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Atheistic Ideas Have Unhealthy Consequences
Sarah Palin and Obama Death Panels

By Darrow Miller

Sarah Palin’s Facebook remarks Concerning the "Death Panels" were bold, spot on, and continue to reverberate. They did what she hoped they would do, which is to change the debate on healthcare in the USA. As David Warren points out in his article Palin Called a Spade a Spade, she was “not nice.” Palin was not rude, nor was she nice; instead she was honest and spoke with candor.

The reaction to Palin’s piece has been all over the board. Some progressives (those “progressing” in a naturalistic paradigm) have responded with hate, vitriolic language, and name-calling. What substantive response can there be to their tirades? Others, both from left and right, say Palin has overreached, but then these critics, naively in my view, point out that there is no call for “death panels” and no language in the bill that speaks of euthanasia.  

Some conservatives distance themselves because Palin’s comments were either “not nice” in style or too radical in substance. It is a shame that they do not realize that ideas have consequences and that the bills being put forward by Congress and the White House are founded on principles and paradigms that will, in time, lead to death panels just as surely as similar ideas led to the Holocaust in Germany during World War II and abortion on demand in the United States.  

But Sarah Palin, like few others in public life, recognizes either intuitively or consciously that the root of the issue in the fight over healthcare reform is founded in two opposing worldviews. The first is naturalism (aka secularism or atheistic materialism), which guides the statist side of the debate, and the second is Judeo-Christian theism, which has been the dominant and foundational worldview for both our country's Founding Fathers and for cultural conservatives today. The decisive question is: Are we “one nation under God” or “one nation under man”? Each of these views represents opposing worldviews, final authorities, and two very different visions for the nation's future.  

Programs Derived
From Paradigms
The policies that are being debated inside the Beltway, at town hall meetings, and over the office coffee pot will eventually create programs that will impact the lives of all Americans. These policies and programs are the logical consequences of principles and paradigms. 

Ideas do have consequences. A culture’s paradigm will produce the principles that will shape policy (e.g., the current healthcare debate) that eventually establishes programs (the implementation of whatever policies are finally approved). This can be illustrated more philosophically as: Worldview → Norms → Behavior → Consequences.

To say it differently, healthcare looks and operates very differently from an atheistic-materialistic perspective than it does from a Judeo-Christian perspective. In atheistic materialism, man is merely a highly evolved animal in which the fittest or most productive survive, and the state decides how to allocate limited resources available for healthcare and ensure equal outcomes, which then requires rationing, decisions about rationing, and therefore, “death panels.” In the Judeo-Christian worldview, human beings are made in the image of God, and so our Declaration of Independence can so boldly state: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life . . . .” Following from this foundational and high respect for human significance, each individual makes personal decisions and takes responsibility for his or her healthcare (and that of children, in the case of families) in an informed and humane pro-choice (self-determinative, not child-abortive) framework of free market solutions and so on.

While the phrase death panels is not to be found in any of the current healthcare bills before Congress, the reality of death panels is, as the late Francis Schaeffer would argue, the inevitable consequence of an atheistic paradigm.  

The following illustration explains my point well. A number of years ago I read an article about Jill Stanek, a nurse in the labor and delivery department at Christ Hospital in Chicago. Stanek was challenging the hospital for allowing babies who were alive after an abortion to die. The hospital had a de facto policy (written or unwritten I do not know) that on a programmatic level allowed born-alive aborted babies to die. Why? Because the hospital was operating (consciously or unconsciously) from the principle that a woman has a “right to choose” and that this right to choose takes precedence over the rights of the baby to life. Why such a principle? Because it expresses ideas embedded at the level of paradigm -- namely, that nature is all there is, impersonal evolution is fact, people are animals, and only the fittest survive. Utility in this framework becomes a primary but inhumane “value,” and for many women it is simply not convenient to carry an “unwanted pregnancy” to term.

Most of the discussion on healthcare in Washington, D.C., operates on the policy level, but the emotions on both sides of the debate run deep. As they should and must. Why? Because, these policies are derived from often unspoken and unexamined sacred “belief systems” of people -- their worldviews and resultant ethical norms. Our lifestyles are derived from our worldviews as guides to life, including public life and public policy. In the battle for the soul of the nation, which group -- the atheists or the theists -- will shape how we answer these questions: Is there, as the Declaration affirms, a Creator who made the universe? What is man, cosmic debris or a creature of great worth and significance? Are morals real or are they mere “values”? Does a baby have a right to life or does a woman have a totalistic right to choose to end her baby’s life? Will society protect the life of a baby, the infirmed, and the old because human life is sacred, or will society create elite panels of experts who, when budgets are tight or in “crisis,” will decide who is productive enough, whose life is worth living, and who should die?  

