Posted on 07/17/2009 7:03:28 AM PDT by Wolf13
Reactions to Sarah Palin’s decision to resign the governorship of Alaska have been a reminder of her unmatched ability to elicit strong emotions from friend and foe alike. We know some of the reasons why. It’s her evangelical Christianity and her folksy manner. It’s her small-town roots and her “new feminism.”
But there is something more. A year ago, Palin gave birth to her youngest son, Trig, who has Down syndrome. Since then, mother and son have become objects of the left’s unrelenting scorn and the right’s unflinching fidelity.
An underexamined reason why Palin is loved and loathed so fiercely is her intimate association with two of our most divisive issues: disability and the right to life.
In her resignation statement, Palin suggested her decision was due in part to her family’s reaction to personal attacks against Trig. Those comments stoked the rage of the Palin-haters. At Talking Points Memo, an article sarcastically suggested that Palin resigned because “she wants to spread Down syndrome ... because Down syndrome is just too cute to be reserved for one in 800 births.”
A Paliban Daily article titled “Sarah Palin’s Retarded Platform: More Trigs!” interpreted Palin’s outspokenness on disability rights as a political ploy to win votes. Other articles contained subtle but unmistakable eugenic overtones.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Thank you both for correcting me on Helen Keller. I was not aware of the fact that Scarlet Fever afflicted her. I don’t believe the point was lost, as you both demonstrated, and thank you for being kind.
Bump x10!!!
I am jim thompson, and I approve this message.
What I’m saying is that the gay lobby seems to want NO genetic tests...that might reveal homosexuality. There are some in the scientific community who suggest those kind of tests would be useful and germane.
They don’t mind tests for Down’s Syndrome, to the best of my knowledge.
My wonder was, IF the test to establish homosexuality were permitted, how would they react? Would they even take it? If they did, and the results were unexpected, would they do what Gov. Palin did?
>> “They are GODLESS...”
I believe that is the whole problem. When they look at someone like Trig, they see a “defect” that society needs to be protected from. “Defects” need to be corrected or eliminated. I see a precious and unique creation made by a Loving God, who according to His words was made in His image - as we all are. I know a child with Downs Syndrome. It is no doubt that they present challenges - but they also give rewards. The “very least of these” can teach us some of our most profound lessons, if we open our eyes — and hearts.—JM <<
A truly compassionate scientists would look for ways to correct the genetic disorder in the child without killing the child. The left use their godless ideology to justify the killing of people because they view humanity as farm animals.
I use my own godless ideology as justification for the idea that we are the only sentient tool using species on this planet and that because of that we are better than the animals and far superior than they are. And because we can create shelter and medicine we must advance those skills to help everyone we can with this knowledge. The Loony left’s view of us as “farm animals” leads them to think that there should be “wolves” that should be used to cull the sick and infirm from the herd. I believe we should be the good veterinarian and Shepard and care for the sick and infirm to help them recover and grow strong. Coming from a farm we would always take care of the sick animals as much as we could until they either died of their illness or recovered.
I think by having a policy to care for the sick and infirm rather than killing them can lead to other discoveries that can improve the future health and wellness of everyone. Who knows, the research for a cure for cystic fibrosis or muscular dystrophy could lead to a cure for cancer or some other disease. If we just “cull the herd” what motivation would we have to improve ourselves as a result?
I *hate* getting sucked into the cult-of-personality vortex, but I’m there. I’m unabashedly a Palinist or a Palinphile or whatever the term is, and I fully agree with your thought.
I’ve read with astonishment that men support Sarah more than women, and as I woman, I wondered why.
Then I thought of my own experience as an adoptive mom. When my kids were young, most people expressed nothing but support for our choice to adopt, but every so often a woman (and it was always a woman) would express an almost insane fury against that decision. For example, one waitress wondered out loud, in front of our children, why the birth mother did not chose to abort. One day, I was waiting for my children to finish their marshal arts class in a crowded waiting room when one of the other mothers learned we had adopted. She angrily announced for all to hear that my children were most likely the children of prostitutes. Everyone in the room was appalled, not only at her statement, but at her disproportionate sense of outrage.
