Letters to the Editor for Thursday, August 27, 2009
Published: August 27, 2009
Updated: August 27, 2009
Nazis, Hitler have no place in health debate
In the recent column (“Health Lessons for the U.S. from Great Britain”), Cal Thomas notes that we should be cautious about who has the power in a health care system. He cites Adolf Hitler’s 1933 Sterilization Law as an example.
Click to sendWhat Mr. Thomas didn’t say, or perhaps, like most people, didn’t know, was that Hitler got his ideas on sterilization and laws to support it from the United States, and particularly Virginia. “An act to provide for the sexual sterilization of inmates of state institutions in certain cases” was passed by the General Assembly in 1924. Hitler used our law as the model for his sterilization program.
Dr. Albert Priddy, the superintendent of the Lynchburg Colony, worked to have a bill passed to sterilize those deemed feeble-minded. Carrie Buck, a 17 year old rape victim who was institutionalized at the Lynchburg Colony and accused of feeble-mindedness, was his test case.
Priddy (and others in that time) thought sterilization would be good for the country economically and socially. Carrie Buck was railroaded through the Virginia court system, all the way to the Supreme Court (Buck v. Bell).
Once Virginia’s law was passed and upheld by the Supreme Court, sterilizations across the country became a reality with more than 65,000 Americans sterilized. Carrie Buck was sterilized on Oct. 19, 1927. One physician in Virginia lamented that we should step up our sterilization rates because “the Germans are beating us at our own game.”
Fortunately, the “science” of eugenics was ultimately proven to be based on faulty science and the sterilizations slowed and then ended. What happened to Carrie Buck was unjust, and I’m glad that Virginia eventually apologized to her and the other people who were childless for their remaining lives. Hitler, of course, continued the sterilizations and killings.
As the health care debate continues, I would hope that people would stop using Hitler and the Nazis as an argument for or against health care changes.
The comparison between what is being proposed for health care (whether you agree or not) and what happened in the days of Nazis is completely inappropriate. Hitler and the Nazis tortured and murdered millions. It was a terrible time. What was done then was heinous and using it as a comparison now is not an invitation to thoughtful dialogue about health care.
KENZIE VanDERWERKER
Bedford
Editor’s Note: The letter writer is an 11th grade student at Liberty High School in Bedford County.
Feeling a bit uneasy
Do I think the national health care plan of Barack Obama and the Democrats is good for the country?
Not at all, but I would feel much better about what our lawmakers are doing if I knew they would be under the same plan and were doing what’s best for all American citizens.
It looks like business as usual for our elected representatives: “Do as I say, not as I do.”
RON WADDELL
Forest
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Reader Reactions
WhyTheHate? are you trying to tell me that a widow who just lost her husband, is in a complete turmoil trying to raise children and grieving should immediately get a job.
Are you telling me that a person in a grieving process that takes a year at least and in some cases longer should get a job immediately. Are you telling me that such a person should go out looking for hand outs, there by lowering her dignity, is lazy and living off others.
WhyTheHate? have you no decency or compassion. Have you no morals or mercy for the less fortunate who was given a sudden blow in life.
In case you did not bother to get informed about the conversation firechick and I were debating, that is what it was about.
Yes, if you still feel the same way after knowing, I will consider you sick and not worthy to occupy the same air as decent loving caring people. People who want such a person to have a chance in life, without begging.
If I had to beg for something, and lose my “dignity” , it might make me a little more inclined to work harder and improve myself.
People who are baby factories or just plain lazy and collect welfare who eat better than me and talk on $300 cell phones make me sick.
Old people who have lost pensions or were taken advantage of or people who are disabled…...yes please help them.
People who are able to work but don’t….let them lose their dignity.
imppie has no other words so he attacks the messenger.
Let’s do a little recap.
I said; It was sick thinking.
Fire said; I make her sick.
so I said; all people like her make me sick.
now according to imppie I am the first one who got personal.
imppie you seem to be the sickest of all.
