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Here's an interesting essay sent to me by a good friend.
It examines some of the causes of the Holocuast, asserting that it is through euthanasia in Germany, was the starting point.
Saturday, October 18, 2003
------------------------------------------------------------------
Auschwitz in America
By William J. Federer
------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: October 18, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern
Even before the rise of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich,
the way for the gruesome Nazi Holocaust of human
extermination and cruel butchery was being prepared in
the 1930 German Weimar Republic through the medical
establishment and philosophical elite's adoption of
the "quality of life" concept in place of the
"sanctity of life."
The Nuremberg trials, exposing the horrible Nazi war
crimes, revealed that Germany's trend toward atrocity
began with their progressive embrace of the Hegelian
doctrine of "rational utility," where an individual's
worth is in relation to their contribution to the
state, rather than determined in light of traditional
moral, ethical and religious values.
This gradual transformation of national public
opinion, promulgated through media and education, was
described in an article written by the British
commentator Malcolm Muggeridge entitled "The Humane
Holocaust" and in an article written by former United
States Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop, M.D.,
entitled "The Slide to Auschwitz," both published in
The Human Life Review, 1977 and 1980 respectively.
Muggeridge stated: "Near at hand, we have been
accorded, for those that have eyes to see, an object
lesson in what the quest for 'quality of life' without
reference to 'sanctity of life' can involve ...
[namely] the great Nazi Holocaust, whose TV
presentation has lately been harrowing viewers
throughout the Western world. In this televised
version, an essential consideration has been left out
– namely, that the origins of the Holocaust lay, not
in Nazi terrorism and anti-Semitism, but in pre-Nazi
Weimar Germany's acceptance of euthanasia and
mercy-killing as humane and estimable. ...
"It took no more than three decades to transform a war
crime into an act of compassion, thereby enabling the
victors in the war against Nazism to adopt the very
practices for which the Nazis had been solemnly
condemned at Nuremberg."
The transformation followed thus: The concept that the
elderly and terminally ill should have the right to
die was promoted in books, newspapers, literature and
even entertainment films, the most popular of which
were entitled "Ich klage an (I accuse)" and "Mentally
Ill."
One euthanasia movie, based on a novel by a National
Socialist doctor, actually won a prize at the
world-famous Venice Film Festival! Extreme hardship
cases were cited, which increasingly convinced the
public to morally approve of euthanasia. The medical
profession gradually grew accustomed to administering
death to patients who, for whatever reasons, felt
their low "quality of life" rendered their lives not
worth living, or as it was put, lebensunwerten Leben,
(life unworthy of life).
In an Associated Press release published in the New
York Times Oct. 10, 1933, entitled "Nazi Plan to Kill
Incurables to End Pain; German Religious Groups Oppose
Move," it was stated: "The Ministry of Justice, in a
detailed memorandum explaining the Nazi aims regarding
the German penal code, today announced its intentions
to authorize physicians to end the sufferings of the
incurable patient. The memorandum ... proposed that it
shall be possible for physicians to end the tortures
of incurable patients, upon request, in the interest
of true humanity.
"This proposed legal recognition of euthanasia – the
act of providing a painless and peaceful death –
raised a number of fundamental problems of a
religious, scientific and legal nature. The Catholic
newspaper Germania hastened to observe: 'The Catholic
faith binds the conscience of its followers not to
accept this method.' ... In Lutheran circles, too,
life is regarded as something that God alone can take.
... Euthanasia ... has become a widely discussed word
in the Reich. ... No life still valuable to the State
will be wantonly destroyed."
Nationalized health care and government involvement in
medical care promised to improve the public's "quality
of life." Unfortunately, the cost of maintaining
government medical care was a contributing factor to
the growth of the national debt, which reached
astronomical proportions. Double and triple digit
inflation crippled the economy, resulting in the
public demanding that government cut expenses.
This precipitated the 1939 order to cut federal
expenses. The national socialist government decided to
remove "useless" expenses from the budget, which
included the support and medical costs required to
maintain the lives of the retarded, insane, senile,
epileptic, psychiatric patients, handicapped, deaf,
blind, the non-rehabilitatable ill and those who had
been diseased or chronically ill for five years or
more. It was labeled an "act of mercy" to "liberate
them through death," as they were viewed as having an
extremely low "quality of life," as well as being a
tax burden on the public.
