On October 22nd, 2020, the Geneva Consensus Declaration was formally signed by 32 nations representing over 1.6 billion people (approximately one-fifth of the world’s population). This international agreement, spearheaded by the United States under President Donald Trump, aims to thwart the efforts of pro-abortion and pro-LGBT groups to take over the United Nations. It is a righteous roadblock in their destructive path. Under the Geneva Consensus Declaration, signatory nations have endorsed a number of bold pro-life, pro-family declarations. For example, signers have committed to the following: Emphasize that “in no case should abortion be promoted as a method of family planning”... Reaffirm that “the child needs special safeguards and care before as well as after birth”... Reaffirm that “the family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State”; that “motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance,” that “women play a critical role in the family” and women’s “contribution to the welfare of the family and to the development of society”. Reaffirm that there is no international right to abortion, nor any international obligation on the part of States to finance or facilitate abortion... The Geneva Consensus Declaration makes clear what the UN already knows – and what Mr. Trudeau tries to hide: There is NO international right to abortion. Key signing nations include the United States, Brazil, Egypt, Hungary, Indonesia, and Uganda. 26 other countries have also come on board, and the declaration remains open for additional world leaders to sign. ...
Gotta love how the Grauniad spins this: "US signs anti-abortion declaration with group of largely authoritarian governments". Never change, Guardian. Never change.
I shall refrain from making assessments as to which of these Governments might be considered authoritarian. Numbers of them however continue to use the death penalty, which is interesting as one reflects on the rights of the unborn as against the rights of the already born.
So if a country is authoritarian, I assume you to mean that they're "bad" even if the sanctity of life is stronger there? And if a country (say Netherlands) has a culture and a people who are so wicked and corrupt that they're beginning to kill the sick elderly (seen as 'useless'), and the post-birth infants (seen as 'a burden'), but they're less authoritarian, then that would mean they're "good"? Just trying to get a sense of the moral compass involved here. And what's wrong with the death penalty? Easily one of the most evident principles in all of moral theology and ethics, both in the natural law and in the history and culture of Christendom.
My use of the word 'authoritarian' reflected the use of the same word as used by @Ananias in Post #2 in this thread. I ventured no opinion as to the supposed moral value of authoritarian regimes at that stage, but I will now. Authoritarianism is a form of government characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of a strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic voting. Political scientists have created many typologies describing variations of authoritarian forms of government. Authoritarian regimes may be either autocratic or oligarchic in nature and may be based upon the rule of a party or the military. In an influential 1964 work, the political scientist Juan Linz defined authoritarianism as possessing four qualities: Limited political pluralism, realized with constraints on the legislature, political parties and interest groups. Political legitimacy based upon appeals to emotion and identification of the regime as a necessary evil to combat "easily recognizable societal problems, such as underdevelopment or insurgency". Minimal political mobilization and suppression of anti-regime activities. Ill-defined executive powers, often vague and shifting, which extends the power of the executive. Minimally defined, an authoritarian government lacks free and competitive direct elections to legislatures, free and competitive direct or indirect elections for executives, or both. Broadly defined, authoritarian states include countries that lack the civil liberties such as freedom of religion, or countries in which the government and the opposition do not alternate in power at least once following free elections. Authoritarian states might contain nominally democratic institutions such as political parties, legislatures and elections which are managed to entrench authoritarian rule and can feature fraudulent, non-competitive elections. Since 1946, the share of authoritarian states in the international political system increased until the mid-1970s, but declined from then until the year 2000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarianism Authoritarian regimes are not of themselves bad by nature of their being authoritarian, however there is an old adage which suggest that all power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Henry VIII's England had a tendency to authoritarianism, and for all the good one can find, there is also a long list of persons who suffered, in my view wrongly, at the hands of that regime, not the least of which were Thomas More and Margaret Pole. Which of course brings me to your question of the death penalty. In my view the death penalty is wrong. The saying The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away makes little sense if you have state approved cessation of life. The USA has been shown to execute people who have later been shown to be innocent. The difficulty is you can take back a death penalty. Now if the best system(?) in the world gets it wrong often enough, then maybe it is time to stop doing it, or at the very least have very specific limitations on its used. Indonesia's use of the death penalty in the case of cannabis importation is clearly a case in point.
I imagine that Israel may have stoned some people to death who were not guilty of the accusation brought against them, despite whatever precautions were taken. It can happen. Even so, God instructed them to utilize that method of punishment. If the death penalty was appropriate in God's eyes for them, why should it be different for us? The death penalty has nothing to do with abortion, though. Two very different things. Those who receive the death penalty are treated as humans and given due process of law, tried by a jury and convicted of wrongdoing (whether by error or not at least they had their day in court), then sentenced. The unborn never get a shot at justice, no one represents their interests, they're not treated as human beings, and they are killed for mostly selfish reasons. I see no valid parallels between the death penalty and abortion.
