When the Rights of Some are Extinguished…

I read this yesterday in the introduction to a 26-year-old book entitled Medical Holocaust, by William Brennan. I thought it was worth sharing:

Although every holocaust ever perpetrated is an unprecedented event in its own right, this should not detract from what all holocausts share in common. The central element af any holocaust .. whether it involves the extermination of Jews by the Nazis, the annihilation of Russians by the Soviet regime, or the slaughter of Cambodians by the Khmer Rouge .. is the systematic and widespread destruction of millions looked upon as indiscriminate masses of subhuman expendables. The basic ingredients for a holocaust exist whenever any society can be misled into defining individuals as less than human and therefore devoid of value and respect. This is all the fuel necessary to ignite destruction on the level of a holocaust. Once one group of individuals is deemed unworthy of the designation human, the precedent is established for defining ever growing numbers of people and groups out of the human race and along with that, denying their most fundamental right, the right to life itself. When the rights of some are extinguished, the rights of all are in jeapordy. As callousness to the value of human life increases, so does the the likelihood of a monumental holocaust.

Well said...