MINISTERS OF EUTHANASIAPART 1
 
 
By Dennis L. Cuddy, Ph.D.[Note: Bill Clinton was from Hope, Arkansas, and his mentor, Professor Carroll Quigley, wrote Tragedy and Hope wherein he described the "hope" of the world as the Power Elite (PE) who run things behind the scenes. Barack Obama's campaign theme was "hope" via "change." Is this all just coincidental?]
Responding to the charge that President Obama's national health care proposals would include "death panels," John Meachem of Newsweek wrote, "I Was A Teenage Death Panelist" (Sept. 12, 2009) in which he remarked that "the origins of what became the dreaded death panels show the idea to be sensible and humane…. We have to think about death differently…. Without a shift from late-in-life overtreatment to a wider use of the hospice model, costs will continue to grow to a likely unsustainable level." In the same edition of Newsweek, Evan Thomas (who said Obama is "sort of God") wrote "The Case for Killing Granny," in which he commented: "Until Americans learn to contemplate death as more than a scientific challenge to be overcome, our health-care system will remain unfixable…. A significant portion of the savings will have to come from the money we spend on seniors at the end of life."
The global PE for well over 100 years has been promoting euthanasia. In an earlier NewsWithViews column, I quoted H.G. Wells in Anticipations (1901) describing the coming "world state" where there would be "the merciful obliteration of weak and silly and pointless" people. And in Robert Hugh Benson's Lord of the World (1907), he said there would be Ministers of Euthanasia (like Jack Kevorkian) in 1998 under American Socialism.
That the PE had the beginning of the 21st century as the time Socialism would be adopted in the U.S. fits with what John Loeffler, host of Steel-on-Steel, referred to as an 80-year period for cultural change. For example, German culture began to change in the mid-1800s, so that by the 1930s, Germans were willing to accept National Socialism (Nazis). Therefore, with the change in American culture beginning in the late 1920s with Socialists like John Dewey, Norman Thomas, etc. the 80-year movement toward Socialism here would be complete about now.
Regarding euthanasia, in Germany in 1920, Dr. Alfred Hoche and Karl Binding authored "The Permission to Destroy Life Unworthy of Life" urging a national policy of assisted suicide for those terminally ill, mentally retarded, or with brain damage or psychiatric conditions. This was similar to the views of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger regarding those at the beginning of life, when she wrote in The Pivot of Civilization (1922): "There is but one practical and feasible program in handling the great problem of the feeble-minded. That is, as the best authorities are agreed, to prevent the birth of those who would transmit imbecility to their descendents." A little over 80 years later, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in a July 12, 2009 New York Times Magazine interview would say: "I had thought that at the time Roe v. Wade was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of."
Concepts such as Social Darwinism in the late 1800s gave rise to the racial hygiene movement long before the Nazis ascended to power. In 1923, the University of Munich appointed Fritz Lenz to the first German chair in racial hygiene, and in 1931 Lenz commented: "Hitler is the first politician with truly wide influence who has recognized that the central mission of all politics is race hygiene and who will actively support this mission."
In March 1933, Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, and on October 7, 1933 the Ministry of Justice in Berlin proposed that "it shall be made possible for physicians to end the tortures of incurable patients, upon request, in the interests of true humanity." In October 1939 (but backdated to September 1, 1939 when WWII began), Hitler authorized Aktion 4 or T4, a program which "granted mercy deaths" to those who physicians determined to be incurables.
Under the Nazis, euthanasia was first practice on the handicapped as they were considered "life unworthy of life." This was followed by euthanasia against those (e.g., Jews, Gypsies, etc.) whom the Nazis considered "inferior" to their Aryan race. In the 1940s, Josef Mengele became a leader in the Nazi's euthanasia movement and was known as "the Angel of Death" (see reference to Mengele in my 4-part series "The Power Elite and the Secret Nazi Plan"). It is important here to remember that the Nazi movement was only a subpart of the PE's larger plan.
During WWII, Jerome Bruner was chief of psychological warfare for General Eisenhower. In the late 1950s, Bruner authored "The Process of Education," a report of the Woods Hole Conference which would become a guide for educational reformers in the 1960s. Bruner was also director of the Educational Development Center in Cambridge, MA, when in 1964 it produced Man: A Course of Study (MACOS), which was given $6.5 million by the National Science Foundation for its development. Congressman John Conlan criticized federal support for MACOS, which included a positive image of euthanasia such as infanticide and senilicide (e.g., old Eskimos left on ice to die).
In the December 31, 1969 edition of The Christian Century, Sam Keen wrote "The 'Soft' Revolution Explored" about an "alteration of consciousness" occurring, saying: "Western civilization has become disillusioned about its ancient romance with the religious and moral ideals of the Judeo-Christian tradition." He said there was "a change in value orientation" and an "emerging secular religion." About 25 years later, Keen at the first State of the World Forum in 1995 would evoke loud applause as he declared, "If we cut the world's population by 90%, there won't be enough people left to do ecological damage." Think about what would be required to reduce the earth's population by 90%!
At the same time Keen wrote his The Christian Century column, New Age spiritualist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross authored On Death and Dying (later testifying to the U.S. Senate in 1972 on death and dying), and The Hastings Center was founded in New York by Willard Gaylin and Daniel Callahan, who would later worry that America is waging a "war against death" (Callahan believed we must accept death). The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation would pay for a special supplement to The Hastings Center Report "Dying Well in the Hospital: the lessons of SUPPORT."
The year after On Death and Dying was published, in February 1970 Dr. Daniel Leviton (teacher of death education at the University of Maryland) delivered an address titled "The Role of the Schools in Providing Death Education," in which he asserted: "…We are very much interested in educating parents in order to reduce the spread of that dread disease, 'hangupitis.' Public schools would do well to develop related parent education programs in such myth-shrouded areas as human sexuality and death education." That someone supports death education does not mean necessarily that they support euthanasia. However, getting students "comfortable" with death can lead to suicides, which for many can be a kind of self-imposed euthanasia of depressed people. In September 1972, Dr. Leviton delivered an address titled "Education for Death, or Death Becomes Less A Stranger" at the American Psychological Association convention, in which he cautioned: "I can say that no one enrolled in the Course has suicided to date but it remains a possibility. The instructor in Death Education needs to be prepared for the eventuality of a student's suicide."

If students in "Death and Dying" classes go to morgues, feel corpses, view an embalming, rub caskets, sit in coffins, write suicide notes, and are asked to write their own epitaphs or obituaries, is it any wonder they may start to contemplate suicide as a way to get out of their problems? One girl at Columbine High School (where the two student killers wore black garments with swastikas) in Littleton, Colorado said she contemplated suicide after taking a death education course. Even before the Littleton massacre, Tara Becker Merrill of Colorado attempted suicide after a high school class about death, saying she was taught that "death is exciting, appealing, something to look forward to." Many other students have committed suicide after taking death education or seeing films about suicide. One textbook, Coping With Death and Dying by Robert Russell, contained a section on euthanasia that stated: "Committing suicide may represent a last attempt to make an independent, personal decision."

At the same time Dr. Leviton was delivering his address in 1970, the movie M.A.S.H. was released with a theme song titled "Suicide is Painless," and in 1972 a popular TV show titled M.A.S.H. began with the same theme song. That same year (1972), the Center for Teaching International Relations (CTIR) was co-founded at the University of Denver by Josef Korbel (Secretary of State Madeline Albright's father) and it would produce Death: A Part of Life (by George Otero and Zoanne Harris), which on page 117 included Kamikazee Letters from WWII.
© 2009 Dennis Cuddy - All Rights Reserved