"Why, Comrades, of course we love justice and mercy. See how I love my little kitty, here!?"
Schiavo 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals Decision
US court rejects appeal over woman's feeding tube (Schaivo Denied Life)
Appeals Court Refuses to insert Terri Schiavo's Feeding Tube
Regarding Terri Schiavo: Facts Should Trump Emotions and Activism
by Frank Salvato
Mar 22, 2005
So it has come to this, a true test to see if the American political system, judicial system and the American public as a whole have the ability to set aside emotion and activism in deference to the facts. So far the jury is out on this question. Just as it is out on the question of whether or not Terri Schiavo will live or die. Personally, I think we can do better, much better.
I find it reprehensible that in an age when gathering facts has never been easier or more convenient, most among us prove delinquent in doing so, even in matters of life and death and especially in those that will set precedent for future actions. It is grave evidence that our society is in a “persistent vegetative state” where the overbearing voice of the activist agenda trumps not only the good of the people but common sense. Our failure to ascertain facts or even be tempted by unanswered questions renders us neutered by political correctness. This is the death knell of civic responsibility and thus moves us closer to being considered cowards in the eyes of our Founders.
It has become apparent that there is a need to consider the facts before we can be moved to consider the questions that they raise. To this end the mainstream media has been abhorrently delinquent, opting instead to report sensational half-facts ala The Enquirer circa 1975. This proves one of two things or perhaps both; that the mainstream media has lost its ability to report the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and that it has turned into an activist propaganda machine hell-bent on the destruction of the American right to be informed.
Many questions have been raised over the course of the Terri Schiavo case. The astounding thing is that few have been answered. Instead we see reluctance by the court to explore all avenues of knowledge available while it consistently rules in favor of a petitioner whose motives are questionable at best. Make no mistake, a court that refuses to examine all facets of an issue and excludes expert testimony presenting an alternative opinion can only be classified as an activist court.
Terri Schiavo did not have a Living Will. Therefore, the issue of her wishes is open to question. While it is normal for our society to depend on the spouse to convey the wishes of the critically disabled or injured, in circumstances when immediate family members hold adamant opposition to a matter concerning decisions of life and death we must insist that all voices be heard.
In this instance the Schindlers (Terri Schiavo’s parents), practicing Catholics who have always considered their family close, claim that Terri would never have considered ending her life given these circumstances. While the tenets of Terri’s religion reinforce this claim, her spouse, with no other proof than his word, claims otherwise. Thus we have a “He-Said-She-Said” dilemma. That is until we hear a statement made by an ex-girlfriend of Michael Schiavo’s referred to only as “Cyndi” due to the fact that she fears the man. Obviously this is why she is an “ex-girlfriend.”
On April 25th of 2001 Cyndi stated that Michael Schiavo admitted to lying about Terri expressing anything about her wishes regarding life sustaining treatment in the event of severe disability. While Cyndi later refused to testify citing her fear of Michael Schiavo, the issue became moot when just a day later on April 26th Judge George Greer refused to hear any testimony at all regarding Michael Schiavo’s statement. No investigation. No consideration. Nothing.
To say the least, Terri Schiavo’s wishes remain in question. For the courts to rule on behalf of Michael Schiavo based solely on the legal point that he is the next of kin, especially in light of her parents’ declarations and the silenced testimony of a woman who feared for her well being, is irresponsible and grounds for Judge Greer’s removal from the case, if not the bench.
Florida Statute 765.101 defines a persistent vegetative state (PVS) as being a permanent and irreversible condition of unconsciousness in which there is: a) The absence of voluntary action or cognitive behavior of any kind, and b) An inability to communicate or interact purposefully with the environment. The opinion that Terri Schiavo’s behavior meets the medical and/or statutory definition of PVS doesn’t take into account that she responds to stimuli, tries to communicate verbally, follows limited commands, laughs and cries in interaction with loved ones, physically distances herself from irritating or painful stimulation and watches loved ones as they move around her. These observations were made by medical professionals and are on record. Further no MRI or PET scans have ever been performed on Terri Schiavo on orders issued by her “husband.”
The question here is, who determined that Terri Schiavo met the criteria for being in PVS? While 14 independent doctors — including six neurologists — adamantly refute the diagnosis of PVS, stating that therapy would be beneficial to Ms. Schiavo, Judge Greer has consistently excluded their testimony in favor of opinions from four doctors that adhere to the PVS diagnosis.
Of the 4 doctors selected to be the court’s medical authorities, three were hand-picked by Michael Schiavo and one was selected by Judge Greer.
Dr. Peter Bambakidis, appointed by Greer, has questionable affiliations with Michael Schiavo’s lawyer George Felos.
Dr. Melvin Greer insists that a doctor need not examine a patient to know the appropriate medical treatment.
Dr. Victor Gambone has stated that he has been startled by Terri Schiavo’s awareness.
