Author Ed

The Nazi Plan

Ed

This is part 3 of my thoughts from The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide by Robert Jay Lifton (click here to see it on Amazon.com)  Click here to read part 2.

In order to rid the Volk of this disease, Dr. Lifton identified five distinctive steps in the Nazis process (21):

  1. Coercive sterilization of those deemed less “desirable”
  2. The killing of “impaired” children in hospitals
  3. The killing of “impaired” adults in centers especially equipped with carbon monoxide gas
  4. The killing of “impaired” inmates of concentration and extermination camps
  5. Mass killings in the extermination camps

Most people that I’ve related these five steps outlined here are repulsed by the thought that any government would sanction these actions. But of course, we’re doing it today in the U.S. I’ll make the connections for you in subsequent posts but I’ll start here with Step 1: Coercive sterilization.

Many states in the U.S. had passed forced sterilization laws in the early 1900’s. Some of these states kept enforcing these laws into the 1970’s. Read recent news articles about the eugenic past of the U.S. by clicking here to read about forced sterilization in North Carolina or clicking here to read about forced sterilization in Washington.

The difference between Nazi Germany and the rest of the world was that the Nazis went on to steps 2-5 and the rest of the world didn’t, or did they?

Stayed tuned to see how we kill “impaired” children today. (Click here to read part 4.)

Love and Companionship–21st Century Style

Ed

Since I got into the reading mode this spring for my courses in bioethics, I thought I’d continue throughout the summer so I don’t lose the “edge.” One book recommended by my prof for the personhood course I took was Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other by Sherry Turkle, a licensed clinical psychologist. I’ve only gotten through the first hundred pages so far, but it’s already got me thinking.

Regarding current day robots (and possibly the future as robots get more and more sophisticated), Turkle wrote in the introduction (10):

A forty-four-year-old woman says, “After all, we never know how another person really feels. People put on a good face. Robots would be safer.” A thirty-year-old man remarks, “I’d rather talk to a robot. Friends can be exhausting. The robot will always be there for me. And whenever I’m done, I can walk away.”

I can relate to these two individuals because I’ve often felt (and thought) the same way. But what does that say about our society today when we view our friendships and relationships as an inconvenience? What will become of me if I should suffer a chronic disease or a debilitating disability? What will happen when I succumb to old age and my body fails me? Will I be abandoned because I’m too much of an inconvenience?

Turkle started her studies of how humans interact with computers and robots in the mid-1970s. At that time, there was a computer program called ELIZA at MIT that was the center of her studies. She noticed that although all the students knew that ELIZA was a limited response software, they kept asking questions and conversing with it as if it was a real person. She also noticed that the students would alter their questions so that ELIZA would be able to respond to them. In other words, they wanted to believe that ELIZA was real.

This trend continued in the 80s and 90s as Turkle observed children with Tamagotchis and Furbies. These little playthings became real to the children to the extent that some of them had difficulty returning the items when the study time (two weeks) was over. It’s not that the children didn’t want to let go of their favorite toys; instead, the children had grown attached to the toys as if they were real pets and they didn’t want to lose these “animals” that they’ve been nurturing and growing.

Many people have suggested using robots as childcare or eldercare proxies, but there are problems with this idea. I’ll write more on that next time. Click here to read the next post in this train of thought.

Medicine and Life

Ed

Father Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, just published a new book called Pro-life Reflections for Every Day.  The “minute meditation” for October 9 was based on a quote from Pope John Paul’s 1995 encyclical, The Gospel of Life. Here is the meditation from the book published by Catholic Book Publishing Corp. in New Jersey.

Physicians and health care workers are also responsible, when the skills they acquired to promote life are placed at the service of death. – The Gospel of Life, 59

Reflection. Pro-abortion politicians will often say to us, “Legislators should not be practicing medicine.” But we’re not asking them to practice medicine, but to prevent the abuse of medicine.

Medicine is for the purpose of preserving life; abortion takes life. There is no disease that abortion cures, and no proven medical benefit.

