Holland to implement neo-Nazi euthanasia program for babies
Gerard Jackson
The Dutch government is set to implement the Groningen Protocol, a policy similar to the Nazi program of killing defectives. The main difference for the moment is that the Dutch program will focus on defective babies. This barbaric policy brings me to William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. He quoted Santayana's stark warning: "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it."
Shirer concentrated on the political and military aspects of the Third Reich but Santayana's warning is just as applicable to its moral aspects, as Shirer well knew, especially concerning euthanasia and the inevitable drift from selective euthanasia to state sanctioned mass killings.
The lesson of history is that state sanctioned euthanasia can never be quarantined to a 'few hard cases'. History tells us that it always spills over into involuntary euthanasia. Dutch euthanasia has already claimed the lives of many elderly folk in nursing homes whose lives were taken against their will. (Yet the Dutch police refuse to call this murder).
Of course, supporters of the Dutch view will argue, as Professor Singer has, that "What the Nazis did was a totally different thing. "They called their program euthanasia but it was not euthanasia because it was not for the good of the infants involved."
But the comparison with Nazi Germany is stunning apt because it too believed that murdering people, including infants, for their own good and that of society was moral. Hitler's decree of the 1 September 1939 authorising euthanasia made this point crystal clear:
"Reichleiter Bouhler and Dr Brandt are hereby instructed to extend the authority of physicians designated by name in such a manner that those who are, as far as it is humanly possible to judge, incurably sick may, after the most scrupulous assessment of their state of health, be granted a merciful death."
So where is the difference between Hitler's views on euthanasia and the views of those Dutch doctors who are just aching to kill babies, even if the parents are against it?
Even more striking is that the justification for the Nazi euthanasia program did not originate with Nazis but with so-called progressives, what Americans call liberals. As we can see, Singer's defence of his stand on euthanasia is obfuscating the fact that when compared to the Nazi perspective his view turns out to be a difference without a distinction, irrespective of motives.
In 1920 Permission to Destroy Life Unworthy of Life was published in Germany. Authored by a Professor Karl Binding in collaboration with Dr Alfred Hoche, the booklet categorised those who were to be killed -- all for the greater good. This was liberalism (not classical liberalism) taken to its logical conclusion with an absolute vengeance.
Ironically Holland is strongly opposed to the death penalty, a subject on which it has had the nerve to lecture the US. Rather than face their hypocrisy supporters of Holland's killing program have argued that "people who support capital punishment should not oppose euthanasia".
Capital punishment is used only for the most terrible crimes. Its purpose is deterrence and retribution. What opponents of euthanasia fear is that euthanasia will spread far and wide into the frail, aged and handicapped population on financial grounds. There is a vast difference between executing a criminal for a heinous crime and killing infants.
But this is a difference that our home-grown media supporters of Euthanasia choose to ignore. Nicolas Rothwell of The Australian seems to think we should have euthanasia because the majority of Australians support it. The majority of Australians also support the death penalty, but Rothwell thinks their opinion on this matter should be ignored.
Stephen Romei, another one who works for The Australian, approves of euthanasia and infanticide while simultaneously condemning America's use of the death penalty as "barbarism".
After WW II the Allies rightly executed leading war criminals for their appalling deeds. These executions were intended as a deterrent to any dictator and his minions who might think of taking the same road. Yet nearly sixty years later we see a liberal – very liberal – European country taking the same barbaric road by turning its hospitals into death factories for infants.
"Those who forget history. . . . ."
Gerard Jackson is Brookes' economics editor
BrookesNews.Com
Monday 6 December 2004