Dr. Ronald Cranford, is on the board of the Euthanasia Society of America, has ties to the Hemlock Society and even advocates denial of spoon-feeding for the disabled.
To say the very least, the word impartial cannot be used when discussing the medical testimony provided in this case, neither can the word thorough. In fact, the “deck was stacked” in Michael Schiavo’s favor, something easily done when one is the “dealer.” To say that there are no unanswered questions and no bias regarding the medical opinions issued in the Terri Schiavo case is to be ignorant of the facts and ignorant of the truth.
Add to just these two issues the following facts, and I beg you, challenge yourself to be curious as to why:
Terri Schiavo has always been able to swallow but her “husband” denied her the therapy that would allow her to re-learn how to eat even though the therapy is considered mandatory by Florida Statute 744.3215, even to those diagnosed with PVS.
Although Michael Schiavo was awarded $600,000 of his own in a malpractice award regarding this case he has squandered the million dollars plus settlement that was to pay for Terri Schiavo’s medical care. A ruling by Judge Greer has allowed that money to be spent on Michael’s attorney’s fees.
Although Michael Schiavo has remained married to Terri he has fathered two children with his girlfriend whose mother has a connection with the county sheriff (this would prove convenient when trying to allude investigation into anything that might be construed as criminal).
Michael Schiavo filed a petition to prohibit the media from seeing Terri’s neurological examination videotapes or airing the videos to the public after they had been presented to the court as evidence.
Michael Schiavo has petitioned to have Terri cremated immediately after her death.
The list of questionable issues surrounding this case goes on and on and on.
To say that this case is a tragedy would be the understatement of the millennium. To say that this is a case about advocating the agenda of the Right to Life crowd is ludicrous. This is more than a tragedy and it is slowly becoming a judicial travesty. This case is about whether the life of another human being, a damaged human being but a human being nevertheless, should be snuffed out by the stroke of a pen and the disconnection of a feeding tube, all on the unsubstantiated word of a man who couldn’t even honor the vow of “’Til death do we part.” This case is about a murder of convenience.
Florida courts have long been known for leaning towards the liberal and activist agendas. In most instances of their activism the remedy of judicial prudence was found in appeals to the federal court. This time they have come dangerously close to setting a precedent that would allow for the legitimization of an ideology that would advocate the termination of the infirmed. It is chilling.
Image that when you arrive at old age you become afflicted with a debilitating disease, your mouth doesn’t want to do what you want it to and your speech isn’t what it used to be. Your arms and legs aren’t as quick to react as they once were. You are incontinent and as your body begins to wear out you require the aid of a feeding tube for nutrition and therapy to help you maintain any semblance of mobility. Your memory is fading but you are aware and appreciative of your surroundings, your family and your friends.
Now imagine Michael Schiavo is your guardian.
Sleep well, we all get older.
Frank Salvato is a political media consultant and managing editor for The Rant.us
Prayers for the family and for Terri. Prayers that on appeal a majority of JUdges will rule as this dissenting Judge did...or failing that, that either of the Bush executives will act...or failing that, that the people will.
At this point I can't help but be thinking that the Schindlers' lawyers are staggeringly incompetent. I don't even have a law degree but I'm pretty damn sure that if I were making the filings, with only the information available to me through the internet, I could get that tube reinserted.
Another sad day in a string of sad days for our republic.
"..objective decision concerning a question of law"
Clerks with adding machines.
Terri has truly been blessed, to have such loving parents and so many fighting for her right to life. Free Republic has been fighting for Terri, people who honor life have been fighting for Terry, I hope that this gives Terri's parents much comfort now.
Whether all of these 'legal eagles' (FL courts and FED courts) realize it or not, they are setting a very dangerous precedent by deciding this case on hearsay evidence from the estranged husband. Hereafter, a judge will not be able to deny evidence based on hearsay. They accepted hearsay here, they will have to accept hearsay forever.....
The doors are rapidly closing on any hope to save Terri. I am so sorry for her family. I pray that in the end the truth gets out and her non-husband gets what he deserves.
Jeff, what we are seeing are the Eugenics Programs which the left have pushed for decades and were in camp with Hitler before WWII re eugenics.
Below is an excellent history of Eugenics with the left of America and the tie ins with the Hitler Eugenic pushers.