The public psyche was conditioned for this, as even
school math problems compared distorted medical costs
incurred by the taxpayer of caring for and
rehabilitating the chronically sick with the cost of
loans to newly married couples for new housing units.
The next whose lives were terminated by the state were
the institutionalized elderly who had no relatives and
no financial resources. These lonely, forsaken
individuals were needed by no one and would be missed
by no one. Their "quality of life" was considered low
by everyone's standards, and they were a tremendous
tax burden on the economically distressed state.
The next to be eliminated were the parasites on the
state: the street people, bums, beggars, hopelessly
poor, gypsies, prisoners, inmates and convicts. These
were socially disturbing individuals incapable of
providing for themselves whose "quality of life" was
considered by the public as irreversibly below
standard, in addition to the fact that they were a
nuisance to society and a seed-bed for crime.
The liquidation grew to include those who had been
unable to work, the socially unproductive and those
living on welfare or government pensions. They drew
financial support from the state, but contributed
nothing financially back. They were looked upon as
"useless eaters," leeches, stealing from those who
worked hard to pay the taxes to support them. Their
unproductive lives were a burden on the "quality of
life" of those who had to pay the taxes.
The next to be eradicated were the ideologically
unwanted, the political enemies of the state,
religious extremists and those "disloyal" individuals
considered to be holding the government back from
producing a society which functions well and provides
everyone a better "quality of life." The moving
biography of the imprisoned Dietrich Bonhoffer
chronicled the injustices. These individuals also were
a source of "human experimental material," allowing
military medical research to be carried on with human
tissue, thus providing valuable information that
promised to improve the nation's health.
Finally, justifying their actions on the purported
theory of evolution, the Nazis considered the German,
or "Aryan," race as "ubermenschen," supermen, being
more advanced in the supposed progress of human
evolution. This resulted in the twisted conclusion
that all other races, and in particular the Jewish
race, were less evolved and needed to be eliminated
from the so-called "human gene pool," ensuring that
future generations of humans would have a higher
"quality of life."
Dr. Koop stated: "The first step is followed by the
second step. You can say that if the first step is
moral then whatever follows must be moral. The
important thing, however, is this: Whether you
diagnose the first step as being one worth taking or
being one that is precarious rests entirely on what
the second step is likely to be. ... I am concerned
about this because when the first 273,000 German aged,
infirm and retarded were killed in gas chambers there
was no outcry from that medical profession either, and
it was not far from there to Auschwitz."
Can this holocaust happen in America? Indeed, it has
already begun. The idea of killing a person and
calling it "death with dignity" is an oxymoron. The
"mercy-killing" movement puts us on the same path as
pre-Nazi Germany. The "quality of life" concept, which
eventually results in the Hegelian utilitarian
attitude of a person's worth being based on their
contribution toward perpetuating big government, is in
stark contrast to America's founding principles.
This philosophy which lowers the value of human life,
shocked attendees at the Governor's Commission on
Disability, in Concord, N.H., Oct. 5, 2001, as they
heard the absurd comments of Princeton University
professor Peter Singer.
The Associated Press reported Singer's comments: "I do
think that it is sometimes appropriate to kill a human
infant," he said, adding that he does not believe a
newborn has a right to life until it reaches some
minimum level of consciousness. "For me, the relevant
question is, what makes it so seriously wrong to take
a life?" Singer asked. "Those of you who are not
vegetarians are responsible for taking a life every
time you eat. Species is no more relevant than race in
making these judgments."
Singer's views, if left unchecked, could easily lead
to a repeat of the atrocities of Nazi Germany, if not
something worse. Add to that unbridled advances in the
technology of cloning, DNA tests that reveal physical
defects, human embryos killed for the purpose of
gathering stem cells to treat diseases ... and a
haunting future unfolds before us. President Theodore
Roosevelt's warning in 1909 seems appropriate:
"Progress has brought us both unbounded opportunities
and unbridled difficulties. Thus, the measure of our
civilization will not be that we have done much, but
what we have done with that much. I believe that the
next half century will determine if we will advance
the cause of Christian civilization or revert to the
horrors of brutal paganism. The thought of modern
industry in the hands of Christian charity is a dream
worth dreaming. The thought of industry in the hands
of paganism is a nightmare beyond imagining. The
choice between the two is upon us."
