Nailing Christ to the Cross

It wasn’t a coincidence.

When Martin Luther decided to nail his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of Wittenburg Castle Church, he chose Halloween to do it. This Augustinian monk held fiercely to many grievous doctrinal errors, but he did understand one thing: the liturgical year of the Catholic Church.

The liturgical year is meant to do two things at once: through it, we cast our eyes back towards Christ’s life on earth and through it we simultaneously cast our eyes forward through the long history of mankind, a history which will be crowned in the Parousia, the Second Coming of Christ. Luther understood this. That’s why he really had no choice. His attack on indulgences had to take place on All Hallow’s Eve. We moderns don’t realize the significance of the day because our seasons are confused.

For instance, we all know that America celebrates New Year’s Day on the wrong day. The new year doesn’t begin January 1st, it begins on the first Sunday of Advent. Advent, of course, is the season during which we meditate on man’s sinfulness and prepare for Christmas. At least, we used to.

Up until World War II, every Christian treated Advent as a time of preparation and repentance. Stockings, ornaments, even Christmas trees, were not erected in any house until Christmas Eve. During Advent, everyone meditated on the world’s wickedness prior to God come in the flesh (past), and prepared themselves for the Last Day, when God comes as Judge (future). For centuries, Christmas was at once both a reminder of the Incarnation, the First Coming, and a reminder of Dooms-Day, Judgement Day, the Second Coming.

That’s why Christmas gifts were exchanged only during Christmas season (which doesn’t start until Christmas Eve). The exchange of gifts not only recalled the gifts of the magi to the Christ child (past), they also reminded us of the wonderful exchange of Divine Persons within the Trinity, the exchange we enter into in Heaven after Judgement Day (future).

World War II changed all that. Because it took six weeks to transport anything by ship over the ocean, Americans were told to buy their Christmas gifts for their sons overseas by Thanksgiving, or their sons would not receive those gifts during Christmas season. American businesses liked the extra income generated by the much longer and earlier selling season – six weeks beats twelve days hands down.

Sixty years of advertising broke two millenia of Christian practice. Halloween has now become the closest thing we have to an Advent season. Advent is now a four-week long Christmas season, and Christmas season is now Purgatory. The season during which we are supposed to celebrate our life in heaven with the Christ child is now the time we pay all the bills.

In Luther’s time, everything was still in its proper order: Death, Purgatory, Judgement Day. Death and Purgatory were recalled first through the commemoration of All Saints’ Day, emphasizing those who died and went straight to heaven, and all Souls’ Day, emphasizing those who died and still had more purification ahead of them.

Purgatory, of course, is not someplace any of us are supposed to end up. God calls each of us to purify our lives of every sin while we are still alive here on earth. Indeed, we are called not only to purify our lives of every sin, but to purify the universe of every consequence of every sin we may have committed. And make no mistake about it: every sin carries a consequence, not just a spiritual consequence, but a material consequence.

When you or I sin, we remove grace from our lives. Grace is power. It is the ability to live life in peace and joy. When we remove this power, we are unable to live life peacefully or with joy. So, no matter how secret my sin may be, because it removes from me the power to be peaceful and joyful, I will be rendered unhappy by my sin. Because I lack the grace of joy, I will inevitably lash out at you, with unhappy word or fist, as a direct consequence of my oh-so-secret sin. Because I am not at peace, each of you who meet me are tempted to relinquish your peace. If any of you do, you will pass the pain along to the people you meet. The effects of my secret, solitary, stone-hearted sin ripple inexorably out into the world, tearing apart more and more lives.

There is good news. When I go to confession, my sins are forgiven and the grace, the power, to be joyful and at peace is restored to me. All I have to do is live it.

There is bad news. Even though my ability to live peacefully is restored, the effects of my earlier sins are still rippling through the world. Others are still being tormented by the consequences of my sin.

There is astonishing news. God expects me to purify the world of these rippling consequences. He gives me the grace to do it through the works of indulgences.

