I know that it’s generally considered to be hyperbole when one compares someone to Nazis, but really, what is the difference between the UK’s practice of euthanizing sick babies and the Nazi practice of euthanizing retarded children and old people?

In Britain — and soon here — you clearly must view your physician with suspicion lest he or she decide that you or or child should simply be killed by the state medical bureaucracy.

Bishop Clemens von Galen was an early opponent of Nazi social programs, and noted how government medicine worked under National Socialism:

for some months we have been hearing reports that, on the orders of Berlin, patients from mental asylums who have been ill for a long time and may appear incurable, are being compulsorily removed. Then, after a short time, the relatives are regularly informed that the corpse has been burnt and the ashes can be delivered. There is a general suspicion verging on certainty, that these numerous unexpected deaths of mentally ill people do not occur of themselves but are deliberately brought about, that the doctrine is being followed, according to which one may destroy so-called ‘worthless life,’ that is, kill innocent people if one considers that their lives are of no further value for the nation and the state….

…in the opinion of some department, on the testimony of some commission, they have become ‘worthless life’ because according to this testimony they are ‘unproductive national comrades.’ The argument goes: they can no longer produce commodities, they are like an old machine that no longer works, they are like an old horse which has become incurably lame, they are like a cow which no longer gives milk.

No, we are dealing with human beings, our fellow human beings, our brothers and sisters. With poor people, sick people, if you like: unproductive people.

But have they for that reason forfeited the right to life?

Have you, have I the right to live only so long as we are productive, so long as we are recognized by others as productive?

Then, it is only necessary for some secret edict to order that the method developed for the mentally ill should be extended to other ‘unproductive’ people, that it should be applied to those suffering from incurable lung disease, to the elderly who are frail or invalids, to the severely disabled soldiers. Then none of our lives will be safe any more. Some commission can put us on the list of the ‘unproductive,’ who in their opinion have become worthless life. And no police force will protect us and no court will investigate our murder and give the murderer the punishment he deserves

Who will be able to trust his doctor any more?

Those are “unworthy lives” says the patriot. “You have to realize that a new age has dawned.” [Click for video.]

The Best of Ryan McMaken