Wonderful Social Welfare in Europe?

[KathleenElsie]

Free health-care, birth (well if you are lucky enough to get born maybe) to death (well maybe till someone decides you are no longer useful or you cost the STATE to much) welfare the perfect nanny state. Some of the social liberals in the USA and Canada agree we should be more like Europe. A fairer place to live.

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Sweden Parliament Approves Effort to Become International Abortion Hotspot

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http://www.lifenews.com/swedflg.jpgStockholm, Sweden (LifeNews.com) – The Swedish Parliament has approved a bill that would make Sweden an international destination for women seeking abortions. Foreign women will now be allowed to have abortions in Sweden in what detractors call “abortion tourism” by offering abortions to women in nations where the practice is illegal. The practice would be similar to that in which pro-euthanasia organizations in Switzerland operate assisted suicide houses where elderly and disabled patients are killed. “The abortion law is going to be changed so that foreign women will be allowed to have abortions in Sweden,” a statement from parliament said. Previously only women from the northern European nation could have abortions unless the national health office gave special permission. According to the AFP news agency, 134 members of parliament supported the bill while 124 opposed it and 91 members abstained. Read the complete story

Many people tend to look at the social structure of Europe and want to emulate it. They say how fair it is to those living there. How morally or socially just is it to allow society to murder the very people they say they care for? Murdering the future and the past does not seem moral or just to me.

How does someone justify these practices and yet claim to believe in The Holy Catholic Church and God?

 

[ribozyme]

Free health-care, birth (well if you are lucky enough to get born maybe) to death (well maybe till someone decides you are no longer useful or you cost the STATE to much) welfare the perfect nanny state. Some of the social liberals in the USA and Canada agree we should be more like Europe. A fairer place to live.

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Many people tend to look at the social structure of Europe and want to emulate it. They say how fair it is to those living there. How morally or socially just is it to allow society to murder the very people they say they care for? Murdering the future and the past does not seem moral or just to me.

How does someone justify these practices and yet claim to believe in The Holy Catholic Church and God?

So you are criticizing the Scandinavian welfare state because of its alleged “culture of death.” Well, you also mention “social liberals” presumably because they are more receptive to abortion and do not have the perfervid opposition to abortion that social conservatives possess.

How about you compare the United States to Sweden?

I’ll compare the United States to Japan.

Figures for 2003

Japan: Live births, 1123610; estimated abortions, 319800; ratio of live births to estimated abortions, 3.51.
United States: Live births, 4089950; estimate abortions, 1287000; ratio of live births to estimated abortions, 3.18.

johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/ab-japan.html
johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/ab-unitedstates.html

 

[melensdad]

So you are criticizing the Scandinavian welfare state because of its alleged “culture of death.” Well, you also mention “social liberals” presumably because they are more receptive to abortion and. . .

Your post is lost on me. I clearly do not understand your point unless it is sarcasm in the form of a parody? You are making a clear point about creeping moral relativism, right?

Or are you actually saying that because our society is evil that we can’t point out others that are as evil and trending toward even more evil? You really are not doing something so silly as to say that we cannot look at other evil, are you?

Seriously, we have plenty of problems here. Threads like this one do not shy away from our own problems but simply point out other problems exist in other areas. But as moral relativism is a huge problem in Christianity today, and in Catholicism, you certainly made a great post that perfectly illustrates this problem by totally changing the focus and making a relativistic argument.

 

[ribozyme]

Your post is lost on me. I clearly do not understand your point unless it is sarcasm in the form of a parody? You are making a clear point about creeping moral relativism, right?

Or are you actually saying that because our society is evil that we can’t point out others that are as evil and trending toward even more evil? You really are not doing something so silly as to say that we cannot look at other evil, are you?

Seriously, we have plenty of problems here. Threads like this one do not shy away from our own problems but simply point out other problems exist in other areas. But as moral relativism is a huge problem in Christianity today, and in Catholicism, you certainly made a great post that perfectly illustrates this problem by totally changing the focus and making a relativistic argument.

I thought it was a post assailing efforts supporting some political agendas in the United States such as single-payer health care (usually left wing agenda) using abortion in Scandinavia to argue why we should mimic the welfare state because of the prevalence of abortion in Scandinavia.

I was trying to elicit a comparision of Sweden and the United States. I compared the United States and Japan, and surprising, despite the political activism against abortion in the United States, it has a HIGHER rate of abortion compared to Japan.

(I did intend to say a sarcastic remark about Japan when I initially posted my first reply in this thread, but I didn’t. My intuition was correct: posting that remark would have exacerbated the situation.)

I will have to restrain myself about discussing the morality of abortion (or the moral status of a fetus) in this thread as a precautionary measure. However, I did convey my views on other threads I recently posted in.

I wasn’t endorsing relativism; I thought “social liberal” meant “democratic socialist.” Of course, the latter term isn’t used in the United States because it has a negative connotation. Regarding my “liberal” views, for example, I do NOT support legalization of psychoactive drugs. It would cost society more in terms of brain damaged fetuses and ruined lifestyles than the war on drugs itself. But that is another topic.

 

[tvdxer]

Free health-care, birth (well if you are lucky enough to get born maybe) to death (well maybe till someone decides you are no longer useful or you cost the STATE to much) welfare the perfect nanny state. Some of the social liberals in the USA and Canada agree we should be more like Europe. A fairer place to live.

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Many people tend to look at the social structure of Europe and want to emulate it. They say how fair it is to those living there. How morally or socially just is it to allow society to murder the very people they say they care for? Murdering the future and the past does not seem moral or just to me.

How does someone justify these practices and yet claim to believe in The Holy Catholic Church and God?

First, you’re using the example of one country, Sweden. Sweden (along with Denmark) is probably the most socially liberal country in the world. Most European nations have abortion laws that are actually somewhat stricter than those in the U.S. In addition, the rates of abortion in prosperous Western European countries (as opposed to the ex-communist ones in the East) are actually lower than those in the United States.

Second, since when do European countries put their citizens to death because they’re no longer productive or useful to the state? The only country in which euthanasia is legal is the Netherlands, which accounts for a small percentage of the European population.

There are areas in which the U.S. could be more like Europe. Europeans are in better shape than Americans. Most European countries emit less CO2 per capita and have better public transit systems. European cities are generally more walkable than those in the U.S. Europeans receive, on average, 30 or so days of paid vacation vs. less than two weeks for Americans, and actually take it. About 55% of E.U. citizens speak a second language, vs. just 9% of Americans. The murder rate in most Western European countries is well below that of the U.S.

On the other hand, there are many negative things about Europe as well, such as the low fertility rate and lack of religious devotion or even belief. Conservatives often bash Europe as being the land of the Godless nanny state; liberals sometimes hold Europe up as the gold standard for progressiveness. Both views are incomplete. Perhaps it is more intelligent to take a more nuanced view of the (very diverse) continent, rather than simply worship or condemn everything about it.

 

[melensdad]

There are areas in which the U.S. could be more like Europe. . . . Most European countries emit less CO2 per capita and have better public transit systems. European cities are generally more walkable than those in the U.S.

Most produce less CO2 because their people are compacted into smaller spaces, commute short distances, etc. Most transit systems are better because the cities and countries are far more compact, with nations equal in size to one midwestern state. As for the “walkable” point, much of that is based on the fact that their cities are often 300 to 500 years older than our oldest cities and were designed for walking while our cities were often built up around the automobile, their cities were built long before the care was invented.

I’m not trying to argue, but just put things into some perspective.