The elite lefties aren't the only ones who push Eugenics, the pseudo conservatives who hate God, push Eugenics as hard as the lunatic left does.
http://geocities.com/jonjayray/lefteug2.html
EUGENICS AND THE LEFT
John J. Ray
Hitler's American inspiration
Everybody now knows how evil Nazi eugenics were: How all sorts of people were exterminated not because of anything they had done but simply because of the way they had been born. And we have all heard how disastrous were the Nazi efforts to build up the "master race" through selective breeding of SS men with the best of German women -- the "Lebensborn" project. Good Leftists today recoil in horror from all that of course and use their "Hitler was a Rightist" mantra to load those evils onto conservatives. But Hitler was a socialist. As he himself said:
"We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions." (Speech of May 1, 1927. Quoted by Toland, 1976, p. 306)
So it should come as no surprise that Hitler's eugenics were an intergral part of his socialism and that the great supporters of COMPULSORY eugenics worldwide in Hitler's day were overwhelmingly of the Left. Left-influenced historians commonly blur the distinction between a belief in eugenic or dysgenic processes and actually advocating a State-enforced eugenics program but we can find the facts if we look carefully. And it was American Leftists upon whom Hitler principally drew for his "inspiration" in the eugenics field.
In the USA, the great eugenicists of the first half of the 20th century were the "Progressives". As it says here:
A significant number of Progressives -- including David Starr Jordan, Robert Latham Owen, William Allen Wilson, Harry Emerson Fosdick, Robert Latou Dickinson, Katherine Bement Davis, and Virginia Gildersleeve--were deeply involved with the eugenics movement
And as we read further here:
The second stage in the development of the eugenics movement extended from 1905 to 1930, when eugenics entered its period of greatest influence. More and more progressive reformers became convinced that a good proportion of the social ills in the United States lay in hereditary factors....
An educator, biologist, and leader of the American peace movement, Jordan's main contribution as a major architect of American eugenics was to bridge the gap between eugenics and other reform groups. Like other progressives, Jordan subscribed to the Populist-Progressive criticism of laissez-faire capitalism. Jordan had faith in progress and in a new generation. Yet, this optimistic environmentalism of Jordan's contradicted his Darwinian-hereditarian outlook of the world. Ironically, a similar ambivalence - - a "love-hate" attitude toward environmentalism - - ran through most progressive ideology.
For Jordan, the first president of Leland Stanford University, education permitted society's better members to outlive inferior peoples. Jordan believed the twentieth century had no place for the weak, the incompetent, and the uneducated. In addition, Jordan urged an end to indiscriminate and sentimental charity, a major factor he believed in the survival of the unfit. Jordan, like most progressives, viewed the urban setting as detrimental and destructive to human life. He held the general progressive belief in the social goodness of the small town or farm. The progressive's romantic attraction to the countryside can be partly explained by the alien character of the urban population. An increasing number of city dwellers belonged to the "undesirable foreign element".
And who were the Progressives? Here is the same writer's summary of them:
"Originally, progressive reformers sought to regulate irresponsible corporate monopoly, safeguarding consumers and labor from the excesses of the profit motive. Furthermore, they desired to correct the evils and inequities created by rapid and uncontrolled urbanization. Progressivism ..... asserted that the social order could and must be improved..... Some historians, like Richard Hofstadter and George Mowry, have argued that the progressive movement attempted to return America to an older, more simple, agrarian lifestyle. For a few progressives, this certainly was true. But for most, a humanitarian doctrine of social progress motivated the reforming spirit"
.
Sound familiar? The Red/Green alliance of today is obviously not new. So Hitler's eugenics were yet another part of Hitler's LEFTISM! He got his eugenic theories from the Leftists of his day. He was simply being a good Leftist intellectual in subscribing to such theories.
Both quotes above are from De Corte (1978). Against all his own evidence, De Corte also claims that the Progressives were "conservative". More Leftist whitewash! Unless it was glaringly obvious that someone was of the Left, just believing in eugenics MADE that person conservative in De Corte's view. Other evidence of their conservatism was not needed or cited. There is a detailed discussion of what the "Progressivism" of the time actually was here. Whatever else it was, it was clearly not conservative.
But the book by Pickens (1968) sets out the connection between the Progressives and eugenics far more throughly than the few quotes here can indicate.
Eugenics, however, was popular science generally in the first half of the 20th century. As a scientific idea it was not confined to Leftists. But note the difference in the IMPLEMENTATION of eugenic ideas (again from De Corte):
Even early social crusaders held similar illiberal views. Josephine Shaw Lowell, a leader in asylum reform, stated in 1884 that "every person born into a civilized community has a right to live, yet the community has the right to say that incompetent and dangerous persons shall not, so far as can be helped, be born to acquire this right to live upon others. Thus, strands of eugenic-style racism not only found their way into conservative philosophy represented by Sumner and other Social Darwinists but so did progressive reform ideals. Consequently, reformers began viewing the criminal, insane, epileptic, retarded and impoverished as more products of their heredity than of their social surroundings.
Whereas Social Darwinists desired to let nature take its course in eliminating the "unfit," eugenicists, on the other hand, felt Social Darwinism had not accomplished the task of guaranteeing the "survival of the fittest" quickly enough. For eugenicists, the "vigorous classes" should be encouraged to have more children, while the "incompetent classes" should be compelled to have fewer. Consequently, eugenicists in their distrust of laissez-faire concluded that "natural selection" must be helped along.
