In his notorious novel “1984,” British author George Orwell envisioned a future where mass surveillance, censorship, and historical revisionism, backed in the end by brutal torture, would repress personality and individuality and enforce ideological and even psychological conformity. Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” anticipated a late 21st century dominated by unrestricted capitalism, in which there was no need for censorship because materialist pleasures inundated the senses to such an extent that curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge were drowned. While both novels (especially Orwell’s) are often invoked by both the Left and Right in critiques of politicians and institutions that one side or the other dislikes, neither author quite accurately — or, rather, quite fully — foresaw the evils which have come to dominate the modern age.
Two other authors, however, evinced a much higher degree of prescience. Robert Hugh Benson, an English Catholic priest, in his apocalyptic 1907 novel “Lord of the World,” prophesied and dreaded the mass persecution of Christians, who largely became second-class citizens, and the widespread normalization and state sponsorship of abortion and euthanasia. The French Catholic and adventurer Jean Raspail, in his controversial “The Camp of the Saints,” asked how Europe might respond to a mass invasion-by-immigration launched by the Third World, anticipating that such an invasion would, like the barbarian hordes of old, bring with it wholesale rape, looting, and even murder, all fueled and tolerated by the suicidal empathy and shameful self-loathing of the Western world.
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How horrified and heartbroken Benson and Raspail would no doubt be to read the news last week and realize that the futures they feared have merged and become flesh, a nightmare reality walking under the naked sun, feasting upon the blood of the children of what was once called Christendom.
Noelia’s Tragedy
Far more horrific than any dystopian work of fiction — all the more horrific, certainly, because it is reality, not a figment of an author’s imagination — was the life of Noelia Castillo. At the age of 13, the young Spanish woman was forcibly taken into the custody of the state. Her parents had fallen on difficult times financially and lost their home; they later lost their marriage and, last week, the life of their daughter. Noelia was housed in various state-run facilities for minors. During this time, according to her father’s attorneys and court filings, Noelia was raped by a Muslim immigrant teenager, with no father there to protect her, no mother there to comfort her. Shortly afterward, the Muslim immigrant returned, this time with friends, and they proceeded to gang-rape Noelia.
(Some mainstream media reports have charged that Noelia was raped by young men she met at a nightclub. While this is entirely possible, it is contradicted by the statements and court filings of her father and his attorneys, who accuse a group of Muslim immigrants of the ghastly crimes. According to her father, Noelia attempted to report the rapes but was dismissed by the socialist state’s employees in charge of the youth housing facilities, who wanted above all else not to appear racist. Since Spain instituted its secular constitution in 1978, following the death of Catholic military leader and head of state Francisco Franco, the Muslim population of Spain has skyrocketed by nearly 85,000%, now standing at nearly three million strong, where once it was no more than 3,000.)
Scarred from her experiences and diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive (OCD) and bipolar disorders, Noelia attempted suicide, leaping from the fifth story of a building. The suicide attempt, which she survived, left her paralyzed from the waist down and permanently damaged her spine. At the age of 23, the state recommended that Noelia apply for Spain’s euthanasia program. Alone and broken, she did. Her father, however, assisted by the Catholic Asociación de Abogados Cristianos (Association of Christian Lawyers), fought the process in court in an effort to keep his daughter alive. Over the course of two years, he fought for his daughter’s life in Spanish courts from Barcelona to the High Court of Justice of Catalonia and the Spanish Supreme Court. His pleas and appeals were consistently and repeatedly rejected. Finally, earlier this month, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled against Noelia’s father, allowing the euthanasia to proceed, as all appeals had now been exhausted.
On Thursday, at the age of 25, Noelia was killed by euthanasia. As a registered organ donor, she was sedated and transported to another facility, where her organs were harvested before she was killed. According to some reports, Noelia expressed hesitation before she was euthanized, requesting a delay, but was told that her organs had already been reserved by others.
