Patrick Buchanan: "The Execution of Terri Schiavo"

WND.com ^ | 04-04-05 | Buchanan, Patrick J.

[Theodore R.]

The execution of Terri Schiavo

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: April 4, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern

© 2005 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

Terri Schiavo is dead. She did not die a natural death, unless you believe a court order to cut off food and water to a disabled woman until she dies of starvation and thirst is natural.

No, Terri Schiavo was executed by the state of Florida. Her crime? She was so mentally disabled as to be unworthy of life in the judgment of Judge George Greer. The execution was carried out at Woodside Hospice. An autopsy will reveal that Terri's vital organs shut down for lack of food and water. She did not die of the brain damage she suffered 15 years ago. She was put to death. We have crossed a watershed in America.

Michael Schiavo's argument that Greer found compelling was that this is what Terri wanted and she had told him so, though Michael never mentioned this until eight years after she was disabled.

Did Terri, at 26, really tell the man to whom she swore lifelong fidelity to find a way to kill her if she became handicapped? Is that what she had in mind when they pledged to stand by each other "in sickness and in health, 'til death do us part"?

Was Terri that different from her mom, dad, brother and sister, who fought with all they had to keep her alive so they could take care of her for all the years she had left? Why, one wonders, did this severely handicapped woman fight for two weeks against the dying of the light?

America is a great country because she is good country, and if ever she ceases to be good, she will cease to be great, Alexis de Toqueville is quoted as saying. Are we that America today? Are we the same kind of people? Would the country we grew up in have done this to a disabled woman?

Hubert Humphrey, a passionate liberal, once said, "The moral test of government is how [it] treats those who are in the dawn of life ... those who are in the twilight of life ... and those who are in the shadows of life."

In America, three in 10 in the dawn of life never see the light of day. They are destroyed in the womb because their very existence embarrasses or would encumber their parents. In the twilight of life, we have begun to provide our elderly ill with the means of assisted suicide. In Europe, euthanasia has become involuntary in some nursing homes. In the shadows of life – the sick, the needy, the handicapped – there is now in this land we once called "God's country" a chance the state will put you to death.

The motivations of the good folks praying for Terri outside the hospice one can understand. The motives of her parents one can understand. Even the motives of Michael Schiavo one can understand. He wants to be rid of Terri to start a new life with his new family.

What is inexplicable is why he did not get a divorce and let her go. What is inexplicable is the behavior of the media talking heads, who seemed so desperately anxious that the judge's ruling not be reversed and that Terri die. Why were they so pro-death?

One must not interfere in a family decision, they say. But these are the same folks who always demand interference if a father takes a belt to discipline his 14-year-old delinquent son.

This is what Terri would have wanted, they say. We have no right to interfere. But what Terri would have wanted is unclear and in dispute. And if there is disagreement, why not come down on the side of life? Why come down on the side of death, which is final and forever? Why were so many progressives on the side of death for Terri Schiavo?

Conservatives are hypocrites, they charge. The Right opposes judicial activism and preaches states' rights. But in Terri's case, the Right clamored for judicial activism and rejected states' rights.

But this is absurd. The judicial activist in Terri's case is Greer, who sentenced a brain-damaged woman to death by starvation and dehydration. If this is not judicial activism, in violation of a citizen's right to life, due process of law, and not to be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment, what is?

And what is there left to say about that angel of death, the American Civil Liberties Union? As Nat Hentoff writes, the ACLU, "which would be passionately criticizing state court decisions and demanding due process if Terri were a convict on death row, has shamefully served as co-counsel for her husband, Michael Schiavo, in his insistent desire to have her die."

But whose rights were in mortal peril here? Why was the ACLU not at the door of that hospice, denouncing Greer the way it would be at the door of a penitentiary denouncing Jeb Bush, if the ACLU even suspected an innocent man was being put to death?

We have turned a sad page in the history of America's decline.

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[Vapor3]

I want Greer to be the subject of a congressional hearing.I want him to defend his rulings in front of the country.

[drpix]

Don't forget not just Death for the Innocent but Life for the Guilty.