The issue is not just an end of life issue -- death panels; it is also a beginning of life issue -- abortion on demand. It is an issue of life from conception to natural death.

The Obama Case Study
During his campaign for president, then-Sen. Obama responded to a question about when life began by saying that the issue was “above my pay grade.” This was “nice,” but it was also hypocritical and cruel. He could not, or would not, speak with candor. If he had been honest, he would have said what the record indicates is his position: “Life begins and ends when the state says it does; there is no God-given right to life.” If candidate Obama had been transparent and told the nation what he really thinks, based on the policies and programs he advocates, he would have lost the election because the majority of Americans affirm the ethically laden fact that life is a right endowed upon humanity by our Creator.   

We could easily have known what Sen. Obama truly believes by examining his policy and actions. This was revealed when in 2003, as an Illinois State senator, he actively opposed and eventually killed a bill (state policy) called the “Born Alive Infant Protection Act.” If this policy had been enacted then, medical personnel would have had to function -- on a programmatic level -- to save the life of a baby born alive after an abortion procedure. While Obama and his colleagues would not likely use the word infanticide (such language would be true but not “nice”), what they have done and continue to do is to support policy changes that kill pre-born and newborn babies.  

Again, President Obama showed what he believes and how passionately he believes it by striking down President Bush’s (and President Reagan’s) policy of banning the use of federal money to support international groups who have programs that perform abortions.   

So while President Obama and his colleagues in the House and Senate, whether Democratic or Republican, who support the current healthcare proposal may say there is no language in the bill for death panels or active or passive euthanasia, we can know where these policies will inevitably lead.
How can we be so sure? Because, ideas have consequences! The paradigm and principles that led to the support of policies and programs that support death at the beginning of life will inevitably support policies and programs of death at the end of life, even if these policies and programs are expressed in nice language massaged to camouflage the cruelty of their real-world impact.   

Palin a Lightening Rod
For the Culture Wars
One of the reasons so many Americans have reacted so strongly to this issue is that they are culturally conservative -- that is, they either consciously or subconsciously affirm the words of our Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” These words were at the heart of the Founding of our nation because the Founders were writing the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution with a pen in one hand and a Bible in the other. They were functioning from a Judeo-Christian worldview and Biblical principle.   

Many Americans may not be able to articulate why they believe in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but it is "in their bones."  And they know that something is terribly wrong in the seismic shifts that are taking place in the country they love; they want to hold on to these core principles.

Sarah Palin understands the power of paradigm. She operates personally and transparently on basic principles, arguing that all of human life is sacred because God has made it so. When she carried her Down syndrome baby to term, she was functioning from personal conviction. Not only are her words not nice, her life is “not nice.” While ninety percent of Down syndrome children are aborted (no doubt probably by women who are Republican, Democrat, or Independent), Palin revealed the strength of her convictions with the birth of baby Trig.

In a speech given on June 7, 2009, in Long Island, New York, Gov. Palin said: “Having a son being born with Down syndrome is a whole new chapter of our lives . . . I tell Todd that God has blessed us, and we don't ask, ‘Why me? Why us?’ We say at this point, finally -- and to be honest with you, it’s taken a while for us to get to this point -- ‘Thank you God, for allowing us to recognize the special needs community’ . . . Without Trig this would be absent from us. I am at a point in my life of thanking God for blessing us with this bundle of joy, this typical rowdy 1-year-old.”

This is why so many statists -- advocates, in effect, of “one nation under man” (both liberals and conservatives) went ballistic when Gov. Palin was chosen to run as the GOP candidate for vice president. Sarah Palin was not “nice”; her whole life spoke of the candor of her convictions. This group understood that her life and policies would be a threat to the statist agenda and the lifestyle of license that is so much a part of the atheistic-materialistic belief system.

Sarah Palin, in her life and in her words, supports beginning- and end-of-life policies that are based in Judeo-Christian thought and principle. She is to be heralded -- and she is by many grassroots cultural conservatives -- and encouraged by all who embrace the words of our Declaration of Independence or who consciously assert that their humane way of life is rooted in a Judeo-Christian worldview. This may be bad news for “death panels,” but it’s good news for modern man.

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