Wild Horse Sterilization Government Programs: Ethics? Morals? or Humane Decay

Sterilization of Wild Horses on Public Lands? We see an ongoing travesty here, within government agencies of the Bureau of Land Management, the Humane Society, the Wild Horse and Burro Board, and other affiliated non-profits and corporations alike – the Travesty?

The travesty, in reality an ethical and moral horror show, is the fact the sterilization of wild horse’s entire premise, yes, the very basis of reasoning for it, remains and is false. Yes, a lie of tremendous proportions, and its ongoing misrepresentation of facts . . .

You see, the fact is, 5,000 cattle that roam over a few thousand acres on our Public Lands, often destroys these same lands – truthful and non-manipulated science makes this very clear. In truth, and on our Public Lands, we have a problem with cheat grass, wildfires, and we have a problem with extreme weight-bearing cattle hooves, the way cattle eat and disturb the roots of vegetation destructively, and the emission of gases over abundantly into the atmosphere; we have a problem with cattle and cheat grass attracting Crows, which then attack an endangered species of Sage Grouse as good non-manipulated science shows clearly as well. But the Department of the Interior and Bureau of Land management, to get along with welfare ranchers, well, Lie. “We Blame the Wild Horses,” they say.

Suddenly it is not the 5,000 cattle on a few thousand acres, that is an over abundant amount as well per square-footage of range-grazing use – rather, it is the wild horses, 200 of them, on the same thousands of acres, that are, as BLM-DOI-Humane Society-and other non-profits want us to believe, is the burden. But why?

This is what those who want to continue experimentation and sterilization of America’s Icon (similar in all aspects of Icon as the Bald Eagle, it is safe to state as fact) want the public to believe – it is the 200 horses that cause the damage, and place an endangered species, the Sage Grouse, in jeopardy as well.

Money and power, and despite what they state as necessity, the corruption within all of the wild horse management people and organizations involved right now.

A History

“COMPULSORY STERILIZATION, 1933-1939 When Adolf Hitler took power in Germany, one of his top priorities was to purify the race and to build the genetically pure Aryan man. It was an objective he had discussed in his early manifesto, Mein Kampf. One of the first major laws passed by the Nazi regime in 1934 was the forced sterilization program of those with hereditary illnesses. This program was intended to develop eventually into a full-scale program of euthanasia for those judged “unworthy of life,” especially the mentally and physically disabled. To prepare public opinion in greater Germany, a systematic and widespread propaganda campaign was put into effect to provide the scientific and political rationale for these proposals and to build support among the public at large.

The Nazi propaganda program took advantage of a well-developed German film industry that was already being retooled as an instrument of the state in order to maintain and expand backing for the regime. The general pattern of slick, well-produced films utilized repetition of misleading and erroneous scientific information and statistics, coupled with powerful emotional images that confirmed pre-existing prejudices and stereotypes. These techniques were particularly effective when applied to the forced sterilization program and to the euthanasia program that would follow when public opinion was sufficiently prepared. These techniques were also used to inform and indoctrinate those personally involved in carrying out the initiatives and to help maintain their level of commitment.

The scientific and medical communities that would implement these programs were already well-disposed to accept their theoretical underpinnings. . .”

“. . . As early as 1920 Karl Binding, a legal specialist, and Alfred Hoche, a psychiatry professor, had published an influential book entitled Permission for the Destruction of Unworthy Life. Hoche in particular advocated the idea of an organic state that must amputate any useless or diseased limb in order to assure the survival of the body politic. A series of training films were produced to indoctrinate medical personnel. They were widely shown at medical conferences, and we have evidence of one that was viewed at a 1935 national meeting of the Nazi partyi

One early 16mm film Erbkrank (“The Hereditarily Ill” or “The Genetically Diseased”), variously dated as 1934 (U.S. National Archives) or 1936 (Bundesarchiv, Koblenz) was presented as an educational documentary by the NSDAP, the agency for racial affairs of the National Socialist Party. It begins by citing the influence of the “Jewish Liberal thinking” that led to a situation in which mentally ill and handicapped patients were being cared for in “palatial” sanatoriums by “the cream” of the medical profession, the best-educated, best-trained, and healthiest nurses and doctors. These idyllic scenes are intercut with contrasting scenes of average, hard-working German families living in abject poverty within over-crowded hovels, and the implication is that their situation is the result of the same misguided policies: “Healthy families are housed in sheds that are falling apart and in dark alleys, but for the insane… palaces have been built.” This was a particularly telling argument for the average German worker, impoverished during the terrible economic times of the Weimar Republic.