I have since pondered the possibility that these women have themselves aborted their children, and my decision to adopt forced them to see the immorality of that decision. In Palin’s case this would be even more pronounced. Consider how many women in this country aborted children they initially wanted, just because they learned the child was disabled.
If one of every four babies in this country is aborted, and 80-90% of mothers bearing disabled babies abort, this would certainly skew Palin’s popularity among women.
I believe the only way a woman can psychologically get past post-abortion guilt is to feel the Lord’s forgiveness. Only then can she forgive herself.
No, it wasn't. The point is that some people think it's just fine to kill other people if they want to, whether the other people are unborn babies, babies after birth, handicapped adults, or infirm elderly people. There is no common ground between these people, and people such as Sarah Palin who think other people have as much right to live as herself.
(FReepers just can't help being persnickety about facts.)
It Can’t Happen here…Or Can It?
Focus On The Family ^ | August 1998 | Tom Neven
Posted on 11/24/2002 4:51:39 AM PST by Stand Watch Listen
"A witness to Hitler and an official observer at the Nuremberg war crimes trials warns against what happens when a nation’s moral foundations are shattered But his years studying in Berlin in the shadow of Hitler have perhaps had the greatest effect in shaping him. Today, he has many things to say as our culture continues to wallow in abortion on demand and careens headlong toward physician-assisted suicide, euthanasia and even eugenics, the belief that we can "improve" the human race through science.
The living room and study of his Colorado Springs home groan beneath the weight of books and testify to a keen intelligence and wide-ranging curiosity. Plutarch’s Lives of the Caesars, Winston Churchhill’s five-part history of World War II, an entire shelf of Tolstoy and the complete works of Martin Luther in both English and German mingle with The Basic Writings of Thomas Jefferson and biographies of Stonewall Jackson and Sir Thomas More.
The Rev. Charles Carroll, who at 82 has the intellectual vigor of a man 50 years his junior, has just about seen it all in his lifetime. But his years studying in Berlin in the shadow of Hitler have perhaps had the greatest effect in shaping him. Today, he has many things to say as our culture continues to wallow in abortion on demand and careens headlong toward physician-assisted suicide, euthanasia and even eugenics, the belief that we can "improve" the human race through science.
The Warning Signs
Carroll lived in Berlin during 1937 and 1938, renting a room from a Jewish family recommended to him by the American embassy. He describes a surreal scene as the husband showed him around the apartment.
"He took me over to the medicine cabinet, showed me the medications and said, ‘You can use any of these if needed, but never touch this,’ " Carroll says. "It was cyanide. When we went back in the hall, I looked at the entrance doors. They were typical of the period, framed with glass, and behind each pane was a plate of steel. He said, '‘t will give mother Lido [the daughter] and me enough time.’
"I thought him paranoid at the time," Carroll continues, "but he was right, and I was dreaming." (Because the wife was not Jewish, the family managed to survive the Holocaust.)
By that point Nazi Germany was already well down the path to the Holocaust. It was a journey that began with small steps
First came The Law for the Prevention of Congenitally Ill Progeny on July 14, 1933. This eugenics program had two aspects: The positive side that encourages the increase of "racially healthy" Aryans, the Nazis’ supposed master race of non-Jewish Caucasians, and the negative side that justified vernichtung lebensunwerten lebens, literally "destruction of life unworthy to be lived."
Although abortion was technically illegal in Germany at the time, a case arose where a woman in the late stages of pregnancy was brought to be forcibly sterilized because she was among the "undesirables," the result of which would kill the unborn child. As a result of this "problem," the law was amended in 1934 to say that eugenic considerations carried equal weight to medical considerations when it comes to abortion.
It Can’t Happen Here…
Lest we become complacent, Carroll warns that what happened to Nazi Germany was not unique to that society.
"Although you cannot identify a situation in the United States exactly like that of Nazi Germany," Carroll says, "you can point to some parallels."
He stresses the he does not believe we are headed inexorably toward Nazism, but he does believe that the seeds for its horrible crimes are present in all societies. Sweden sterilized about 60,000 people against their will between 1935 and 1976, and Norway, Denmark and Finland at one time had similar laws allowing compulsory sterilization under certain circumstances. Germany in the 1930s just happened to provide fertile soil for those seeds to sprout.
