Categories
Book reviews

Martin Gilbert’s The Second World War: A Complete History (Henry Holt, 1989)

During the China virus (coronavirus) pandemic, learn what Nazis and the Democratic Party have in common.

The parallels between Nazi oppression of Europe and Democratic Party oppression of the United States become obvious on reading Martin Gilbert’s mammoth history of World War II.

While I originally wanted to learn more about the Nazi oppression of European nations only, imperialist policies of fascist Italy and imperial Japan reinforced several ideas about how dictatorships not only suppress, but eventually kill freedom-loving people.  Of course, Nazi actions in Europe parallel the policies of the Democratic Party in the United States, so reading a dated history of World War II is still relevant.

Besides that, the 747 pages of text—and many full-page maps and photos—are sure to occupy time well spent indoors during the coronavirus pandemic.

Some of the parallels between Nazis and Democratic politicians are obvious.  First is the dominant Nazi belief that there is some human life which is not worth living.  For Nazis, it was Jews, the Roma people (Gypsies), Slavs, and others (homosexuals and mentally ill persons).  Democrats, similarly, despise the unborn, the handicapped newborn, and the elderly.  That’s why their policies endorse abortion legal throughout the nine months of pregnancy for any reason whatsoever, infanticide (the killing of handicapped newborns), and euthanasia (the killing of the elderly and denial of care to medically-vulnerable senior citizens).

Second are the means which Nazis used and Democratic politicians use to obtain and maintain political power.  For Nazis, terror and violence were the order of the day.  For Democrats, much the same, although the terror is usually masked in ad hominem and politically-correct attacks against their opponents, as when an opponent is branded as “homophobic” or “racist” when the person attacked is anything but.  Sometimes, Democratic politicians endorse the practices of violent domestic terrorist groups like Antifa to intimidate law-abiding citizens.

Third is the devastation which the Nazis and Democrats created.  Nazi destruction of Europe is obvious; we have still photo and film documentation of the damage caused to European cities throughout their long reign of terror.  The evidence of Democratic devastation is not as clear as a photo of a destroyed Warsaw, but nonetheless apparent.  Democratic abortion policies, for example, have not only killed unborn children, but also harmed or killed mothers and alienated fathers.  Democratic assaults on heterosexual normativity have affected the family and the importance of the husband and father in the family as much as any Nazi bomb would have destroyed an ancient European church.

Gilbert’s interpolation of historical facts with countless narratives of victims of the war makes the reading of his 747 pages suspenseful and powerfully emotional.  Although we know how the “story” ends (the Nazis lose, and Western civilization is saved from a vicious totalitarian threat), we do not know the specific facts of how Europe saved itself from Nazi oppression.  Gilbert supplies those facts and relates painful episodes of people killed by the Nazis.

Similarly, while we know the horrors of Democratic policies attacking human life, what is not so clear is whether we twenty-first century people have learned anything from Nazi oppression of Jewish and Christian (Western) civilization.  One could answer “obviously not” since the policies of the Democratic Party in the United States are as oppressive as Nazi ideology yet are still endorsed by hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Americans who align themselves with that party.  One can only hope that Americans will reject Democrats’ Nazi-like policies and practices in November’s elections.

Categories
Book reviews

George Gmitro’s Viable@140 (Viable Press, 2015)

A perfect counter to the anti-life fantasy fiction of Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.

“The cat’s out of the bag!  Forget Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.  Gmitro’s novel PROVES that anti-choicers will ENSLAVE women as BREEDERS!”

There are three things wrong with the above paragraph, which would be what a typical anti-life feminist, foam flying out of her mouth in feverish and futile frustration, might say about George Gmitro’s novel, Viable@140.

First, get the easy part out of the way.  There is no little kitty cat in a bag.  Unlike the abortion business Planned Parenthood, pro-lifers have nothing to hide—except their strategic political plans to get rid of anti-lifers in office and replace them with pro-lifers.