So conservatives, in their usual way, wanted to leave well enough alone. It was the LEFTISTS, in their usual way, who actually wanted to start compulsion in the matter.
And in Britain too the Leftists of the first half of the 20th century were outspokenly in favour of eugenics. As just one instance, that famous philosopher, peacenik and anti-nuclear camapaigner, Bertrand Russell spoke in favour of it. Writing in "Icarus Or the Future of Science" in 1924 he clearly approved of it though he did voice doubts about it falling into the wrong hands. And in a letter to his first wife, feminist Alys Pearsall Smith, about socialism and "the woman question," he wrote of eugenics in words that could well have been Hitler's -- even echoing Hitler's bad grammar:
"Thee might observe incidentally that if the state paid for child-bearing it might and ought to require a medical certificate that the parents were such as to give a reasonable result of a healthy child -- this would afford a very good inducement to some sort of care for the race, and gradually as public opinion became educated by the law, it might react on the law and make that more stringent, until one got to some state of things in which there would be a little genuine care for the race, instead of the present haphazard higgledy-piggledy ways."
(Quoted from here)
Even when Russell came to realize that State-sponsored eugenics could very easily fall into the wrong hands -- a realization he expresses in Icarus he still clearly saw it as desirable at least in theory.
And Russell was not alone in Britain. As it says here:
The fact is that eugenics was popular across the political spectrum for many years, both in England and in North America (e.g., Paul, 1984; Soloway, 1990). In England, many socialists supported eugenics. Even those viewed as critics, such as J. B .S. Haldane, Lancelot Hogben and Julian Huxley were not against eugenics per se, but came to believe that eugenics in capitalist societies was infected with class bias. Even so, some (see Paul, 1984), accepted the idea of upper class genetic superiority.
Not only were R. B. Cattell's eugenic beliefs commonplace in that milieu, but he was influenced by prominent socialists who supported eugenics, men such as Shaw, Wells, Huxley and Haldane, some of whom he knew (Hurt, 1998). Jonathan Harwood (1980) actually cited the example of Cattell to demonstrate that British eugenics was not a right-wing preserve in the inter-war years (although Keith Hurt, 1998, has noted that Harwood later characterised Cattell's 1972 book on Beyondism as a "right-wing eugenic fantasy").
Oppenheim (1982) claimed that American eugenicists were opposed by those in the Progressive Movement, juxtaposing the hereditarian reformism of the former with the environmental reformism of the latter. Actually many progressives were also eugenicists and incorporated the idea of eugenic reforms into their larger agenda (e.g., Burnham, 1977); there was a great deal of cross-over between the two movements (e.g., Pickens, 1968).
The few real critics of eugenics in the early 20th century were mainly conservatives and Christians like G.K. Chesterton who saw eugenic planning as just another arm of the wider campaign to impose a "scientific" socialist planning. In fact Chesterton subtitled his anti-eugenics tract "Eugenics and Other Evils" as: "An Argument Against the Scientifically Organized State".
So, as we see from all the quotes above, the racialist thinking of the eugenic socialists was quite "scientific" and progressive in it's day, much as 'global warming' is seen as scientific and progressive today. And many of the eugenics true believers continued on postwar moving into campaigns for legalised abortion, planned parenthood and population control. In fact some modern-day pro-lifers have highlighted the racist roots of much of the liberal pro-abortion movement.
And eugenics of a sort IS back on the Left: The Zero Population Growth brigade are back with their "people are pollution" attitudes! Only this time they want to HALVE our population! And it does seem to be the old gang from the 1960's again -- including Paul Ehrlich. The abject failure of their earlier prophecies -- e.g. that we would all be doomed by the 1970s -- has not dampened them down a bit.
The Feminist connection
And are feminists conservative? Hardly. And feminists are hardly a new phenomenon either. In the person of Margaret Sanger and others, they were very active and prominent in the USA in first half of the 20th century, advocating (for instance) abortion. And Margaret Sanger was warmly praised by Hitler for her energetic championship of eugenics. And the American eugenicists were very racist. They wanted to reduce the black population and they shared Hitler's view that Jews were genetically inferior -- opposing moves to allow into the USA Jews fleeing from Hitler. So if Hitler's eugenics and racial theories were loathsome, it should be acknowledged that his vigorous supporters in the matter at that time were Leftists and feminists, rather than conservatives.
The Greenie connection
As in America, Hitler's eugenics were in fact just one aspect of a larger "Greenie" theme -- a theme that continues, of course, as the Red/Green alliance of today. The Nazis were in fact probably the first major political party in the Western world to have a thoroughgoing "Green" agenda. A good short summary of that has been written by Andrew Bolt. Excerpts:
Hitler's preaching about German strength and destiny was water in the desert to the millions of Germans who'd been stripped of pride, security and hope by their humiliating defeat in World War I, and the terrible unemployment that followed.
