Curtis Dahlgren
Remembering Ronald Reagan, part II
By Curtis Dahlgren
"After the Nazi Holocaust, it was charged that those who knew what was happening (great men among them) failed to halt the slaughter . . . Nothing in history is inevitable; men choose, and we Americans can choose to halt the slaughter of our own innocents. If we do not, history will record . . . that we were not failed by our great men, that our own president called upon us to make the choice." — J.P. McFadden (Forward to "Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation" by Ronald Reagan)
ABORTION IS NOW THE SOCIETALLY VERBOTEN TOPIC; not one eulogist, nor any TV reporters, or even any friendly columnists (so far as I know) have used the word "abortion" since President Reagan died a month ago, even though his crusade against it was just as passionate as his anti-Communist efforts.
At Notre Dame in 1981 he said, "The West will not contain Communism, it will transcend Communism. We will not bother to denounce it, we'll dismiss it as a sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages are even now being written." Those were the words of a prophet.
"The future of our country, the direction that we go as a people, whether we move ahead to meet the challenges of the future or slide back into the irresponsible policies of the past, will be determined by those who get involved." (New York Republican dinner, March 6, 1984)
Those are the words of a prophet too, though more of a warning than words of optimism (he "dismissed" Communism, but he didn't take abortion as lightly). He wasn't just thinking about "the economy stupid" or Communism alone when he spoke of "back-sliding" because that was the same year his 1983 essay on abortion and infanticide was published in the "little book" quoted above — with which Reagan flew in the face of the "Supreme" Court itself. The Gipper's words cut both ways, and it seems he saw an "evil empire" within the heart of the West as well.
In an Afterword to the little book, an essay by Malcolm Muggeridge says: "One of the great contributions of television to preparing the way for the collectivist-authoritarian way of life towards which all western countries are, in their different ways, sleep-walking, is its capacity to present consensus in terms of ostensible controversy." [i.e., Traditionalism becomes the "controversial" while anti-Traditionalism becomes "the New Consensus"]
Mankind has "been there, done that" long ago. But the full story has not been completely told. Movies and television have told us much about the effects of the Holocaust while almost totally ignoring its origins. Muggeridge says that "In this televised version, an essential consideration has been left out — namely, that the origins of the holocaust lay, not in Nazi terrorism and anti-semitism, but in pre-Nazi Weimar Germany's acceptance of euthanasia and mercy-killing as humane . . .
"Surely some future Gibbon surveying our times will note sardonically that it took no more than three decades to transform a war crime [1945] into an act of compassion [73], thereby enabling the victors in the war against Nazi-ism to adopt the very practices for which the Nazis have been solemnly condemned at Nuremberg . . .
"It all began in the early twenties . . . All the most horrible and disgusting aspects of the last decades of the 20th century — the pornography, the sadism, the violence, the moral and spiritual vacuum — were already in evidence there. In this sick environment, the notion of mercy-killing was put forward in 1920 in a book entitled The Release of the Destruction of Life Devoid of Value by Alfred Hoche, a reputable psychiatrist, and Karl Binding, a jurist . . .
"From these beginnings, a program of mercy-killing developed which was initiated, directed and supported by doctors and psychiatrists, some of them of considerable eminence — all this when the Nazi movement was still at an embryonic stage, and Hitler had barely been heard of . . .
"Subsequently, of course, the numbers of the killed rose to astronomical figures, and the medical basis for their slaughter grew ever flimsier; but it should never be forgotten that it was the euthanasia program first organized under the Weimar Republic by the medical profession, which led to and merged into the genocide program of 1941-45 [including abortion for racial reasons in the late 30s]." -ibid
German high school math classes even "got with the program" by posing such questions as: "How many home loans for newlyweds could be paid for with the money wasted on useless eaters in our government institutions?"
Twenty-five years had passed since the Hoche-Binding book, but God didn't even wait until the third or fourth generation to visit the sins of the fathers upon the Nazi powers It's now over forty years since the first lobbying efforts in the 1960s to "liberalize" abortion laws in California and Colorado. Even the survivors of the early "legal" abortions are approaching the age at which they could become grandparents, and God still visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the third or fourth generation of those "who hate God."
