Dallas ISD Learns to Spell PC

Dallas ISD has decided to study up on whether the names of several schools in the district should have their names changed, in order to avoid honoring racists. Their list can be found here. Oddly enough, they left a few names off the list. Please email the DISD and let them know they can do better.

Specifically, if the DISD wants to change school names, they should start here:

• César Chávez Learning Center
• Oliver Wendell Holmes Middle School and Classical Academy
• Franklin D. Roosevelt High School
• Woodrow Wilson High School

César Chávez
César Chávez  hated illegal immigrants:

"In the mid 1970s, he conducted the “Illegals Campaign” to identify and report illegal workers, “an effort he deemed second in importance only to the boycott” (of produce from non-unionized farms), according to Pawel. She quotes a memo from Chavez that said, “If we can get the illegals out of California, we will win the strike overnight.” 

The Illegals Campaign didn’t just report illegals to the (unresponsive) federal authorities. Cesar sent his cousin, ex-con Manuel Chavez, down to the border to set up a “wet line” (as in “wetbacks”) to do the job the Border Patrol wasn’t being allowed to do. Unlike the Minutemen of a few years ago, who arrived at the border with no more than lawn chairs and binoculars, the United Farm Workers patrols were willing to use direct methods when persuasion failed. Housed in a series of tents along the Arizona border, the crews in the wet line sometimes beat up illegals, the “cesarchavistas” employing violence even more widely on the Mexican side of the border to prevent crossings."

Oliver Wendell Holmes
And let us not forget Oliver Wendell Holmes. Holmes was a staunch advocate of the kind of eugenics later practiced by Nazi Germany.

"Eugenics was his only political cause and was obviously is in line with his Darwinism. Holmes’ eugenic views were in fact more extreme than those of other eugenics enthusiasts of his time. Others talked about sterilizing “imbeciles” while Holmes advocated executing unfit babies."

"Holmes had no regard for civil rights or civil liberties. See, e.g., his majority opinion in Buck v. Bell (upholding coercive sterilizaton, which he clearly thought was not only constitutional but a good idea), his dissent in Meyer v. Nebraska (arguing that states should be allowed to ban the teaching of foreign languages), his (unpublished) dissent in Buchanan v. Warley (arguing that banning blacks from buying houses in white neighborhoods is a reasonable regulation of property and should be upheld). A sign of the times is Alschuer's very critical biography, Law Without Values. An even more significant sign of the times is that if I'm remembering correctly, this book received a very positive front page review in the New York Times."

Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927)Majority Opinion: Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Vote: 8 to 1 (Justice Pierce Butler Dissenting)
In 1927, the “eugenics” movement was gaining ground, and not just in Germany. When the State of Virginia engaged the mighty force of the U.S. Supreme Court to prevent Carrie Buck, 18, from ever bearing children again, the venerable Civil War veteran Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. obliged. The court ruled that it was not  unconstitutional for a state to determine that it, the unwilling adult victim and presumably her yet-to-be-born children, would be better off if she were forcibly sterilized.
Holmes observed that Buck was “feeble minded,” as was her mother and her daughter. Though later investigation proved that not to be entirely true, Holmes relied on the trumped-up record to pontificate that, in his infamous observation, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
After reading these cases, one might come to agree with Holmes if it applied to certain Supreme Court justices.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt
FDR is listed #6 on the Huffington Post's "Most Racist Presidents" list (Woodrow Wilson is #7). FDR interned innocent Japanese-Americans. He appointed former KKK member Hugo Black to the SCOTUS. When Hugo was a senator in Alabama he infamously filibustered an anti-lynching bill. Hugo also wrote positively of Roosevelt in his memoirs, specifically pointing out that while the KKK was increasingly being frowned upon by the American public, Roosevelt considered that a positive on Black's part:

"[Roosevelt's] best friends and supporters he had in the state of Georgia were strong members of that organization."   ~Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Kindle locations 2636 -- 2657.