When a liberal doesn’t have an answer for an argument, or realizes that he/she may be wrong, the easy out is to either say that the other person:
1) Is a “hater”
2) Is “sick”
3) Is a “racist”
Then they fold their hands back over their bellies, belch, and retreat back into their fantasy world, where everything is like they want it, and they don’t have to think or consider other points of view.
It’s a pretty easy life, I imagine.
fire you and the rest of the epople who talk/write like you make me sick, so where does that get anyone.
There is one thing for sure I will not lose any sleep over sick types like you.
“That is why I could never ever be a Republican. They want to take any dignity a family may have and make them beg for a living from other people.“
Hey, I’ve got an idea!
How about, say, ..... WORK for a living!
Now there’s a concept! Take care of yourself, your family, your friends. Give to the truly poor and unfortunate. Let the “sturdy beggars” find out that no one is going to give them a handout just for existing.
That philosophy is how this country got to be the place that millions and millions of people around the world have flocked to, and continue to flock to BY THE MILLIONS EVERY YEAR, from dictatorships and socialist workers paradises all around the world, where the government oversees a huge welfare plantation so people can maintain their “dignity”, if you can call it that.
And now you want to screw it up. I hope you don’t get the chance.
Well, I guess that’s good that the money you get goes to paying down bills. But, like you said, once you get it paid off, you don’t have to spend that money each month going towards that bill. So with that money that is not going towards that bill, what do you do with it? Buy more groceries?
I don’t think anything is sick of what I said. That’s what families are for. To help each other in times of need. These were my thoughts on the subject, not all Republicans. I am not even a Republican. If you do things for yourself you gain dignity.
I really feel sorry for people like you. I work for EVERYTHING I have and never ask for anything of others that I can’t get for myself first.
While I work hard and pay my bills, you can just sit there on your butt with your hand out expecting everyone else to take care of you!!!
I am sick and tired of working hard everyday, going to school at night to advance myself, to get a better paying job and people like you just want everyone else to do the work for them.
YOU MAKE ME SICK.
When it is claimed that Clinton paid down the national debt, that is patently false—as can be seen, the national debt went up every single year. What Clinton did do was pay down the public debt—notice that the claimed surplus is relatively close to the decrease in the public debt for those years. But he paid down the public debt by borrowing far more money in the form of intergovernmental holdings (mostly Social Security).
The CBO was talking about the public debt, not the national debt.
If you continue to read into the article you provided you will find:
“Leaders of both parties have vowed not to use surplus funds from the Social Security trust fund, which leaves the estimated $40 billion for the fight over how to spend it.“
So since Social Security had more money coming in than it had to pay in benefits to retired persons, all that extra money was immediately used to buy U.S. Government securities. The government was still running deficits, but since there was so much money coming from excess Social Security contributions there was no need to borrow more money directly from the public. As such, the public debt went down while intergovernmental holdings continued to skyrocket.
Which, if you followed the link I posted earlier so that you could find the National Debts each year from 1993 forward, you will notice that there was no decrease in the National Deficit.
I am not saying that I know more than the CBO but I am stating what happened and not just half of it.
fire any check I ever receive from the Gov. always goes to paying down bills. You can call that stimulating the economy I do not. When a bill is gone it usually takes me a year before I create another bill.
I must say that your response of people should live on charity is very very sick.
That is why I could never ever be a Republican. They want to take any dignity a family may have and make them beg for a living from other people.
I really feel sorry for you and that type of thinking. Just keep up your arrogant ways. That thinking has a way of catching up in the long haul.
fire here is a quote from 2000 about GWB.
Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the likely Republican presidential nominee, who has agreed that there is enough of a federal surplus to pay for his five-year, $483 billion tax cut as well as spending proposals on education, health-care, housing and the environment.
http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/05/12/cbo.surplus/index.html
So now you know more then the CBO?
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