I TOLD YOU SO
Last week it was reported
nationally that an Alabama politician introduced a bill (HB 238) that would require a man to have a “vasectomy
within one month of his 50th birthday or the birth of his third biological
child, whichever comes first.”
When I wrote the essay
that appears immediately below, many of the comments were to the effect that I
was exaggerating.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Adolf
Hitler, the Buck Sisters, and The Four Horsemen
By Henry Mark Holzer
Most dictionaries define “eugenics”
as “the proposed improvement of the human species by encouraging or permitting
reproduction of only those people with genetic characteristics judged [by the
state] desirable.” It has been regarded with disfavor since the Nazi period.” (Encarta
Dictionary.)
According to Wikipedia, this is a Nazi propaganda poster [poster deleted] for the regime’s compulsory
euthanasia program. The translation is: “This person suffering from hereditary
defects costs the community 60,000 Reichsmark during his lifetime. Fellow
German, that is your money, too.”
This poster [deleted]prominently features the flags of other countries. Wikipedia
describes it as a “Nazi poster from 1936 with flags of other countries with, or
considering introducing, compulsory sterilization legislation. The
translation is: “We do not stand alone." (Emphasis supplied.)
The lengthy article in which these posters appear relates the now infamous
story about the Third Reich’s eugenics program. A portion of that article
appears below (in courier font):
Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler was infamous for eugenics
programs which attempted to maintain a “pure” German race through a series of programs
that ran under the banner of racial hygiene. Among other activities, the Nazis
performed extensive experimentation on live human beings to test their genetic
theories, ranging from simple measurement of physical characteristics to the
experiments carried out by Josef Mengele for Otmar von Verschuer on twins in
the concentration camps. During the 1930s and 1940s, the Nazi regime
forcibly sterilized hundreds of thousands of people whom they viewed as
mentally and physically unfit, an estimated 400,000 between 1934 and 1937.
The scale of the Nazi program prompted one American eugenics advocate to seek
an expansion of their program, with one complaining that “the Germans are
beating us at our own game.” The Nazis went further, however, killing tens
of thousands of the institutionalized disabled through compulsory
"euthanasia” programs . . . .
(Emphasis supplied.)
The American flag (along with those of other western nations such as England,
Switzerland, and Denmark) on a Nazi compulsory-sterilization poster?
An “American eugenics advocate” competing with the Nazis in a race to prove
which country could sterilize more of its citizens faster?
Compulsory sterilization?
Nothing like that could happen here. Or could it?
It could.
And it did.
And, as we shall soon see, even worse may happen soon.
Throughout the United States in the first half of the Twentieth Century, some
65,000 American men and women were involuntarily sterilized by various state
governments.
Between 1924 and 1972, 8,299 of them were citizens of the State of Virginia.
A Virginia statute (Acts 1924, chap. 394, p. 569) provided that:
Whereas, both the health of the individual patient and the
welfare of society may be promoted in certain cases by the sterilization of
mental defectives . . . and Whereas . . . the Commonwealth has in custodial
care . . . many defective persons who if now discharged or paroled would likely
become by the propagation of their kind a menace to society . . . and
Whereas, human experience has demonstrated that heredity plays an important
part in the transmission of insanity, idiocy, imbecility, epilepsy and crime;
now, therefore . . .
Be it enacted . . . That whenever the [State of Virginia] .
. . shall be of opinion that it is for the best interests of the patients
and of society that any inmate of the institution under his care should be
sexually sterilized, such superintendent is hereby authorized to perform . . .
the operation of sterilization on any such patient confined in such institution
afflicted with hereditary forms of insanity that are recurrent, idiocy,
imbecility, feeble-mindedness or epilepsy. . . . (Emphasis supplied.)
Seventeen-year-old Carrie Buck was allegedly “a feeble-minded white woman who
was committed to the State [mental hospital]. She [was] the daughter of a
feeble-minded mother in the same institution, and the mother of an illegitimate
feeble-minded child.” (Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200, 205 (1927).)
Carrie Buck was ordered sterilized, Virginia having found that she was “the
probably potential parent of socially inadequate offspring, likewise
afflicted, that she may be sexually sterilized without detriment to her general
health and that her welfare and that of society will be promoted by her
sterilization.” (Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200, 207. Emphasis
supplied.)
Carrie’s sister, Doris, was another victim of state-ordered involuntary
sterilization. Doris was told she had undergone an appendectomy. (Years later,
a Virginia physician conceded that Doris Buck, who was married, “was not
particularly retarded.” )
According to The New York Times:
For years, [Dr. Nelson] said, she and her husband . . .
could not understand why she could not bear children. “This is one of the
tragedies,” Dr. Nelson said. He said the statistical probability of their
having a retarded child was no greater than for the general population.