Hugo Black would go on to repay FDR with the Korematsu v. United States case that defended the constitutionality of imprisoning people of Japanese descent in America. Even Hitler commented on FDR's internment of Japanese-Americans:

"He (Roosevelt) had done all in his power to provoke the Japanese...they (America) were more obsessed than ever with the idea of the Yellow Peril."
-Transcribed by his secretary on 18th February 1945

FDR (1933-1945): “Subjects to do with breeding and race seem, indeed, to have held a certain fascination for the president…. Roosevelt felt it in order to talk, jokingly, of dealing with Puerto Rico’s excessive birth rate by employing, in his own words, ‘the methods which Hitler used effectively’ [to make them] sterile.” His Vice President, Henry Agard Wallace, said, “if we could practice eugenics on people. We could turn out a beautiful golden race.” As Assistant Secretary of the Navy,  FDR introduced condoms to the military in order to keep low-life enlisted men from breeding,

Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson was the man who segregated the federal government and he famously both screened and praised the KKK movie "Birth of a Nation" at the White House.

From the PBS website:

"[Wilson] dismissed 15 out of 17 black supervisors who had been previously appointed to federal jobs and replaced them with whites. He also refused to appoint black ambassadors to Haiti and Santa Domingo, posts traditionally awarded to African Americans. Two of Wilson's cabinet ministers, Postmaster General Albert Burelson and Treasury Secretary William McAdoo, both Southerners, issued orders segregating their departments. Throughout the country, blacks were segregated or dismissed from federal positions. In Georgia, the head of the Internal Revenue division fired all black employees: "There are no government positions for Negroes in the South. A Negro's place in the corn field." He said. The President's wife, Ellen Wilson, was said to have had a hand in segregating employees in Washington, encouraging department chiefs to assign blacks separate working, eating, and toilet facilities. To justify segregation, officials publicized complaints by white women, who were thought to be threatened by black men's sexuality and disease."

Free Market = Anything Goes

Let us all stop pretending that the government somehow stifles the free market.

The government is a legitimate actor in the free market, its existence and actions in no way hinder the market. By the very definition of "free market", any actor can set any rules it wants, and any method of enforcing those rules is legitimate because "free market."

We vote for politicians at the ballot box, we vote for corporations at the cash register, we clearly like having both as market players. Both ARE market players. The market is perfectly free.

The government coerces us with laws and prisons, Amazon coerces with prices and products. Stick versus carrot, and the two are interchangeable. Someone who is homeless may commit a crime in order to secure three hots and a cot in prison. Prison is, under this circumstance, not a punishment but an enticement, a government handout. Similarly, someone who wants a product but can't afford it views the lack of that product as a punishment. The unaffordable Amazon product becomes a stick to beat others with, "If you can't afford to buy/rent a dwelling and you live on the streets, then you are scum and we will shun you. Welcome to prison." Substitute any product for "dwelling" and you get the same result. Your inability to possess whatever the current "socially acceptable" fashion item may be, whether house, iPhone or Air Jordans, becomes an excuse to socially relegate you to irrelevance.

Government, Amazon, Facebook, Google - is there really any difference between them?

Sure, the government has soldiers and cops, but the corporations feed the soldier-cops, clothe them and arm them, governments and corporations lobby each other for money and perqs, and the top executives in both are absolutely interchangeable cogs, as the frequent migration between government and private office shows. Corporate lobbyists write the laws that the legislators pass. The government's job is to implement corporate policies.

Just as different departments within the same company may compete for company resources, so different corporations within the same country/continent compete for resources under government control. The corporate drones always complain about their department heads being idiots - articles about the government somehow being an illegitimate market actor because it is "stupid" sound no different.

I don't see why anyone considers government nefarious and corporations nifty.
The only difference between the two is the spelling.
The revolving door between them is fully operational.

IF this is a democracy AND government does nothing but rob us, THEN it is because we as a nation WANT that product. We like being robbed.

The fact that you, as an individual, don't particularly like being robbed is really your problem, not the market's problem, nor does your dislike of that product provide any demonstration that the government is not a legitimate market actor.

Federal law is written by corporations.
What part of that sentence is hard to understand?

