Alfie Evans and the American Revolutionary Spirit

Americans, at least those who are worthy of that proud title, have been appalled as the Alfie Evans tale has played out in Britain, with the State attempting to administer a kinder and gentler death penalty to the 23 month old, and forcing his aghast parents to stand by helplessly.  David French at National Review, a Never Trumper and as far from a bomb thrower as it is possible for a conservative to be, gets what is at stake:

Consider what’s happened in Britain. Rather than defending a right to life, the state has decided to define which lives are worth living. Rather than protecting the rights of the child only when the parents have manifestly failed, the state has decided that it is the greater, better parent.

The long-term threat to the American experiment isn’t found in any given policy, but rather in a lost philosophy. Americans are shedding a belief in God at an alarming rate. In elite circles, fundamental liberties like free speech and due process are scorned and mocked as tools of white supremacy or oppressive patriarchies. Federalism has been reduced to a tactic of political opposition, not a bipartisan principle of self-governance.

If you don’t want America to become Britain — if you don’t want to wake up one morning to find the American state defying loving and prudent parents to declare that death is in a child’s “best interests” — I would suggest that you not wait until America is secularized, centralized, and authoritarian. I’d suggest that you not wait until the moment when the state has seized the power to act like Britain, and you’re reduced to arguing, “I know the government can do this, but it shouldn’t.”

Because if you wait until then, you’ve already lost.

Across Twitter, I’ve seen conservatives talk about Alfie’s case and discuss “Second Amendment remedies.” Something about that case has unlocked the revolutionary spirit in some American hearts. And rightfully so. Because if our nation reaches the point where it treats children and families the way Britain has treated Alfie and his parents, then the promise of American liberty will be broken. Is Britain’s present a preview of America’s future? It should grieve us greatly to know that the answer to that question is in serious doubt.

Go here to read the rest.  My late son Larry was profoundly autistic.  Anyone who doesn’t think that Alfie Evans, and others like him, would merely be the first among many of “useless eaters” the State would eventually put to death is a fool.