Second, as much as I love Canada and the pro-life Canadians who suffer under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (whom I call “the Obama and Hillary of the North”), Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is simply a fantasy.  No amount of college professors who want to use her work as their fiction choice in upcoming English classes can transform it into anything other than the sheer fantasy of an aging feminist whose support for the destruction of the unborn is not matched by the tsunami of pro-life feminists who will take her place.

Third, Gmitro’s novel is a perfect counter to Atwood’s fantasy because, while it has some flaws, Viable@140 is fast-paced (unlike Atwood’s ultra-serious novel, Gmitro’s work can be read in one day), contains wicked humor (unlike Atwood’s intensely unfunny novel), and plausible (unlike Atwood’s ridiculous dystopia, since, as we all know, anti-lifers, being inherently intolerant and elitist, would enslave pro-lifers more than pro-lifers would ever subjugate anybody else).

But I slightly digress….

The claim could be made that Gmitro’s work justifies what every anti-lifer suspects: that pro-lifers want to kidnap pregnant women (aka mothers), render them unconscious, and force them to give birth.  This summary approximates what some people think Margaret Atwood’s fantasy novel The Handmaid’s Tale suggests will happen if pro-lifers control society.  This is the typical formulation of that tired and tiresome feminist principle that men are patriarchal and want to oppress women with the power of their literal or figurative phallus, blah blah blah.  (Feminists say little about matriarchal oppression of men by women, but this simple book review by an ‘umble pro-life English professor is not the place to discuss such oppression.)

Patriarchy aside, readers will understand that the focus of the novel is to emphasize father’s rights over the mother’s or the unborn child’s rights.  After all, when a father learns that his girlfriend (lover, fiancée, wife, mistress, whatever) wants to kill his unborn child, what would he do?  To what length would the young father go to save his child?  Would he just allow the mother to arrange an abortion at the nearest clinic or would he do something drastic to save her and their unborn child?

Gmitro’s fictional approach to solving this controversy is…well…unique.  Lance, the father, abducts Sandi, his fiancée, while she is on the hospital gurney, waiting to abort their child, and sequesters her well beyond the point of viability so that she cannot abort.  During this time he keeps her sedated; the mother is effectively silenced throughout the pregnancy.

Whether the author is serious about this as a solution or not is unnecessary to argue because I believe the literary perspective of the narrative is more important than the deeper legal and moral issues which the novel neglects.  The anti-life mother is “out” of the picture, literally and figuratively.  She is mercifully so, because most readers would compare her potty mouth on page 59 to the vulgarities spewed out either by an anti-life feminist or by the best that Hollywood can illustrate of an evil spirit being exorcised.  Thus, readers will have a chance to hear from the second most silenced person involved in an abortion, the father.  In Gmitro’s work it is the father who is able to explain his actions, who has his chance to speak about his love for his unborn child, and who shows that he wants his child even though the mother wants to destroy him or her.

Yep, anti-life feminists would be enraged by such a novel.  “How dare any man voice support for his child.  If that isn’t patriarchal oppression, then I don’t know what is.”  How I would like to tell such an anti-lifer, “Shut up, just shad up…”

Aspetta!  That’s just what Gmitro has achieved in this novel.  The customary anti-life reasoning that every anti-life mother offers in other fiction is absent.  In this fictional instance, the father—finally—has a turn to speak.

An additional feature of this novel is that, a few minor passages aside, it is not didactic or preachy as one might expect from characters who ostensibly come from a Baptist Christian background.  Pro-lifers would appreciate the humor throughout the novel.  For example, the names of the various characters conjure up both pro- and anti-lifers: the abortionist Griswold, who hails from Connecticut (page 45); Candee Williams from the anti-life network NSMBC (page 54); FBI agent Ben Casey (page 99); a greedy character named Cindy Pelozi (page 145); an anti-lifer named Davin Souter (page 152); Stare Decisis, the name of the “steep ridge” around the villa where Lance is keeping Sandi (page 205); Colorado Governor Blackmun (page 229); pro-life activist Pam McKorvey (page 232); Georgia Democrat Senator Ann Soto Mayer (page 299); and newly-appointed Supreme Court Justice Reilly (page 301).  The characterization of that eminently weak and virulently anti-life president that the United States endured for eight tragic years (Obama) is true to life.

