How Hitler Won the War (and no one knew)
Last week in my medicine class my professor, Dr. John Patrick, spoke about abortion and in his bluntly British way pointed out to us that the concept of genetic screening came straight out of the Nazi handbook. This link was easy enough for any of us to see, but the truth had simply never occurred to me, for I had never bothered to think about it. The implications of it are terrifying and I've begun to wonder exactly what this means for us. The fact that something so horrible to us 60+ years ago is now part of everyday life is absolutely inconceivable for lack of a better word. Usually, those who win the war, as I was told we had in history class, have the privilege of shaping and influencing the world around them. If, in fact, the ideas of the Nazi party are what is shaping modern society what are we then to think?
I was even more disturbed when in Philosophy class we began to talk about the rise of nihilism after WWII. It seems to me that this was the point at which Nietzsche's predictions about the death of religion and the Christian moral code were accepted as inevitable. Elie Wiesel himself as well as countless numbers of men and women began to believe that God was dead in a literal sense. What is this but another loss on the side of those who supposedly won? What in fact did we win if the cruelty of Hitler, Göring, and Mengele stole even our God from us?
They say that we are speaking English when we could have been speaking German, but I say that what we are speaking cannot be English as our ancestors knew it. We have terms now such as "relative truth" and "worldview." If truth is relative it cannot be true. If there can be more than one way of viewing the world, then we must have believed some great lie. If we can see such a grand thing as the world/cosmos/universe differently, then I could see a glass of cyanide where you saw a glass of water. If I were your patient then, dying of thirst and you handed me a glass of what I believed to be cyanide, would you ask me to drink it anyway despite what I saw? Of course, one of us will be wrong and I may die because of it.
A human fetus is seen by some as a parasite and by others as human life possessing a unique soul, and make no mistake, there are millions dying because of this 'difference of views': 48,589,993 in the United States of America from 1973-2003 according to the National Right for Life website (http://www.nrlc.org/ABORTION/facts/abortionstats.html) and that number is missing several years of data including tomorrow's.
The New York Times states that 90% of pregnant women given “probable” Down syndrome diagnoses choose to have an abortion. I think perhaps Dr. Mengele would be proud.
If you are having those thoughts that many have that perhaps there are situations where death would be merciful and better than to let the child live what will “probably” be a hard and dysfunctional life, I have only the words of my professor to tell you:
Dr. Patrick: “If you were a doctor placed on a committee deciding which fetus lives and which fetus should be aborted, and had the knowledge that one was healthy and of good parents, and that the other you somehow knew would be deaf before thirty and of a dysfunctional family with an alcoholic father and terminally ill mother, to which would you give life?”
Students unanimously: “the healthy one”
Dr. Patrick: “Congratulations ladies and gentlemen, you’ve just killed Beethoven.”
I know that the past few weeks have been hard ones for those on Wall Street. I realize that the economy is a problem which the future President will have to deal wisely with. I suggest though that the economy, even before the last couple of weeks, is what Obama would like you to look at when voting, because if abortion is even mentioned, his chances could easily go right down the drain. Senator Obama is one of the few Democrats that voted against the partial birth abortion ban. He still supports the “right” to partial birth abortion as does his wife. In case you don’t know a partial birth abortion is, as the girl who styled my hair today did not, I think a picture will really be more helpful than any word could ever be:
I only need one reason like that to vote against Obama. I don’t see how the issue of our economy could even begin to match in importance. The next President I’m told will likely be able to appoint one to three Supreme Court Justices in his term.
Only one is needed to overturn Roe vs. Wade.
I was even more disturbed when in Philosophy class we began to talk about the rise of nihilism after WWII. It seems to me that this was the point at which Nietzsche's predictions about the death of religion and the Christian moral code were accepted as inevitable. Elie Wiesel himself as well as countless numbers of men and women began to believe that God was dead in a literal sense. What is this but another loss on the side of those who supposedly won? What in fact did we win if the cruelty of Hitler, Göring, and Mengele stole even our God from us?
They say that we are speaking English when we could have been speaking German, but I say that what we are speaking cannot be English as our ancestors knew it. We have terms now such as "relative truth" and "worldview." If truth is relative it cannot be true. If there can be more than one way of viewing the world, then we must have believed some great lie. If we can see such a grand thing as the world/cosmos/universe differently, then I could see a glass of cyanide where you saw a glass of water. If I were your patient then, dying of thirst and you handed me a glass of what I believed to be cyanide, would you ask me to drink it anyway despite what I saw? Of course, one of us will be wrong and I may die because of it.
A human fetus is seen by some as a parasite and by others as human life possessing a unique soul, and make no mistake, there are millions dying because of this 'difference of views': 48,589,993 in the United States of America from 1973-2003 according to the National Right for Life website (http://www.nrlc.org/ABORTION/facts/abortionstats.html) and that number is missing several years of data including tomorrow's.
The New York Times states that 90% of pregnant women given “probable” Down syndrome diagnoses choose to have an abortion. I think perhaps Dr. Mengele would be proud.
If you are having those thoughts that many have that perhaps there are situations where death would be merciful and better than to let the child live what will “probably” be a hard and dysfunctional life, I have only the words of my professor to tell you:
Dr. Patrick: “If you were a doctor placed on a committee deciding which fetus lives and which fetus should be aborted, and had the knowledge that one was healthy and of good parents, and that the other you somehow knew would be deaf before thirty and of a dysfunctional family with an alcoholic father and terminally ill mother, to which would you give life?”
Students unanimously: “the healthy one”
Dr. Patrick: “Congratulations ladies and gentlemen, you’ve just killed Beethoven.”
I know that the past few weeks have been hard ones for those on Wall Street. I realize that the economy is a problem which the future President will have to deal wisely with. I suggest though that the economy, even before the last couple of weeks, is what Obama would like you to look at when voting, because if abortion is even mentioned, his chances could easily go right down the drain. Senator Obama is one of the few Democrats that voted against the partial birth abortion ban. He still supports the “right” to partial birth abortion as does his wife. In case you don’t know a partial birth abortion is, as the girl who styled my hair today did not, I think a picture will really be more helpful than any word could ever be:
I only need one reason like that to vote against Obama. I don’t see how the issue of our economy could even begin to match in importance. The next President I’m told will likely be able to appoint one to three Supreme Court Justices in his term.
Only one is needed to overturn Roe vs. Wade.