Remembering Collective Shame

By Uwe Siemon-Netto

This column requires a caveat:  I am not an American citizen and therefore neither a Republican nor a Democrat. But as a German residing permanently in the United States I believe that I have a duty to opine on at least one aspect of the upcoming elections – the question whether years from now Americans will have to wrestle with collective shame, just as I have had to deal with collective shame over what has happened in Germany in my childhood for my entire life.

It was West Germany’s first postwar president, Theodor Heuss, who coined the phrase, “collective shame” contrasting it with the notion of collective guilt, which he rejected. No, I cannot be expected to feel guilty for crimes the Nazis committed while I was still in elementary school. But as a bearer of a German passport I have never ceased feeling ashamed because three years before I was born German voters elected leaders planning the annihilation of millions of innocent people.

I am certain that in 1933 most Germans did not find the Nazis’ anti-Semitic rhetoric particularly attractive. What made them choose Hitler, then? It was the economy, stupid, and presumably injured national pride, and similar issues. This came to mind as I read the latest Faith in Life poll of issues Americans in general and white evangelicals in particular consider “very important” in this year’s elections.

Guess what? For both groups, the economy ranked first, while abortion was way down the list. Among Americans in general abortion took ninth and among white evangelicals seventh place, well below gas prices and health care. Now, it’s true that most evangelicals still believe that abortion should be illegal, which is where they differ from the general public and, astonishingly, from Roman Catholics even though their own church continues to fight valiantly against the ongoing mass destruction of unborn life.  Still, 54 percent of Catholics and 60 percent of young Catholics have declared themselves “pro choice,” according to the Faith in Life researchers.

What I am going to say next is going to make me many enemies, of this I am sure: Yes, there is a parallel  between what has happened in Germany in 1933 and what is happening in America now. The legalized murder of 40 million fetuses since Roe v. Wade in 1973 will one day cause collective shame of huge proportions. So what if this wasn’t a “holocaust?” This term should remain reserved for another horror in history. But a genocide has been happening in the last 35 years, even if no liberators have shocked the world with photographs they snapped of the victims as the Allies did in Germany in 1945. And it has the open support of politicians running for office next month.

If most Americans, and shockingly even a majority of Catholics, think physicians should have the “right” to suck babies’ brains out so that their skulls will collapse making it easy for these abortionists to drag their tiny bodies through the birth canal; if even most white evangelicals think that economic woes are a more important concern (78 percent) than legalized mass murder (57 percent), then surely a moral lobotomy has been performed on this society.

I agree it would be unscholarly to claim that what is happening in America and much of the Western world every day is “another holocaust.” No two historical events are exactly identical. So let’s leave the word “holocaust” where it belongs – next to Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen and Mauthausen. Still there are compelling parallels between today’s genocide and the Nazi crimes, for example:

1. Man presumes to decide which lives are worthy of living and which are not. “Lebensunwertes Leben” (life unworthy of living) was a Nazi “excuse” for killing mentally handicapped children and adults, a crime that preceded the holocaust committed against the Jews. Notice that today fetuses diagnosed with Downs Syndrome are often aborted as a matter of course in America and Europe.

2. In German-occupied territories, Jews and Gypsies were gassed for no other reason than that some people considered it inconvenient to have them around. Today, unborn children are often slaughtered because it is inconvenient for their mothers to bring their pregnancies to term.

3. Murder I is legally defined as killing another human being with malice and aforethought. The Nazis killed Jewish and Gypsies with deliberation – and maliciously. But what are we to think of babies being killed deliberately simply because they would be a nuisance if they were allowed to live? No malice here?

4.  Ordinary Germans of the Nazi era were rightly chastised for not having come to their Jewish neighbors’ rescue when they were rounded up and sent to extermination camps. Ordinary Americans and Western Europeans might find the fad to kill babies disagreeable, but as we see from the Faith in Life poll, most have more pressing concerns.

Some future day Americans and Western Europeans will be asked why they allowed their children to be slaughtered. They would even have less of an excuse than Germans of my grandparents’ and parents’ generation. In Germany, you risked your life if you dared to come to the Jews’ rescue. In today’s democracies the worst that can happen to you is being ridiculed for being “a Christian.”