Optimistic "economic conservatives" think that we have "gotten away with murder" and they do not look upon God as The Supreme Judge of the World, the way our Founding Fathers did. As for Reaganomics, I could quash with one paragraph of facts from the Congressional Budget Office the old canards that the rich got richer and the "poor got poorer" during President Reagan's term in office. However, it requires a lot more than one paragraph, or one or two columns, to get the public's attention to all the falaciousness and all the consequences inherent in Supreme Court decisions since 1973.
A friend of mine notes that the average number of abortions in this country went up during Reagan's term, not realizing that his hands were completely tied by the Court. However, as McFadden noted, he called upon each one of us to "make the choice," so "the guilt is ours" if we ignored our own President's solemn warnings.
We knew what was happening (like the people of pre-WWII Germany), and we did nothing about it. "To be or not to be" is now a LEGAL question; by redefining terms we simply change the question to: "TO BE OR TO FLUSH IT DOWN THE DRAIN — WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?" In the 21st century we are just rewriting all those books from German Universities of the 1920s:
No child [should] be admitted into the society of the living who would be certain to suffer any social handicap — for example, any physical or mental defect that would prevent marriage or would make others tolerate his company only from the sense of mercy.
So says Millard Everett in Ideals of Life, quoted in an Afterword to "Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation" by C.Edward Koop. Dr. Koop notes that when anyone questions the ever-sliding "conventional wisdom" on abortion and infanticide he is told that he is "trying to legislate my morality for other people."
"I think, on the contrary," says Dr. Koop, "those who agree [with the 'New' ethics] are trying to legislate the morality of our society." NO KIDDING!
"On such vital moral issues as abortion, politicians tend to sit on the fence, hoping to pick up a few votes from both sides. Your President Reagan is the only example I've come across in half a century of knockabout journalism of a political leader ready to stand up without any reservations for the sanctity of life rather than for what passes for being the quality of life. All honour to him."
As usual, Malcolm Muggeridge got right to the "heart" of the issue. Can we still do that? On that question hangs a tale. Or maybe all of us.
© Curtis Dahlgren
"After the Nazi Holocaust, it was charged that those who knew what was happening (great men among them) failed to halt the slaughter . . . Nothing in history is inevitable; men choose, and we Americans can choose to halt the slaughter of our own innocents. If we do not, history will record . . . that we were not failed by our great men, that our own president called upon us to make the choice." — J.P. McFadden (Forward to "Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation" by Ronald Reagan)
ABORTION IS NOW THE SOCIETALLY VERBOTEN TOPIC; not one eulogist, nor any TV reporters, or even any friendly columnists (so far as I know) have used the word "abortion" since President Reagan died a month ago, even though his crusade against it was just as passionate as his anti-Communist efforts.
At Notre Dame in 1981 he said, "The West will not contain Communism, it will transcend Communism. We will not bother to denounce it, we'll dismiss it as a sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages are even now being written." Those were the words of a prophet.
"The future of our country, the direction that we go as a people, whether we move ahead to meet the challenges of the future or slide back into the irresponsible policies of the past, will be determined by those who get involved." (New York Republican dinner, March 6, 1984)
Those are the words of a prophet too, though more of a warning than words of optimism (he "dismissed" Communism, but he didn't take abortion as lightly). He wasn't just thinking about "the economy stupid" or Communism alone when he spoke of "back-sliding" because that was the same year his 1983 essay on abortion and infanticide was published in the "little book" quoted above — with which Reagan flew in the face of the "Supreme" Court itself. The Gipper's words cut both ways, and it seems he saw an "evil empire" within the heart of the West as well.
In an Afterword to the little book, an essay by Malcolm Muggeridge says: "One of the great contributions of television to preparing the way for the collectivist-authoritarian way of life towards which all western countries are, in their different ways, sleep-walking, is its capacity to present consensus in terms of ostensible controversy." [i.e., Traditionalism becomes the "controversial" while anti-Traditionalism becomes "the New Consensus"]
Mankind has "been there, done that" long ago. But the full story has not been completely told. Movies and television have told us much about the effects of the Holocaust while almost totally ignoring its origins. Muggeridge says that "In this televised version, an essential consideration has been left out — namely, that the origins of the holocaust lay, not in Nazi terrorism and anti-semitism, but in pre-Nazi Weimar Germany's acceptance of euthanasia and mercy-killing as humane . . .