The world was also mad then with the idea that a dictatorial government should run the economy itself and make it "efficient", rather than let people make their own decisions.
The Nazis -- National Socialists -- promised some of that, and their sibling rivals in the Communist Party more.
The theory of eugenics -- breeding only healthy people -- was also in fashion, along with a cult of health.
The Nazis, with their youth camps and praise of strong bodies and a strong people, endorsed all that, and soon were killing the retarded, the gay and the different.
Tribalism was popular, too. People weren't individuals, but members of a class, as the communists argued, or of a race, as the Nazis said. Free from freedom -- what a relief for the scared!
You'd think we'd have learned. But too much of such thinking is back and changing us so fast that we can't say how our society will look by the time we die.
A KIND of eugenics is with us again, along with an obsession for perfect bodies.
Children in the womb are being killed just weeks before birth for the sin of being a dwarf, for instance, and famed animal rights philosopher Peter Singer wants parents free to kill deformed children in their first month of life. Meanwhile support for euthanasia for the sick, tired or incompetent grows.
As for tribalism, that's also back -- and as official policy. We now pay people to bury their individuality in tribes, giving them multicultural grants or even an Aboriginal "parliament".....
People need to feel part of something bigger and better than ourselves -- a family, or a church, or a tradition or a country. Or, as a devil may whisper, the greens.
The greens. Here's a quote which may sound very familiar -- at least in part. "We recognise that separating humanity from nature, from the whole of life, leads to humankind's own destruction and to the death of nations. "Only through a re-integration of humanity into the whole of nature can our people be made stronger . .
"This striving toward connectedness with the totality of life, with nature itself, a nature into which we are born, this is the deepest meaning and the true essence of National Socialist thought."
That was Ernst Lehmann, a leading biologist under the Nazi regime, in 1934, and he wasn't alone. Hitler, for one, was an avid vegetarian and green, addicted to homeopathic cures. His regime sponsored the creation of organic farming, and SS leader Heinrich Himmler even grew herbs on his own organic farm with which to treat his beloved troops.
HITLER also banned medical experiments on animals, but not, as we know to our grief, on Jewish children. And he created many national parks, particularly for Germany's "sacred" forests.
This isn't a coincidence. The Nazis drew heavily on a romantic, anti-science, nature worshipping, communal and anti-capitalist movement that tied German identity to German forests. In fact, Professor Raymond Dominick notes in his book, The Environmental Movement in Germany, two-thirds of the members of Germany's main nature clubs had joined the Nazi Party by 1939, compared with just 10 per cent of all men.
The Nazis also absorbed the German Youth Movement, the Wandervogel, which talked of our mystical relationship with the earth. Peter Staudenmaier, co-author of Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience, says it was for the Wandervogel that the philosopher Ludwig Klages wrote his influential essay Man and Earth in 1913.
In it, Klages warned of the growing extinction of species, the destruction of forests, the genocide of aboriginal peoples, the disruption of the ecosystem and the killing of whales. People were losing their relationship with nature, he warned.
Heard all that recently? I'm not surprised. This essay by this notorious anti-Semite was republished in 1980 to mark the birth of the German Greens -- the party that inspired the creation of our own Greens party.
Its message is much as Hitler's own in Mein Kampf: "When people attempt to rebel against the iron logic of nature, they come into conflict with the very same principles to which they owe their existence as human beings. Their actions against nature must lead to their own downfall."
Why does this matter now? Because we must learn that people who want animals to be treated like humans really want humans to be treated like animals.
We must realise a movement that stresses "natural order" and the low place of man in a fragile world, is more likely to think man is too insignificant to stand in the way of Mother Earth, or the Fatherland, or some other man-hating god.
We see it already. A Greenpeace co-founder, Paul Watson, called humans the "AIDS of the earth", and one of the three key founders of the German Greens, Herbert Gruhl, said the environmental crisis was so acute the state needed perhaps "dictatorial powers"....
The "big government" connection
As they do today, the Leftists of the 1920s and 1930s captured most of the intellectuals and much of the educated class of the day and this gave them access to the levers of government power -- which is of course what Leftists want above all. Leftists never tire of finding reasons for big government. But once something gets into the hands of big government, it can turn out to be very destructive indeed. And the American eugenics laws of the first half of the 20th century are a very good example of that. As it says here:
"President Woodrow Wilson signed New Jersey's sterilization law, and one of his deputies descended to greater fame as a Nazi collaborator at Buchenwald. Pennsylvania's legislature passed an 'Act for the Prevention of Idiocy,' but the governor vetoed it .... Other states, however, joined the crusade. ... Eventually, the eugenicist virus found a hospitable host in Germany. There... it led to the death chambers of Buchenwald and Auschwitz. Thanks to the Nazis, highly praised by eugenicists here, the movement eventually collapsed. But not before nearly 50,000 Americans were sterilized."
