I believe you kaos. My Dad who is a Democrat feels the same way you do.
Quite frankly, there were a lot of conservatives along the way who failed Terri. Judge Greer, by all accounts "conservative". Judge Birch. Congress and to a certain extent, Jeb Bush.
The problem is, are the Democrats who are outraged by this murder going to speak up? Is Ralph Nader going to pursue this as passionately as protecting the environment? Is Jesse Jackson going to stick around the way he would if she were black? Are the disabled groups going to make this their cause celebre, or are they going to go back to persecuting small town bars that don't have handicapped parking?
I know the pro-lifers and other conservatives are going to stay on this. But who is going to cross the party lines?
Thanks. My mom and aunt are Democrats, too, and they're horrified by all this. We've had PVS patients in our family -- *real* PVS patients, not brain-damaged people being labeled PVS. Let me tell you, none of those people were anywhere near as responsive as Terri.
Quite frankly, there were a lot of conservatives along the way who failed Terri. Judge Greer, by all accounts "conservative". Judge Birch. Congress and to a certain extent, Jeb Bush.
I agree. Judge Greer was enemy #1 of Terri Schiavo, and the other judges IMHO pretty much just backed him up to cover for him.
The problem is, are the Democrats who are outraged by this murder going to speak up?
This Democrat is. I'm furious that my Party has failed to fight for the basic human rights of a handicapped person.
Is Ralph Nader going to pursue this as passionately as protecting the environment?
I don't doubt that he is. Nader has always fought hard for what he believes in, even if it isn't "popular" at the time. Public opinion polls don't dictate his actions, thank God.
Is Jesse Jackson going to stick around the way he would if she were black?
I don't think we'll ever know, because the media's more concerned with his involvement with Michael Jackson. They'll always choose a freak show over real issues.
Are the disabled groups going to make this their cause celebre, or are they going to go back to persecuting small town bars that don't have handicapped parking?
As a mildly disabled person who has a handicapped parking permit (and sees fully able-bodied people illegally take up handicapped parking every day), I'd like to point out that attitudes about the latter are what create an environment for tragedies like Terri Schiavo's to happen. Disabled people are considered a nuisance, something that gets in the way of getting a good parking place...a "burden"...less than human. Once society strips you of your humanity, it's just one step from being a "burden" to being "disposable". Terri was the first to cross that barrier, and that's a dangerous precedent.
What's really bad is that, because of how so many people have sided in with Michael (all the better to justify removing Grandma's feeding tube when it becomes a pain in the neck to visit her in hospice), the handicapped rights advocates will face a difficult decision. Do they take up Terri's cause, and risk public opinion turning against ALL handicapped people? Or can they somehow turn public opinion, to make people realize what has been done? Which leads to....
I know the pro-lifers and other conservatives are going to stay on this. But who is going to cross the party lines?
If only more moderates and progressives would have the guts to cross that line, then mainstream America would realize that it's not just "fanatic right-wingers" who were trying to keep a brain-dead woman alive against her will. (And that's what people mistakenly believe, hence the public opinion poll results.) They base their opinions on sound bites they hear on the six o'clock news, and the fact that all the people speaking out on Terri's behalf (before Jesse Jackson and Ralph Nader, I mean) are on the far right. So people concluded, "These right-wingers want outsiders to make private decisions for us!" Of course, they didn't realize that this is precisely what was allowed to happen: Outsiders mandated that Terri's feeding tube be removed.
Because of their preconceived notions about Pat Robertson, et.al., people made snap judgements based on brief news stories. Instead, they should have been going to Terri's family's web site and reading the actual court documents and such for themselves.
What's really bad is that even news-junkie Democrats who might normally side with the cause of a profoundly handicapped woman are so blinded by the sight of people like Randall Terry, that they just have a knee-jerk reaction: "Randall Terry = bad". Beyond that point, rational thinking comes to an abrupt halt.
As far as politicians go, I do think that some Democrats should have crossed the party line, for that would have lent credibility to the Schindlers' cause -- making it a bipartisan effort, not just a right-wing effort. But then, that would require Democratic politicians to develop a spine, and we've all seen repeatedly that they're genetically incapable of doing so.