An indulgence is the flood of grace brought into the world through my obedience to Christ and His Bride. It is a somewhat arbitrary obedience that answers for my earlier arbitrary disobedience. God does not owe me this grace, He gives it to me freely, for He knows I cannot clean up the mess I made unless I receive this assistance. The flood of grace from my repeated obediences slows or removes the negative consequences of my past disobediences.

Paul tells us that we are God’s co-workers (1 Cor 3:9). God’s work is the total eradication of sin and all its consequences. Thus, our work is likewise the total eradication of sin and all its consequences. He expects each of us to do our part.

We each learn obedience as Christ did, through suffering (Heb 5:8). Every living man must learn obedience, must clean up his own mess. I can only win the flood of grace, the indulgence, if I am first in a state of grace: my sins must first be forgiven in confession. I can win the flood of grace only for myself, or for those who can no longer obey in the flesh because they no longer have their flesh with them. That is, I can assist those who cannot easily help themselves – the dead.

Some people die in a state of grace, but have not finished cleaning up their mess. This poses a problem. There is only one way to cleanse the world: join in Christ’s suffering. But Christ suffered in His own body. When I am dead, I do not have a body until the Last Day. Because of this crippling lack, my spiritual suffering must do double-duty, for the part of me which is supposed to do the work of suffering, that is, my flesh, is not present to help out. This double-duty suffering is Purgatory.

When I, as a living man, offer indulgences for the dead, I acknowledge that 1 Corinthians 12 is correct: when one suffers, all share the pain. The pain of those in Purgatory is my pain, for the consequences of their sins still affects me – that’s part of the reason they are in Purgatory. But, when my assistance has helped a soul complete the necessary purification, 1 Corinthians 12 likewise applies: when one is honored, all share the glory.

In Luther’s time, All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day were the pre-eminent days for Catholics to remember and apply 1 Corinthians 12. On those days, Catholics flocked to perform indulgences, for they wanted to purify the world of the consequences of sin, they wanted to purify themselves, they wanted to help those who had died complete their purifications.

The weeks between All Hallow’s Eve and the First Sunday of Advent corresponded to the end of the ages. In a few short weeks, the new age would be upon them! In this new age, Christmas-Parousia would be celebrated. Everyone had to prepare, all had to sweep their house clean of leaven, that is, the consequences of sin, and ready themselves for the heavenly banquet, where they would feast on the pure flesh of God.

Sadly, Luther’s badly-formed theology had no place for meaningful human suffering or men as divine co-workers. He rejected both indulgences and purgatory. So, he attacked indulgences at the crucial moment – the moment during the year when men began to prepare themselves to consciously live as divine co-workers.

His attack on Catholic theology may have begun with indulgences, but it ended by destroying the common understanding that God empowers man to sanctify everything, even time itself. Today, what Luther began on Halloween has reached full crescendo. He did attack it at the crucial moment, for the word “crucial” comes from the Latin “crux”, which means Cross. By nailing his attack on indulgences on that door, he crucified the idea that men should share Christ’s sufferings.

Now, especially in America, Christ suffers alone.

Do you want to change that?

Then take back the seasons.

Are YOU my Mother?


Have you heard the news from out west? It seems that Utah had, in 1989, effectively outlawed surrogate motherhood, the practice of conceiving a child outside the womb and implanting him into a genetically unrelated woman. You see, in Utah, the woman who gives birth is listed as the mother, and her husband as the father, regardless of the child’s genetic make-up. In order to become legal parents, Utah residents who used a surrogate had to wait for the surrogate to give up parental rights, and then go through the adoption process. Money exchanges were forbidden. That is mostly gone now – Bruce Jenkins, the US District Court Judge, overturned part of the law so genetic parents can be listed as the legal parents on the birth certificate.

For the whole of human history, the law has always recognized the mother who gives birth and her husband as the rightful parents, even if the husband was known not to have fathered the child. But, in our enlightened age, the wisdom of countless generations must defer to the wisdom of the last fifteen minutes.