And someone from the past who is still something of a hero to the Left is the American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., who famously said: "When you pay taxes you buy civilisation". This was quoted approvingly recently by Simon Crean, Federal Parliamentary leader of the Australian Labor party. Crean somehow failed to note that Holmes was also known for ordering compulsory sterilizations of the supposedly mentally ill: Yet another forgotten American inspiration for Adolf.
And California was one of the earliest supporters of Eugenics laws and in fact provided the model for Hitler's laws. -- as it says here:
Under the banner of "national regeneration," tens of thousands, mostly poor women, were subjected to involuntary sterilization in the United States between 1907 and 1940. And untold thousands of women were sterilized without their informed consent after World War II. Under California's 1909 sterilization law, at least 20,000 Californians in state hospitals and prisons had been involuntarily sterilized by 1964. California, according to a recent study, "consistently outdistanced every other state" in terms of the number of eugenic sterilizations....
California not only led the nation in forced sterilizations, but also in providing scientific and educational support for Hitler's regime. In 1935, Sacramento's Charles M. Goethe praised the Human Betterment Foundation for effectively "shaping the opinions of the group of intellectuals who are behind Hitler." In 1936, Goethe acknowledged the United States and Germany as leaders in eugenics ("two stupendous forward movements"), but complained that "even California's quarter century record has, in two years, been outdistanced by Germany." In 1936, California eugenicist Paul Popenoe was asking one of his Nazi counterparts for information about sterilization policies in Germany in order to make sure that "conditions in Germany are not misunderstood or misrepresented." .....
California's eugenicists could not claim ignorance that Germany's sterilization program was motivated primarily by racial politics. For example, in 1935, the Los Angeles Times published a long defense of Germany's sterilization policies, in which the author noted that the Nazis "had to resort to the teachings of eugenic science" because Germany had been "deprived of her colonies, blessed with many hundreds of defective racial hybrids as a lasting memory of the colored army of occupation, and dismembered all around." Not only did California eugenicists know about Nazi efforts to use sterilization as a method of "race hygiene" -- targeted primarily at Jews -- they also approved efforts to stop "race-mixing" and increase the birth rate of the "Northern European type of family." The chilling words of Progressive reformer John Randolph Haynes anticipated the Nazi regime's murder of 100,000 mentally ill patients: "There are thousands of hopelessly insane in California, the condition of those minds is such that death would be a merciful release. How long will it be before society will see the criminality of using its efforts to keep alive these idiots, hopelessly insane, and murderous degenerates. . Of course the passing of these people should be painless and without warning. They should go to sleep at night without any intimation of what was coming and never awake."
And a country that is to this day a model and inspiration to Leftists everywhere is Sweden -- with its all-embracing welfare State. So what happened in Sweden? As we read here:
During the Nazi era in Germany, eugenics prompted the sterilisation of several hundred thousand people then helped lead to antisemitic programmes of euthanasia and ultimately, of course, to the death camps. The association of eugenics with the Nazis is so strong that many people were surprised at the news several years ago that Sweden had sterilised around 60 000 people (mostly women) between the 1930s and 1970s. The intention was to reduce the number of children born with genetic diseases and disorders. After the turn of the century, eugenics movements--including demands for sterilisation of people considered unfit--had, in fact, blossomed in the United States, Canada, Britain, and Scandinavia, not to mention elsewhere in Europe and in parts of Latin America and Asia. Eugenics was not therefore unique to the Nazis.
So what exactly did happen in the USA? I am indebted to one of my fellow bloggers for a useful summary of one of the cases. Some extracts:
In the 1920's, the eugenics movement was ... popular. So popular in fact, that mandatory sterilization laws were passed in 34 states from the mid-1920's to mid 30's. Basically, these laws stated that sterilization was mandatory for socially undesirable persons. "The socially inadequate classes, regardless of etiology or prognosis, are the following: (1) Feeble-minded; (2) Insane, (including psychopathic); (3) Criminalistic (including the delinquent and wayward); (4) Epileptic; (5) Inebriate (including drug habitues)..." [etc]. So basically, if you were hyperactive, promiscuous, an alcoholic or drug addict, had cerebral palsy or Down's syndrome, were epileptic, (etc., ad nauseum), or exhibited ANY socially undesirable behavior at all, you were eligible for mandatory sterilization. And not you, nor your parents (if you were a minor) had any right to say "No".
In the mid 1920's, Carrie Buck, at the ripe old age of 17, fought the state of Virginia's mandatory sterilization statute. She was classified as a socially inferior woman, having born a child out of wedlock and her foster parents stated that she was "a handful". Carrie's mother had also been incarcerated in a state institution as a 'promiscuous woman'. And at the age of 7 months, Carrie's child, Vivian, was 'certified' as being 'deficient', based on the 'history' of Carrie and her mother.