“I broke down and cried,” [she] told the [newspaper]. “My husband and me wanted
children desperate—we were crazy about them. I never knew what they done to
me.”
In a legal challenge to the Virginia statute, the Virginia Supreme Court upheld
it, observing that the law “was not meant to punish but to protect the class of
socially inadequate citizens from themselves and to promote the welfare of
society by mitigating race degeneracy and raising the average standard
of intelligence of the people of the state.” (Buck v. Bell,
130 S.E. 516, 519. Emphasis supplied.)
Eventually, the question of the Virginia law's constitutionality reached the
United States Supreme Court. The Court’s 8-1 decision, written by legendary
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes some eighty years ago, are a grim and fearful
portend of what may coming in the Democrat Party’s current plans for “health
care reform”:
We have seen more than once that the public welfare
may call upon the best citizen for their lives [i.e., the draft]. It would be
strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the
State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned,
in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better
for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring
for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent
those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle
that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the
Fallopian tubes . . . . Three generations of imbeciles are enough. (Buck
v. Bell, 274 U.S. at 205. Emphasis supplied.)
The Buck sisters (their brother had been sterilized, too) apparently didn’t
realize that their “lesser sacrifice” had been made for the "welfare of
society . . . and [to] rais[e] the average intelligence of the people of the
state.”
The underlying principle in which the Supreme Court's opinion is
rooted—represented by reference to “public welfare,” “sacrifices,” “better for
all the world” and “society”—is that, in the end, American citizens’ lives
belong to the government, be it state or federal—which is to say that our lives
belong to whatever majority can be mustered to work its will at any given time
about any given issue. After all, involuntary sterilization throughout the
United States was made possible by laws enacted by the elected representatives
of voters in all those states.
It is a short step conceptually and practically from compulsory
sterilization in the name of eugenics, to passive euthanasia in the name of an
amorphous public good to be achieved through the Democrat Party’s “health care
reform.”
There are at least two provisions of HR 3200, as written, which are worse than
anything done by the eugenicists. Those Dr. Frankensteins “only” sterilized the
Bucks of this country, but at least let them live. HR 3200, as it can be
applied, probably will not.
The increasingly infamous Section 1233, as written, provides for payment to
physicians for end-of-life counseling every five years (or sooner if the
patient has a terminal diagnosis).
Well, wouldn’t it be cozy sitting down over tea with good old Dr. Kildare and
chatting about death?
Not on your life!
Even liberals see the danger.
Charles Lane is an editorial board member of the uber-liberal Washington
Post.According to Gateway Pundit:
"As I read it, Section 1233 is not totally
innocuous," Lane writes, adding that it "addresses compassionate
goals in disconcerting proximity to fiscal ones."
"Though not mandatory, as some on the right have
claimed, the consultations envisioned in Section 1233 aren't quite 'purely
voluntary,'" as backers of the bill assert, Lane adds. "To me,
'purely voluntary' means 'not unless the patient requests one.' Section 1233,
however, lets doctors initiate the chat and gives them an incentive -- money --
to do so. Indeed, that's an incentive to insist.
"Patients may refuse without penalty, but many will bow
to white-coated authority. Once they're in the meeting, the bill does permit
'formulation' of a plug-pulling order right then and there," Lane
explains.
"What's more, Section 1233 dictates, at some length,
the content of the consultation," Lane continues.
He points out the legislation says the doctor
"shall" discuss "advanced care planning, including key questions
and considerations, important steps, and suggested people to talk to";
"an explanation of . . . living wills and durable powers of attorney, and
their uses" even though those are legal and not medical papers. The
physician "shall" present "a list of national and State-specific
resources to assist consumers and their families."
"Admittedly, this script is vague and possibly unenforceable,"
Lane writes. "What are "key questions"? Who belongs on 'a list'
of helpful 'resources?' The Roman Catholic Church? Jack Kevorkian?"
Ultimately, the Post editorial writer says "Section 1233 goes beyond
facilitating doctor input to preferring it. Indeed, the measure would have an
interested party -- the government -- recruit doctors to sell the elderly on
living wills, hospice care and their associated providers, professions and
organizations."