“[The genetic parents’] fundamental liberty interests in their parental relationship with their children arises from the fact of the biological parent-child relationship, independent of any grant of right, privilege or designation of status by the state," Jenkins wrote. "Even as it is called upon to consider new questions thrust upon it by the advent of new technology, the legislature, no less than the court, must keep the fundamental liberty interests of the people clearly in mind."

Poor Judge Jenkins. He has no idea how bad this will get.

We have allowed technology to divorce sex from procreation. As both contraception users and abortion supporters like to point out, the decision to have sex is not a decision to have a child.

Alright. Let’s take see how they deal with their brave new world. Let's consider a few of the scenarios our new reproductive freedoms provide us.

We’ll consider an easy scenario first. Imagine identical twin brothers, Joseph and Luke. Luke is an in vitro fertilization specialist. Joseph is a ditch-digger. Joseph gets married. He and his wife, Lucy, decide to have a child. Joseph asks Luke, the doctor, to artificially impregnate Lucy. Dr. Luke readily agrees. Joseph gives Dr. Luke, his sperm, Dr. Luke extracts an egg from Joseph’s wife, fertilizes it with sperm, and implants the child into her womb.

Now, here’s the kicker: who is the father of the child? Is it Joseph, the laborer? Why on earth would he be the father?

After all, Dr. Luke is Joseph’s identical twin. That is, Luke used sperm genetically identical to his own to conceive a child and impregnate Lucy, Joseph’s wife. Sure, he isn’t having sex with Lucy, but sex has nothing to do with procreation, remember? Dr. Luke did everything a father does: he conceived a child with sperm identical to his own (indeed, he could have substituted his own sperm: who would know?) and impregnated Lucy.

Wouldn’t that make Dr. Luke responsible for child support? If not, then why is Joseph responsible for child support? Perhaps Joseph changes his mind after he provides the sperm, but Lucy decides to go ahead and have the child anyway. That means he didn’t even choose to have the child. If a woman can change her mind and have an abortion, why can’t a man change his mind and avoid child support, especially when he isn’t the one impregnating his wife? Isn’t Joseph’s financial considerations part of a “fundamental liberty interest” a la Judge Jenkins?

It may seem a puzzler, but today’s sophisticates will undoubtedly figure out a perfectly just and equitable solution one day. But let us cease from considering such childish trifles as this case and move on to something challenging.

Let’s go back to Joseph and his wife, Lucy. They want to have a child, but Joseph is impotent and Lucy is entering menopause. What to do? Well Lucy gets her friend Henny-Penny to donate an egg and they contract for an anonymous sperm donation in order to get the egg fertilized. Because of the menopause problem, Lucy talks another friend, Broody Hen, into being a surrogate. Broody Hen’s husband, Chuck, is fine with it, because he managed to get Joe to cough up $2500 plus medical expenses for the service. So, now we have two genetic parents, the egg donor and the sperm donor, two surrogate parents, and the two parents who finance the whole operation.

But wait. There’s more. If life begins at conception, the lab tech who fertilized the egg can be considered a parent, as can the doctor who performed the implantation procedure. This child has eight parents.

That’s not too bad. It could be worse. What if Joe were cloning his best friend, Jake, who died recently? The number of genetic parents would increase, because we would now take Henny-Penny’s egg, remove its nucleus and replace it with a nucleus from Jake. Cloning allows us to dispense with the anonymous sperm donor, but we must now consider Jake’s parents, retired and living down in Florida, to be genetic parents of the baby being carried by Broody Hen for Lucy and Joe. After all, they were Jake’s parents the first time, weren’t they?

So, for those who prefer to clone, the child has four genetic parents: the egg cell donor, the nucleus donor and the genetic parents of the nucleus donor. He also has four additional non-genetic parents: the gestational mother, her husband, and the rearing parents, that is, the man and woman (or man and man or woman and woman) who commissioned the child’s creation.

And that doesn’t count the lab techs and doctors who actually create the child in the first place. There’s at least ten parents here.

No question of it: family reunions will have to be potluck.