Carrie lost her case at the state court level, and it wound up in front of the Supreme Court in 1927. The prominent Supreme Court jurist, Oliver Wendel Holmes, wrote the opinion in Buck v. Bell. The decision was 8-1, Justice Butler dissenting. Here's what the majority opinion boiled down to:
"In order to prevent our being swamped with incompetents... 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." ...
"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.Three generations of imbeciles are enough." - Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., (Bucck v. Bell, 1927)
Five months after this decision, Carrie was forcibly sterilized. It later came out that her promiscuity was nothing of the sort. She'd been raped by the nephew of her foster parents, himself a violent (unsterilized) little scumbag. And her daughter's school records show that Vivian was a B student, receiving an A in deportment (behavior), and she was on the honor roll. Genetic tests later showed that neither Carrie nor her daughter had any genetic defects.
Conservative eugenics?
I should note that economist Steven Levitt's work suggests that the old Leftist eugenics program of reducing the birth rate (via abortion) among the "lower classes" was not totally misconceived. Levitt's findings seem to show that making VOLUNTARY abortion available to poorer mothers reduces the crime rate years later. He is at pains of course to indicate that his empirical findings are not an endorsement of either eugenics or abortion. Slate featured a 3 day correspondence between him and Steve Sailer dealing with the issue.
Given the traditional conservative regard for individual liberty, it seems to me that the only eugenics programs that conservatives could justify would be voluntary ones -- such as the large material incentives to reproduce that the Singapore government offers to highly educated Singaporean women. Christian conservatives, however, tend to regard all reproduction as God-given so would oppose even voluntary eugenic programs that limited reproduction -- such as the Woodhill Foundation programs that pay crack-addicted mothers to undertake contraception.
Leftists, however, oppose the Woodhill programs because they are voluntary and privately-funded. They like such matters to be in the hands of the State (i.e. under their control).
And the problem of a self-perpetuating and substantially criminal underclass does not need to be addressed by eugenics. It can be addressed by addressing its major causes -- such as the over-generous welfare system that the Leftists have created in their hunger for praise.
And despite everything, there ARE useful and non-coercive Eugenics programs in operation right now. Genetic screening in the U.S. Jewish community has now all but eliminated an awful hereditary disease -- Tay-Sachs -- from that community.
Shifting the blame
Modern-day Leftists hate it when you point out that it was THEY who were the inspiration for Hitler. So what do they do? They try to shift the blame -- to even the most unlikely targets. A recent book has tried to lay the blame for the Leftist eugenicists of the early 20th century at the door of someone who opposed ALL compulsion. As the book reviewer says:
"It has long been open season on Herbert Spencer (1820-1903). Perhaps because he was the 19th century's most prominent defender of individual liberty and critic of the violence of the state, Spencer has always been the object of hatred and distortion; indeed, it sometimes seems that no accusation is too bizarre to be leveled against him...
What common ground could there be between Spencer and the eugenicists? Both, to be sure, were 'Social Darwinists,' if that means that both thought there were important sociopolitical lessons to be drawn from evolutionary biology. But Spencer and the eugenicists drew opposite lessons. For the eugenicists, the moral of evolutionary biology was that the course of human evolution must be coercively managed and controlled by a centralized, paternalistic technocracy. For Spencer, by contrast, the moral was that coercive, centralized, paternalistic approaches to social problems were counterproductive and so would tend to be eliminated by the spontaneous forces of social evolution ..."
It is a good comment on the dismal minds of Leftists that they think that nothing can be accomplished except through compulsion.
Hitler's Marxist inspiration
It may be objected, however, that comparing Hitler with the fashionable eugenicists among Western Leftists of the 20s and 30s is rather beside the point. Western Leftists surely did not contemplate anything as extreme as Hitler's genocide. Given some of the pitiless utterances of Western Leftists already mentioned, that is a fairly feeble protest but it should be noted that Hitler did not get ALL his ideas from the West of his time. He got some of them from none other than Marx and Engels. And if it can be argued that Western Leftists did not condone genocide, the same cannot be said of Marx and Engels. They in fact vociferously ADVOCATED genocide. Note this quote:
"In January 1849, months before he migrated to London, Karl Marx published an article by Friedrich Engels in Die Neue Rheinische Zeitung announcing that in Central Europe only Germans, Hungarians and Poles counted as bearers of progress. The rest must go. "The chief mission of all other races and peoples, large and small, is to perish in the revolutionary holocaust."
Genocide arose out of Marx's master-theory of history -- feudalism giving place inevitably to capitalism, capitalism to socialism. The lesser races of Europe -- Basques, Serbs, Bretons and others -- being sunk in feudalism, were counter-revolutionary; having failed to develop a bourgeoisie, they would be two steps behind in the historical process. Engels dismissed them as left-overs and ethnic trash (Voelkerabfall), and called for their extinction.
So genocide was born as a doctrine in the German Rhineland in January 1849, in a Europe still reeling from the revolutions of 1848. It was to become the beacon light of socialism, proudly held and proudly proclaimed."