Carroll cites, for example, the International Congress for Questions of Population in August 1935, hosted in Berlin by the German government. Participants came from around the world, including several from the United States led by Harry Laughlin of the Eugenics Research Association. Laughlin was of the opinion that the entire world was in debt to Hitler for his views on eugenics.
At the conference Laughlin cited numerous U.S. laws supporting eugenics in one form or another. He claimed that as of Jan 1, 1935, more than 21,000 "eugenics sterilizations" had occurred in various states for reasons such as being "feeble-minded" (24 States), "mentally defective" (Delaware), "habitual criminals, moral degenerate persons" (Iowa), "inherited tendency to crime" (Connecticut) and "imbecility" (West Virginia). At least 13 States allowed involuntary sterilization of epileptics.
Indeed, in 1927 the Supreme Court had ruled in Buck v. Bell that involuntary sterilization was not unconstitutional.
"They were sterilizing people in Virginia who they felt were incompetent-a large number of blacks, some poor whites," Carroll says, and the Nazis often cited this legal case as they went forward with their eugenics agenda.
The German conference was also full of Darwinian "survival of the fittest" thinking and references to evolution. Indeed, Carroll remembers a post-war conversation he had with a Jewish physician, Leo Alexander, during which Alexander explained the ease with which some doctors could carry out abortion, forced sterilization and even murder.
"There is a difference," Alexander said, "between those who look upon their fellow human beings as common creatures of a common creator and those who look upon them as a conglomerate of biologicals and chemicals."
Forced Sterilization and abortion led inexorably to active euthanasia. As early as 1935, Hitler considered enacting some form of euthanasia, but his fear of what the church would say, as well as protests by Adolf Cardinal Bertram, chairman of the German Catholic conference, forced Hitler to put this program on hold, at least until the eve of World War II. As Germany moved against Poland in September 1939, Hitler enacted the euthanasia program, believing the distraction of war would give him cover.
The program, under the supervision of SS doctor Lt. Gen. Karl Brandt, led first to the killing of deformed or retarded children, carried out on an individual basis, and then the mass killing of adult "undesirables," which provided the first "practice" for the slaughter of the Holocaust. One lesson learned: Killing in carbon monoxide-filled buses (only of the means the Nazis used at the time) was inefficient, which led to the development of the quicker-killing Zyclon B of the gas chambers.
It is important to note that in no case was this killing done to sick or dying people or at the request of a patient. And with the exception of the first case, this killing was done without the knowledge of the families.
"If you can get a group of physicians to sterilize and abort and, as we say, euthanize, it isn’t very difficult to get them to do anything," Carroll warns. "There’s no doubt in my mind that sterilization, abortion and euthanasia were the first steps toward the Holocaust."
A Loss of Natural Law
Even though most people are not trained in the law, Carroll believes Christians today must understand basic issues of law if they are to stand against the growing culture of death.
In particular he refers to society’s loss of natural law, "one of the bulwarks of what we once called Western civilization," he says. Natural law is the belief that, just as the physical world functions under a series of laws that we ignore at our peril, so too does the moral world.
Thje opposite of natural law is positive law: The law is what the judge, legislature—or the Fuehrer—says it is. Carroll cites, for example, Hitler’s speech of July 13, 1934, during which he stated that he was the law in Germany.
While not as audacious as Hitler’s diktat, the modern judiciary’s tendency to rule by apparent fiat is a close approximation of the state overruling natural law-- Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme court decision that legalized abortion, being the chief illustration.
Backbone of Resistance
Carroll believes that many Christians were fearless in their opposition to Hitler. And this, he stresses, required great moral and physical courage. "People minimize that today," he says.
Carroll cites a letter from Helmut von Moltke, great-grand nephew of the famous 19th-century field marshal of the same name, to his wife just before he was executed by the Nazis.
"I was not being tried because of an attempt on Hitler’s life, which I did not make, nor because I was a great land owner, nor because I was of the nobility, but because I was first and foremost a Christian," von Moltke wrote.
"I feel it can unequivocally stated that the church was the backbone of what resistance there was," Carroll says. Catholic bishop Clemens von Galen of Munster stood in his pulpit Aug 3, 1941, and denounced the euthanasia program at considerable risk to himself." After his speech, countless Catholic bishops and evangelical leaders joined forces and protested.