Some characterizations, however, make me want to scream out.  Why, for example, is Lance so gullible or such an innocent that he can’t see that his fiancée is a material girl?  I mean, is sex with her that enjoyable if he knows that she is ephemeral and contrary to his Horatio Alger values?  The reader has to conclude that his Baptist Christian training about sexuality must not have been as complete as that for orthodox Catholics.

The novel has some technical flaws.  For example, omitted commas before and after appositions are annoying punctuation errors which hamper a quick read of various lines using direct address.  Some grammar errors will stop the educated reader from appreciating the flow of the narrative.  Also, the last thirty or so pages are composed of too much dialogue instead of descriptive details and dialogue, which can confuse the reader.  It is hoped that future reprints of the work will correct these errors.

Gmitro’s work is a good read not only because the action is fast-paced, but also because the plot is plausible, dramatizing a complex philosophical problem.  The question posed on the novel’s promotional materials (“When it comes to the life of your child, just how far would you go?”) is worth raising.  While I hope that men do not use Lance’s ignoble means of abducting his fiancée for the noble means of saving her and her unborn child, I can see how some unfortunate radical person who claims to be pro-life (or desperate father, who wants to save his child from being aborted) would conclude that the main character’s activity is morally good.  Such a possibility is frightening because no one would want to see any father take matters into his own hands by kidnapping the mother of his child and forcing her to give birth.

Over all, Gmitro’s novel can lead to a fruitful discussion of moral principles which most colleges and universities ignore.  Move over Margaret Atwood; your anti-life fantasy novel has been replaced by a more plausible, life-affirming one.

Categories
Book reviews

Graham Greene’s The Honorary Consul (Bodley Head, 1973)

Seventies politics aside, novel still relevant for fatherless young men

A friend recommended this novel for its abortion content, and it does mention that issue as well as infanticide.  However, what makes this work of dead white male literature more interesting for today is its depiction of men who suffer from father loss.  Thus, it comports with the best of academic discussion about the masculinist literary theory.

Plot details need not be elaborated here.  What I see in this work is more interesting: the deep hurt several male characters feel being fatherless, the connection between loss of Christian faith and support for abortion and infanticide, and the compelling nature of love which overcomes even the most disgusting and violent political and terrorist activity.

Dr. Eduardo Plarr, the ostensible protagonist of the novel, is the father of a child presumed to be the Honorary Consul’s, Charley Fortnum’s.  Unlike most dads who rejoice in their unborn children, Plarr not only may have done abortions (128), but also thinks of his unborn child as “a useless part of Clara like her appendix” (265).  Although it is a redeeming quality of this character that, eventually, “the child became real to him” (265), shortly after this affirmation of life, Plarr recounts how he would have committed infanticide of “a child born without hands and feet.  I would have killed it” (283).  Today’s disability rights and pro-life communities would be outraged at such violence against a handicapped newborn.

But then, what else can one expect from a physician who lost his Catholic faith?

Besides that, Plarr is just another man who is missing a vitally important element in his life, his father.  Reinforcing heterosexual normativity may not have been Greene’s intent on writing the novel in 1973, but the pain these men feel is obvious and worthy of college students’ exploration, especially if they have to write a literary research paper using one of the sanctioned theories demanded by leftist professors.

Consider: the discussion of masculinist literary theory concepts begins early in the novel, in an initial contrast between Latin-American and British men (16).  Plarr wonders whether his father is alive or dead; he learns late in the work that his father was killed trying to escape his imprisonment for political activity (219). Oddly, shortly after this revelation (three pages later), the author chose to include an account of a man who did not know who his father was (222).  Equally odd is Plarr’s declarative/interrogative that “We all of us seem to live with dead fathers, don’t we?” (272).  Does any college student detect ideas for a good research paper?