The above is a quote from the latest article by George Watson -- a literary historian specializing in the early history of socialism (I have an earlier article of his posted here and there is a review of his major book here). The quote is taken from an article in the December 2004 issue of Quadrant, Australia's premier intellectual conservative magazine. I have posted here a PDF of the first page.
The fact that Hitler's genocidal ideas largely originated with Marx and Engels themselves has of course been hidden from public awareness with almost total success by a Left-dominated media and academe. It would be too embarrassing to admit. But if we look at all the historical materials available to us, there can be no doubt of the Leftist origins of Hitler's genocidal "eugenics".
References:
De Corte, T.L. (1978) Menace of Undesirables: The Eugenics Movement During the Progressive Era. University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Pickens, D. (1968) Eugenics and the Progressives. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.
Toland, J. (1976) Adolf Hitler Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday.
Thanks for the ping. As I stated on another thread, I feel as helpless now as I did watching a certain compound in Waco, Texas go up in flames. I cannot fathom what the court system in this country has become, but it will be nothing compared to what is coming down the road if this type of "justice" continues.
Also part of another thread was the statement that Terri's only hope was a miracle cure, or a large number of armed men, willing to throw caution to the wind, and remove her from her present situation and have a facility prepared for long term care and hiding someone not easily hidden for the rest of her natural days.
The bottom line of that scenario, is everyone involved finding out just how diligent the government would be in returning Terri to the facility where her death sentence can be carried out "legally" and the bringing to "justice" those who thought they could cross the government.
No surprise.
"Why, Comrades, of course we love justice and mercy. See how I love my little kitty, here!?"
CALLER: Yes. Does it bother you that the death is so slow? Maybe Dr. Kevorkian-style would be a faster, more peaceful way?
SCHIAVO: Removing somebody's feeding is very painless. It is a very easy way to die. Probably the second better way to die, being the first being an aneurysm.
And it doesn't bother me at all. I've seen it happen. I had to do it with my own parents.
What a surprise! Re-inserting the tube could do no harm while the case is being litigated. No wonder he is in the minority!
life
Anyone to contact to voice our unbelief?
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Schiavo parents' appeal rejected
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Terri Schiavo, 41, who has been in a vegetative state since 1990, has received no food or water since Friday. The three-judge panel in Atlanta, Georgia, ruled 2-1 to deny the parents' appeal, a day after a judge in Florida also refused a similar request. A lawyer representing her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, said they would file another appeal. Mrs Schiavo's feeding tube was removed at the request of her husband, Michael Schiavo, who says she would not want to be kept alive artificially and has no hope for recovery. Mr Schiavo and the Schindlers have been locked in legal battles for years over whether the feeding tube should be removed. Series of appeals A panel of three judges from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals had to consider whether to order the reconnection of Mrs Schiavo's feeding tubes to allow her to remain alive while the legal wrangling continues.
But it ruled that Mrs Schiavo's parents had failed "to demonstrate a substantial case" for success, should they be allowed to take to court their claim that their daughter's religious and due process rights had been violated. The decison comes a day after a judge ruled the Florida courts had not violated Mrs Schiavo's rights by ordering her feeding tube to be disconnected. The BBC's Lesley Curwen in Washington says it is uncertain whether the Schindlers' next appeal will be heard at a local level or whether it will go to the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court. However, the Supreme Court has previously refused to intervene in the case. 'Peaceful, calm' The family claim that Mrs Schiavo is fading fast, our correspondent adds. Before the latest decision was handed down, Mrs Schiavo's mother made an emotional appeal for the Florida Senate to intervene, saying: "For the love of God, don't let my daughter die of thirst."
A lawyer for Mr Schiavo said Terri was "stable, peaceful and calm". Before the Schindlers filed their latest appeal, Mr Schiavo urged the Atlanta court not to rule in favour of reconnecting the tubes. "That would be a horrific intrusion upon Mrs Schiavo's personal liberty," his lawyer, George Felos, wrote to the judges. Congress and President George W Bush intervened over the weekend to allow federal courts to review the case. The debate over the case has divided the US, with some arguing Mrs Schiavo's life must be preserved and others condemning politicians for interfering in a private family affair. It is thought Mrs Schiavo could survive for up to two weeks before dying of starvation. |
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Translation: "However, bleep justice, we're going with the law." Lawyers used to be a social rung lower than blacksmiths in this country. Blacksmiths, after all, served a real purpose. But over a period of decades lawyers generated a need for their profession and continuously added arcane layers to it -- further generating a need for lawyers in order to understand what the lawyers were doing and saying.
And what it's come down to today is, us simple, ignorant blacksmith folk are supposed to see something noble in this statement, this cry of "The law, the law!" from a lawyer, from those who twist it and turn it and ignore the justice it was meant to serve.
