Puffs

I can remember well during my years as an EMT for the Lawrence Ambulance Service trips to the emergency room on Friday nights with a boy injured in a football game. Last Friday night I was going to the emergency room when I recalled those trips. Last Friday was also the beginning of the 2022 football season in Nebraska.

About one-half hour after arriving at the hospital . . . sure enough someone brought a football player (in full uniform) in for treatment. I was surprised, but yet, not surprised. Some things don’t change.

A O

Can history really “repeat” itself? ? ? ?

I’ve read and heard about countries either starting or wanting to start “euthanasia” programs over the past few years. It brought back to mind a little book I read many years ago. This book was called “The German Euthanasia Program.”

The small book was actually a re-print of two chapters in a book called “A sign For Cain,” which was a classic on the subject of violence.

It was written in 1978.

I’ve recently read a couple of news reports about Canada. The last report was written by a Mr. Douglas Blair for ‘The Daily Signal.’ The headline was: “Canada is Euthanizing Its Sick and Poor. Welcome to World of Government Health Care.”

How many people, especially the “leftists” and Democrats in the US, tout Canada’s socialized health care system as something America should emulate, claiming government-run health care is more humane.

Canada, it now seems, has some of the most permissive euthanasia laws in the world. Canada’s medical assistance in dying laws allow almost anyone who can claim some form of hardship or disability to receive physician-assistance suicide, regardless of how minor those disabilities might be.

In a recently reported story from The Associated Press, Alan Nichols, 61, was successfully killed after a quick one month waiting period as he was suffering from hearing loss. Nichols was an otherwise decently healthy guy, but his brother claimed he was railroaded into killing himself. Nichols’ family said hospital staff helped him request euthanasia and pushed him to do it, a story that has been repeated many times by other disabled or sick Canadians.

Reports from Canada’s federal government shows that 10,064 people died in 2021 by medically-assisted suicide. This was a massive 32 percent jump from the year before.

There are several states in America promoting euthanasia. Their reasons cover a whole extent of ideas they think seems to justify the end they want.

One sentence out of this news report was: “Our costly health care system is far from perfect, but at least it isn’t wholesale encouraging people to end their own lives.”

I bring this up now because the liberal left in the US so often implement ideas by doing it “undercover.” I mean they say one thing, but do another.

To get back to the book I mentioned at the beginning. In general the book reported on “violence” in society in general, but specifically in Germany before WWII. The second sentence in the book read: “Even individuals cannot be completely understood henceforth without a realization of how easy it is for a civilized society to revert to a state of brutality.”

What it was saying is: Europe, and Germany in particular, had developed a very good level of psychiatric care for disabled individuals and for the elderly in the 1800s and early 1900s. Just why and how Germany changed from a benevolent society to one that made great effort to dispose of the aged and disabled citizens so quickly.

The book pointed out that the systemic killing of people began some time before Hitler and the Nazi government came to power. In general, the book pointed out the change in the system seem to come out of the system of government supplied health care. Someone in the system, realized that it was less costly to kill the elderly and disabled than to care for them.

Just like in today’s effort to enable the killing of people, the Germans made themselves feel better by requiring two doctors to concur that killing was justify. However, the book gave many reports of doctors receiving hundreds of requests a day to approve. And . . . they did the approval as they would get hundreds more the following day.

They could not do any more than sign their names on the requests. They could not have known of any specifics of the individuals.

The driving force behind the German euthanasia program was money. Simply put: “it cost less to kill an “un-productive” individual than to care for him. The reasons for being un-productive didn’t matter. It could have been age, mental capacity, physical disability, or whatever. There were examples of men severely injured in WWI fighting for Germany that were not productive and were sent to be killed.

This all was happening before Hitler came to power. He just took advantage of the system already in place and expanded it greatly.

The really surprising thing I took out of reading the book was how easy it was for supposedly well-educated men and women with high morals to become the people who made the system work. They seemed great before the system started and many resumed their work after the war as if nothing had happened.

It makes me shudder to think that Canada has now discovered what Germany found out a hundred years ago.. . “it is cheaper to kill an individual than to care for that person.” Assisted Suicide is now among the top five reasons of death in Canada.

I just pray we do not let those ideas go any further than they already have.

I recently read a quote I think applies today: “the devil will tell you 99 things correct and honorable, to get you to accept just one thing he wants you to accept.”

Please keep that in mind as we approach the November election. Is it really right for the liberal element in society to do all they want?

So many Democrats seem to favor the “liberal” element. Can they be trusted to not someday begin the killings of helpless children and adults, just like the Germans a hundred years ago?

A O