The welfare of children is seen by some as being a very modern, civilized concern of enlightened twentieth-century humanity. Again, let us look at history. In 1483, men wept in the streets of London when the Princes in the Tower were thought to have been murdered. In the wars between the Turks and the Byzantines in the Middle Ages, the Byzantines would sometimes place children at the head of their army in order to confuse the enemy, who would nont attack while the children were there. Whatever one might think of the ethics of such a tactic, it showed that both sides would not move to harm a child and that each was confident of the other side's aversion to doing so. Today, children in the Balkans are killed by snipers and murdered for political ends. When teh murders of children make headline news, people no longer weep in the streets.
But why do these things happen? Here we enter into territory that is even more subjective than the question of whether or not certain kinds of depravity are new, for much depends on one's moral viewpoint. I think that no-one will disagree that the very notion of morality is ebbing away, in the sense that there are few moral principles that can be said to be held by more or less everyone in Britain or, for that matter, in the West, generally. Moral relativism has undoubtedly fragmented society, making it much easier for people with extreme views to secure an audience.
Maggots, Murder and Men by Dr. Zakaria Erzinclioglu