It requires little imagination, or paranoia, to contemplate
eugenics-plus-oriented physicians, who believe some elderly can be “too old,”
pushing them into eschewing “too expensive” medical care that could prolong
their lives. Indeed, it is paradoxical that the usual liberal concern that
“consumers” not be overreached by slick salesmen when they buy a used car, has
somehow been forgotten when he is forced to listen to an alleged “end-of-life”
expert with a financial interest in the outcome of the “counseling.”
“Sign here, Mr. Cronkite, we’ll pull the plug, and the taxpayers will save a
bundle.”
But there’s more: rationing that will necessarily hasten the death of the
elderly.
It is a fact that for various reasons—e.g., more people becoming insured,
whether they’re intentionally uninsured or not—the Democrat’s health plan is
going to be stratospherically expensive.
Where is the money going to come from (apart from more deficits, and thus
eventual serious inflation)?
Among other places, from reduced Medicare reimbursements to participating
physicians and institutions.
That will necessarily result in (1) fewer physicians caring for Medicare
patients, (2) less time with those patients they do see, (3) reduced care and
treatment for the elderly, and (4) ) likely termination of Medicare Advantage
Plans (e.g., AARP)—all resulting in a reduction in the nature, scope, quality
and quantity of care for the elderly.
One need not be Dr. Kildare to understand that when this is what happens to
medical care, more seniors die—younger, faster and in much more distress.
Indeed, Obama himself suggested that his 86-year old grandmother, instead of
having a hip replacement, perhaps should have had only a few Vicodin tablets to
ease her pain.
The Democrats can now play all the word games they wish, trying to bury in lies
and euphemisms the nature of what they want to do, but it’s too late. Former
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle has stated categorically in his health care
book that “[s]eniors should sacrifice advancements in care so that resources
can be spent on the young.”
I call Section 1233 and the Daschle-Reid-Pelosi-Obama approach to elderly
medical care what it is: passive euthanasia.
These Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse mean to emulate the policies of Nazi
Germany, whose posters reminded the Volk that certain citizens ill through no
fault of their own “cost the community” too much money, and that in instituting
compulsory sterilization the Nazi’ did “not stand alone.”
Yes, elder medicine in this government-controlled, un-free, anti-competitive
marketplace is expensive, and yes there are murderous, socialized triaged
medical systems in other western English-speaking countries. But neither of
these abomination is a warrant for the United States of America to
cannibalistically dispose of its elderly.
If the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse have their way, elderly Americans could
easily become the Twenty-First Century’s Carrie and Doris Buck—and even end up
envying them.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Yesterday the
Imbeciles. Today the Elderly. Tomorrow the Unborn?
By Henry Mark Holzer
A
couple days ago in my blog entitled “Adolf Hitler, the Buck Sisters, and The
Four Horsemen” (http://henrymarkholzer.blogspot.com/2009/08/adolf-hitler-buck-sisters-and-four.html),
I wrote of the Nazis’ use of eugenics to rid the Third Reich of “undesirables,”
and of how American eugenics proponents achieved a Supreme Court victory
approving the practice in the United States. “Three generations of imbeciles
are enough.”
I also made the point that under proposed Obamacare, rationing of medical
services would “necessarily hasten the death of the elderly,” and that “[o]ne
need not be Dr. Kildare to understand that when this . . . happens to medical
care, more seniors die—younger, faster and in much more distress. Indeed, Obama
himself suggested that his 86-year-old grandmother, instead of having a hip
replacement, perhaps should have had only a few Vicodin tablets to ease her
pain.”
I wrote that “[t]he Democrats can now play all the word games they wish, trying
to bury in lies and euphemisms the nature of what they want to do, but it’s too
late. Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle has stated categorically in his
health care book that ‘[s]eniors should sacrifice advancements in care so that
resources can be spent on the young’.”
So much for the elderly, who are to be “sacrificed” to the needs of the young.
But what about the unborn, who also require the expenditure of substantial
government resources, medical and otherwise? Are some of the unborn also to be
“sacrificed” on the altar of Obamacare’s “resource allocation” for the sake of
others?
Why not?
For decades the unborn have been sacrificed for the sake of others—mothers,
fathers, boyfriends, careerists, adulterers, philanderers-- with millions of
abortions fig-leafed by euphemisms such as “birth control” and “planned
parenthood.”
But, but, but . . . you say, abortions are voluntary. Pregnant women
aren’t forced to have abortions. Roe v. Wade “constitutionalized”
choice, not compulsion. The government could never require
a woman to abort, for the sake of the young, or for “society” (i.e., lots of
other people), or for any other reason.
No?
Let’s see.
In the wake of Roe v. Wade, the states had to revise not only
their abortion laws (those that survived the Court’s indefensible decision),
but also related laws affected by that decision (e.g., criminal statutes).