Best of all, though, the novel ends with an episode demonstrating the compelling nature of love.  The child whom Clara is carrying, conceived by Plarr, will not merely be raised by Charley Fortnum, but truly loved by him.  The unborn child is evidence that “Someone he [Charley] loved would survive” (335).

Thus, a novel concerned with terrorist activity, which mentions abortions and suicides and which illustrates the class warfare of Latin American society in a turbulent historical period, ends with that most life-affirming literary device: a newborn child bringing love to a shattered world.

Categories
Book reviews

Stephanie Gray’s Love Unleashes Life: Abortion and the Art of Communicating Truth (Life Cycle Books, 2015)

Easy-to-read guide to assist pro-abortion persons to choose pro-life views.

Stephanie Gray’s work “in the trenches” among college students has resulted in this easy-to-read guide to assist persons who may think they must support abortion to reconsider their views and adopt pro-life positions.

Not a scholarly, point-counterpoint debate text, Gray’s work is much person-focused.  Pro-abortion people would most benefit from reading this work since she focuses not so much on what they believe but the person behind those beliefs.  The book is filled with anecdotes of how she engaged with pro-abortion persons successfully—often people who were most hostile and aggressive at first—but who later saw in Gray a pro-lifer who helped them to resolve their own personal problems which compelled them to think that they had to support abortion.

Pro-life readers will also benefit from Gray’s emphasis that we should listen and ask questions of pro-abortion persons instead of arguing the issue logically (13).  Gray recommends a three-step approach when discussing abortion with such persons: finding common ground, using stories and analogies to convey a pro-life truth, and asking questions of the pro-abortion individual (32).

Gary’s compassion towards abortion supporters is manifested in other areas, as when she affirms that “the pro-lifer’s task of being a voice for the pre-born also involves ministering compassion, love, and grace to the born” ([69]).

Finally, readers on both sides of the abortion issue will find some of Gray’s statements simply memorable.  Her account of two young people who were conceived through in-vitro fertilization is joyous in one instance, heartbreaking in the other.  When discussing why a pro-life friend would never drive a mother to an abortion clinic, a makeover of a common expression will stick in one’s mind: “Friends don’t drive friends to abortion clinics” (123; bold in original).

Categories
Book reviews

Antonia Fraser’s The King and the Catholics: England, Ireland, and the Fight for Religious Freedom, 1780-1829 (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2018)

Lugubrious writing, yet how Catholics overcame British bigotry in the nineteenth century can apply to the pro-life movement today.

What do events two centuries ago have to do with life today?  If you can say “religious freedom”, “bigotry”, and “anti-Catholicism”, then those phrases should be enough to help contemporary readers understand how Protestant bigotry against “Papists” kept millions of people in second-class citizen status for centuries.  More importantly, though, Fraser’s book illustrates how the peaceful protests of activists like Daniel O’Connell and Catholic and Protestant aristocrats overcame such bigotry.

The heroes of the book are the Duke of Wellington and O’Connell; the anti-Catholic bigotry of “beloved” writers like William Wordsworth and Robert Southey is simply disgusting.  The irrational anti-Catholic positions of George III and George IV testify to the inherent contradiction of the British monarchy: if a British king thought he was forced to uphold only Protestant Christianity, then he could not help those who believe in the Church which Protestantism left.  Those kings, who blocked Catholic Emancipation for forty years, also deserve our disgust for their bigotry against millions of their Catholic subjects.

However, the contemporary pro-life movement’s emphasis on peaceful protest and legislative action parallels O’Connell’s methods to provide civil rights for the millions of Catholics in Britain at the time.  The parallels are inescapable, especially when contrasted against the hostile, Antifa tactics which obstructionist Democrats endorse to keep abortion legal throughout the nine months of pregnancy for any reason whatsoever.  That they want to have infanticide and euthanasia legalized makes pro-life efforts more vital in the new year and beyond.