In his State of the Union address in 1905, Roosevelt
stated:
"There are those who believe that a new modernity
demands a new morality. What they fail to consider is
the harsh reality that there is no such thing as a new
morality. There is only one morality. All else is
immorality. There is only true Christian ethics over
against which stands the whole of paganism. If we are
to fulfill our great destiny as a people, then we must
return to the old morality, the sole morality. ... All
these blatant sham reformers, in the name of a new
morality, preach the old vice of self-indulgence which
rotted out first the moral fiber and then even the
external greatness of Greece and Rome."
In biblical comparison, Jesus showed mercy by healing
the sick and giving sanity back to the deranged, but
never did he kill them. This attitude is exemplified
today by Mother Teresa of Calcutta, whose version of
"death with dignity" was to gather the dying from off
the street and show compassion to these rejected and
abandoned members of the human race, all the while
knowing that they may only survive for another half
hour. Her "mercy-living" movement went to great
trouble to house, wash and feed even the most hopeless
and derelict, because of inherent respect for the
"sanctity of life" of each individual.
This attitude is summed up in her statement: "I see
Jesus in every human being. I say to myself, this is
hungry Jesus, I must feed him. This is sick Jesus.
This one has leprosy or gangrene; I must wash him and
tend to him. I serve because I love Jesus."
Will America chose the "sanctity of life" concept as
demonstrated by Mother Teresa, or will America chose
the "quality of life" concept championed by
self-proclaimed doctors of death – such as in the case
of the court-ordered starvation of Terri Schiavo – and
continue its slide toward Auschwitz? What kind of
subtle anesthetic has been allowed to deaden our
national conscience? What horrors await us? The
question is not whether the suffering and dying
person's life should be terminated; the question is
what kind of nation will we become if they are. Their
physical death is preceded only by our moral death.
It examines some of the causes of the Holocuast, asserting that it is through euthanasia in Germany, was the starting point.
Saturday, October 18, 2003
------------------------------------------------------------------
Auschwitz in America
By William J. Federer
------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: October 18, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern
Even before the rise of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich,
the way for the gruesome Nazi Holocaust of human
extermination and cruel butchery was being prepared in
the 1930 German Weimar Republic through the medical
establishment and philosophical elite's adoption of
the "quality of life" concept in place of the
"sanctity of life."
The Nuremberg trials, exposing the horrible Nazi war
crimes, revealed that Germany's trend toward atrocity
began with their progressive embrace of the Hegelian
doctrine of "rational utility," where an individual's
worth is in relation to their contribution to the
state, rather than determined in light of traditional
moral, ethical and religious values.
This gradual transformation of national public
opinion, promulgated through media and education, was
described in an article written by the British
commentator Malcolm Muggeridge entitled "The Humane
Holocaust" and in an article written by former United
States Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop, M.D.,
entitled "The Slide to Auschwitz," both published in
The Human Life Review, 1977 and 1980 respectively.
Muggeridge stated: "Near at hand, we have been
accorded, for those that have eyes to see, an object
lesson in what the quest for 'quality of life' without
reference to 'sanctity of life' can involve ...
[namely] the great Nazi Holocaust, whose TV
presentation has lately been harrowing viewers
throughout the Western world. In this televised
version, an essential consideration has been left out
– namely, that the origins of the Holocaust lay, not
in Nazi terrorism and anti-Semitism, but in pre-Nazi
Weimar Germany's acceptance of euthanasia and
mercy-killing as humane and estimable. ...
"It took no more than three decades to transform a war
crime into an act of compassion, thereby enabling the
victors in the war against Nazism to adopt the very
practices for which the Nazis had been solemnly
condemned at Nuremberg."
The transformation followed thus: The concept that the
elderly and terminally ill should have the right to
die was promoted in books, newspapers, literature and
even entertainment films, the most popular of which
were entitled "Ich klage an (I accuse)" and "Mentally
Ill."