I thought the meditation was apropos since August 1, 2012 is the beginning of implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) the massive so-called “healthcare reform” that the Congress and President Obama passed in 2010. The first implementation is the requirement that all health plans pay for contraception and potentially abortion-causing drugs such as Plan B–a.k.a. the morning after pill or Ella–with a very narrow exception for religious organizations.

But of course, this is but the beginning of the rules that lead to death that the PPACA, for example, all health plans will be required to collect $1 per person per month to be applied to a special fund that will pay for abortions. By the way, the PPACA also states that the employee doesn’t need to be informed that their premiums will include this $1 per month charge nor will you have an opportunity to opt out of it.

Good God or Cosmic Sadist?

Ed 4 Comments

Continuing with some observations from C.S. Lewis’ A Grief Observed (see it here in Goodreads). Click here to read the first part.

Oftentimes when someone is facing the uncertain future at life’s end, thoughts of eternity arise. This is especially true if the person is suffering from a debilitating disease or cancer. Thoughts begin to wander and people start to wonder what kind of God would allow this kind of suffering. Wouldn’t it be better to just help this person die through physician-assisted suicide or maybe even euthanize this person if he cannot do it himself?

Lewis wrote this while mourning his wife’s death from cancer (42ff):

But oh God, tenderly, tenderly. Already, month by month and week by week you broke her body on the wheel whilst she still wore it. Is it not yet enough?

The terrible thing is that a perfectly good God is in this matter hardly less formidable than a Cosmic Sadist. The more we believe that God hurts only to heal, the less we can believe that there is any use in begging for tenderness. A cruel man might be bribed–might grow tired of his vile sport–might have a temporary fit of mercy, as alcoholics have fits of sobriety. But suppose that what you are up against is a surgeon whose intentions are wholly good. The kinder and more conscientious he is, the more inexorably he will go on cutting. If he yielded to your entreaties, if he stopped before the operation was complete, all the pain up to that point would have been useless. But is it credible that such extremities of torture should be necessary for us? Well, take your choice. The tortures occur. If they are unnecessary, then there is no God or a bad one. If there is a good God, then these tortures are necessary. For no even moderately good Being could possibly inflict or permit them if they weren’t.

Many persons, including Christians, wonder how can a good God allow one of His own to suffer so much; many persons, including Christians, determine that God is nothing more than, in Lewis’ words, a Cosmic Sadist; and many persons, including Christians, conclude that if this is who God is, then they don’t want anything to do with God. They judge God harshly through the enormity of their pain or grief, missing what Lewis comes to understand, that there is something to our benefit in that same pain or grief or suffering; a suffering that although may bring tears to God’s eyes, He allows, because “every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit” (John 15:2b NKJV).

Click here to read my concluding thoughts on from this book.

Gendercide in America

Ed

I’ve written about gendercide in China over the years (read about The China Model and Forced Abortion in China), but did you know that Planned Parenthood will tell you how you can do the same here in the US? In fact, in Arizona–where it is illegal to get an abortion based on the gender of the baby–they tell you specifically NOT to tell the abortionist that this is why you want an abortion or else he won’t do it.

You can see the Live Action videos that expose this practice from Texas (Part 1), New York City (Part 2), Arizona (Part 3), Hawaii (Part 4), and North Carolina (Part 5).

Why is it important to know this is happening? Because some pro-aborts suggest that it’s okay to get an abortion for whatever reason you want, including the gender of the baby. From a recent blog on the website, Slate:

Let’s just remember that we are talking about fetuses. No matter how many ultrasound pics get posted to Facebook, these are fetuses with female genitals or male genitals—not little girls and little boys.

Beside the incorrect understanding of biology–if you have female genitals, then you’re a girl; and if you have male genitals, then you’re a boy–the author makes sense in the rest of the article. If pro-aborts hesitate to say that abortion is okay even if it’s based on the baby’s gender, then what other reasons can a pro-lifer offer where it doesn’t make sense that a woman should get an abortion?

For the pro-abort this is a slippery slope the other way, one that will lead to abolishing abortion-on-demand completely. They understand what’s really at stake, so no matter how immoral the reason for getting the abortion, or how sickened you might be to know that people want to kill their babies just because of the baby’s gender, the author of the blog on Slate say, “Gulp for a second if you must, then get over it [emphasis added].”