As soon as you admit that federal law is written by corporations, you admit that government is a creature of the very corporations you claim make up the free market. Which means government is as much a joint corporate product as an Echo Dot, all the parts manufactured by different companies, but the whole melded together and sold as a product to the American public.

Government is part and parcel of the free market, government waste and insanity is the foundation of the free market. It is simply the central, necessary actor that free market corporations created and maintained so as to keep their own business models going. Complaints about government "distorting" the free market are self-refuting and literally insane. Government can no more distort the free market than any other business entity can distort the free market.

It's a free market.
Anything goes.

America's Eugenicist Presidents

Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909):

I agree with you if you mean, as I suppose you do, that society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind. It is really extraordinary that our people refuse to apply to human beings such elementary knowledge as every successful farmer is obliged to apply to his own stock breeding. Any group of farmers who permitted their best stock not to breed, and let all the increase come from the worst stock, would be treated as fit inmates for an asylum. Yet we fail to understand that such conduct is rational compared to the conduct of a nation which permits unlimited breeding from the worst stocks, physically and morally, while it encourages or connives at the cold selfishness or the twisted sentimentality as a result of which the men and women ought to marry, and if married have large families, remain celebates or have no children or only one or two. Some day we will realize that the prime duty the inescapable duty of the good citizen of the right type is to leave his or her blood behind him in the world; and that we have no business to permit the perpetuation of citizens of the wrong type.

William Howard Taft (1909-1913): From 1924-1927 a legal test case, Buck vs. Bell, was fought all the way to the United States Supreme Court. Despite the presence on the bench of such humane jurists as William Howard Taft and Louis Brandeis, the court voted 8:1 in favour of forced sterilization of a young Virginia girl, Carrie Buck, whose only crime had been to have an illegitimate child. Only one judge, a Roman Catholic, voted against. William Howard Taft was the Chief Justice of the court.

Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921): In 1911, he approved "AN ACT to authorize and provide for the sterilization of feeble-minded (including idiots, imbeciles and morons), epileptics, rapists, certain criminals and other defectives”. He was also an avowed racist. He passed legislation to make interracial marriage a felony in Washington D.C., and, as president of Princeton University, he discouraged blacks from applying. “The whole temper and tradition of the place are such that no Negro has ever applied for admission," he said of the university, "and it seems unlikely that the question will ever assume practical form."

Warren G. Harding (1921-1923): American president Warren G. Harding publicly praised eugenicist Lothrop Stoddard’s book, The Rising Tide of Color, at a public speech on 26 October 1922

Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929): President Calvin Coolidge stated: "America must be kept American. Biological laws show . . . that Nordics deteriorate when mixed with other races."

Herbert Hoover (1929-1933): attended 2nd International Congress of Eugenics hosted by the American Museum of Natural History in New York in the fall of 1921.

"Give dysgenic groups [people with 'bad genes'] in our population their choice of segregation or [compulsory] sterilization.“  - Margaret Sanger, April 1932 Birth Control Review.

FDR (1933-1945): “Subjects to do with breeding and race seem, indeed, to have held a certain fascination for the president…. Roosevelt felt it in order to talk, jokingly, of dealing with Puerto Rico’s excessive birth rate by employing, in his own words, ‘the methods which Hitler used effectively’ [to make them] sterile.” His Vice President, Henry Agard Wallace, said, “if we could practice eugenics on people. We could turn out a beautiful golden race.” In order to keep low-life enlisted men from breeding, FDR introduced condoms to the military as Assistant Secretary of the Navy.

Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 sent 120,000 Japanese Americans to internment camps (including thousands of Germans and Italians). The act itself affected many families strictly due to their ancestry, even if they were American citizens. Roosevelt also refused to invite 1936 Olympic hero Jesse Owens, an African American, to the White House after he returned from Germany. Owens famously said, “Hitler didn’t snub me—it was our president who snubbed me. He didn't even send me a telegram." FDR also didn't support anti-lynching laws until after WWII.

Margaret Sanger founded the American Eugenics Society to advance the cause of eugenics in the United States. She advocated for contraceptives and sterilization. Like all eugenicists, she saw these as central to advancing eugenics. Due to the negative connotations surrounding eugenics following the discovery of the Nazi death camps, the American Eugenics Society was renamed to "Planned Parenthood". Despite the renaming, the organization never disavowed its original goals.

