The Charlotte News

Saturday, August 22, 1942

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page is here. You may read it; it having been a lazy latter August Saturday with a high of 89 and a low of 73, there was obviously not too much news to report, one has to assume, or at least not much incentive musterable to report it, when the bold headline was relating the declaration of war against the Axis by Brazil.

The editorial page is especially noteworthy for its tribute to Prime Minister Churchill, as well its editorial on a grand jury’s clearing of the Chicago Tribune and its publisher, Robert McCormick, of any violation of the law in publishing, just as the Battle of Midway concluded on June 7, that the U.S. Navy had advance warning of the Japanese attack, knew the positions of their ships.

"That Umbrella" suggests that other raids as that on Dieppe could be effective if followed by successive substantial waves of airplanes to join the Luftwaffe in fatal air battles, thereby drawing planes from the Russian front. But the editorial was working without accurate figures on the losses occasioned by the battle: obviously, losing 1,400 of 6,100 men at a clip, and another 2,300 taken as prisoners, could not long endure as an effective means of combatting the enemy or effectively aiding the Russians through the long haul, but would have only depleted the trained forces capable of invading in North Africa and Sicily, the more realistically achievable plans of the moment. Indeed, it would have been suicidal madness at this juncture, akin to Lee’s charge at Gettysburg, signalling desperation on the part of the Allies and giving Herr Goebbels a field day of opportune advancement for his propaganda machine.

Incidentally, we were looking at that Nazi T4 health program to which the young woman, by way of attempting to draw comparison to the President’s proposed health care initiative, referred the other day at the town hall meeting. The T4 plan was one for euthanasia of all who were retarded or otherwise mentally impaired. The plan successfully murdered 275,000 people during its operation. There is a difference, a great difference, even if the young woman’s rather twisted view of the President’s health care plan were as she implies, between passive death and euthanasia.

But the cruel fact is that for some decades now, and increasingly so, we are providing health care, sometimes far too much and unnecessary health care, to those who can afford it while sparing it to others who cannot, all built on a market notion of free enterprise, of capitalistic profit motives, primarily for wealthy insurance providers, including HMO’s. Doctors who participate in this system often bemoan its demerits but nevertheless rationalize the need for a new car and big house for two to keep up with the Joneses of the medical profession, and so, crying and weeping their crocodile tears, yet participate.

Lead.

Don’t just carp and cry your tears for the dispossessed of health care, if you truly hate the present system. Stand up at these meetings yourselves, doctors, and tell the LaRouche crowd, of which this woman was apparently a paid operative, why the present system is far more akin to the Nazi T4 plan than any reform of the system possibly could be with government mandates for equitable health care to all.

Less money in your pockets? Maybe. Maybe not. But if so, is it worth it? What price your souls? What price your Hippocratic Oath, even if violated only passively while rationalized on the basis that you stop by the side of the road, after all, whenever you feel the need to show off as a Good Samaritan Doctor to the ailing on the roadside?

We also caution the LaRouche crowd and alert the Secret Service to their antics. Go to their website and you will find a bearded individual providing a video, dated August 19, 2009 and titled "To Whom It May Concern", in which he says, a minute and fifty seconds into the tape, that he wouldn’t be surprised if the British, consistent, he says, with their having assassinated every President who resisted their will, were to do likewise to the current President unless he subscribes to their plan of world domination—which we are left to assume is the object of the current health care bill, even if we somehow managed to miss the logical interconnection. But logic is secondary with these people, who know the truth beyond the dismaying Eleusinian esoterica incumbent in any logical sequence of premise to conclusion.

Mr. Mallon’s response to the letter writer of the previous day is quite adequate and apropos, eerily so, as the LaRouche group pushes the same sort of propaganda agenda 67 years later as did the Vindicators and other kindred groups in the country at the time, of whom the letter writer was no doubt a member at large. Perfidious Albion. Bad Nazi Germany. Wink-wink.