Finally, I disagree with the opinions of the critics on the back cover about the quality of the writing.  In many places, passages are not as mellifluous as they could be; a clearer chronological order would have helped.  The uneven flow probably accounted for a reading which took three days instead of one.

Categories
Book reviews

Leslie Leyland Fields’ Surprise Child: Finding Hope in Unexpected Pregnancy (Waterbrook Press, 2006)

Fields’ work is a lucid discussion of the fears mothers experience when faced with unexpected pregnancies.  Divided into nine easy-to-read chapters (can be done in a few hours), Fields offers suggestions on how to respond to an unexpected pregnancy so that both the mother and the child will have the best outcomes of often difficult—and, in some cases, insurmountable—circumstances.  All husbands and fathers should read this book of women’s experiences.  More importantly, it should be read by those men who think of their girlfriends only as objects for their sexual gratification.

Categories
Book reviews

Tom Fitton’s Clean House: Exposing Our Government’s Secrets and Lies (Threshold Editions, 2016)

Compelling expose of Hillary and Obama scandals.

Tom Fitton’s analysis of the numerous Hillary and Obama scandals which continue to plague the country makes compelling reading.  Confused about media coverage of their scandals?  Read his book instead for a lucid summary of major events over the eight years of the Obama White House.

Speaking about the lack of transparency on numerous conflicts created by the former president, Fitton writes, “If the Obama administration truly had nothing to hide, it would not have gone to such extraordinary lengths to keep information on what it was doing and its internal machinations from the public” (9).

Chapter four on voter fraud was especially compelling, particularly the hostile tactics of the New Black Panther Party in its attempts to suppress the white vote (120ff).

Regarding photo IDs needed for voting, Fitton declares that “There is simply no evidence to support the contention that the requirement to show a photo ID (which are provided for free in every state with such a requirement) discourages legitimate voters from voting” (123).

How Obama stole the 2008 election can be surmised from Fitton’s commentary from page 133 on.  Also, how was it possible that Obama released 36,000 criminal aliens into the country instead of deporting them?  Fitton’s analysis of Obama’s dereliction of duty as commander in chief and upholder of law is frightening (183ff).  Even more dangerous is Obama’s inaction regarding the creation of ISIS terror cells on US soil (192ff).

Not all is doom and gloom.  Fitton praises the investigative journalism of CBS News’ Sharyl Attkisson (109ff).  As an Ohioan, I am particularly proud of Secretary of State Jon Husted, who worked with Judicial Watch and cleaned up the mess created and ignored by the previous secretary of state, Democrat Jennifer Brunner (128).

Readers will find some familiar names mentioned in Fitton’s study: Robert Mueller (208ff) and James Comey (236).  No wonder President Trump still has to deal with these people; they have been entrenched in Deep State self-preservation tactics for years.

A helpful appendix shows redacted emails from the Lois Lerner IRS scandal, where she targeted, no doubt with Obama’s approval, conservative political action groups.  Pages of notes and an ample index make research easy, especially for students.

Fitton’s summary was so impressive that I donated to Judicial Watch, liked its Facebook page, and subscribed to the group’s YouTube channel.  You will find this book so interesting that you will do the same.

Finally, given the scandals that Democrats continue to create and the stonewalling tactics which they use in their resistance to cleaning up Washington, Fitton will have much more to write about in subsequent years.

Categories
Book reviews

Nicole Flattery’s Show Them a Good Time (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019)

Has an abortion story with psychotic characters; a book meant for freakishly serious college profs.

A freakishly serious college English professor would assign this collection of short stories.  Thus, you’ll understand damned little.

