Posted on 04/04/2005 9:37:47 AM PDT by Jim W N
I have to give my left-wing friends some credit. They are really good at making up touchy-feely names for some really bad ideas. Whether it is “contributions” as a word for tax increases, or “protection of the environment” to justify complete and total control over your property and business, or “investments” for out of control government spending (e.g. “I want to invest in our schools for our children” is another way of saying “I want to steal your money, give it to the teachers’ union bosses, who will then give it back to me, so I can stay in power, and use the kids as the excuse for the whole scheme.”), the lefties in this country can come up with really pretty sounding titles for extremely dangerous concepts.
Take the so-called “Death with Dignity” idea being tossed around California these days and introduced into our legislature as AB 654. The lefties sell it as a “compassionate” means of dealing with “end of life” decisions. People should be left with the “choice” to bring a “swift and painless” end to a “full and complete life.” It is a “courageous” choice, which should be “overseen” by a “licensed professional” who will fully evaluate whether the person who wants this “humane” end to his or her “tortured existence” is competent to reach this very “personal and emotional” decision.
For all the pretty words, “death with dignity” is just a nice way of saying we just wish the old, the disabled, the mentally ill, or anyone with more than normal problems would just spare us all the trouble and kill themselves. We’ll give them the pills, we’ll find them a doctor who will convince them they would be better off dead, and then we’ll make sure they off themselves quickly and painlessly.
Everywhere it has been authorized; this form of “voluntary euthanasia” has turned houses of healing into killing fields. In the Netherlands, many of the aged and/or infirm will not go into a hospital out of fear that the doctors in those hospitals will order their deaths. In Oregon, in the two short years that their “compassionate” statute has been in effect, there have been five documented cases of people who died under suspicious circumstances using this statute.
About 30 years ago, a court held, in the case of Karen Ann Quinlan, that medical care could be withheld from a comatose patient. Twenty years ago, a court held that food and water are medical treatment, and a person can refuse that treatment if he or she is mentally competent. Today, we have hospitals and hospices essentially requiring people to terminate food and water “treatments” on the grounds that helping some people would just be futile (read “too expensive” in the era of managed care). What was once an “individual choice” has turned into a medical mandate requiring the old and the infirm to forego treatment that can alleviate or cure the symptoms of a disease.
In 1933, Joseph Goebbels produced a movie in Nazi Germany extolling the virtues of “death with dignity.” Six years later, in the midst of the war, to “save money” the German government built a number of gas chambers which were then used to euthanize the physically and mentally disabled. Three years after that, those same gas chambers were used to solve the “Jewish” problem in Germany. Our country has rejected euthanasia and “death with dignity” for the last 70 years for a reason. History has taught us that these concepts have been used by governments throughout this world to justify the most horrible injustices that people have ever visited upon their fellow human beings. It is always sold as an instrument of freedom, and it always ends of as a tool of terror.
Sounds good to me. Lets start with Robert Byrd, Ted Kennedy, Feinstein, Boxer, yadda yadda.
Now what was it Ann Coulter said? "Liberals can't just come out and say they want to kill babies, steal your money and grow government."
Ironic, but isn't it always the leftists who claim that conseratives and/or Republicans want to starve old and handicapped people?
Sad thing is my youngest daughter thinks it's "ok" for a
man to tell his girlfriend to get an abortion because they can't afford another baby (he's in school) But her older sister has had her baby instead o f getting an abortion.When we began killing babies we lost all right to
any national future.
-“Death with Dignity” “compassionate” “end of life” “swift and painless” “full and complete life” “courageous”“overseen” “licensed professional” “humane” “tortured existence” “personal and emotional”-
Lefties really do speak in quotation marks. I think English-only doesn't go far enough - look at what they do with it. We need an American language.
If my Grandfather who has cancer and is 85 was to have died the last time he was hospitalized by the hands of Euthansia advocates than he wouldn't still be alive today walking through his garden making sure the Tomotoes are growing, the green beans are turning green, and he wouldn't be making his Strawberry Peach Jam he makes from fresh strawberries and Peaches her grows in his Orchard. These are things that he does that he enjoy's, and I love to see him do them as well. I have a few jars of the jam now in my fridge.
Old people have purpose and God still uses them. It is not for man to decide when they need to go, it is God's decision.
Great article.
Well said. Reading your post made me miss my grandfather something terribly. Thanks for bringing back those priceless memories.
YEAH! And the ugly and stupid too!
Illustrating absurdity by being absurd doesn't work when the illustrator truly is absurd.
Amen to that.
Ditto that. My grandfather went to the hospital for heart failure a couple of months ago and the doctors there intended to let him die because he was 89 years old and not worth their effort, apparently. It was only having many family members keep constant supervision and constantly questioning treatment decisions that kept him alive. Now he's in rehab doing just fine and a week from being back to normal.
Of course, suicide is not a dignified, or moral, way to end one's life.
Throw in welfare recipients, famine stricken areas, etc, because without help, these people wouldn't survive either.
Darn good expression of what is going on, as well as a darn good unmasking of the buzzwords. I'd add, as some of the buzzwords, "It's legal," and "Judicially determined."
#11 - and s/he is.
GREAT post.
And they don't even get a whiff of the irony.
Of course, the policy now is to give the benefit of the doubt to death. This preference for death over life inevitably leads to the final solution.
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