Echoes of Nazi Germany: Those Who Want to Execute Her have a Gruesome Prescedent

I certainly cannot recall if I had ever defended Patrick J. Buchanan's opinion on any political or social view. My glimpses toward his PBS commentaries or his being as a guest on CNN or other news media left me to have not so a favorable opinion on his political outlook. Let's face it, Mr. Buchannan is an arch conservative that is so radically contrary to my own lifelong yearning for liberal philosophy. However, after observing the recent stormy episodes regarding Terri Schiavo's case of life and death, reading a few so called liberal writers' commentaries in various newspapers and magazines, I have beginning to question some of these elite liberals' definition of liberalism.

Granted that evangelical conservatives are playing politics invoking the name of Terri Schiavo to further their other political and social goals, but so are the liberals (so called). The pain and anguish felt by the family of Terri Schiavo, including her parents and her husband are genuine, many of us who had gone through similar life and death episodes related to our beloved family members or dearest friends know it quite well what these sufferings can mean. In this particular case there is no living will of the patient, nor she can communicate effectively showing her desire to cease her earthly existence. However, for her family, parents and siblings and dearest friends, her pure survival resonates a deeper chord in their lives that most of us may find hard to fathom.

Terri Schiavo’s husband may be genuinely trying to provide a “dignified” end to her beloved wife, and indeed he had stayed steadfast beside her from the beginning of this ordeal for more than fifteen years now, the fact of the matter is that he does not possess any provable written consent from the lady of his life.

Human beings are wrought with frailties and imperfections. All these years of steadfastness and devotion and dedication toward a life partner who is not able to perform the expected conjugal life, surely may raise a toll amidst the most committed spouse. The tie that binds two human beings together in celebratory matrimony must be respected for all that it deserves, but the natural tie between a mother and her daughter should get similar, if not more, respect.

It may very well be that Patrick J. Buchanan have gone overboard, once again, comparing Nazi Germany and the saddening episode of Terri Schiavo, but she is indeed being starved to death though the “liberal” scientists, sociologists and politicians, all are trying to give a “dignity” on her on coming death. And that’s the opportunistic “liberalism”, quite similar to its counterpart espoused by the conservatives, have started to bother me lately.

Regards,
Sohel

ECHOES OF NAZI GERMANY: THOSE WHO WANT TO EXECUTE HER HAVE A GRUESOME PRECEDENT

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Had Congress and President Bush not returned to Washington on Palm Sunday, America would have sent this message to the world:

Ours is a nation where a judge may not sentence Beltway sniper John Malvo to death because he is too young to die, but can sentence Terri Schiavo to death because she is too severely handicapped to live.

Before the Palm Sunday rescue, Schiavo was scheduled to die by starvation and dehydration, a method of capital punishment most would consider criminal if done to a pet.

This was the method used at Auschwitz to murder Father Maximilian Kolbe, the priest who volunteered to take the place of a Polish father of a large family, who was one of 10 the camp commandant had selected for execution in reprisal for the escape of a prisoner.

After being starved and dehydrated for days, Kolbe was injected by his Nazi captors with carbolic acid. He died a martyr's death, said the church that canonized him. That is what would have happened to Terri. Only she would have been denied the lethal injection by those watching her die.

That there arose a national outcry at the execution of Schiavo -- so loud Congress and President Bush heard it and came to the rescue -- is a sign America is not morally dead . . . yet. But a culture of death has taken deep root in America's soul.

One wonders if our young, so many of them cheated of a knowledge of history in schools they are forced to attend, are aware of how closely our elites approximate, in belief and argument, the elites of Weimar and Nazi Germany in the 1920s and 1930s.

In 1920, Dr. Alfred Hoche, professor of psychiatry at the University of Freiburg, and Karl Binding, a law professor at Leipzig, wrote ``The Permission to Destroy Life Unworthy of Life.'' They urged a national policy of assisted suicide for those ``empty shells of human beings'' -- the terminally ill and mentally retarded, and those with brain damage and psychiatric conditions.

When war came in 1939, a program code-named ``Aktion 4'' went about systematically eliminating all ``life unworthy of life'' in the Reich. By 1940, scores of thousands had been put to death.

Hitler's doctors may yet prove to be the medical pioneers of the 21st century.

PATRICK J. BUCHANAN is a syndicated columnist.