Posted on 03/20/2005 12:21:10 PM PST by pickrell
The current heat surrounding the case of Terri Schindler-Schaivo underscores the need for moderation.
Rather than continue to hold the national will captive to the extremists on either side, the majority in the middle need to step up to the plate and assert themselves.
What we are saying is that there aren't only two choices in this matter. It is reactionary to assume that a husband must either decide to kill the wife, or not decide to kill the wife. All that many people are asking for is that each husband be allowed to decide on his own whether or not to kill his wife. A pro-choice policy like this respects the right of any husband to control his own life, in a manner that any of us would expect.
The rabid anti-choice crowd makes specious arguments like, "...rather than kill her, why don't you divorce her, put her up for adoption by a husband, or family member, who might treasure her for what she is?" They hope, by such duplicity, to close the door on the "exceptions for the life or health of the father" clause.
After all, if several competent doctors can be located to testify as to the emotional and financial harm that may come from this wife being allowed to carry the secrets of the marriage out into the public view, along with any insurance jackpots, irreparable harm can be prevented from being inflicted on the father. By closing this door, future wife killing may again become relegated to the back alleys, and away from the controlled sterile and safe environment of the courts.
This is the perfect argument in favor of the "living" constitution. What better vehicle to decide who gets to keep on living? But only the timid will stop there. Past injustices may be corrected by extending this concept to the out-moded statutory rape laws, for instance.
The outrageous logic that has always prevailed, is that those persons too young or too mentally ill to be able to consent to sexual use by adults, are presumed to have declined consenting and submitting to sex. Why not instead ask the only person who reliably knows whether consent was involved? Why not ask the accused rapist? Their word should prevail.
Strict constructionists would peddle the notion that what the law means is exactly what the law says. That if the majority of the people wish so badly to remove provisions from the laws of the State, or the Federal Bill of Rights, that currently inhibit what seems the prudent thing to do, then they must do what is prescribed in such cases... convince enough of their neighbors to change the laws, or amend the Constitution.
The far more cost-effective and prudent method is to find a judge with enough wisdom to appreciate the correctness of their argument, and simply have him/her issue the directive that this wife needs to be killed.
By removing the ability to "adjust" the laws protecting the helpless, we hamstring ourselves as a society, to be constrained on how we treat these, the helpless among us, by mere writings on paper, and our fidelity to these dry...laws.
Many protections already exist to protect the common wife. She can prevent herself from ever gaining weight, or aging, or losing her armcandy appeal. If she does not fervently apply herself to these tasks, is this not really a tacit plea to be put out of her misery? What husband could not sympathize with Terri Schiavo's husband? What wife honestly would not?
After all, "...for better or for worse...", doesn't have to be taken to extremes. Where are the moderates?
Neither, then, does rape, or property rights, or any of a number of issues inconvenient to that elite segment of society that sorts women into USDA Choice, Prime... and the lesser utility grades.
If you've got it, flaunt it.
If you lose it, be afraid. Be very afraid.
Brutal.
On the DU board! Just kidding but seriously a "Living Constitution" is the view of liberals and used to take away our liberties.
And calling people here "anti-choice" well people can call you "anti-life" if you want to play the name game!
Will the 'journalist' soon begin polishing Hillary's 'moderation credentials'? We are witnessing the beginnings of a national 'crown Hatellary Rodhamster the moderate for us all' movement. When a fool writer uses the term 'anti-choice', it makes clear what the writer's agenda is ... this writer is transparent, not a moderate. Murder is not moderate enlightened social policy, yet!
How can you be moderate on an issue of life or death?
"All that many people are asking for is that each husband be allowed to decide on his own whether or not to kill his wife. A pro-choice policy like this respects the right of any husband to control his own life, in a manner that any of us would expect."
Yep. Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal, Part II
Mohammed himself couldn't have asked for more.
I am not a moderate, I am an extreamist! I neither seek nor give to a middle ground. When our enemies ask for moderates then they are close to quiting what ever task they are doing at hand. I am also glad for a lot "cooler" heads to run things, because if I were in charge then things would be very different.
All that I know is that if it was my daughter involved, The issue would have been resolved long ago. The husband would die first and not by the torture of starvation or dehydration.
The black robed murder accompaces have no right to conduct ethnic cleansing and protection of criminal activities. Why was the killer of the little 9 year old girl loose and on the streets. This world must be changed to sanity.
Any Constitution that lives and breathes must also die.
Exactly what the "living, breathing" crowd is hoping.
It's called, [to plunder a phrase], "Illustrating absurdity by being absurd..." When a writer makes a transparent "plea" to enable people to do convenient things to other people, in spite of the evil involved, he must rely on the perceptions of the reader to understand what is really being illustrated. To simply come out and say that killing inconvenient people is evil, is much less effective than momentarily putting them in a position to wonder whether the writer, or the people being written about, can actually have thought about their actions. For more telling is the corrosive effect that society's acceptance of this denial of the fundamental right to life would have on every other "right" we now enjoy, and how tenuous they would then become. If I cut it too fine and left you too uncomfortable, I apologize. But we are playing for all the marbles now, in this latest phase of the cultural war. We must win.
You are of course right about that, and a piercing speech about the fallacies of the Living Constitution theory was delivered on CSPAN by Judge Scalia just a few days ago. But since Scalia doesn't merit the same exposure in the media as the latest celebrity murderer, it falls to us bomb throwers to "PING" that debate back, by shoving such concepts of back into the debate. Even if by subterfuge. Bills of attainder were prohibited, so that specific individuals couldn't be punished by laws passed through Congress for that purpose. The idea was to keep Congress from playing judge and usurping the power of the judiciary. Now Congress may enact a "reverse" bill of Attainder, the "Let's not kill Schiavo" law, passed specifically so that a specific individual may be saved. This will perhaps begin the process of preventing judges from usurping the power of the Legislature and playing Congressman. Whatever returns us to being a nation of law, and not a nation of judges.