Harry Truman (1945-1953): co-chair of Planned Parenthood’s honorary sponsors council, 1966. Truman once called Adam Clayton Powell that "damned n****r preacher," and wrote in a private letter that, “I think one man is just as good as another so long as he’s not a n****r or a Chinaman.” 

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-1961): was a co-chair with Truman. At a White House dinner in 1953, President Eisenhower had told Chief Justice Earl Warren he could understand why White southerners wanted to make sure “their sweet little girls [are not] required to sit in school alongside some big black buck.” In 1958, he advocated a "good two-cent contraceptive" that anyone can afford to the UN.

John F. Kennedy (1961-1963): John F. Kennedy endorsed foreign aid for population control in April 1963 in reply to a reporter's question planted by Planned Parenthood. Before John F. Kennedy's 1960 election to the presidency, a Senate colleague had asked Kennedy how he, as a Catholic, viewed the issue of making "family planning information" available at home and abroad. Kennedy responded, "It's bound to come; it's just a question of time. The Church will come around. I intend to be as brave as I dare." As President, Kennedy cautiously gave encouragement to those who wanted to involve both the U.S. government and the United Nations in population control. He did not, however, share with the public his views on abortion. According to journalist Benjamin Bradlee, a friend of Kennedy's, in 1963 JFK privately "said he was all for people solving their problems by abortion (and specifically told me I could not use that for publication in Newsweek)..." 

LBJ (1963-1969): received Planned Parenthood’s first Margaret Sanger award, 1966, along with MLK.  LBJ's "war on poverty" included using food "as leverage" for fertility control. He called the Civil Rights Act the "n****r bill." 

John D. Rockefeller III appointed Frederick Osborn, a celebrated eugenicist, author of “Preface to Eugenics” (New York, 1940) and one of the founding members of the American Eugenics Society (AES) as the first president of the Population Council. Osborn served as President of the Population Council until 1959. However, in 1968 Osborn wrote, “Eugenic goals are most likely to be achieved under another name than eugenics.” Moreover in 1972, right after Roe v. Wade was reargued on October 11th, the American Eugenics Society was reorganized and renamed to “The Society for the Study of Social Biology” and now known as “The Society for Biodemography and Social Biology.”

“The name was changed because it became evident that changes of a eugenic nature would be made for reasons other than eugenics, and that tying a eugenic label on them would more often hinder than help their adoption. Birth control and abortion are turning out to be great eugenic advances of our time.”

Richard Nixon (1969-1974): “It is my view that no American woman should be denied access to family planning assistance because of her economic condition. I believe, therefore that we should establish as a national goal the provision of adequate family planning services within the next five years to all those who want them but cannot afford them. This we have the capacity to do.“ He initiated the Commission on Population Growth which called for legal abortion by 1972 in order to prevent the birth of “little black b*st*rds”.  "I have the greatest affection for them [Negroes] but I know they're not going to make it for 500 years," he said. "They aren't. You know it, too. The Mexicans are a different cup of tea. They have a heritage. At the present time they steal, they're dishonest, but they do have some concept of family life. They don't live like a bunch of dogs, which the Negroes do live like."  "There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white... Or a rape.""

Gerald Ford (1974-1977): Adopted NSSM 200 in 1974 as official US policy. This classified document gives "paramount importance" to population control measures and the promotion of contraception among populous countries. The US deemed rapid population growth inimical to the socio-political and economic growth of these countries and to the national interests of the United States, since the "U.S. economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad", and these countries can produce destabilizing opposition forces against the United States.  13 countries of "special U.S. political and strategic interest" were primary targets: India, Brazil, Egypt, Nigeria, Indonesia, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Mexico, Thailand, Turkey, Ethiopia and Colombia 

Jimmy Carter (1977-1981): January 14, 1981, his farewell address re-emphasized the overriding importance his administration had attached to the problem of “overpopulation.”

