Posted on 03/19/2012 5:13:39 AM PDT by Kaslin
Dear Mr. Friedman:
I am deeply disappointed by your refusal to speak with me personally about some remarks you make to my editors at TownHall.com. I have given you ample time to respond to my phone calls. Now, I’m responding to you in this open letter. I really have no other choice given your unwillingness to speak directly to the people you target with your misguided condescension. I’ll respond to your irresponsible remarks one paragraph at a time. Here goes:
Mike Adams is not the first person to draw an analogy between the Holocaust and abortion, but we wish he would be the last one. (Aborting Hitler, Mike Adams, January 30th).
In my column, I correctly referred to the Nazi Holocaust as a Holocaust. I correctly referred to the feminist Holocaust as a Holocaust. I did not deny or in any way minimize any Holocaust. I simply spoke of two instead of speaking of one. If you are anti-Holocaust, then why are you morally superior for talking about one less Holocaust than I do? I just don’t understand your basic premise. Unfortunately, you will not pick up the phone to explain it to me when I call your office.
Referring to abortion as the "American Holocaust", makes for a catchy headline but it also undermines the historical truth of Nazi Germany, and Adams ought to know better. The Holocaust was the systematic industrialized murder of millions and should never translate into 2012 political analogies.
(Author’s Note: The headline was “Aborting Hitler” not “American Holocaust.” Friedman is undermining the historical truth of what I have written. He ought to know better).
Now, I am even more confused. When I assert the truth of one Holocaust, how do I “undermine the historical truth” of another? Why can’t both assertions be true – particularly when I back those assertions with evidence? Furthermore, are you at all concerned that some of the unborn murdered in the womb are little Jewish children who cannot defend themselves? Have you no concern that Planned Parenthood is engaged in industrialized murder? Are you also denying the “historical truth” that the founder of Planned Parenthood was a eugenicist who subscribed to Nazi ideology? Can you not see the connection between the two? Or are you trying to re-write history like the Holocaust deniers you claim to oppose? These are all great questions you could answer if you would just pick the phone.
Adams is entitled to his views on abortion, but his attempt to assert a moral equivalency between abortion, and the murder of millions of people at the hands of Nazis, is not only offensive but is indicative of a lack of understanding about the Holocaust.
Now, I think I understand your position. You don’t think the unborn are “people.” Well, what are they? Are you even prepared to offer an explanation of when a living fetus becomes a “person”?
Here’s where I can help. There are exactly four reasons routinely given for denying the personhood of the unborn. They follow in no particular order of importance:
1. Size – the unborn are smaller and therefore not persons;
2. Level of development – the unborn are less developed and therefore not persons;
3. Environment – the unborn are not persons because they are still in the womb;
4. Degree of dependency – the unborn are not persons because they must depend on others for survival.
I have rebuttals to all of these argument but you do not seem interested in them. Nor did you seem to understand the basic premise of “Aborting Hitler,” which was to assert that the denial of personhood is the motivating force behind Holocausts in general. Because you didn’t get it, now you’re doing it. Do you get it now?
Sincerely,
David C. Friedman
Regional Director, Washington DC Regional Office
Anti-Defamation League
Finally, I must take exception to your decision to sign off using the word “sincerely.” You aren’t sincere. If you were sincere, you would take seriously the argument that the unborn are persons. Then, once you arrived at that conclusion, you would also conclude that abortion is a Holocaust. Abortion provides a clear example of the “systematic industrialized murder of millions.”
Unfortunately, you have become nothing more than a Holocaust denier. The fact that you work for ADL makes you a shameless hypocrite, as well. Of course, you are entitled to lecture someone who sees through your intellectual poverty and moral bankruptcy. But you ought to know better.
Author’s Note: For more on the parallels between the Holocaust and abortion see Ray Comfort’s brilliant film “180.” Click here to view it now. Unfortunately, the film has not been approved by the ADL. It never will be.
BAM! That’s going to leave a mark.
Amen I say
Here’s the bottom line: Liberals just make stuff up and have absolutely no concern for truth. They make things up and then just walk away, moving on to their next lie. They simply don’t care about truth because they have long since figured out that truth will never substantiate them.