As a foreigner I have no right to tell Americans whom to elect on Nov. 4. Recently, though, a friend asked me: “If you worked in an office and a colleague asked you at the voter cooler, whom he should vote for what would you tell him?”  Well, I would say: “I am not here to make up your mind for you. But personally I could never give my vote to so-called pro-choice candidates.”

This would doubtless lead to a heated postmodern dialogue. Perhaps the colleague is not a Christian; he might chastise me for mixing politics and religion. “If you as a Christian oppose abortion,” he could say, “then by all means don’t get involved in an abortion, just don’t impose your religious views on the rest of us.” How would I answer that? An evangelical might yank out his Bible and quote passages pertaining to this issue. But to a non-Christian the Bible is meaningless; I am not sure a political debate around the water cooler is a great venue to start individual evangelization.

My Lutheran approach would be different. I would argue natural law, the law God has written upon the hearts of all human beings, including non-believers. Unless they really have undergone a moral lobotomy they should be open to this story: Down in Wichita, Kansas, there is a physician by the name of George Tiller. On his website he boasts that he has already performed 60,000 abortions, mostly late-term, and week after week he is killing 100 more unborn babies.

Dr. Tiller does not think of these fetuses as clusters of cancerous cells. He knows they are human because he baptizes some of them before he incinerates them in his own crematorium. You don’t baptize non-humans. Dr. Tiller knows that. He is a practicing Lutheran. His former congregation, Holy Cross of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, excommunicated him as an unrepentant sinner. But the Lutheran Church of the Reformation, which belongs to the ELCA, communes him. Did I mention that he kills 100 human beings every week and has already done away with 60.000? Sixty thousand! In Nuremberg they hanged some fiends for murdering less than 60 -- zero point one percent of Tiller’s toll.

Perhaps this little tale will give even non-believers pause if they have not discarded their conscience, known to Christians as the law God has written upon every man’s heart. One day, of this I am certain, this will indeed result in collective shame – and God knows what other horrible consequences.

Comments

[Sean McCoy]

Thank you for this post. It puts a very good and proper perspective on the issue that we can offer to those who "don't want things to get religious"

[Charles St-Onge]

Thank you for taking the "risk" of publishing an important perspective on such a sensitive topic. If this is not why we have fought for the right to free speech, then for what other reason?

[Hubert L Dellinger Jr MD]

Very true and very important. Thanks!

[Rev. Michael B. Boyd]

Great article! Right on the money! And very sobering for all Americans.

I have been preaching this for 11 years now.........I couldn't agree
more. It is time to act and affect
change.........in spite of the real
persecution that will follow...that is a very small price to pay for the millions of innocent lives we are killing in secret. God Bless your efforts.

[Rev. H. C. Mueller III]

Dr. Siemon-Netto, thank you so much for your post. I have listened with much interest when you are on Issues ETC. Perhaps another non religious argument against abortion is the tax burden it places upon our society. Did anybody think ahead when we began killing the citizens who would provide for social security? Children are an asset, and more importantly a blessing for a country. Thank you for speaking out.

[Danny Presswood]

MY VIEW OF ABORTION

A professor in a world-acclaimed medical school once posed this medical situation -- and ethical problem -- to his students: "Here's the family history: The father has syphilis. The mother has TB. They already have had four children. The first is blind. The second had died. The third is deaf. The fourth has TB. Now the mother is pregnant again, The parents come to you for advice. They are willing to have an abortion, if you decide they should.
What do you say?"

The students gave various individual opinions, and then the professor asked them to break into small groups for "consultation." All of the groups came back to report that they would recommend abortion.

"Congratulations," the professor said, "You just took the life of Beethoven!"

About 82% of women getting abortions are unmarried, more than half are poor, and nearly 60% already have at least one child. Hispanics get abortions 2.5 times more often than whites and African-Americans get them nearly four times more often. After decades of antiabortion activism, the number of abortion clinics has fallen dramatically. To date, abortion clinics have been targeted for 686 blockades, 41 bombings, 570 bomb threats, and seven murders. As a result, the number of abortion providers dropped from a high of 2,908 in 1982 to 1,819 in 2000. Today, 87% of U.S. counties do not have a single abortion provider. Source: (Current Thoughts & Trends, Issue #42 April 2003)

76 Percent of women who chose an abortion did so because having a baby "would change their life (job, relationships, or school)". 1 percent of women who chose an abortion did so because of rape or incest. (Source: Family Planning Perspectives, 7-8/88, reported in MS., 4/89.)