‘Heaven on Earth’
Leftism promises, almost without exception, a utopia, a Heaven on earth. All men (and women and they/thems, for that matter) can live in perfect harmony, with all their needs provided by the state, all their innumerable rights protected and even championed by the state. No suffering, no injustice, no inequality will plague the human race. That’s the theory, at any rate.
In practice, leftism has proven an insufficient foe for reality. Suffering is part of reality here on earth, so how does leftism propose to eliminate it? Euthanize the suffering. Injustice is an unfortunate result of the Fall, a hateful stain left on the human inclination by the sin of Adam and Eve. Since leftism cannot really eliminate injustice and set to right so many wrongs, it merely promises vengeance: the victims of such injustices as colonization and slavery do not really have their wrongs redressed, but they are given an opportunity to colonize Western nations and wreak upon them the same (and in many cases worse) atrocities than colonial powers ever did. Inequality is a natural state of man, and since leftism cannot make any man more than he really is, it instead makes others less.
Noelia’s tragedy is the synthesis and apotheosis of leftism: all of the policies which leftism upholds as necessary cures to the manifold ills plaguing mankind came together in a perfect storm over the course of her life — in order to end her life. No suffering was alleviated, only inflicted. No injustice was rectified, only ignored. No inequality was remedied, only silenced. The Colombian philosopher and author Nicolás Gómez Dávila once wrote, in characteristic aphoristic form, “The modern world shall not be punished: It is the punishment.” If Noelia’s devastating story is any indication, then that punishment will not be restricted to guilty parties convicted in a court of law, but will ravage the young and the innocent just as much as those who devise the modern world’s disastrous program of “Heaven on earth.”
In point of fact, in its effort to effect “Heaven on earth,” leftism has succeeded in the opposite: bringing about Hell on earth. How else can Noelia’s suffering be described? Leftism has, perhaps, even brought about something worse even than Hell on earth, for at least Hell is an instrument of justice: the damned have merited their eternal suffering, and even chosen it through their repeated rejection of the will of God. Noelia was not damned; she did nothing to merit being ripped away from her parents, she certainly did not choose to be raped over and over again, and she did nothing to earn the apathy of a nation and a culture that responded, quite literally, to her suffering with the suggestion of suicide.
One of the chief reasons that leftism can only, for any of its proclaimed good intentions, effect a Hell on earth and not a Heaven, is that Heaven does not exist on earth, and never can. In His goodness, God affords glimpses and hints of Heaven in this earthly life. The love of a mother and father for their children is a shadow of God’s love for mankind, which He hopes to share one day with those who accept His gift of love. The profound peace and meditation which prayer sometimes affords is a glimpse of the Beatific Vision, in which God is seen and embraced and contemplated clearly and for all eternity. The warmth and joy of friendship and community are a mirror of Heaven, too, where all will be united in perfect love of God, who is Love Himself.
Leftism cannot alleviate suffering. No ideology or political force or even religion ever can. One can spend a lifetime trying to avoid suffering, or one can follow in the footsteps of Christ and embrace suffering as Christ took up His cross. Leftism cannot treat injustice, for justice demands giving to one his due, and the sinners of this world (that is to say, everyone) are due suffering. Nor can leftism erase inequality, for God created all men unequally — equal in dignity, certainly, equal as being made in the image and likeness of God, but far from equal in terms of skills and talents, intelligence and wit, charm and affability, good looks and good health, and even responsibility: some are called to do no more than raise a family, while others are charged with leading nations.
The quest for a “Heaven on earth” is not a novel one. Before ever Adam was laid to sleep in Eden and Eve was fashioned lovingly from his rib, the angel Lucifer sought his own “Heaven,” where he might be his own “God.” Ever since then, one of the hallmarks of his malignant influence in this realm is the desire to create “Heaven on earth.” Those movements and institutions which promise such a result are, wittingly or not, under the fallen angel’s direction. Conversely, it is the purpose of Christian institutions not to bring about “Heaven on earth,” but to prepare souls to reach Heaven.
LifeNews Note: S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.