As the above examples demonstrate, our intellectual sophisticates have fooled themselves into thinking we can divorce sex from procreation. Ironically, the very culture that created the fifty percent divorce rate has conveniently “forgotten” how messy the consequences of divorce are.

Poor Judge Jenkins. It’s a pity he didn’t remember his Shakespeare:

Oh, what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive.

The Great Plan

Did Margaret Sanger oppose abortion or support it? The question isn't easy to answer. We can find public expressions of distaste for abortion in many of her writings, but her phrasing in other areas of her work do not carry the same attitude. There is good reason to believe that she did not publicly advocate abortion for the simple reason that she was having a difficult enough time advocating birth control to a recalcitrant public.

Feminists like Victoria Woodhull, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sarah Norton, and Mattie Brinkerhoffn had all actively opposed abortion virtually within her lifetime (1860s-1870s). The American Medical Society had spent the forty years between 1840 and 1880 getting state legislatures to outlaw abortion. Consequently, American society was much more well-informed and adamantly opposed to the practice at the turn of the century than it would be in the 1960's, when feminists ignorant of their own history foolishly took up the cause before a public who had likewise forgotten why the procedure was made illegal.

Margaret Sanger had two primary goals in life: replace marriage with the public acceptance of sexually libertine adults like herself, and create a race of thoroughbreds through the use of eugenics. Sadly for her, she was up against a much more thoroughly informed society than Gloria Steinem and Faye Wattleton have to contend with. She played the hand she was dealt.

Clearly, she believed the use of contraceptives was the key to accomplishing both of her goals. Unfortunately, the 1873 Comstock laws, passed by a Protestant Congress, forbad the distribution of contraceptives. Medical and public opinion was against both contraceptives and abortion. She had to show that contraceptives should be legalized. The plan she hit upon is the one still used by Planned Parenthood today. She would play one off against the other.

In her public writings, she showed a nearly uniform distaste for abortion ("See? I'm mainstream like you are"). Then she pointed to contraception as the means to help women avoid abortion ("You should be enlightened and compassionate, like me."). That is, she leveraged the public's own abhorrence of abortion to position contraception as an acceptable middle way. Planned Parenthood continues to play this card in exactly this way today. "Without contraception, abortions will increase!" they cry cynically, knowing full well that the increased use of contraception inevitably increases abortion rates. But did she really dislike abortion?

Consider these slips of the pen:

"We know that abortion, when performed by skilled hands, under the right conditions brings almost no danger to the life of the patient ..." --Margaret Sanger. "Why Not Birth Control Clinics in America?" Birth Control Review, Volume III, Number 5 (May 1919), page 10.

"Infanticide did not go out of fashion with the advance from savagery to barbarism and civilization. Rather, it became, as in Greece and Rome, a recognized custom with advocates among leaders of thought and action. So did abortion, which some authorities regard as a development springing from infanticide and tending to supersede it as a means of getting rid of undesired children.

As progress is made toward civilization, infanticide, then, actually increased. This tendency was noted by Westermarck, who also calls attention to the conclusions of Fison and Howitt (in Kamilaroi and Kurnai). 'Mr Fison who has lived for a long time among uncivilized races,' says Westermarck, 'thinks it will be found that infanticide is far less common among the lower savages than among the more advanced tribes.' Following this same tendency into civilized countries, we find infanticide either advocated by philosophers and authorized by law, as in Greece and Rome, or widely practiced in spite of the law, civil and ecclesiastical." - Margaret Sanger, Women and the New Race, Chapter Two.

Chapter Seven of the same book begins "Are overburdened mothers justified in their appeals for contraceptives or abortions?" Unsurprisingly, she goes on to answer, "yes", noting that women have a right to abortion.

We know that Sanger saw birth control as the "pivot of civilization". In Women and the New Race, she describes increased rates of abortion and infanticide as marks of civilized society. Indeed, she spends long passages in the book describing how abortion is extremely common in numerous civilizations. That is, she builds a case for the legalization of abortion on one hand (all civilized countries do it), while decrying it as barbaric on the other.