A poll of couples in New England revealed that, if they were able to know these things in advance, 1 percent of them would abort a child on the basis of sex, 6 percent would abort a child likely to get Alzheimer's disease, and an incredible 11 percent would abort a child predisposed to obesity. (Source: The Utne Reader, quoted in Signs of the Times, January,
1993, p. 6.)

A human life is defined as any living entity which has human DNA. A spermatozoa, ovum, pre-embryo, embryo, fetus, and newborn are different forms of human life.

A human person is defined as a form of human life, considered to be a person whose life and health should be protected. Through biblical and scientific study, as well as personal introspection and conviction, I am convinced that human personhood begins at the moment of conception, when the male sperm and the female egg join to form a human embryo.

You know there is something seriously wrong with the moral and ethical fiber of a nation when 11 percent of women would have an abortion if they knew in advance that their child was predisposed to obesity! America will indeed suffer from generations of collective shame over the millions of babies murdered by the practice of abortion. And the illustration of Beethoven is so appropriate! A woman has no way of knowing if her unborn child will be another musical prodigy like Beethoven or Pavarotti, a genius like Albert Einstein, a brilliant scientist and mathematician like Isaac Newton, a statesman like Benjamin Franklin, a great evangelist like Billy Graham, a great athlete, or even a phenomenon like – dare I say – an HONEST politician!

I'm not without empathy. I understand there are circumstances that make it nigh unto impossible for a young woman to keep and raise a child (although abstinence is a sure fire way of preventing the pregnancy in the first place), but a woman who finds herself with an unwanted pregnancy can still bring some good out of a seemingly bad situation because there are hundreds of thousands of couples unable to have children who are yearning for an infant to raise as their own. And there are pregnancy care centers in practically every major city in the US.

So as you enter the polling booth next month, please remember this; if your mother had chosen abortion, for whatever reason, you would not be here to vote at all! Exercise your right and responsibility to vote, and vote in favor of the future voters of this nation who cannot vote for themselves – the unborn.

Rev. Danny Presswood
Chaplain (MAJ, USA RET)
Founder, W.O.W! Ministries (Winning Our World for Jesus)

[BillL]

Thank you for offering a wonderful comparison that many should take to heart. How will our grandchildren and their children view what we have allowed? It is estimated that the world has lost 30 million blacks alone since Roe vs Wade. That would be considered genocide if that happened anywhere except in abortion clinics!

[Mark Locher]

God bless you for this post. It is of course a very eerie reminder for all of us.

[Carol Geisler]

What causes differences in laws concerning unborn children? Scott Peterson, for example, was convicted of two murders -- his wife and his unborn child. Yet a woman who has an abortion, killing her unborn child, is not convicted of murder. Why does the law consider one to be murder but not the other?

[David Moye]

Fantastic article. Thank you. To be blunt, I am scared to death of the upcoming election. I have spoken with countless people that do not care about abortion and are Obama supporters and I am going nuts. I am starting to feel that the values of currently living Americans are becoming so different from mine that I do not fit into the mainstream of my own country. I am Pro-Life. I refuse to call a person that does abortion a "doctor". They clearly are not. I am doing everything I can think of to get the message out but think prayer is going to be what wins this election. I pray that God convicts the hearts of voters to put abortion at the top of the list and vote for McCain. I would rather enter a depression, lose my job, have my family fight to live instead of allowing one more innocent baby to die. There has got to be something else we the people can do.

[Rebecca]

As Christians we know that God's plans for our lives are not always our plans. God gave us a soul and allowed us free will, even when the collective and individual decisions we make have disasterous consequences. While we observe and lament the results of those decisions, how much must God be angry at his creation?