"Not that it stopped all the programs," Carroll admits, but it had some success. "The euthanasia program, by admission of Lt. Gen. Brandt, came to a slow end during the war, and he gave the churches credit for it."
"What Would I Do?"
What if you had been alive then? "that’s a question all of us have to ask," Carroll says.
"The thing that bothers me the most in the United States today is that the moral foundations of the republic are shattered," he says. "Our growing apathy disturbs me. One of the interesting things about the Nazi revolution is that Germany was in a moral vacuum [when Hitler came to power], and moral vacuums, like natural vacuums, seek to be filled."
A courageous church, unafraid to speak out, is the only hope to fill that void, he believes, citing the following statement from Albert Einstein:
"Being a lover of freedom, when the [Nazi] revolution came, I looked to the universities to defend [freedom], knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but no the universities were immediately silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers, whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced.
"Only the church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing the truth."
It Can’t Happen here…Or Can It?
...I wonder...I now just wonder?????
We’ve both have/had family members with physical and mental disabilities. My family is very, very tolerant and forgiving, however there are things that are unacceptable to us and poking fun at a person’s disbility is one of them.
We actually saw the kid for the first time since that day a couple months ago. He asked me if I was so Christian why I wouldn’t fogive him. (Ha! Lecturing me on morals! Imagine that!) I said, “We forgive you. We just don’t want you around us. There are special circles of hell for people like you. I’d be asking God for a little of that forgivness if I were you.”
This is why socialist healthcare is so evil and dangerous -
they will claim that the “handicapped” are too much of a burden on the healthcare system, and, since they are not human anyway, they will be required to be aborted.
More like “hollerance...”
I wholeheartedly disagree with this statement.One could theologically argue that if that child is never able to distinguish right from wrong then he could not intentionally sin, thereby be blameless in the eyes of God. Also, he, like every other human (even abortion doctors and senators) is born with a divine soul created in the image of God.
“I don’t really like to mix religion and politics. I don’t want to force my views on anyone. But, I want this country to be healed, and to return to greatness. We will never do that if we leave God out of the equation.”
What’s wrong with mixing religion and politics?
YOUR POST IS MAGNIFICENT! It rings so very true! Nice job!!
Last April on Good Fri, our dearest friends buried their adopted 17 month old daughter. She had Downs but died of complications from leukemia. We are all still grieving over her loss, she was a special child who touched many lives. Her funeral was as much a tribute to her loving adoptive parents as it was to her short life and I believe anyone who knew her or knows them is specially blessed.
More Americans now identify as pro-life
More Americans now identify as conservative.
As a grad student, I should know better. I was working off of emotion in my response, and hers was the first substantive example I could muster.
To your point, I agree that these people would do away with the infirm and the "different," but don't they look at history? Don't they research what Hitler's Germany was doing with eugenics and the mutilations they performed all "in the name of science?"
I saw a graphic on FR the other day from 1940's Germany that depicted the handicapped as a financial burden to society. If this health care plan passes, they're going to deny care to people who need it most. How the HELL does that make sense?
As a Catholic, I pay attention to what comes out of the Vatican, and I think the Pope was on the right track recently when he said that the drive for the almighty dollar is corrupting people. I am a free enterprise, Capitalist pig, but I agree that there are times when organizations do things with their money outside of the realm of common sense. If the government is in control of the purse strings, Down Syndrome children, those with birth defects, etc. will be denied service from day one. It will be a disqualifying malady. Then with abortion legal and gene therapies available due to embryonic stem-cell research, they'll force mothers to have abortions of children with those disqualifying maladies or force them to undergo gene therapy to fix them.
Then consider if they can make diseases such as Down Syndrome, Cancer, MD, MS, etc. into disqualifying maladies, how long until obesity, alcoholism, depression, bipolar disorder, various cancers, etc. are termed the same way? What then? What happens when the government says, "Nope, we've got too many boys in the country now, you'll have to abort or go through therapy to make the male fetus a female again.
Good God, what are we doing here, folks? We are tiptoeing through a forest of bad karma right now, and I fear the Devil is in the details, or in this analogy, the bushes lining the trail.
How about forgiving him if he truly recognized that his views were evil and disgusting, and convincingly demonstrated repentance?
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