The way O.J., Scott Peterson, and Robert Blake did.
Exactly. And two of them walked.
Well if you support doing that then your not a moderate according to the MSM you are an extremely extreme extremist!
"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."
Barry Goldwater
Shhhh! You can't tell the audience which cup the pea is under! Ahem. I am certainly not an extreme extremist. [Though I have my second "extreme" adjective on lay-a-way, at Macy's.] But I am working my hardest to reach that aspiration... Tongue back out of cheek- thanks for the comments.
The problem with your piece is that it's too subtle for the issue at hand. It is, in fact, not "absurd" at all, but so vague as to be unintelligible.
It was interesting and instructive to see how many people in the St. Pete area said they were 'tired of hearing about it', they'd been hearing all about it (lol) for 10 - 15 years, enough already! Never mind a woman was being killed down the street from them!
They were, in essence, complaining "Isn't the ___ dead yet?" . . . As in fact are so many here on FR. We're gonna die of apathy. Don't bother me, yawn.
You may be right, but I hope that isn't the case. It may be that a few are instead afflicted with what I am daunted by. We watched Michael Schiavo being painted as the most villainous person on Earth, and to tell you the truth, if he did do what he appears to have done, I think he may qualify as one of the most foul creatures in existence.
The problem is that many of us have watched hyperbole become the watchword in these cases. We cannot understand that not just one court, but, if "reports" are correct, many courts, have examined the "evidence" in this case and don't find a problem with it!
The points made by many on this forum, which have yet to be "disproven", would point to a judiciary that at least appears to be completely unconcerned with justice, but rather focused totally on protecting their own prerogatives, their own turf.
Since I am unschooled in the legal arts, I, and many like me I suspect, have to rely on the legal opinions we hear. Many have appeared on this forum. But how can these opinions differ so awesomely, so widely, unless;
A:...one side is totally ignorant of the law or the facts as they apply to this case...
or B:...one side or the other is totally dismissive of fact, evidence and objective judgement, in favor of making this case come out the way they predetermined it to.
or perhaps even C:...there are colliding issues which haven't yet found good law to balance process with result.
I was trying to disguise in this piece that I personally felt a travesty had occurred here, since many of the persons who argued against intervention have experience and knowledge of law and precedent that would put us neophytes to shame.
This case isn't over, and if vested interests have conspired to strip a woman of her very right to life, then heads need to roll.
It seems to me, though, that verification of evidence is lacking here, and the astonishingly suspicious behavior of a husband who is apparently falling all over himself to frantically cremate what little evidence may remain, is nearly unbelievable. Either he is the stupidest, most ill-advised (surely his legal counsel has considered the tattered remnants of his reputation!??), person on the planet...
... or there is more to this. Frankly I don't see what it could be, but I am hoping that the autopsy will answer a few questions... if it was conducted in anything resembling a scientific setting rather than a political one.
After that, if a storm of protest (such as Jim Robinson is working to generate) forces the courts to publicly explain and justify what seem to be mouth-dropping lapses of protection of due process, then Terri may not have died for nothing.
I know that is a cheap statement to make, but many of us simply haven't the expertise to take the front lines in this case. We have to sit back, listen and learn. We don't have anything worthwhile to add, other than perhaps posts like the one I made trying to make a case for continued objectivity and attention to new evidence.
This may, unfortunately, be taken to be yawning indifference. In many of our cases it is instead a debate outside of our expertise.
But those who argue that crucial ramifications apply in hopes of future return of States' rights have made some powerful points, also. Those quick to utterly denounce the Federal intervention into previous issues seem now perhaps...indifferent...to the question, now that it has swung. We won't be taken seriously until we can construct a coherent platform on these issues.
It certainly isn't necessary that everyone agree with them, but it just seems to me that we all need to listen and weigh those arguments, rather than trash the commentors and their apparent bloodlines...
This tragedy may enable a restructuring of law to better protect the helpless... or it may so harden opinions that listening and weighing goes out the window. I hope the latter is not the case, since so much work is needed to return the country to the original "road map" laid out at it's inception, and which has proven to be the best ever devised in history.
Something bad has happened here- but we're just not armed with enough "evidence" to know what to do about it.
Hi, pickrell, thanks for your post and excellent article. You are obviously not apathetic!
evidence -- don't you feel sorry for the ME? He's charged with finding on autopsy something that SHOULD have been determined in life via PET scan and by having her out and about, receiving ordinary care and therapy that michael denied her. Since when do we have to kill patients to evaluate them? or in this case, to justify killing them?
evidence -- I look at the ongoing abuse. The best evidence that something was amiss is that Terri's room was kept darkened, that she didn't have the comforts in her room all along that she had as media props at the very end (stuffed animal, flowers, pictures), that she was not allowed to get out in her wheelchair (though she'd enjoyed that in the past, acc. affidavits). And the OM just glossed right over it when the Schindlers mentioned that Terri had not had swallowing tests.
I need to express that better...for all michael's and felos' protestations that they want the world to know Terri's cognitive abilities, they denied the free flow of information and debate, the judge would not admit them as evidence or see for himself, and the OM ignored (as I saw happen myself here in Jax).
Oh, Lord, may what was hidden and **allowed to be hidden** for so many years please finally come to light.
Guess I'm too raw still . . . heaven help the freeper who has to disparage and mock those in Terri's fight rather than finding their own little niche of the culture war to fight.
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