[nicmarlo]

TRUE JUSTICE demands it to be so.

[Aliska]

1. Sad that the critical issues are laid out so plainly in an obscure, right-wing internet publication by a right wingnut (sarcasm) Pat Buchanan who has little credibility with mainstream America and no politial viability.

2. Terri death by starvation was cruel and inhumane, but now some will push for legislation that a needle would be better because that's what almost everybody does to their dying animals.

3. This is being approached as if some people who are worse off than Terri could still justifiably be put to death by the courts. Where do we draw the line on the brain-injure and other disabled people if we are now drawing lines?

4. It's all or none with me, at least in theory. The best guidance so far has come from the Vatican; feeding tubes to them are not extraordinary. Are extraordinary means such as ventilators really extraordinary in our times or only extraordinary when the person is not likely to improve?

5. What bothers me more than anything is that I don't like to keep people alive just so they can suffer longer, nor can I in any way justify putting people to death when we have the means to prevent it. Techology has put my thinking on this in a real catch-22.

6. Art Bell (possible lunatic fringe) says his mail is running 50-50 concerning Terri.

7. Some deeply troubling moral questions. We opened Pandora's Box; it isn't going to be closed again; at best, the lid will be repositioned in some yet indetermined and nonuniform way, depending on your country, state or court system.

[hopespringseternal]

First of all, you have the death culture. These are people who want the power to end the life of anyone who is inconvenient for them and who cannot speak for themselves. As we have seen, over time their appetite for destruction will only increase.

These people either do not believe in any god at all, or believe that God's primary concern is their convenience.

Then you have the judges. They have been fully infected with the disease of liberalism, which at its heart says, "We know what's best for you." That turns justice on its head and each case is no longer decided on law and facts, but by the need of each individual judge to feel powerful and important and to impress his peers.

Novelty becomes the rule, but not novelty among the pack. The novelty is from the past, an overturning of mellenia of established human wisdom and a headlong flight into the folly of man's ego.

Rather than limiting the evil of man, they seek to license it. Rather than reforming the heart of man, they seek to "reform" good itself, to redefine good to be whatever is found in the heart of man.

And so the desire to be rid of inconvenient others, a most despicable desire, is empowered. Rather than serving our fellow man, we become his emperor and executioner. Anytime he is unable to speak his own wishes, we become false witnesses putting him to death.

These people were not shocked by the horrific crimes of Andrea Yates, they identified with her and her desire to rid herself of inconvenient others. That suggests they are not satisfied with their accomplishments so far in dealing out death.

At first glance, it would seem odd that their thirst for blood only extends to the innocent: They will move heaven and earth to spare the guilty. But really, that fits withing their perverted reality perfectly. In all their evil, they imagine themselves not just to be good, but to be paragons of virtue. They spare the guilty the rest of society has demanded a blood accounting from in order to demonstrate their greater mercy and magnanimity.

Remember that no matter what, they must differentiate themselves from society to maintain their delusion that they are better, wiser, nobler than the rest of mankind.

One of the many remarkable aspects of the Schiavo case was the attorney Felos calling a starving woman "beautiful and peaceful" and praising "the dying process." The rest of us found those remarks nonsensical, but Felos and his fellow death cultists actually believe this stuff. It is how they feed their megalomania.

[Walkure]

You are quite right about legislative and executive responses not promising so far. Jeb Bush is the poster child for non-response. He only took SAFE action. A daring man, a man driven by the Holy Spirit, would have found some quasi-legal pretext, however threadbare, to raid that hospice, rescue Terri, reinsert the tube, and give her the rehab that would have made her a thinking functioning person. All these quasi-conservatives and quasi-christians who are saying not to blame Jeb but to blame judges like Greer are no different from persons who are soaked by the rain, yet do not bother to open an umbrella.

[Calpernia]

And what is there left to say about that angel of death, the American Civil Liberties Union? As Nat Hentoff writes, the ACLU, "which would be passionately criticizing state court decisions and demanding due process if Terri were a convict on death row, has shamefully served as co-counsel for her husband, Michael Schiavo, in his insistent desire to have her die."