I don't have a problem with what you're saying here, and I don't even have a problem with calling authoritarian regimes bad. I certainly don't agree with them, so that's not my point. My issue is the moral dismissal of these regimes in those stances which are moral, solely because of them having bad aspects elsewhere (eg. authoritarianism). It seemed to imply that authoritarianism is the super-issue, which determines the overall rectitude and justice of a given society. As I show with my contrast with the Netherlands, we're quickly approaching a point where an authoritarian but otherwise moral society may be more equitable, and more friendly to human life, than the so-called non-authoritarian societies, where the raging fire of atheism and apostacy produces widespread hatred of life, nihilism towards meaning, and widespread slaughter of those seen as inconvenient. All done under "free" and "open" social structures. The issue of capital punishment is probably its own thread so I won't say too much on it here. But it takes root in two places, in divine law, and in natural law. In divine law, it takes root in the New Testament saying which our Lord utters and cites: He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword. Matthew 26:52. And the other is the passage from the Epistles of St. Paul where he calls the Nero a deacon of the Lord who was given by God the power of life and death over the State; in church history this has been understood as speaking of the civil state in general. Romans 13:4. The second source for capital punishment comes from natural law, where it takes root from the simple principle of an eye for and eye, and tooth for a tooth. (Although this too is found in Scripture, it's not a revealed but a natural principle, because found in all nations and cultures.) It simply means that if you killed, then it is right for you to be killed. If you stole, then it is right for you to be stolen from.
I am not sure why the Netherlands is being singled out, I spent a couple of months there a while back, and apart from the somewhat seedy/sleazy aspects of Amsterdam, I found the society quite healthy. I spent most time in Rotterdam, Delft, Gouda, and Utrecht. I found the Dutch, open, friendly, hard working, honest, and noticeably blunt. I did also note that whilst they still embrace many of the austere aspects of Calvinism, they tended to do so without an acknowledgement of the divine. I had a number of discussions with a number of people about why that was so. It does seem that the moral compass becomes either lost or reduced to relativism, and ultimately logic suggests that the common good gets replaced with individual assessment, which is not at all Gezellig. This principle, and I am not sure that I would call it natural law, establishes the limits to retribution. I spent four or so years in Papua New Guinea which has a cultural tradition of pay-back which often lacked this moderation. It is a principle also enunciated by the 45th POTUS a little while back when he spoke about commensurate retribution, in relation to ships being attacked in the Persian Gulf. Clearly that was not the principle invoked in the capital punishment administered to Thomas More, Margaret Pole, or Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran. Smacking children is an odd way to teach them not to be violent, and killing people seems an odd way to teach people to stop killing people, and indeed they seem to be ineffective tools. More authoritarians regimes are more likely to invoke the Death Penalty, especially where it does not represent commensurate justice.
Have you looked at the abortion mills? That's not exactly a common stop on a tourist tour. Have you peeked inside the nursing homes where they're killing the elderly? I doubt that when you were enjoying the local pasteries, this would be on your (or anyone's) tourist itinerary. Have you sat in at the therapy clinics or visited their online forums to observe the skyrocketing rates of masturbation, divorce, transgenderism, sodomy, adultery, and nihilism? You should not confuse the tourist itinerary with the actual state of a given society. Most European cities have visually not changed since the 1800s. They look quaint, charming, adorable. But the people living in those cities have no faith, have no moral compass, and have no purpose or meaning in life, because they are completely separated from God. To be a Christian is as odd and unusual to them, as to have six fingers. You are looking at apostates, people who are flirting with Gehenna every day of their lives. They may smile and be charming, and serve an excellent double espresso, without changing the reality that their societies are broken, and their cities are an adorable vintage themepark, from the time when those cultures were Christian and healthy.
I think by 'authoritarian' the implication is that those governments are repressive, even brutal, in the way that they govern. Many on the list are not seen as good bed fellows by USA citizens in almost any other of their policies apart from the those of abortions and assisted deaths. The death penalty is widely employed by all the Muslim ones and the USA seems quite keen on retaining it in many of its own States. Quite a lot in common with repressive Islamic states actually, policy-wise. .
WE don't have a lot in common policy wise with repressive Islamic States. We do have the death penalty, something I am against but that is about it.
I was referring rather to their inclination to want to impose their religious views of 'morality' by the use of secular law.
Every law passed is imposing someones view of morality. Even when we say we are wanting to live and let live and have maximum freedom we are imposing a view of morality within our laws. Our laws are shaped by our moral outlook and are therefore an imposition of our morality
Which is the difference between living in The Spirit and living by the letter of The Law. The principle remains the same whether it is The Law of Islam or the Law of God, (as some USA believers see it, which is much as Muslims see 'The Law of Islam'). The desire to have morality, (as they see it), imposed by law, is known as legalism. Col.2:11-23.
I still think you miss the point. All law is an imposition of some form of morality so are all laws living by legalism?
I think you were saying, they will "now" euthanize children in the Netherlands. Yep. Yes. The headlines say it all: Emmanuel Macron and the barren elite of a changing continent European leaders Macron, Merkel, May, Jean-Claude Juncker all have no children Is Europe Governed by 'Childless Baby Boomers'? - Snopes Childless leaders are destroying Europe All of these leaders have cold empty homes, and these women are purposefully barren: