[expatguy]

An American Expat in Southeast Asia

[MarMema]

Thank you, well done!

[TruthFactor]

Well said and PING.

[Newshound2036]

Good post. People are horrified all over the world about this case. What if it was you they wanted to kill?

[nuconvert]

"Why does your country not just give Terri Schiavo a lethal injection or simply put a bullet in her brain?"


An Iranian friend of mine asked that too.
The original question was, "Why are you killing that woman in Florida?" "Why doesn't Pres. Bush stop that"?
And when I tried to explain about law, the lethal injection question came up. Needless to say, the answers I tried to give made no sense to my friend. They don't make any sense to me either.

[sockmonkey]

Thanks. I'm not sure how we got to this point in our history, but we've crossed a line..

I was thinking about the uproar over thalidomide babies, and how that was fuel for the argument for abortion.

How little by little, over a period of time, a group was able to change people's opinions on abortion, and we crossed a line, and 44 million aborted lives later something that was touted as an avenue of relief for cases where there was incest, rape, severe mental or physical handicap of an unborn child has now become acceptable for any reason or for no reason.

When Kenneth Cole ran his ad showing a woman holding one of his purses with the caption, "After all, it's a woman's right to choose." it pretty much showed how low we'd gone.
When one's catchy advertising slogans equate human life with a handbag, we've crossed a line.

On to the next threshold:

I think this one started out framed as "quality of life", and then, "death with dignity", and "right to die"...They can stop the PR campaign now. It seems our legal system, and most of the American Public has jumped on board.

And just like the destination for some of those chosen to board Hitler's trains, the next stop is going to be as sad, and as far reaching for some of the most vulnerable in America.

Please excuse the lack of cohesion in my reply. I am overwhelmed at what I am witnessing in my Country.

[RottiBiz]

Outstanding post! Thanks.

I am horrified and sickened by the judicial activism that is killing innocent Terri by supporting a man -- a husband in name only -- who wants her dead.

Judge Greer's order to have Terri's feeding tube removed and also forbidding the oral administration (a natural process) of even a drop of water by mouth, is the essence of evil.

My heart breaks for Terri and her family and my prayers go out to them.

My heart breaks for our country, too.

[AZ_Cowboy]

Thank you for the post. I am very disappointed to see things going as they are with this case. It is amzaing to me that our legal system has decided to uphold this whole thing as "her wishes" despite the fact that this claim remains without any form of documented support. That is a disturbing trend for me. Apparently, what you say really can kill you now. Heck, someone can just say you said it and it can still kill you!

[ARCADIA]

Amen!

[sheikdetailfeather]

Well done and so sadly true.

[Tolik]

expatguy: (permalink: http://laotze.blogspot.com/2005/03/moral-sovereignty-and-americas-foreign.html)

...When a great nation such as ours starts to dehumanize individuals in the way that Terri Schiavo has and is being dehumanized in an organized effort to justify and rationalize the killing off of those members of our society who are sick, disabled, no longer productive, "have worthless lives or lives not worth living" or "wish to die" then we have lost the moral high ground.

When great men stand by and mumble to themselves "...Well the courts have decided" and do nothing as an omnipotent judiciary and corrupted court system misuses the law to legitimize atrocities committed against our fellow man, then we have truly fallen as a people.

Human rights are those we possess by virtue of being human. They are God given rights, natural rights, i.e., rights we possess by nature, not by law. They are not rights granted to us by any government, and so they cannot be taken away by any government, regardless of what laws it may pass and what degree of violence it may employ to enforce its laws.

.....What right do we have now to excoriate others? What right do we have to speak out against human rights abuses around the globe?

....If China decides to put a bullet in the brain of all their retarded school children tomorrow, what can we say or do?

Nailed It!
Moral Clarity BUMP !

This ping list is not author-specific for articles I'd like to share. Some for perfect moral clarity, some for provocative thoughts; or simply interesting articles I'd hate to miss myself. (I don't have to agree with the author 100% to feel the need to share an article.) I will try not to abuse the ping list and not to annoy you too much, but on some days there is more of good stuff that is worthy attention. I keep separate PING lists for my favorite authors Victor Davis Hanson, Lee Harris, David Warren, Orson Scott Card. You are welcome in or out, just freepmail me (and note which PING list you are talking about).

[lainde]

Beautifully said...Kudos!

[snowsislander]

When a great nation such as ours starts to dehumanize individuals in the way that Terri Schiavo has and is being dehumanized in an organized effort to justify and rationalize the killing off of those members of our society who are sick, disabled, no longer productive, "have worthless lives or lives not worth living" or "wish to die" then we have lost the moral high ground.

I don't think this case shows flaws in our national character. Our president and the governor of Florida have not espoused this killing; our Congress has not espoused this killing; a large percentage of Florida's legislature are against it.

It is disappointing that a probate judge in Florida can sentence a woman to death by starvation, and in the process of executing her ignore Congressional subpoena and can command the Pinellas County Sheriff to defy the executive branch of Florida.

Those extraordinary actions themselves were not the rule of law: they were rule by judge. But those actions had their origin in a simple problem: Florida has a law on the books that is unconstitutional. It allows for the state of Florida to deprive citizens of life without due process.

I have heard people comment that this is somehow a states rights case, as if states somehow have a right to kill their citizens at their own pleasure. The states do not have such a right. Citizens are guaranteed by the 5th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution due process when they are deprived of life. Florida's law abridges that by providing an expedited process to terminate life.

However bad this law is, it takes an over-the-top and out-of-control judge to take it to this point. The safeguards, extraordinary as they were in some cases, were invoked because of an extraordinary danger: a probate judge in a guardianship case who decided to use this power to improperly terminate a life. When the injustice of this was pointed out by the parents of the individual, this judge stubbornly refused to listen to reason; the review process for his decision was not designed as one to be a review of a capital case; the only safeguards left were legislative and executive intervention, because the judicial mechanisms that were being invoked were the wrong ones to handle a capital case.

While this is lamentable, and does not show our best face, it is not a condemnation of our government at large, or our leaders at large. It may show weaknesses in our distribution of power; it may show how a law designed for one reason had a provision that give it an entirely different complexion in the hands of a bad actor; it may show that our wheels of justice sometimes grind too slowly to save individuals, but I don't believe that it shows that our country has somehow taken on a new and evil face.