In column criticizing health care reform, Cal Thomas invokes the Holocaust: "Great horrors don't begin in gas chambers"
November 24, 2009 10:23 am ET by Media Matters staff
From Cal Thomas' November 24 column:
We've only just begun with this. The new breast and cervical cancer screening guidelines may soon become mandatory as health care rationing kicks in. The unwanted, the inconvenient and the "burdensome" could soon be dispatched with a pill, or through neglect.
Great horrors don't begin in gas chambers, killing fields or forced famines. They begin when there is a philosophical shift in a nation's leadership about the value of human life. Novelist Walker Percy examined the underlying philosophy that led to the Holocaust and wrote: "In a word, certain consequences, perhaps unforeseen, follow upon the acceptance of the principle of the destruction of human life for what may appear to be the most admirable social reasons."
In our day, the consequences of government seizure of one-sixth of our economy and government's ability to decide how we run our lives (it won't stop with health care) are foreseen. They are just being ignored in our continued pursuit of personal peace, affluence and political power.
Opinion polls show a majority of Americans reject this health care "reform" bill. They think haste may waste them in the end. It doesn't matter. Like members of a cult, whatever the leader says, goes. The facts be damned. The crowd from the '60s will "seize the time," in the words of Black Panther radical Bobby Seale, thus sealing our doom as a unique and wonderful nation.
Welcome to the U.S.S.A., the United Socialist States of America.
A little more than a year ago you wrote a piece about your long friendship with Ted Kennedy. How do you think he might have responded to this?
What do you think it says about the value of a human life when that life is taken during a war of choice that was completely unnecessary?
What do you think it says about the value our culture places on human life that 45,000 Americans die every year from lack of health coverage?
Most polling agrees that a majority of Americans, whether they would choose the public option or not, want the choice of a public option, so this is actually just a lie on your part.
You speak in fearful and dreadful terms of health care rationing, but it is already happening. Part of health coverage reform is to bring that rationing to an end.
The government is not considering seizing 1/6th of our economy. The public option will compete with private insurance policies in a federal exchange where all policies must meet certain minimum requirements.
Bobbby Seale has nothing to do with this, and quoting a 'Black Panther radical' is just more fearmongering on your part.
Let me end with a question: How is making sure all Americans have health coverage and can go to the doctor when they need to going to destroy this country or what makes this country great? We are only as good as we treat the least of those who live here. Our freedom is unaffected by health reform. Our democracy is unaffected by health reform. The Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence are all unaffected by health reform.
Hey they always need a minority so they can enhance thier stupid arguments that "someone" is going to take something from you.
Don't actual families of those who suffered through REAL calamities like the Holocaust just cringe at their suffering being exploited in this way?
Where is the MSM outrage at this kind of overheated rhetoric?
True conservatism isn't hateful, spiteful and rude. I doubt he will ever be asked to return.