. . . The problem is presented in Darwinian terms: only the healthy will succeed in the new state and become “good Nazis” capable of building the Thousand Year Reich. . .”

Concern Rather Than Emotion or Contempt

“Another example of concern, I recall, was the 16mm films like Das Erbe (“The Inheritance”) hammer home the theme that the weak perish and the strong survive according to the natural law and God’s order. Through footage of stag beetles battling and plants fighting for survival, the point is made that “we all live in a battle in which the weak are eliminated.” Once again this wisdom is imparted by a doctor, a scientist who studies the natural world where war and survival are the rule.

Techniques of horse breeding are explained, with the implication that they can be applied to racial breeding. The example of an American family called the Kallikaks, a staple of the Nazi propaganda films supporting sterilization, is trotted out to demonstrate how bad genes and illnesses can be widely distributed through otherwise healthy families, bringing misery in their wake. Another often repeated image appearing in the background is a dictum attributed to Adolf Hitler: “He who is not healthy and able, both physically and mentally, may not immortalize his body in that of his child.””

So many of these people involved in the sterilization of wild horses from Public Lands, will state Horse Advocates, for example, deal in emotion-only reflexive action in the matters of the wild horses. Well no, that is yet another untruth they pander to the public. The concern is the Gorilla in the Room Complex – the fact the entire Wild Horse and Burro Program, as it is today, is built on false premise, and in direct violation in the matters of many of the laws that are inclusive within the Wild Horse and Burro Act, and of course when situations like this do exist, corruption abounds . . .

There is simply no truth given to the public by the Bureau of Land management, the Department of the Interior, the Humane Society, or any others attached to these Wild Horse Programs, and as they exist today.

Then we move to Welfare Ranching on Public Lands, which is an entirely different, yet associated with false premise combined with the lie or myth of ranching of yester-years entirely. This government subsidy program is nothing more than corruption within other subsidy programs in the billions. Once again the taxpayer’s ripped off entirely, with nothing to show for their tax-dollars given in subsidies!

Yet, taxpayers, who indeed pay for this entire mess of corruption, pay the bills and remain either ignored, or become part of the supposedly terrible Horse Advocates – who are indeed only concerned about saving the Wild Horses. Then the Gorilla in the Room rears its ugly head once again, we find very questionable people, in the wild horse management realms, that apparently have sold their souls within the pools of immorality, no ethics, and move along with an astounding and corrupt procedure, or ethical boundaries of the Nazi’s within the early part of this century – Sterilization for . . .

Well, who knows, because what it is today and under the paradigm of False Premise, can be changed tomorrow, in order to coverup the lie from yesterday, in order to ignore Environmental Health, and prescribe roundups next week of America’s Icons, the Wild Horses under the guise of damage the horses pose on America’s Rangelands – and the lie and flow of misinformation continues –

CONCLUSION

The Nazi propaganda effort in support of forced sterilization and euthanasia was in many ways a classic campaign to win public acceptance and understanding of a controversial policy. It was built on accepted scientific theories current at the time and took them to their logical conclusion. The triumph of eugenics and social Darwinism provided the scientific footing to justify many actions that would otherwise have been reprehensible. The propaganda also provided a moral sanction for these activities by claiming to restore God’s order to Christian Germany, an order that was upset by the advent of liberal Jewish doctrine. This was a theme that the Nazis used to great effect.

TIME FOR CHANGE is and remains an understatement. America is better that what these government agencies involved, as well as the Humane Society and other non-profits demonstrate today. None of them, currently, represent the American Intelligence and Ethics so many have fought for in all wars and in all circumstances.

We defeated the Nazi’s – not from hatred, but from motivated paradigms from such honesty as the difference between Right and Wrong – and a truth from all of our hearts that life is to be respected and cherished – not slaughtered or sterilized out of existence!

What is needed to provide change? Honesty is needed here, not corrupt ideologies nor a broken-wildlife management procedure, and based from a war of mental attrition by the Nazi Party – who by the way were defeated entirely by American knowledge, motivated by patriotism and ethics – something those involved with the Sterilization of America’s Wild Horses should learn, as obviously they have not a clue about our history nor Ethics, nor Morality in America!

But the more American’s know and acknowledge what is ongoing on our Public Lands, the filth and corruption evident, then soon, these entities will be introduced to America, the Good America that has ethics and standards of, yes, even management and respect for our Nation’s Wildlife – All Wildlife! — John Cox, Note Filed in The Cascades

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Michael Burleigh, Death and Deliverance: Euthanasia in Germany, 1900-1945 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994) p. 97. I am deeply indebted to Burleigh’s book throughout this paper. See also Robert Jay Lifton, The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Pathology of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 1986).