Connecticut Welfare Department regulations paid for childbirth expenses.
But they limited state Medicaid benefits for first trimester abortions
to those “medically necessary.”
In 1977, in the case of Maher v. Roe [a pseudonym] the Supreme
Court of the United States was asked to decide “whether the Constitution
requires a . . . State to pay for . . . [non-medically necessary] abortions
when [meaning “since”] it pays for childbirth.” In other words, did Connecticut
have a constitutional, Tenth Amendment, right to a Medicaid funding policy
which treated birth and abortion differently?
Before answering that question, the Court felt obliged to point out what Roe
v. Wade had not held: “Roe did not declare an unqualified
‘constitutional right to an abortion. It implies no limitation on the authority
of a State to make a value judgment favoring childbirth over abortion,
and to implement that judgment by the allocation of public funds’.” (Emphasis
supplied.)
According to the 6-3 majority, “The State unquestionably has a strong and
legitimate interest in encouraging normal childbirth . . . an interest
honored over the centuries.” (Emphasis supplied.)
If, according to the Supreme Court, a state has the constitutional power in the
allocation of public funds, to favor childbirth over abortion—supposedly a
rock-solid constitutional right rooted in the “right of privacy”—that same
state necessarily possesses the constitutional power to favor, meaning to
“prefer,” abortion over childbirth.
The government preferring abortion over childbirth? An outrageous idea, no?
Hardly.
The liberals, progressives, feminists, democrats, and their ilk currently
running our government have always preferred abortion over childbirth. Indeed,
they are zealous in the extreme about it. And once the Obama Administration
regains its footing after the health care fight, we will see further examples
of their preference for abortion over childbirth, followed by government funds
being dispensed, or withheld, to implement that preference.
But could that “preference” be translated into compulsory abortion of the
unborn, perhaps of “abnormal” fetuses, torn from mothers who cherish their
babies and want to carry them to term?
Preposterous?
Maybe not.
I return to the Supreme Court, which in Buck v. Bell (http://henrymarkholzer.blogspot.com/2009/08/adolf-hitler-buck-sisters-and-four.html)
upheld compulsory sterilization of “imbeciles” and other actual, and alleged,
retarded Americans.
As noted, in the Maher case, the Supreme Court majority said that “[t]he
State unquestionably has a strong and legitimate interest in encouraging normal
childbirth . . . an interest honored over the centuries.” (Emphasis supplied.)
After the last word in that sentence, “centuries,” there appears a footnote, as
astonishing as it is ominous, written by Associate Justice Lewis Powell: “In
addition to the direct interest in protecting the fetus, a State may have
legitimate demographic concerns about its rate of population growth. Such
concerns are basic to the future of the State and in some circumstances could
constitute a substantial reason for departure from a position of neutrality
between abortion and childbirth.” (Emphasis supplied.)
Does anyone need a translation? If there are too many people—the elderly,
for example? —for whatever reasons, the state could “favor” abortion. Just the
way Virginia and many other states “favored” compulsory sterilization, a
population control technique approved by the Supreme Court of the United States.
It gets worse.
As noted in the footnote below, the majority which subscribed to this
horrendous proposition consisted of Powell, Burger, Stewart, White, Rehnquist,
and Stevens: two “conservatives,” three “moderates,” and a liberal. The Court’s
other three liberals were in dissent: Brennan, Marshall and Blackmun (the
infamous author of Roe v. Wade).
Do the math.
All six conservatives, moderates and liberals mused about a contemporary
solution to “demographic concerns about [government’s] rate of population growth”
by favoring abortion—the way the Court, 8-1, had approved various states
favoring compulsory sterilization.
But not one of the three liberal dissenters raised even a syllable in
denunciation of dumping the unborn in the name of some sort of a public good.
On that point, the Supreme Court of the United States—conservatives, moderates,
and liberals alike—was of one mind.
Once, compulsory sterilization of Americans was thought to be impossible—until
it happened.
Once, rationing medical care for our senior citizens was considered
unthinkable—but now it is discussed, even advocated, openly.
Once, even after Roe v. Wade sanctioned abortion-on-demand,
coerced abortion was believed to be inconceivable—yet some thirty years ago it
was not denounced by a single justice of the Supreme Court.
So, we must wonder: Tomorrow the unborn?
________________
* Powell, Burger, Stewart, White, Rehnquist, Stevens vs. Brennan, Marshall,
Blackmun.
And
now we are here on February 23, 2020, no longer having to wonder.
