Posted on 03/28/2005 7:09:05 AM PST by amdgmary
By the time you read this, Terri Schiavo may well be dead, and America will have taken the next step down the road to democide. While the brothers Bush may not have found it within their executive powers to prevent a woman from being legally starved to death, they did manage to con an entire nation into thinking that they did not act because they could not.
This is most unfortunate, because it is quite clear that neither George Bush nor his brother Jeb ever had any intention of saving Mrs. Schiavo from death by starvation. Like Pontius Pilate, they engaged in meaningless political machinations intended to deflect the blame from themselves while pretending that they were helpless to act. A simple executive order from either man would have sufficed to see the woman fed; the notion that the president has too much respect for either the 10th Amendment or the separation of powers doctrine to act is simply laughable.
For you see, George Bush has yet to veto a single law on the grounds that it requires exercising a power not specifically granted to the United States by the Constitution; instead, he has lobbied hard for many such unconstitutional laws. The Constitution gives the federal government no power with regards to children being left behind, for example. And every IRS tax court, every Justice Department immigration court, is a far greater violation of the separation of powers than the insertion of a feeding tube into a starving woman's stomach.
As for Jeb Bush, it's hard to know precisely what his position is since he's been hiding out ever since the Florida Legislature decided that it's down with offing the disabled. Considering the number of elderly concentrated in the Sunshine State, you'd think the Florida voting public would be paranoid about anything that might conceivably lead toward eradicating the useless eaters of society, but then, I suppose someone's got to play on all those golf courses.
Which leads us to what this affair is really all about. This is not a Democrat or Republican thing – many of the pro-starvation judges have been Republican appointees – it is a demographic thing. Already, the elderly soak up a staggering amount of national resources, as the blessings of technology allow them to live longer while turning them into wrinkled chemical cyborgs. This would be unobjectionable to anyone, except for the fact that the elderly are not paying for most of the expense of their much-needed medical treatments, and they are collecting Social Security for many more years than anyone previously envisioned.
The move to health maintenance organizations 20 years ago essentially sealed the doom of the elderly. It is already a well-established fact that when the health of an individual is at odds with the profitability of these government-mandated corporations, the individual is out of luck. This trade-off, writ large, serves as an example of what we can expect to see over the next 30 years when the "right to die" will become the "responsibility to die" and quality of life becomes a legal question to be determined by Department of Health bureaucrats instead of a pallid excuse to justify high taxes in certain locales.
It won't happen overnight. Schiavo simply represents the first nibbling about the margins. But soon will come the Fox News debates about the terminally ill and the mentally disabled – if an Alzheimer's patient can't even recognize his own daughter, is he really there anymore? It's customary to dismiss slippery slopes as a false form of hypothesis, but when there's both historical and international models that are obviously being followed, we're no longer talking about possibilities, we're looking at time frames.
And eventually they'll get around to the cripples and the Jews. This is an inspired evil that stems from a supernatural source whose inhuman goals are always the same: death, division and destruction. If you don't see how these things connect, recall that it was Jesus Christ who said: "I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me."
Keep that in mind the next time you're trying to decide if your government is on the side of the angels or not.
If Terri herself had asked to have the tube removed, or if Terri had put her hands to the tube and pulled it out, I MIGHT agree.
I MIGHT also have just solved my retirement problems. I will build a 10 story building with an enclosed backyard that is completely covered in concrete. I will then sell 1-way tickets to the roof. I would expect NOBODY to interfere with the private decisions of those who buy the tickets.
The guys who collect the remains and cremate them would be part of the ticket price.
Shalom.
And Soylent Green. It's your responsibility to die for the common good.
If Michael had never popped up and said, "She would have wanted to die," would her wishes have been clear?
Shalom.
Regardless, I still maintain that Democrats would have had a political heyday as a result, with the backing of a media that manipulates facts on a whim.
It would not have boded well for us.
Since the Gov. has demonstrated his lack of confidence in the State of FL and called in the Feds over a week ago I think you're on shaky ground. What better signal that a State has lost its Constitutional bearings than a call for help from the Chief Executive Officer?
"I'm not sure we can get it done here in Florida," Martinez quoted (Gov.) Bush as saying just after a new Schiavo measure stalled in the Florida Legislature. "Do whatever you can federally."
For instance, the judicial branch of the government chose to ignore the direct law passed by congress. Not the same problem as Germany at all.
If you wish to avoid another circumstance where a Halocaust can take place, you must preserve the law and use that law to eliminate that possibility. Asking our executive to actually become like Hitler and ignore the law will not accomplish that.
Another quick thought I failed to address in my last post - who's to say?
Who's to say that, in this period of time where people are conditioned to believe that the courts are the law that the local police would not have interpretted an order by the Executive as an unlawful order, regardless of its constitutionality?
I think it was a showdown best avoided.
I too, and my will says keep me alife till the insurance companies cry uncle and then more. Has onyone read any articles on the blogs about contributions from insurance co. to official in the Shiavo case?
If Terri had signed a living will I might agree that you have no standing.
However, I agree with you that it is mind-boggling that the courts don't just tell Michael, "Look, as far as you're concerned, she's dead. Even if she ever comes out of it we will not let her approach you for a penny nor a moment of your time. We'll protect you from any hint you ever had a wife before your current babe. Her parents are taking over."
They want her, but he doesn't. Because he is her guardian, he has the sole say. She is unwanted and, thus, must die.
Every invalid a wanted invalid.
Shalom.
Based on what I am hearing this is already taking place. What about the cost (moral and monetary) of what I believe brought us to this place in history--organ donation?
Frankenstein medicine! Plug all into life-support because hospitals are required to ask if you want to donate organs of your loved ones.
Ditto, here.
Vox rocks.
I take your points seriously with all due respect. If the consequences of inaction here didn't carry such enormous implications of the destruction of the right framework of Constitutional government I would be less inclined to hope for great risks to be taken. This is pivotal. Whichever way it goes it will be very difficult to swing the pendulum back. The course to be decided is whether we stand on the ground that a human being has a right to be treated as a human being in all circumstances or is it conditional to popular opinion?
Come 2008, this whole thing will be largely forgotten. Count on it.
They will anyway.
The only requirement for Evil to succeed is that good men do nothing.
It's not you, but I've been in far too many situations where those who have right on their side are afraid to act because "we can't win."
Where is Don Quixote when you need him?
To dream, the impossible dream.
To fight the unbeatable foe.
To bear with unbearable sorrows.
To run where the brave dare not go.
To right the unrightable wrong.
To love pure and chaste from afar.
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star.
This is my quest to follow that star,
No matter how hopeless, no matter how far.
To fight for the right without question or pause.
To be willing to march into Hell for a Heavenly cause.
And I know if I'll only be true to this glorious quest
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm when I'm laid to my rest.
And the world will be better for this
That one man, scorned, and covered with scars
Still strove, with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star.
Words by Joe Darion (emphasis mine).
Shalom.
Didja know they are working on a re-make?
Good point, I never looked at it that way. Thanks.
Asking our Executive to oppose the judge who had already begun to act like Hitler would not be a problem, IMHO.
True, the Executive could take it too far. Then we would have a similar problem to the one we have now, just with a different branch. I think, however, we could have counted on the current holder of that office to not take it too far.
Apparently, that wasn't the problem.
Shalom.
Logan's Run, where everyone over 30 or so was put to death, mandated by the state.
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