That’s pretty much what religious-right pooh-bah Richard Land said last month at a Christian Coalition gathering in Florida. Reform efforts promoted by President Obama and congressional Democrats will lead to rationed care, which is based on Nazi ideology, Land said:
“I want to put it to you bluntly. What they are attempting to do in healthcare, particularly in treating the elderly, is not something like what the Nazis did. It is precisely what the Nazis did,” said Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
Land was the keynote speaker for the 20th anniversary “God and Country Banquet” of the Christian Coalition of Florida.
“Let’s remember,” Land added, “the first 10,000 victims of the Holocaust were not Jews, they were mentally handicapped German children who were gassed and burned in ovens because they were considered to have … lives unworthy of life,” citing the Nazi ideology used to rationalize the Holocaust.
In fact, Land accused Democrats of supporting forced euthanasia for the old and sick:
“The Nazis said people should be euthanized when they had lives unworthy of life. … Well, at the very least Dr. Emanuel, [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi, [Sen.] Max Baucus and President Obama are saying that some people have lives less worthy of life. And the older you are, the sicker you are, the less valuable your life is and the more likely they want to terminate your care,” Land said.
Thus says a man named by Time magazine in 2005 as one of the 25 most influential evangelical Christians in America. We wonder where Time would rank Land on a list of the 25 most influential lunatics in America.