A problem I have always had with abortion is that you must be a woman (a specific group of citizens), and pregnant (a more restrictive group within a group) in order to exercise this "right." The exercise and pursuit of being able to freely speak, practice religion, associate, own a gun, prevent unlawful search and seizure, avoid cruel and unusual punishment, et al, cross gender lines and address situations every citizen may encounter.

Nat Hentoff who writes for Village Voice, asked the question in his Sept 8, 2008 column, how can a staunch pro-life Democrat such as Bob Casey, claim common ground on the issue of abortion with Senator Obama when the Senator advocated a death penalty for babies born alive? Good question. JWR has other excellent articles by Mr. Nanthoff concerning this issue.

[Renee Ann]

Thank you for writing this article. I also want to recommend that everyone listen to the interview you did on Issues, Etc. on this article. I've posted clips from this article, plus the Issues, Etc. audio on my blog:

http://mousenaround.wordpress.com/2008/10/20/collective-shame/

[Steve Moriarty]

A society that sees the killing of an innocent child as the solution to anything is without hope.
History will judge us by how we treated the weak in our midst, and it will not be pretty. How well do we look back on our past, when we approved (and legally protected) the enslavement of our fellow human beings? Can anyone even articulate a justification now?
At its height there were perhaps 2 million slaves in the nation; we've killed 50 million children in 35 years.

[Norman Teigen]

Natural Law is not the legal theory of the United States. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes stated that 'experience, not logic, is the law of the land.' It is not reasonable to hope that Natural Law theory could be restored because it just doesn't work.

There may be more to the tragic history of Germany than you are able to describe in such a short space.

I find your essay interesting and compelling but not determinative. Someone, somewhere in Lutheran-land, needs to write an essay on the subject that is written with an understanding of American legal theory.

There is a strange attraction in conservative American Lutheranism for the pro-life expression of the political right. The connection between this element and millennialism is worthy of study.

[GAMazy]

There are many issues on which we can compromise - LIFE is not one of them. On this one issue we will not move. Your article is compelling and provocative. I appreciate your insight and have furthered your wisdom in our state via my blog. God's blessings over your life as you speak the Truth.

[Tom Schneider]

Thank you so much, and God bless you for this very important and necessary commentary. You have given me plenty of new compelling arguements for my liberal neighbors which think abortion is nothing more than a woman's right to choose. Gott sei dank!

[NMK]

Prior to Roe v. Wade, abortion was illegal in nearly two-thirds of the states except in cases where it was necessary to save the life of the mother. To save the mother it was only available under very limited circumstances. Women who wanted to terminate their pregnancy often sought illegal, back-alley abortions. It is estimated that before 1973, 1.2 million women resorted to illegal abortion yearly and that botched illegal abortions caused as many as 5,000 women’s deaths a year. During this period, illegal abortions were often performed by an untrained physician in unsanitary conditions using primitive methods. These primitive methods kill people as well, perhaps people we would not associate with however people just like the aborted babies. If an overturn of Roe v Wade were to happen we are going to go back to back alley abortions, self abortions, or even an increase in suicide due to the lack of counseling available to those women who at that time can only comprehend the immediate “problem” rather than making a well informed long term decision. Does this mean that we then as Christian’s are saying it is alright to let those women die due to their decision? Should we not as Christian’s uphold ourselves to get an amendment passed that requires counseling prior to such a procedure rather that the standard risk spiel we all know about prior to a medical procedure that only requires a signature possibly not understanding everything?
All of this just leads to problems with today’s society. We could say that abortion happens because both parents in today’s society have to work in order to support families not making it easy for someone to be home when a child is sick, or when they come home form school after being picked on, or to be available when sex is all they can think about. Should we not as be reminded that as a body of Christ we should make ourselves available to each other in such times of need? Instead it seems as though we say it is wrong those people are bad and stay sheltered in our own little boxes and don’t take the effort to help out to try to avoid these abortions. These “reasons” for abortion can be taught out of the next generation if we all step up and do rather that speak out and hide.
Believe you me I hate abortion and know that it is murder, but overturning Roe v Wade is not the answer to the big problem and in turn would cause the same outcome in the end….death. The answer to the problem is us as much as the doctors who perform abortions; the answer is us just as much as the woman who chooses abortion! Salvation is a personal choice God gives to each of us, so is the choice to start positive changes right at home right in our neighborhood! Learn why people make the decision to abort learn what alternatives there are for that mother, learn how to use our “B” asic “I” nstructions “B” efore “L” eaving “E” arth to let God talk to us and let us know that with him and through him the answer is there.