One euthanasia movie, based on a novel by a National
Socialist doctor, actually won a prize at the
world-famous Venice Film Festival! Extreme hardship
cases were cited, which increasingly convinced the
public to morally approve of euthanasia. The medical
profession gradually grew accustomed to administering
death to patients who, for whatever reasons, felt
their low "quality of life" rendered their lives not
worth living, or as it was put, lebensunwerten Leben,
(life unworthy of life).
In an Associated Press release published in the New
York Times Oct. 10, 1933, entitled "Nazi Plan to Kill
Incurables to End Pain; German Religious Groups Oppose
Move," it was stated: "The Ministry of Justice, in a
detailed memorandum explaining the Nazi aims regarding
the German penal code, today announced its intentions
to authorize physicians to end the sufferings of the
incurable patient. The memorandum ... proposed that it
shall be possible for physicians to end the tortures
of incurable patients, upon request, in the interest
of true humanity.
"This proposed legal recognition of euthanasia – the
act of providing a painless and peaceful death –
raised a number of fundamental problems of a
religious, scientific and legal nature. The Catholic
newspaper Germania hastened to observe: 'The Catholic
faith binds the conscience of its followers not to
accept this method.' ... In Lutheran circles, too,
life is regarded as something that God alone can take.
... Euthanasia ... has become a widely discussed word
in the Reich. ... No life still valuable to the State
will be wantonly destroyed."
Nationalized health care and government involvement in
medical care promised to improve the public's "quality
of life." Unfortunately, the cost of maintaining
government medical care was a contributing factor to
the growth of the national debt, which reached
astronomical proportions. Double and triple digit
inflation crippled the economy, resulting in the
public demanding that government cut expenses.
This precipitated the 1939 order to cut federal
expenses. The national socialist government decided to
remove "useless" expenses from the budget, which
included the support and medical costs required to
maintain the lives of the retarded, insane, senile,
epileptic, psychiatric patients, handicapped, deaf,
blind, the non-rehabilitatable ill and those who had
been diseased or chronically ill for five years or
more. It was labeled an "act of mercy" to "liberate
them through death," as they were viewed as having an
extremely low "quality of life," as well as being a
tax burden on the public.
The public psyche was conditioned for this, as even
school math problems compared distorted medical costs
incurred by the taxpayer of caring for and
rehabilitating the chronically sick with the cost of
loans to newly married couples for new housing units.
The next whose lives were terminated by the state were
the institutionalized elderly who had no relatives and
no financial resources. These lonely, forsaken
individuals were needed by no one and would be missed
by no one. Their "quality of life" was considered low
by everyone's standards, and they were a tremendous
tax burden on the economically distressed state.
The next to be eliminated were the parasites on the
state: the street people, bums, beggars, hopelessly
poor, gypsies, prisoners, inmates and convicts. These
were socially disturbing individuals incapable of
providing for themselves whose "quality of life" was
considered by the public as irreversibly below
standard, in addition to the fact that they were a
nuisance to society and a seed-bed for crime.
The liquidation grew to include those who had been
unable to work, the socially unproductive and those
living on welfare or government pensions. They drew
financial support from the state, but contributed
nothing financially back. They were looked upon as
"useless eaters," leeches, stealing from those who
worked hard to pay the taxes to support them. Their
unproductive lives were a burden on the "quality of
life" of those who had to pay the taxes.
The next to be eradicated were the ideologically
unwanted, the political enemies of the state,
religious extremists and those "disloyal" individuals
considered to be holding the government back from
producing a society which functions well and provides
everyone a better "quality of life." The moving
biography of the imprisoned Dietrich Bonhoffer
chronicled the injustices. These individuals also were
a source of "human experimental material," allowing
military medical research to be carried on with human
tissue, thus providing valuable information that
promised to improve the nation's health.
Finally, justifying their actions on the purported
theory of evolution, the Nazis considered the German,
or "Aryan," race as "ubermenschen," supermen, being
more advanced in the supposed progress of human
evolution. This resulted in the twisted conclusion
that all other races, and in particular the Jewish
race, were less evolved and needed to be eliminated
from the so-called "human gene pool," ensuring that
future generations of humans would have a higher
"quality of life."