The Truth About The American Civil Liberties Union

[television is just wrong]

Another thing we need to throw into the mix is the fact that there are perpetrators out there after elderly's houses and bank accounts.

My next door neighbor is late 70's, blind and first her taxi cab driver from India took posession of her house, then her attorney changed paperwork and took posession of her house as well and her bank accounts. SHE OWNS NOTHING.....

[Calpernia]

>>>>Another thing we need to throw into the mix is the fact that there are perpetrators out there after elderly's houses and bank accounts.

Meet Lisa McPherson.

"The Clearwater Probate Judge, Hon. George Greer, entered an order affirming that the Estate of Lisa McPherson is entitled to attorney fees against Scientology for the appeal in Scientology's first failed attempt to remove Dell Liebreich as executor. However, the trial court denied attorney fees for the 1999 trial. That partial denial will now be appealed by the Estate. Scientology argued that the Estate was entitled to attorney fees, but only from itself! (This argument is as inexplicable as Scientology's case against Dell Liebreich for tortiously interfering with herself.)"

Rest in Peace Lisa McPherson
1959-1995

[Calpernia]

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[Calpernia]

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[Calpernia]

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[Calpernia]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1376967/posts?page=29#29

[TigersEye]

We have crossed a watershed in America.

Yes we have. The government has moved from assuming the authority to take a citizen's life without due process, ie Waco and Ruby Ridge, and taking a risk of being held to account to declaring the authority to take life and the authority to justify itself as to whether due process has occurred and the law obeyed.

The judiciary has held itself up as unaccountable to anyone or anything but its own opinions. There is no recourse to that within the system as the system itself has been ruled subserviant to the court.

The President the Congress and the people have found no fault with that made no subtantial complaint about it and there now exists no place to file a complaint.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[nw_arizona_granny]

Bump

[windchime]

The significance of Patrick Buchanan and Nat Hentoff ( both of whom usually inspire me to turn off their words) presenting a similar position on this issue of the 'court ordered' removal of hydration/nutrition by any method on this disabled American citizen requires mental gymnastics to comprehend.  Where are we when those many consider 'extremists' from diametrically opposite persuasions illustrate intelligence, rationality, logic and sanity in this matter?

Terri Schiavo: Judicial Murder  Village Voice  FR  3-29-05

[backhoe]

 

 

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Think Terry's Fight does not affect, or apply, to you?

Think again.

Got a recessive gene? Old parent or spouse? Handicapped child?

At what point do they become "a useless Eater"-- like Terry?

All you geezers that moved to Florida for low taxes & mild weather? You're next...

Just as the Pope predicted, we have become a Cult of Death--

 

To access the entire database of links we have ( some going back to 2003 ), click these:

 SCHIAVO; TERRISCHIAVO;  EUTHANASIA;  

 

 

• End judicial tyranny! Join FR's March for Justice!
• Latest News on Terri Schiavo
• Useless Eaters vs The Death Cult
• http://www.theempirejournal.com/

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[floriduh voter]

Beyond sad, it's heinous. Some of the Fla Legislature GOP women who voted for Terri to be MURDERED are weeping now. Why? Because they've been called murderers. If the shoe fits, wear it, I say.

[Regulator]

The FL state court basically told the legislature that they could not amend what they had created, since the court had ruled on the original law, saying "it was an attempt to interfere in a judicial ruling". The court seems to have developed an irrational affection for the original form of the law, thus overstepping their authority in proclaiming it could not be modified, simply on the basis that they had made a ruling on the original form. They do not seem to realize that their only purpose is to assure that all laws are compatible with the state constitution, not whether the court likes one form of a law better than a modified one. The FL courts are WAY out of line on this

Another in a long line of extremely important points in this heinous case.

Not only did we have judicial overstepping on the part of Judge Greer (the first county probate judge to decide that he has the power of execution in a civil case), but we once again saw the infamous and arrogant Florida Supreme Court (of "we have jurisdiction" fame in 2000) jump in to assert the rather strange notions you just mentioned: that once ruled on, a law may not change. Gosh, any other orders to the legislature, guys 'n gals? Or can we just be good little legislators and go home now?