003/04/01/unevenly-yoked/#comment-292 Actually, when referencing the millions of people killed by the "Christian" countries, I wasn't even thinking of Communism: I was thinking of WWI, WWII, the death camps of Nazi Germany, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and so on. It clearly didn't occur to Chesterton to think of the millions of native Americans killed by the white settlers, or the millions of Africans bought, shipped, and killed in the slave trade, as evidence of the Christian disregard for human life. Given his social background, there's no reason why this should occur to him: but every reason why it should occur to <i>us</i>. Actually, when referencing the millions of people killed by the “Christian” countries, I wasn’t even thinking of Communism: I was thinking of WWI, WWII, the death camps of Nazi Germany, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and so on. It clearly didn’t occur to Chesterton to think of the millions of native Americans killed by the white settlers, or the millions of Africans bought, shipped, and killed in the slave trade, as evidence of the Christian disregard for human life. Given his social background, there’s no reason why this should occur to him: but every reason why it should occur to us.

]]> by: Jemima http://www.ficml.org/jemimap/wordpress/2003/04/01/unevenly-yoked/#comment-291 Tue, 08 Apr 2003 02:29:24 +0000 http://www.ficml.org/jemimap/wordpress/2003/04/01/unevenly-yoked/#comment-291 The quote is from 1903, so Chesterton didn't have the horrors of the 20th century in mind when he wrote it. Communism, while certainly Western, is not Christian. I don't think Chesterton would have been surprised at its total disregard of human life, either. The quote is from 1903, so Chesterton didn’t have the horrors of the 20th century in mind when he wrote it. Communism, while certainly Western, is not Christian. I don’t think Chesterton would have been surprised at its total disregard of human life, either.

]]> by: Yonmei http://www.ficml.org/jemimap/wordpress/2003/04/01/unevenly-yoked/#comment-290 Mon, 07 Apr 2003 20:46:53 +0000 http://www.ficml.org/jemimap/wordpress/2003/04/01/unevenly-yoked/#comment-290 <i>The thing we will not face is the enormous fact that they have along with all this, not merely from personal sin, but by ingrained, avowed, and convinced philosophy another quality, a total disregard of human life, whether it is their own or other people's. </i> Which is kind of a weird thing to claim, when the part of the world that is theoretically Christian - I mean the US and Europe - that has killed people by the millions in the 20th century. Samuel P. Huntington wrote: "The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do." The thing we will not face is the enormous fact that they have along with all this, not merely from personal sin, but by ingrained, avowed, and convinced philosophy another quality, a total disregard of human life, whether it is their own or other people’s.

Which is kind of a weird thing to claim, when the part of the world that is theoretically Christian - I mean the US and Europe - that has killed people by the millions in the 20th century. Samuel P. Huntington wrote: “The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.”

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