The only thing missing now is the old line about the evils of the Soviet Communists when compared to the Nazis. We must have the Nazis to defeat the Communists, a necessary evil which we hope to be able to defeat in time. Wink-wink.

But to employ that latter line would lead to a bit of a logical conundrum for the LaRouche crowd. We shall, however, leave that to them to consider logically.

We would not compare the present health care situation covered by private insurers, whose premiums and profits are through the roof and out the window, to Nazi Germany and its policies of planned euthanasia and extermination, but rather to the corporate state to which Mussolini gave sustenance with his fascist ideals. For in the former, there were targeted groups; in the latter, the harsh results derived from a roulette wheel of Economic Darwinism.

Trying to remedy that mess is not to be compared to anything in the 1930’s and early 1940’s other than the Allies trying to defeat fascism in Europe and feudalism in Asia. But this time, at least, for the most part, we are not separated by divisions of language and culture on which to premise a common understanding of a common goal to effect a resolution commonly beneficial to everyone, understanding along the way that only should everyone benefit should anyone benefit when the goal line to be reached is reasonable and equitable health care.

Well, as to all of this present world situation, perhaps Dick Young’s piece speaks volumes to us from that time of 67 years ago.

Don’t get us wrong. We do not thereby imply that we are all the product of syphilitics and mental deficients. But on some days, we might begin to think that too many of us might be.

Still, even so, we would resist to the death any T4 program here. Make no mistake, lady. You can count on it. You have no fears.

We, ourselves, only build tables; we have yet ever to destroy one.

It being a lazy stadium night in summertime, and since we had drop by early this morning here at the Tower a visitor, Tea Four Tu, we thought we would supply you with that which Tea--or Mr. E. Teas, as he prefers, (the "E", says he, having no meaning, being akin to the "S" in Sam Grant’s name or that of Harry Truman)--read to us, a poem by Walt Whitman.

Mr. E. Teas says that he would like to dedicate his reading to Senator Kennedy for all of the service to our country performed through the last nearly five decades in the Senate, in being a continuing beacon to the country for hope through many dark days, some of which were personal to his own family and out of which it would have been very easy to cast aside the mantle bequeathed him and quietly retire. That he did not, bespeaks the noblesse oblige of the Senator and his family through time and stands as a courageous model for us all—an embodiment of the true democratic spirit on which the Founders established this country.

He says, also, oddly, that though he never much agreed with Robert Novak, who passed away Tuesday, Mr. Novak had the right to say what he said through time, and, therefore, as a sub-dedication, he also dedicates the reading to Mr. Novak, not because he was an ideological friend so much, as with Senator Kennedy, but because he was neither an enemy and because he loved ACC basketball, even if, for unknown reasons, he held the banner up for the Maryland Terrapins, who, Mr. E. Teas says, are not nearly so bad as Duke or Wake Forest, and so, all things being relative, he offers his reading in like kind to the memory of Mr. Novak and all those who have given their lives to saying, more or less, what they honestly believe.

Well, having thought about Mr. E. Teas's dedication to these two gentlemen, each scholars in their own right, we heartily concur. You may not have liked the careers of either, or one or the other. But each was, and in the case of Senator Kennedy, still is, a gentleman and a scholar, and their work deserves our attention not only in the past but for the present and the future. We thank them for their service to the country in very different and distinct ways.

So, here is Mr. E. Teas’s reading of the Walt Whitman poem, composed 1855, as subsequently amended by the author. Mr. Tea, we note, misspoke at one point for the particular transcription from which he recited being possessed of an error: the word is "daily", not "dally". Or, perhaps it was simply a pronunciation left from his Irish past. We merely note it.

Incidentally, we hope that Miss ____ _____, over in Lenoir, had her appendectomy successfully removed and effected a speedy recovery. At these prices, who can say? Her appendectomy may yet wind up at auction online--to avoid death from starvation.