A Matter of Life and Death

Ideas are a matter of life and death. Take slavery, for example, which deems some peoples as inferior to others and regards people as objects to be used. Eugenics similarly witnesses to a whole set of beliefs that suggest only certain human lives are intrinsically valuable — so long as (in the case of Nazism) they are German, have blond hair and blue eyes, and do not have Down syndrome or a disability.

One cannot read Hitler’s writings on the concept of lebensraum (“final solution”) and suggest that ideas, even in seed form, are insignificant or not worth debate. In the end, the ideas…