1st non-eugenics President - Ronald Reagan (1981-1989): Initially requested increased “Population Planning programs” by 33% over Carter’s 1981 budget. Reagan administration will then ask the budget to be zeroed out the following year, on the ground that population growth was a "natural phenomenon" that could stimulate economic growth.

George HW Bush (1989-1993): President George H.W. Bush earned the nickname “Rubbers” as a congressman for his passion for increasing access to contraception. Created the National Center for Population and Family Planning in the Department of Health Education and Welfare also know as HEW. Worked with Planned Parenthood, Houston, 1969. However, three presidential administrations, that of Ronald Reagan, George H. Bush and George W. Bush withhold funding from the UNFPA, after the organization is accused of promoting coerced abortions and sterilizations.

Bill Clinton (1993-2001): The Clinton administration nearly doubled U.S. spending on world population control programs (from about $300 million in 1992 to $585 million in 1995) and, in keeping with the United Nations action plan, sought to double population control spending again in the next five years (up to $1.2 billion for fiscal year 2000).

2nd non-eugenics President - George Bush (2001-2009): withholds funding from the UNFPA, after the organization is accused of promoting coerced abortions and sterilizations

Barack Obama (2009-2016): Obama established the President's Global Development Council, run by USAID. It advises on all aspects of U.S. global development policy. Nine appointees were announced in December 2012. The majority of them are associated with organizations that promote reproductive rights and population control policy.

His science advisor, John Holdren, co-wrote  Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment; which discussed solutions to overpopulation: enforced population controls, including compulsory abortion, adding sterilants to drinking water or staple foods, forced sterilization for women after they gave birth to a designated number of children, and "the use of milder methods of influencing family size preferences" such as access to birth control and abortion.

Donald Trump (2016-2020), "“You have to be born lucky,” President Donald Trump told Oprah Winfrey in 1988, “in the sense that you have to have the right genes.” His biographer Michael D’Antonio explained to Frontline that Trump and his family subscribe “to a racehorse theory of human development. They believe that there are superior people and that if you put together the genes of a superior woman and a superior man, you get a superior offspring.”

So does Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon... Sources told The New York Times this November that despite his devout Catholicism, Bannon “occasionally talked about the genetic superiority of some people and once mused about the desirability of limiting the vote to property owners.”

Thoughts on Charlottesville

The Nazis learned eugenics from American and England.

The Nuremberg laws were modeled on US law.

Every president from Teddy Roosevelt forward (with the sole exceptions of Reagan and GW Bush) advocated for eugenics policies of some sort.

The Nazi eugenic policy won in WW II because it wasn't their policy.
It was ours.

So, when people say the marchers in Charlottesville don't represent America, they are damned liars. If you support and/or use contraception or abortion, which are essentially eugenic tools, then you are a eugenicist. You differ only in degree from the Charlottesville marchers not in kind.

And, in that sense, Charlottesville is a fight between the national socialists and the international socialists, it is a family fight between close relatives, brothers under the skin, ideological twins who differ only in details. Both sides want eugenics, both sides want the other side physically wiped out.

That's America.

US War Heroes Speak

On the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings

The priest who blessed the pilots expresses his remorse.

A St. Francis Quote

"Preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words."

The argument is that St. Francis never said this. Maybe he didn't say it precisely this way, but the sentiment is surely Franciscan.

Here's what St. Francis or the Franciscan Order has said in this regard:

“It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.” 

“...As for me, I desire this privilege from the Lord, that never may I have any privilege from man, except to do reverence to all, and to convert the world by obedience to the Holy Rule rather by example than by word.” 

...love one another, as the Lord says: "This is My commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you." And let them show their love by the works they do for each other, according as the Apostle says: "let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth."  

No brother should preach contrary to the form and regulations of the holy Church nor unless he has been permitted by his minister … All the Friars … should preach by their deeds.  ~Francis of Assisi, Rule of 1221, Rule 11

..."Yes, the true servant unceasingly rebukes the wicked, but he does it most of all by his conduct, but the truth that shines in his words, by the light of his example, by all the radiance of his life." (1989) The Road to Assisi, Sabatier, edited by Sweeney, pg 143.