Dr. Koop stated: "The first step is followed by the
second step. You can say that if the first step is
moral then whatever follows must be moral. The
important thing, however, is this: Whether you
diagnose the first step as being one worth taking or
being one that is precarious rests entirely on what
the second step is likely to be. ... I am concerned
about this because when the first 273,000 German aged,
infirm and retarded were killed in gas chambers there
was no outcry from that medical profession either, and
it was not far from there to Auschwitz."
Can this holocaust happen in America? Indeed, it has
already begun. The idea of killing a person and
calling it "death with dignity" is an oxymoron. The
"mercy-killing" movement puts us on the same path as
pre-Nazi Germany. The "quality of life" concept, which
eventually results in the Hegelian utilitarian
attitude of a person's worth being based on their
contribution toward perpetuating big government, is in
stark contrast to America's founding principles.
This philosophy which lowers the value of human life,
shocked attendees at the Governor's Commission on
Disability, in Concord, N.H., Oct. 5, 2001, as they
heard the absurd comments of Princeton University
professor Peter Singer.
The Associated Press reported Singer's comments: "I do
think that it is sometimes appropriate to kill a human
infant," he said, adding that he does not believe a
newborn has a right to life until it reaches some
minimum level of consciousness. "For me, the relevant
question is, what makes it so seriously wrong to take
a life?" Singer asked. "Those of you who are not
vegetarians are responsible for taking a life every
time you eat. Species is no more relevant than race in
making these judgments."
Singer's views, if left unchecked, could easily lead
to a repeat of the atrocities of Nazi Germany, if not
something worse. Add to that unbridled advances in the
technology of cloning, DNA tests that reveal physical
defects, human embryos killed for the purpose of
gathering stem cells to treat diseases ... and a
haunting future unfolds before us. President Theodore
Roosevelt's warning in 1909 seems appropriate:
"Progress has brought us both unbounded opportunities
and unbridled difficulties. Thus, the measure of our
civilization will not be that we have done much, but
what we have done with that much. I believe that the
next half century will determine if we will advance
the cause of Christian civilization or revert to the
horrors of brutal paganism. The thought of modern
industry in the hands of Christian charity is a dream
worth dreaming. The thought of industry in the hands
of paganism is a nightmare beyond imagining. The
choice between the two is upon us."
In his State of the Union address in 1905, Roosevelt
stated:
"There are those who believe that a new modernity
demands a new morality. What they fail to consider is
the harsh reality that there is no such thing as a new
morality. There is only one morality. All else is
immorality. There is only true Christian ethics over
against which stands the whole of paganism. If we are
to fulfill our great destiny as a people, then we must
return to the old morality, the sole morality. ... All
these blatant sham reformers, in the name of a new
morality, preach the old vice of self-indulgence which
rotted out first the moral fiber and then even the
external greatness of Greece and Rome."
In biblical comparison, Jesus showed mercy by healing
the sick and giving sanity back to the deranged, but
never did he kill them. This attitude is exemplified
today by Mother Teresa of Calcutta, whose version of
"death with dignity" was to gather the dying from off
the street and show compassion to these rejected and
abandoned members of the human race, all the while
knowing that they may only survive for another half
hour. Her "mercy-living" movement went to great
trouble to house, wash and feed even the most hopeless
and derelict, because of inherent respect for the
"sanctity of life" of each individual.
This attitude is summed up in her statement: "I see
Jesus in every human being. I say to myself, this is
hungry Jesus, I must feed him. This is sick Jesus.
This one has leprosy or gangrene; I must wash him and
tend to him. I serve because I love Jesus."
Will America chose the "sanctity of life" concept as
demonstrated by Mother Teresa, or will America chose
the "quality of life" concept championed by
self-proclaimed doctors of death – such as in the case
of the court-ordered starvation of Terri Schiavo – and
continue its slide toward Auschwitz? What kind of
subtle anesthetic has been allowed to deaden our
national conscience? What horrors await us? The
question is not whether the suffering and dying
person's life should be terminated; the question is
what kind of nation will we become if they are. Their
physical death is preceded only by our moral death.
In a private institution, no less?
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