But that may be the point.  The book jacket proclaims that “In this fiercely original [hyperbole] and blazingly brilliant [more hyperbole] debut, Flattery likewise deconstructs [here we go!  the first literary theory that leftist professors like to use to babble on about how words don’t mean what they’re supposed to mean] the conventions of genre [uh-huh; obviously, not an English professor who believes in the Judeo-Christian bases of the Western world] to serve up strange realities [riiight…].”

“Abortion, a Love Story” is a short story (which isn’t so short, spanning pages 65-150) worth reading in this collection, if only to demonstrate how abortion psychologically fractures a mother’s mind.  While it could be argued that Natasha had serious mental problems before she aborted the child conceived with her college lover, the fact that her college life is utterly in shambles after the event just proves what pro-lifers have known for decades: post-abortion syndrome (PAS) is real and devastating.

One more thing that “Abortion, a Love Story” demonstrates is that abortion can never be changed into comedy, as Lucy and Natasha (the halves of the fragmented aborted mother) conclude.  Natasha wants to make the play that the two women are writing a comedy (119), but by the story’s end it’s obvious that abortion simply cannot be funny.  When the “characters” are in what must be the scenery of the abortion clinic, Natasha affirms, “We’re not allowed to make a single joke here” (147).

Reading the rest of the stories will have you exclaiming “Wha-what?” or “OK…and what?”  A line from one of the stories could summarize anyone’s reaction to the entire collection: “Have you ever heard of anything so dumb?” (134).

Oh well, the 238 pages will only take a couple of hours to read, and it is good every now and then to explore how the diseased minds of characters view the world.

Categories
Book reviews

Mei Fong’s One Child: The Story of China’s Most Radical Experiment (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016)

For over three decades, pro-life researchers like Steven Mosher have disclosed the horrors of forced abortions in China, resulting from the one-child policy.  Now, yet another contemporary critique of that disastrous policy reinforces the pioneering work of the early researchers.

Fong provides not only anecdotal evidence, but also official data to support several tenets repeated throughout the book: that China’s economic growth is not related to its population control (xi), that the one-child policy in China is unnecessary for economic prosperity (xiii), that the one-child policy is responsible for forced abortion in China (xv), that the one-child policy is based on “an arbitrary economic goal” (48), that China is experiencing severe problems associated with a rapidly aging population (139); and that the problems of an aging population will increase because of the success of the propaganda behind the one-child policy—successful because most middle class Chinese only want one child (208).  Unfortunately, these are only some of the negative consequences of China’s experiment in population control, social control (such as the suppression of filial piety under the Mao regime), and forced abortion.

Fong mentions several important recent episodes in Chinese abortion history: Feng Jianmei’s case, whose image of her seven-month aborted child, thanks to the Internet, led to world condemnation of China’s forced abortion practices (60-1); Steve Mosher’s seminal work in exposing the forced abortion component of the one-child policy (61); and Chen Guangcheng, the famous activist who sought legal action against family-planning officials for their coercive measures (80-1).

Fong’s empathy with Chinese mothers who are forced to abort matches sorrow of her own; she miscarried her first child, a sorrow balanced at the end of the book with a loving account of the birth of her twin sons.  Unfortunately, Fong cannot end her work happily regarding China’s future; the trajectory of the drastic one-child policy and forced abortions suggests a bleak future for the country.

Categories
Book reviews

Viktor E. Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning (Beacon Press, 2014; originally published 1946)

Frankl’s book counters today’s Nazi-like forces which promote abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia.

Decades ago, as a young activist in the pro-life movement, I remember reading that great respect is given to Frankl for his life-affirming ideas.  Now, I understand not only why he is so respected by the international pro-life community, but also how his ideas can combat the greatest threats to human life coming from the Democratic Party: abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, and other medical killing.

Fortunately, Frankl’s book, written fresh after the ending of World War II, still teaches valuable lessons for civil rights/human rights/pro-life activists (same thing) in 2020.  What, exactly, can this book teach people who have not lived in concentration camps and have no idea what it was like to have their humanity stripped from them by Nazi racists, as the Jews were in Nazi Germany?