"Surely some future Gibbon surveying our times will note sardonically that it took no more than three decades to transform a war crime [1945] into an act of compassion [73], thereby enabling the victors in the war against Nazi-ism to adopt the very practices for which the Nazis have been solemnly condemned at Nuremberg . . .
"It all began in the early twenties . . . All the most horrible and disgusting aspects of the last decades of the 20th century — the pornography, the sadism, the violence, the moral and spiritual vacuum — were already in evidence there. In this sick environment, the notion of mercy-killing was put forward in 1920 in a book entitled The Release of the Destruction of Life Devoid of Value by Alfred Hoche, a reputable psychiatrist, and Karl Binding, a jurist . . .
"From these beginnings, a program of mercy-killing developed which was initiated, directed and supported by doctors and psychiatrists, some of them of considerable eminence — all this when the Nazi movement was still at an embryonic stage, and Hitler had barely been heard of . . .
"Subsequently, of course, the numbers of the killed rose to astronomical figures, and the medical basis for their slaughter grew ever flimsier; but it should never be forgotten that it was the euthanasia program first organized under the Weimar Republic by the medical profession, which led to and merged into the genocide program of 1941-45 [including abortion for racial reasons in the late 30s]." -ibid
German high school math classes even "got with the program" by posing such questions as: "How many home loans for newlyweds could be paid for with the money wasted on useless eaters in our government institutions?"
Twenty-five years had passed since the Hoche-Binding book, but God didn't even wait until the third or fourth generation to visit the sins of the fathers upon the Nazi powers It's now over forty years since the first lobbying efforts in the 1960s to "liberalize" abortion laws in California and Colorado. Even the survivors of the early "legal" abortions are approaching the age at which they could become grandparents, and God still visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the third or fourth generation of those "who hate God."
Optimistic "economic conservatives" think that we have "gotten away with murder" and they do not look upon God as The Supreme Judge of the World, the way our Founding Fathers did. As for Reaganomics, I could quash with one paragraph of facts from the Congressional Budget Office the old canards that the rich got richer and the "poor got poorer" during President Reagan's term in office. However, it requires a lot more than one paragraph, or one or two columns, to get the public's attention to all the falaciousness and all the consequences inherent in Supreme Court decisions since 1973.
A friend of mine notes that the average number of abortions in this country went up during Reagan's term, not realizing that his hands were completely tied by the Court. However, as McFadden noted, he called upon each one of us to "make the choice," so "the guilt is ours" if we ignored our own President's solemn warnings.
We knew what was happening (like the people of pre-WWII Germany), and we did nothing about it. "To be or not to be" is now a LEGAL question; by redefining terms we simply change the question to: "TO BE OR TO FLUSH IT DOWN THE DRAIN — WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?" In the 21st century we are just rewriting all those books from German Universities of the 1920s:
No child [should] be admitted into the society of the living who would be certain to suffer any social handicap — for example, any physical or mental defect that would prevent marriage or would make others tolerate his company only from the sense of mercy.
So says Millard Everett in Ideals of Life, quoted in an Afterword to "Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation" by C.Edward Koop. Dr. Koop notes that when anyone questions the ever-sliding "conventional wisdom" on abortion and infanticide he is told that he is "trying to legislate my morality for other people."
"I think, on the contrary," says Dr. Koop, "those who agree [with the 'New' ethics] are trying to legislate the morality of our society." NO KIDDING!
"On such vital moral issues as abortion, politicians tend to sit on the fence, hoping to pick up a few votes from both sides. Your President Reagan is the only example I've come across in half a century of knockabout journalism of a political leader ready to stand up without any reservations for the sanctity of life rather than for what passes for being the quality of life. All honour to him."
As usual, Malcolm Muggeridge got right to the "heart" of the issue. Can we still do that? On that question hangs a tale. Or maybe all of us.
© Curtis Dahlgren
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