She will do the same for abortion's medical consequences: in some writings, she claims it is very dangerous. At the same time, she claims the procedure is very common, asserting that between one and two million abortions are performed each year. Now, if abortion is so dangerous, how on earth is it possible that one to two million women a year are having abortions in a country whose population of fertile women is perhaps 20 million? The entire population of fertile women would be dead within a lifetime, if it were true.

She makes these logically contradictory claims for exactly the same reason she publicly opposes abortion. By emphasizing the dangers of abortion and artificially inflating the numbers, she creates a pressing need for a solution, and surprise! She just happens to have the solution at hand: contraception. Today, we would call it "stacking the deck". Once contraception is legalized, the game can be played again. She can even use the same argument. She just emphasizes the word "illegal" this time and point outs that legal abortions would be much safer.

This is all hypothesis, of course. It is possible Margaret Sanger was ambivalent about abortion. It is more likely that she was playing a cynical game in order to get the first part of her agenda in place. We like to think Hitler was an aberration, but he was not. He was a product of the scientific thinking of his age. He did not do anything that hundreds of intellectuals throughout Europe and America had not already suggested. He simply employed the practices recommended by the science of eugenics. Scientists today claim Nazis were unscientific. They weren't - not by the standards of the day. They were perfectly good biologists by the standards of the first twenty years of the 1900s. Hitler shows us the face of science when the guiding force of religion is actively purged away.

All eugenicists are ruthless, and Sanger was a eugenicist. World War II, the general abhorrence of Nazi eugenics policies and the Nuremburg trial declaration that abortion was a crime against humanity threw her timetable off. She spent the forties re-tooling her message for the post-WWII world. It was only after her death that the organization she founded was able to completely put in place the program she envisioned from the beginning: baptizing the genetically unfit into the unholy trinity of sterilization, contraception and abortion.

Democracy at work

Some things just don’t add up. For years, the media has told us that voter turnout is too low, that citizens need to become more interested in electoral processes and legislative agendas, that we all need to vote. “Whatever it takes to bring voters to the polls, that’s what we’ll do,” has been a common theme.

In California, over one hundred citizens took this message so much to heart that they didn’t just vote, they ran for governor. So, how did the public patrons of voter participation describe this response? “One of the most bizarre episodes in recent U.S. political history” warned CNN. “A circus”, bellowed ABC. “Absurd,” cried political commentators across the nation, both liberal and conservative.

You can’t have it both ways.

In a highly individualistic society where everyone is politically active, we would expect to have dozens, if not hundreds, of candidates for every particular office. In fact, if we were really interested in raising voter turnout, we would rig election rules to encourage multiple candidates.

It would be easy to do. The American marketing machine has told us for years that we have a right to have every product exactly the way we want it. Indeed, even our babies have become products; IVF parents now shop around for specific genetic traits. So, why is the ballot box the only place our choice consists of spam or meatloaf? Americans do not shop where we cannot choose. You want people to shop? Then give them what they have been conditioned to expect: endless choice. The California experience brought the highest turnout in years.

In another sense, the recall election was actually rather close to the founders’ vision. For the founders of the country, Cincinnatus was the man to imitate. In 458 B.C., an army was preparing to besiege Rome. Frightened citizens promised to give Cincinnatus dictatorial powers if he would only rid Rome of the threat. He agreed, left his small farm, destroyed the opposing force and returned to Rome where he immediately resigned his dictatorship and got back to farming. He had been in office for all of fifteen days.

He didn’t have to resign. He could have stayed in power and had a formidable political career. He didn’t. That is the kind of selfless service the earliest Americans expected from their leaders. Indeed, that’s why Ohio named one of their towns Cincinnati – as a reminder that his example was supposed to be followed in public life.

America’s founders intended political service to be public service, not self-service. It was never supposed to be a career for anyone. People were supposed to volunteer to serve in much the same way that people gave time to their local church or soup kitchen: not because they got anything back personally, but because it was expected and somebody needed them. Like Cincinnatus, Americans who had useful skills to contribute to a problem were expected to help out by contributing the necessary skills. But they were also expected to return to their real work in a relatively timely fashion. This attitude of service explains why many of America’s early Presidents died either penniless or reasonably close to it. They were away from their real work, and their income suffered accordingly.