Why I Am Not A Libertarian

As Libertarians, we seek a world of liberty; a world in which all individuals are sovereign over their own lives and no one is forced to sacrifice his or her values for the benefit of others.

We believe that respect for individual rights is the essential precondition for a free and prosperous world, that force and fraud must be banished from human relationships, and that only through freedom can peace and prosperity be realized.

Consequently, we defend each person’s right to engage in any activity that is peaceful and honest, and welcome the diversity that freedom brings. The world we seek to build is one where individuals are free to follow their own dreams in their own ways, without interference from government or any authoritarian power.

The above quote demonstrates why libertarianism can never be something a Christian can embrace. Libertarianism ignores reality. It pretends that all men are equally capable. It is literally insane. Even a cursory glance at the world demonstrates that all men are not created equal in physical ability. Some are smarter, stronger, faster, whatever, than others are. In fact, this is so obvious that every culture in history has reacted to this fact by instituting slavery: enslaving the weaker, stupider, slower, etc. members of the culture.

Christianity was weird because it considered all men equal. It did not assert physical equality - that's stupid. It asserted instead, spiritual equality. We are all equal before God because we are each made in God's image and likeness. We all have an equal shot at salvation. Because we are in God's image, we all have equal rights before God. But even Christianity never asserted that all men are physically equal because, again, that assertion is obviously stupid. Christianity is about embracing reality, it is not about rejecting reality.

The recognition that all men are NOT created equal in ability is what justifies the state. We may all be created equal in rights, but that is pretty much where our equality ends. Draw the line wherever you want, but it must be drawn. Roughly half the population has an IQ below 100 and/or has physical disabilities serious enough to require assistance (e.g., extreme youth, age, disease, etc.). The needs of the physically weak and intellectually stupid are real needs. They really need food, housing, health care, etc.

Now, it is absolutely the case that the upper half (or third or quarter or quintile) in any population has no real, substantial use for government. As one's capabilities increase, one's need for government is correspondingly reduced. But, similarly, as one's capabilities decrease, one's need for a "nanny state" increases. A five-year old cannot be left to his own devices. S/he must frequently be forced to eat vegetables, brush teeth and go to bed. So, (roughly) half the population needs a big government, while the other half needs a small government. These two needs cannot be reconciled.

The most capable half are often tempted to ignore the lower half. Should we even have to listen to the weak and stupid? Well, if we are willing to ask a five-year old what he likes (and what parent doesn't give a child the opportunity to at least make his wishes known), then we should be willing to entertain the pleas of the less capable. That is, the lower half has a right to participate in democracy. And, since all men have equal rights, the lower half even have a right to overrule the upper half. If the upper half are not taking into account the needs of the lower half, the lower half have an absolute right to overrule their "betters" in order to make sure their own needs are taken into account.

So, yes, we have to listen to the lower half and consider what they say. Sure, as with the five-year old, we may not follow their suggestions, but we have to at least listen to them occasionally. And, whether we listen to them or not, we really do have to take care of them.

But there's the snag. The moment we recognize that we have to take care of them, even if only a bit, we have ceased to be libertarians.

Average IQ scores reported in Lynn 2006 from studies done in Europe, North America and East Asia. Each point represents the average IQ score from a single study.  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Europe_EAsia_averageIQ_scattergraph.png

The Devil Went Down To GOSH

Many American Catholics are complaining that the overweening authoritarian English government, with its murderous euthanasia and anti-life attitude, has murdered Charlie Gard. They say that it should be the parents' right to pursue the treatment they think best, no matter how slim the likelihood of success. In short, many American Catholics are lying to themselves in order to justify their simplistic take on a complicated situation.

Let us assume Charlie Gard had an eminently treatable disease that could be solved with a simple blood transfusion. With the transfusion, Charlie lives. Without it, he dies.

And what if Charlie's parents didn't want treatment? They were Jehovah's Witnesses who refuse blood transfusions because they think it is Biblical to do so.  Should the parents have the right to "treat" their child with prayer instead of transfusions? Should the government step aside and let the child die because Charlie's parents are nuts?

