In 1729, Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver’s Travels, shocked society with his essay, “A Modest Proposal For Preventing the Children of Poor People From Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and For Making Them Beneficial to the Public.” His satire suggested Ireland could solve its poverty and population problem by selling unwanted children to the rich for food.

        He wrote, “I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled….”

        The goal of “A Modest Proposal” was to mock the heartless attitudes towards the poor, as well as England’s condescending attitudes and policies toward the Irish. It was a sobering wake up call. In 1958, James William Johnson aptly summed up Swift’s ironic warning, namely that “human depravity is such that men will attempt to justify their own cruelty by accusing their victims of being lower than human.”

            Which brings us to 1920. In that year, two German intellectuals, lawyer Karl Binding and psychiatrist Alfred Hoche, wrote their pamphlet, “Permission for the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Life.” Influenced heavily by Charles Darwin’s concept of “survival of the fittest,” Binding and Hoche viewed people with disabilities as inferior “useless eaters,” observing that “Their life is absolutely pointless…. They are a terrible, heavy burden upon their relatives and society as a whole.”

            Who were these undesirable people? Initially, the list included anyone young or old who suffered from mental illness, learning disabilities, physical deformity, epilepsy, blindness, deafness and severe alcoholism.

            Binding and Hoche’s personal perspectives became government policy within thirteen years, just months after Adolph Hitler came to power in 1933. What began as an official sterilization project evolved into the mass murder of the physically and mentally disabled at euthanasia (literally meaning “good death”) centers. Many died from lethal injections, poison pills, starvation or exposure. Viewing these methods as inefficient, the Nazi’s began killing large groups in “shower” chambers filled with Zyklon B gas.

            The same method of mass murder perfected in “psychiatric hospitals” was soon implemented in extermination camps on other “biological enemies” of the Third Reich – Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Communists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals and other “unwanted” groups.

            The infamous Nazi policy known as “The Final Solution” that murdered millions of innocents (including 1.5 million children) was the natural outcome of an ancient worldview known as eugenics, a set of beliefs and practices aimed at creating a genetically superior human race by eradicating undesirable populations. With eugenics, Hitler found the ideological justification for mass murder. He truly believed he was promoting a greater “good” by eliminating those he and his followers deemed as “bad.”

            Hitler wasn’t alone in embracing eugenics. In 1921, an American nurse and social activist named Margaret Sanger founded what later became Planned Parenthood. Sanger sought her own final solution to society’s poverty and population problem, while liberating women from the burden of “unwanted” children. Like Hitler, Sanger believed she was promoting a greater good. Both Hitler and Sanger were taking Darwinistic thought to its logical conclusion: life is only worthy of life if the strong and powerful say it is.

            Which brings us to 2019. Almost 100 years after Binding and Hoche unveiled their radical proposal, pro-choice advocates cheered when the New York legislature passed a bill allowing abortions to occur at any time. Such initiatives are hailed as necessary to advance human “progress,” even though a vast majority of Americans view them as inhumane.

            What do these extreme pro-choice American lawmakers have in common with the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (i.e. – Nazis)? They are treading dangerously close to the same human depravity that attempts “to justify their own cruelty by accusing their victims of being lower than humans,” for both seek to benefit society by eliminating the “unwanted,” “unfit,” or “unwell.”

            And where will this modern-day Darwinian worldview lead us? What’s to keep policymakers from withholding food, water or shelter from people belonging to a particular race, religion or political party they distrust? What’s to stop people in power from denying essential medical services to “useless eaters” like the mentally ill, aged or infirm? Who’s to prevent younger generations from telling Baby Boomers and disabled veterans that they have been a drain on taxpayers for too long and that healthcare only belongs to productive members of society? They might even quote Japan’s finance minister, Taro Aso, who said in 2013 that the elderly should “hurry up and die” to relieve pressure on the state to pay for their medical care.               

            Hurry up and die; it’s the mantra of the party of death in every nation throughout history.

            If human depravity veiled in human progress is allowed to spread unchecked, there’s no limit to the injustices that can be foisted upon defenseless human beings, and not just babies. Anyone who believes the perverse logic that such killings are for the common good needs to remember Isaiah’s warning, “Woe to you who call evil good and good evil.”