Can you remember the last time anyone died penniless as a result of being elected to political office and serving honorably?

Me neither.

Yet, instead of promoting the idea of regular people running for office, the “powers that be” vilify it. The government/media chatter on about diversity being the source of our strength, but they attack it when they see it. Why? Because our educational system, our media, our political system, all of it, is designed to crush real diversity and force conformity. John Gatto’s recent book, An Underground History of Education in America, shows how the field was planted. A century later, we reap the harvest.

Catholics should be concerned. We know how diversity stacks up against conformity. As G. K. Chesterton points out, hagiographies – those remarkable stories the medievals wrote about the lives of saints - had a very practical purpose. By writing them, Christians were attempting to outline a science of holiness. They compiled saint stories for somewhat the same reason the FBI now compiles criminal profiles. The hagiographers were looking for common lifestyle and cultural patterns in the lives of the saints, patterns which ordinary people could use to become holy. Their results were surprising. The only pattern they found was attachment to the sacramental life. Apart from that single thing, the lack of uniformity was stunning. They discovered that holiness is wildly unique and diverse. No two saints are precisely alike in how they achieved it or in how they lived it.

The FBI’s criminal analysis, on the other hand, has discovered quite the opposite. Crime, that is, sin, is banal, common, uniform. Simple observation of a major crime scene is often sufficient to tell us the economic, social and political culture in which the criminal moves, even detailing age, sex, race and personal habits.

So, what the media and the government point to as generators of diversity are exactly the reverse of what really does generate diversity. They point to skin color, economic condition, age, sex. In fact, as the medievals discovered, diversity is actually found in our individual responses to grace, our drive to reach the individual perfections that God enables each of us to achieve by the gift of His grace.

But, since both the media and the government reject theology, they are forced to settle for anthropology, the study of man. Ironically, precisely because they don’t have theology, they not only do not understand God, they cannot understand man, for Christ is the One who reveals man to himself.

Thus, they aren’t really competent in anthropology either. When faced with their own artificially generated diversity – the diversity of over a hundred “Joe Sixpack” candidates for office – they mocked and attacked it. And that clarifies the situation enormously.

They don’t want diversity. What they want from us is banal conformity. We are supposed to know our place, bow to their expertise, and allow them to create their idea of a perfect world for us. After all, if it’s their idea, it must be perfect.

If the California election proved anything, it proved that neither the media nor the government really want voter participation. It’s too dangerous. If real, unique individuals got involved and reached positions of power, they would brand their very uniqueness upon society. That is, they would begin to mend and re-create society’s human law, basing it on the natural law common to every man's heart. As these categories of the divine law were enacted and followed, the sacraments would be more greatly frequented. Grace would flow. Diversity would break out everywhere. And that kind of diversity just isn’t tolerated around here.

Mutual Admiration Society
Back in 1975, Arnold Schwarzenegger apparently indicated a certain admiration for Hitler, “because he came from being a little man with almost no formal education up to power. And I admire him for being such a good public speaker."

The Democrats were quick to pounce. "I don't see how anyone can admire Adolf Hitler," nearly ex-governor Gray Davis told the ABC television show Good Morning America, "Any decent American has to be offended by that phrase." Senator Dianne Feinstein declared, "If this was a man that found Adolf Hitler to be a glorified and acceptable and a desirable character …I don't want that man as my governor.”

Senator Joseph Lieberman, the Democratic presidential candidate, added, “You know, after reading in the paper this morning about the pill popping and skirt chasing and Hitler praising, it would be very tempting to point out Republicans' hypocrisy on values. But would it be right to do? Absolutely." Senator Joe would know a thing or two about hypocrisy. He claims to be an Orthodox Jew, but doesn’t mention Orthodox Judaism excommunicated him during his last presidential run for his support of homosexuality and abortion rights.

