demoivre

To all those people who feel that, for whatever reason, the world would be a better place without certain segments of the population in it:

"Without hesitation, they doomed millions to extinction and tens of millions to inhuman wretchedness in the mystical delusion of their divine mission. (They called if "history" instead of "divine.") Could one grant them this prerogative, even in principle, without justifying every self-righteous maniacal minority that decides to enforce its visions on humanity by wars, inquisitions, and dictatorships? Anyone who decided to torture and kill one man or woman for the good of the victim's unborn great-grand-children would be adjudged insane. Is he any less insane when he decides to torture and exterminate millions of men and women for the good of their unborn posterity?

Sentimentality? All life is sentimental, if it is worth bothering about it all. If human life has no intrinsic value, then revolutions are senseless, ideals a mirage. Surely it is as sentimental to grow excited over the bliss in store for unborn millions as over the misery of existing millions.

If it is permissible to exterminate a sector of humanity for the sake of History, then there is no sensible reason for drawing the line at five million or five hundred million. Drown them all, comrades, leaving only a he-Stalin and a she-Stalin in their monolithic ark to start over."

-Eugene Lyons, Assignment in Utopia