Specifically, while the book contains many general interest comments and profound philosophical statements, Frankl’s antidotes to the life-denying ideas of the Nazis (or today’s Democrats) are easy to summarize.

“The consciousness of one’s inner value is anchored in higher, more spiritual things” (59).  This is an important statement, especially for Americans who think that the meaning in one’s life is based on one’s usefulness, income, or work that can be performed instead of one’s inherent value as a human being.

What Frankl has to say about suffering is foundational to understand his opposition to suicide (and our contemporary euphemism “assisted suicide”), euthanasia, and other forms of medical killing:

“When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task: his single and unique task.  He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe.  No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place.  His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden.”  (73)

Americans can easily reconcile this statement about suffering with their individualism and, thus, not fear suffering, which is why some turn to assisted suicide, euthanasia or other forms of medical killing.

What’s a good antidote to suicide?  Frankl claims:

“This uniqueness and singleness which distinguishes each individual and gives a meaning to his existence has a bearing on creative work as much as it does on human love.  When the impossibility of replacing a person is realized, it allows the responsibility which a man has for his existence and its continuance to appear in all its magnitude.  A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life.”  (75)

The uniqueness of every human life is reiterated later in the work:

“Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfillment.  Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated.  Thus, everyone’s task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it.”  (102)

The above are predicates for Frankl’s more life-affirming statements:

“An incurably psychotic individual may lose his usefulness but yet retain the dignity of a human being.  This is my psychiatric credo.  Without it I should not think it worthwhile to be a psychiatrist.  For whose sake?  Just for the sake of a damaged brain machine which cannot be repaired?  If the patient were not definitely more, euthanasia would be justified.”  (124)

Since human beings are more than “brain machines”, euthanasia is never justified.

Lastly, for this section of my review, a quote from the 1984 Postscript encapsulates Frankl’s opposition to euthanasia from the perspective of one who suffered in the Nazi concentration camps.  Speaking about the difference between having inherent value as a human being and being useful, Frankl writes:

“If one is not cognizant of this difference and holds that an individual’s value stems only from his present usefulness, then, believe me, one owes it only to personal inconsistency not to plead for euthanasia along the lines of Hitler’s program, that is to say, ‘mercy’ killing of all those who have lost their social usefulness, be it because of old age, incurable illness, mental deterioration, or whatever handicap they may suffer.”  (143)

Christian religious readers (especially Byzantine and Catholic Christians, perhaps more orthodox Protestant Christians also) may object to Frankl’s apparent subjectivity about the “meaning” of life.  He writes that “the meaning of life [differs] from man to man, and from moment to moment.  Thus it is impossible to define the meaning of life in a general way.  Questions about the meaning of life can never be answered by sweeping statements” (72, an idea repeated on 101).  However, Frankl seems to redeem himself when he asserts in the 1984 Postscript that “I will not be elaborating here on the meaning of one’s life as a whole, although I do not deny that such a long-range meaning does exist” (135).

A glaring omission in the material is that the book says nothing about the historical fact of how Frankl and his first wife were forced by the Nazi regime to abort their unborn child.  That he says nothing about the death of this child speaks volumes, perhaps indicating that the sorrow over the loss of that child was more unspeakable than his life in concentration camps.  Imagine, then, how difficult it must be for today’s aborted mothers who suffer post-abortion syndrome (PAS) for their “legal, safe” abortions.

A final quote, this from one of the letters appended to main work, is important and can be prophetic for contemporary American readers, who suffer under a government which legalized abortion, the holocaust which kills unborn babies throughout the nine months of  pregnancy for any reason whatsoever and who have been exposed to the ideas of killing the handicapped newborn and the elderly or medically vulnerable: “every nation is in principle capable of a Holocaust!” (180).

Not only reading, but also implementing Frankl’s life-affirming ideas in our lives would do much to stop the nation’s acceptance of practices associated more with Nazi killers than Americans who believe in the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.