[Mark Locher]

This guy, Siemon-Netto, is nuts!

[Dr. Uwe Siemon-Netto]

Please elaborate.

[Dan Buck]

Choosing a candidate solely on the basis of whether they are pro-life or pro-choice makes little to no sense. Can you name the last pro-life president who actually made an effort to reverse Roe v. Wade? The "A" word is used every two or four years to incite passion in a certain group of voters. Once the election in over, you rarely hear about it from those candidates, whether they are elected or not. The issue is often not pursued because it is well known that there isn't adequate support - from Republicans or Democrats - to reverse Roe v. Wade.
G.W. Bush really concerned himself with abortion the past 8 years, didn't he? No, but he did lay the groundwork for building more personal wealth by authorizing the "murdering" of thousands of innocent civilians in the Middle East. And so did his father.

Every four years we have to listen to the same cries of "Faith, famliy and values..." I am sure that Obama doesn't have any faith, doesn't care for his family and doesn't have any values. He is after all, pro-choice.

Carol posted:
What causes differences in laws concerning unborn children? Scott Peterson, for example, was convicted of two murders -- his wife and his unborn child. Yet a woman who has an abortion, killing her unborn child, is not convicted of murder. Why does the law consider one to be murder but not the other?

Well Carol, the mother in this case had "chosen" to bring her baby to term - that would be the difference.

Pretty radical views...
Now if Obama burns down the Whitehouse and destroys all places of worship and businesses of a certain religious/ethnic group - then we may have cause for concern.

[Mel Schaefer]

Dan Posted:
The mother in the Peterson case had chosen to bring her baby to term. So in this situation the killing of this baby counts as murder?

So your saying that killing an unborn baby that is wanted is not alright but killing an unborn baby that is not wanted is?

This makes no sense! Murder is murder no matter how it is done or who does it.

[uwesiemon]

Dave, evidently your Catholic elementary school failed to teach you to think in analogies, irony and contradictions. That's very sad, and here I thought that parochial schools were better than the rest.

[Nick Stuart]

Ho-hum, who [in the church] cares?

Abortion remains completely legal and effectively unregulated because good church-going Evangelicals, Lutherans, Catholics, Reformed, &tc., &tc. want it to be legal. When little Sissy gets pregnant, mom & dad want to be able to take her to get her, you know, problem taken care of. Same thing if Mom finds herself in a family way when it's too costly or inconvenient.

In my theologically conservative church I can't recall in the last 10 years any mention from the speaker's platform (we don't have anything as archaic as a pulpit) that abortion is wrong.

We will have a lot to answer for.

[Dr. Uwe Siemon-Netto]

Nick is right. In my former ELCA congregation in New York I have heard the pastor refer to abortion clinics from the pulpit as "women's health centers." The Greek word, diaballo, came to mind. It gave the devil his name. The insouciance of many Catholic, evangelical and even Lutheran voters concerning this issue during the last elections gives me goosebumps.

[Carol Geisler]

It may be that Roe v Wade is woven into our national fabric, but that does not mean that it must be allowed to stay there. As to being a “bit of matter” unwilling to impose control over other bits of matter … if the bit of matter down the street came one night and stole your car or broke into your home, you might be very willing to impose some control in that situation. As bits of matter we impose control on one another all the time (a law that says one must stop at a red light, for example).
It is difficult to argue against certain issues because those issues disguise themselves so effectively. Abortion is hidden behind words such as freedom and choice. Same sex marriage hides behind equality. Freedom, choice, and equality are good words which we value highly and we do not like to argue against them in any situation.
I am reminded of 2 Corinthians 11:14 and 15 (and I know that using the Bible will remind one blogging bit of matter of his Catholic school days but I just wanted to add the thought). Paul is writing about false apostles who pretended to serve Christ and comments, “even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.” Sometimes the darkness of moral wrongs hides very effectively behind the light of words and ideas that are so valuable to us.