What if Charlie's parents were medievalists who decided that their child should be treated by purging him - inducing vomiting, diarrhea, and leaching blood from his body - because the medieval ways were best. Are you up for defending that? Parents should have the final say, right?  Government should propose, but never dispose?

Because if your argument is that parents should have the final say in the treatment of a child, then any parent who tries exorcism to treat epilepsy cannot be gainsaid. Any parent who tries to drive out the demon of diabetes with beatings is someone American Catholics must defend. Anyone who trepanned their child's skull in order to heal his schizophrenia is simply pursuing the treatment they think best, as is their right.

If you are not able to defend THOSE parents, if you think those treatments are indefensible, then you admit the government should sometimes take over because the parents - however well-intentioned they may be - are insane.

And, once you admit that parents can sometimes be crazy, you admit that what constitutes "a slim hope" or "a chance of a better life" is not necessarily as clear-cut as you would like.

Doctors had shared the parents’ hopes when Hirano said he had new evidence that Charlie might benefit from NBT, but had learned with “surprise and disappointment” last week that he had neither looked at the child’s brain scans nor read the medical notes, or even other expert opinions or the judgement of the court.

The hospital was also shocked to learn from Hirano that he “retains a financial interest in some of the NBT compounds he proposed prescribing for Charlie,” something that in the U.S. would barely raise an eyebrow, but in the UK is seen as a serious conflict of interest.

Isn't this just a little off-putting? What kind of doctor issues a medical opinion before he has studied anything concerning the patient he claims he wants to treat? Everyone is always concerned about Big Pharma - what about Hirano's financial ties?

Keep in mind that this is an extremely rare condition. If the doctor had a possible treatment, he would have a hard time rustling up subjects. There isn't an animal equivalent, so he can't even run tests on mice, rabbits, apes. He needs human subjects with the condition, and there are hardly any at all.

So, along comes another instance of this very rare disease, you finally have someone you can test and write grant proposals over and... wouldn't you be awfully, awfully tempted to make claims about the efficacy of your treatment just so you can test it out? This disease is so rare it takes months just to find a single subject, and here is a subject, and... and... it sure would be convenient if we could just have him to test for six months.

No one seems to have entertained the possibility that the US doctor was a parasite looking for test subjects, and willing to exploit grieving parents facing a hopeless situation so that he could add a couple data points to his graphs. What if that's all this American doctor really ever was - just the front man for another medical exploitation, of the kind we are all too familiar with?

"The kid's going to die anyway... we might as well test the treatment out on him...." And when parents ask, "Will it hurt?", well, there's only one way the front man is going to answer that question, isn't there? "Will it help him?" Again, there's only one way to answer. He needs data points. He NEEDS data points. Every point helps, this disease is so rare. So...

But, once he has to physically stand in front of his medical colleagues, stand face-to-face with other professionals, how long can the charade continue? Once he gets a chance to physically examine the patient, go through the charts, go through the scans page by dreary page, and then he has to look the treating doctors in the eye... how long could your nerve hold through that?

"Oh, we .... we waited too long. Maybe, if I had gotten here sooner..." He gathers his Superman cape around him, along with the shreds of his dignity, and flies back to America. At least some good comes of it. His name is now well-known to the public. He'll get more cases, more data points. He may have lost the Charlie point, but... he got the publicity, and that's all that really matters.

Meanwhile, the parents have had hopes artificially raised and thoroughly crushed. Their pain is magnified, their anger stoked, and millions pile on, joining their pet causes to Charlie's corpse. Socialized Medicine, Big Government (tm), Medical Exploitation, Modern God Complex....

All the parents wanted was something that never existed. Charlie was born dying. The parents were sold a bill of goods, a pig in a poke, not just by that doctor, but by every person who threw a dollar into their kitty and told them "Charlie will certainly not die! If Charlie simply eats of that pill, his eyes will open, and he will have life."

Charlie Gard's situation is not about parental rights or big government or socialized medicine or anything else that has been hitched to his wagon. Charlie's situation is about Charlie. It was never anything else.