Eleven-month old Charlie Gard died last Friday. He was killed by the idea that the State, in all its “wisdom”, knows what is best for its “subjects”. Charlie was a British subject, without many of the unalienable rights Americans enjoy. Ultimately, Charlie died because under socialism, the State knows what’s better for us than we do.
For much of the year, the British National Health Service, backed by their courts, insisted that Charlie’s damaged brain was too expensive to deal with. Charlie’s parents, who wanted to raise, love, and care for him anyway, were forbidden to do so. As Margaret Thatcher said, “The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” Well, Britain’s health system is out of cash, so Charlie was welcomed by its Death Panels. Thatcher’s Law means that at some point, the bureaucrats running a socialist state must make “hard choices” that don’t affect themselves, but fall heavily on the likes of the Gard family.
Just last week the National Health Service decreed that smokers and the obese will no longer get routine surgeries. “After all,” they say, “we’ve got to draw a line somewhere, and these folks did it to themselves.”
Poor Charlie’s condition was not self-inflicted; he was born with it. Yet, when socialist systems create limited resources, rationing MUST be done, and where better to start than with those with incurable diseases, who generate high, repetitive, medical costs? Socialized medicine holds that society’s finite resources shouldn’t be wasted on “life unworthy of life.” That is an early 20th century phrase of eugenicists (like Margaret Sanger, the racist founder of Planned Parenthood) and “racial hygienists” whose ideas were used by the Nazis. The Third Reich in Power, Richard J. Evans (The Penguin Press, New York 2005) pp.506-535.
In 1933, Nazi racial purification programs, justified by socialists because of “limited medical resources”, mandated forcible sterilization of “deviants, habitual criminals, hereditary poor (beggars and Gypsies), and any with hereditary illnesses”. In 1934, 56,000 were sterilized, and a total of 360,000 by December, 1939. (Evans, 508-9).
How ironic that Britain, which stood alone against Nazi evil for 18 months, 70 years later adopted the very Nazi policies that led to Charlie’s death. The “necessary policies” that got the German people used to “tough” decisions by the State that cheapened the value of life for all Germans, are now being used by the Brits to desensitize their people to the value of life.
The Germans quickly went from accepting sterilization to accepting that children with birth defects, handicaps, “congenital feeble-mindedness”, the very old and the terminally ill be killed by starvation and poisoning. From “life undeserving of life”, it was a short step to using these same victims as lab rats in poison gas experiments. By 1942, the Germans had gotten so used to “tough, necessary decisions”, that they never blinked as the death camps opened up.
Remember this: “Once one segment of the population is declared non-human, it only takes a 51% vote of a nation or a court to declare ANY OTHER segment of the population non-human.” Francis Schaeffer.
God created Israel as an example of His love and wisdom, so that other nation would be attracted to Him as well. Ex. 15:26; Deut. 4:5-8. Jesus intends that Christians do the same. Matt. 5:13-16. God tells us that shedding innocent blood pollutes the land, i.e., it corrupts our minds by devaluing life. Ex. 21:23-25; Deut. 19:11-13; Num. 35:33-34. God warns us about becoming callous about the value of human life.
Once, parents were responsible for raising their children. Government’s role was to protect kids from parental misconduct, when parents neglected or harmed kids. Socialist medicine, however, forced the State to enforce rationing, preventing Charlie’s parents from helping him. They were forbidden to take him to the US where he might have gotten treatment. The British courts only allowed an American specialist to come in a week ago; by then it was too late.
In a free market, the Gards could have found insurance or charity hospitals for Charlie, or gone to another country, but they were blocked from any alternative but the State’s mandates. Understand that ANYONE, Democrat or Republican, who stands for State control of healthcare, ultimately wants virtually every decision of our lives controlled by the State!
In socialism it‘s far better for a person to die than for the State to admit it is impotent to help because of scarcities IT created. As Stalin said, “The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of millions is merely a statistic.” With Charlie’s death, the Brits can fake sorrow and quote Spock, saying, “Gee, that’s tough, but the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.”
When nations adopt socialist medicine, lifeboat ethics soon become the norm, even for doctors who swear “First, do no harm.” Then socialist courts are enlisted to enforce the deaths of children. A mother in Newfoundland, Canada has a 25-year old daughter who has spina bifida, cerebral palsy, and seizure disorder. Her socialist doctor told her that her daughter should be euthanized. https://www.naturalfamilyfoundation.org See, July 29, “Death Panels”.
Liberals are all for a mother’s right to kill her unborn child without any State restrictions, but once the baby is born, they insist on State intervention against the parents’ rights at every stage. While we increase penalties for animal cruelty, we enforce cruelty against our kids, unborn, or alive-but-disabled. Ironic.
In John 9, Jesus’ disciples asked, “Who sinned, this man or his parents that caused him to be born blind? Jesus answered, “It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents, but it was in order that the works of God might be displayed in him.”
Folks, in a fallen world it is up to us to glorify God by caring for those who are hurting. By this we become God’s hands, His smile, His hugs, His healing. That’s why we are here! Godless socialism sees only the bottom line. God sees the hurting individuals and those who can help them, and blesses both. “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” Eph. 2:10.
Image: https://pixabay.com/en/fantasy-composing-creepy-2549111/