And herein lies the source of everyone’s amusement. The Democrats don’t want in a future governor what they happily accept in their physicians, or at least, in their nurses. Planned Parenthood, the darling of both Arnold and his Democratic attack dogs, was founded by ex-nurse Margaret Sanger, an outspoken supporter of Adolf Hitler. There is, of course, one major difference between Sanger and Schwarzenegger. Schwarzenegger condemned Hitler’s actions while admiring skills historians all agree Hitler displayed: he did rise from obscurity with very little formal education and he was a brilliant speaker. Sanger, on the other hand, expressly admired Hitler for what he did. He forcibly sterilized genetic inferiors.

Margaret Sanger, the keynote speaker at a 1929 KKK rally, knew what most people today don’t. Hitler’s philosophy was largely made in America. Darwin, the philosophical foundation of the eugenics movement, was English. One of his major American supporters, Charles Davenport, founded the Eugenics Records Office at Cold Spring Harbor. America was the first country to sterilize “inferior” people. California was the second state to pass a law permitting forced sterilization (1909). Even today, the government’s right to sterilize whomever they please is legally uncontested. After all, the 1927 US Supreme Court Buck vs. Bell decision which expressly gave the state that right has never been overturned.

That’s why German leaders before the court at the Nuremburg trials were mystified. The American prosecutions attacked the Nuremburg laws, laws that forbad inter-marriage between Jews and Aryans. But the Germans had simply modeled their law on the laws of the state of Virginia, which forbad marriage between blacks and whites, laws that the US Supreme Court had upheld. Indeed, one of the men eventually convicted at Nuremburg was the former Harvard Medical School faculty member who drew up New Jersey’s law legalizing sterilization of the “unfit.” The Nazis on trial pointed out that German laws were more liberal than American law: a man was considered black if he had 1/32nd part of “Negro blood” while Germans considered anyone with 1/8th Jewish blood to be Aryan. Certainly, Jews were forbidden to practice medicine in Germany by 1938, but 5000 black doctors were kept out of the American Medical Association in 1939. What, exactly, was the problem?

Margaret Sanger and her associates saw only one, "There is a great danger we will fail because the Negroes think [birth control] is a plan for extermination." In 1939, Sanger advised; "We do not want word to get out that we want to exterminate the Negro population." She recommended getting Negro religious ministers on board. W.E.B. Dubois already supported birth control for eugenics purposes, others could be convinced. The strategy paid off. Planned Parenthood even found Dr. Martin Luther King a willing recipient of the Sanger award. To this day, nearly eighty percent of Planned Parenthood clinics are located in minority neighborhoods.

Planned Parenthood supporters insist that Sanger was just a product of her time, and merely used eugenics as a means to promote her real object, birth control. She was a nice lady who abhorred racism.

While her personal views on anti-Semitism are debatable, she kept Lothrop Stoddard on the board of the Birth Control League, even after he praised Hitler in 1940 for having finally solved the “Jew problem.” One of her numerous lovers was an SS officer. True, Hitler burned her books. But he burned them because they advocated pansexualism, and he was afraid Aryans might start contracepting. He agreed with her birth control philosophy concerning the unfit. She expressly advocated forced sterilization or lifetime incarceration for people she considered of sub-standard intelligence. She expressly noted that “Negroes and Southern Europeans are mentally inferior to native born Americans." Her views never changed.

Margaret Sanger was, to quote “Tailgunner” Joe Lieberman, “pill popping and skirt chasing” for most of her life. She told her granddaughter “as for sex, three times a day is about right” and became addicted to narcotics and alcohol in her final years, dying in a drug-induced stupor.

While Hitler certainly adopted his famous one-armed salute from American football cheerleaders, Schwarzeneggar, Feinstein, Lieberman and the Democrat party have long led cheers for Margaret Sanger and the work of the organization she founded. Sanger advocated abortion, the medical procedure the Nuremburg trials would label “a crime against humanity.” The Nazis, good students of Americans like Sanger, legalized abortion in Germany for the first time, using eugenics as the rationale. Hitler just put into practice what Sanger advocated. What’s not to admire?