I have a different conclusion
I saw this over at Gay Patriot.
The Lottery is 1948 story about a rural town the has an annual lottery to choose a victim to be stoned to death to guarantee a good harvest.
According to The Washington Times, a college professor from Pasadena City College has been teaching The Lottery for 30 years. The professor says that in the past students were horrified by the story. Now they aren’t.
“The story always impressed the class with the insight that I felt the author had intended: the danger of just ‘going along’ with something habitually, without examining its rationale and value. In spite of the changes that I had witnessed over the years in anthologies and in students’ writing, Jackson’s message about blind conformity always spoke to my students’ sense of right and wrong.”
Then in the 1990s, something started to change dramatically in how her students responded to the sobering tale. Rather than being horrified by it, some claimed they were bored by it, while others thought the ending was “neat.”
When Ms. Haugaard pressed them for more of their thoughts, she was appalled to discover that not one student in the class was willing to say the practice of human sacrifice was morally wrong! She describes one interaction with a student, whom she calls Beth:
‘Are you asking me if I believe in human sacrifice?’ Beth responded thoughtfully, as though seriously considering all aspects of the question. ‘Well, yes,’ I managed to say. ‘Do you think that the author approved or disapproved of this ritual?’
“I was stunned: This was the [young] woman who wrote so passionately of saving the whales, of concern for the rain forests, of her rescue and tender care of a stray dog. ‘I really don’t know,’ said Beth; ‘If it was a religion of long standing, [who are we to judge]?’”
I don’t think the lack of moral judgement is the problem. I think it is worse than that. Totalitarian Progressivism is Utopian at heart. If they kill enough of the right people to get total conformity, peace on earth and pleanty for all will happen.
This is the core of Nazism, Communism, Maoism, etc. Just put the wrong thinkers to death and then magically everything gets better.
How many times have we seen from radical environmentalists that humans are a virus or cancer.
It sold not be a shock Beth is willing to sacrifice people but wants to save the whales. She’s been told all her life that to save the whales all the people that drive SUVs and eat meat need to die.
Collectivists killed over 100 Million people to try for Utopia. Now that a generation has passed that has not witnessed those horrors first hand (be it WWII or the Cold War) more believers are willing to kill millions to try it again.
What is stoning one innocent person for a good harvest when your heroes starved 10 million Ukrainians or 2 Million Cambodians to death for the same goal.