The correct translation for "holocaust" is: "an accepted burned offering." Now think back to what they did with many Jewish bodies after gassing them in the camps.
Creepy, huh?
"The holocaust" was a cynical invention of an anti-Semitic media. The correct word is "Shoah," which simply means "disaster."
I'm NOT a Holocaust denier. However, I am willing to recognize that some people may employ the word in a very cynical, self-serving fashion as a political weapon. These people should be ashamed.
Now, I think I understand your position. You don’t think the unborn are “people.” Well, what are they? Are you even prepared to offer an explanation of when a living fetus becomes a “person”?
The crux of the false analogy is that Mr. Friedman's distinction is not about "personhood;" it is about collective intent for genocide, which is a different crime than murder for convenience. The goal of abortion is not to kill all babies of only a particular race. Mr. Adams should learn better.
Excellent!
I find it worrisome that the far left now argues for post-birth abortion. Newborn babies are almost as small as they were just before birth, and within the first couple weeks they are usually noticeably smaller. The newborn are only slightly more developed than the unborn. Newborns require a protected environment. And newborn babies must depend on others for survival. Former US Senator Obama argued for legal killing of the accidentally born children who survive attempted abortions, and that view is moving toward the mainstream in the far left fringe that controls the Democrat Party. The only justice in their stance is that most democrats are at a lower level of mental development, require a protective environment, and must depend on productive Americans for survival. If they get the powerful centralized government they are working to create, liberals will be its first victims.
The people who did the killing in the Holocaust first had to alter their conscience or superego. They had to accept the absurd notion that the Jews, Gypsies and others were not really human beings and exterminating them while unpleasant was not in their mind a moral transgression. These murderers actually had families and slept well. Similarly those who do the abortions and acquiesce to abortion have made a similar accommodation. They have convinced themselves that killing pre born human life is somehow not a transgression against nature. They profit and live well, and fully expect their neighbors to applaud their killing. They do have a lot in common with the Nazi killers. Personally I never trust a “pro abortion” individual. When someone announces they are “pro choice” (the politically correct term for the killing), they have shown they are capable of virtually any moral transgression. it is best to have only superficial relationships with such people.
I would say that the Jewish Holocaust was a disaster that killed 6 million Jews. It seems that you would accept the word "Shoah" to describe this.
I would say that the Abortion era has been a disaster that has killed 50 million people. Would I be justified in using the term "Shoah" for this disaster? Could I use the word "holocaust"?
On a strictly numerical basis, one might say that the Abortion disaster is nearly ten times greater than the Jewish Holocaust -- but numbers are not everything, and I see no advantage to anyone saying this atrocity is worse than that atrocity. These atrocities are simply terrible and neither needs to win "the prize" of being the worst.
I am also reminded of the child sacrifices to Moloch, and how people who did not know God would throw children into the flames as burnt offerings.
Personally, I think that Mike Adams is justified in calling the Abortion disaster a "holocaust".
Google the demographics of abortion.
Now, consider that abortion may be ‘chlorine for the gene pool’. Wouldn’t want to stand in the way of evolution, would you?
Just sayin’.
Whether you are correct may depend on which features of the Holocaust should be considered central to its moral repugnance. Is genocide a central element? Or would the government eliminating a similar number of families either to take their assets or simply because they would not conform to the new order be just as immoral? I worry about the effect of insisting on genocide as a central element of the Holocaust's evil. While genocide was an additional element of evil in the Holocaust, I don't see a huge moral gap between Hitler's targeted mass murders of Jews, gays, Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and other "undesirables", and the less narrowly targeted but still horrifying mass murders committed by Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and others who interpreted socialism as violently as Hitler did but included more diversity among their victims.
mike Adams has good instincts, but he is a psychologist who has discovered how bankrupt and evil psychology is. Unfortunately, he is lacking in serious education, but he is coming along.
A+
I totally agree.
Nor was that the goal of the "Final Solution".
The Third Reich killed 6 million Jews.
They also killed 5-7 million Gentiles - Gypsies, Communists, the physically/mentally defective and others they found inconvenient.
Thinking back, the original goal of Margaret Sanger was, in fact, to kill all babies of a particular race ... "human weeds" she called them.
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