Posted on 06/19/2005 8:19:40 PM PDT by CHARLITE
Just when it seemed that every liberal commentator on the Terri Schiavo case was starting to sound like Barney Frank, the great Joan Didion published a long and remarkable article on the case in the quite far left New York Review of Books of June 9. Frank, of course, took the occasion of last week's Schiavo autopsy results as yet another opportunity to denounce Republicans as "this fanatical party willing to impose its own views on people."
For those of you still somehow unaware, "imposing their views" is a semiofficial Democratic meme or code phrase meaning "religious people who vote their moral views and disagree with us." Didion, on the other hand, cut through all the rhetoric about imposing views and said the struggle to spare Schiavo's life was "essentially a civil rights intervention." This is a phrase of great clarity, particularly since Democrats have a long track record of protecting civil rights and Republicans don't. Behind the grotesque media circus, the two parties were essentially switching roles. In the first round of public opinion--the polls--the GOP took a beating. But in the long run, the American people tend to rally behind civil rights, and the party that fights to uphold them is likely to prevail.
On the "rational" or "secular" side of the dispute, Didion wrote, there was "very little acknowledgment that there could be large numbers of people, not all of whom could be categorized as 'fundamentalists' or 'evangelicals,' who were genuinely troubled by the ramifications of viewing a life as inadequate and so deciding to end it." Amen. There was also little admission that this was a "merciful euthanasia" controversy posing as a "right to die" case. Many of us understood, as the autopsy has now shown, that Schiavo was severely damaged, but a national psychodrama built around the alleged need to end a life without clear consent is likely to induce anxieties in all but the most dedicated right-to-die adherents.
"The ethical argument" Didion did not conclude that ending Schiavo's life was a wrongful act, but she seemed to be leaning that way. She wrote: "What might have seemed a central argument in this case--the ethical argument, the argument about whether, when it comes to life and death, any of us can justifiably claim the ability or the right to judge the value of any other being's life--remained largely unexpressed, mentioned, when at all, only to be dismissed."
That issue was slurred and muffled by the media and by shrewd, though completely misleading, right-to-die arguments that distracted us from the core issue of consent. George Felos, the attorney of Terri Schiavo's husband, Michael, told Larry King, "Quality of life is one of those tricky things because it's a very personal and individual decision. I don't think any of us have the right to make a judgment about quality of life for another."
Here Felos piously got away with adopting a deadly argument against his own position by presenting it as somehow bolstering his case. This can happen only when the media are totally incurious or already committed to your side. Michael Schiavo made a somewhat similar eye-popping argument to King: "I think that every person in this country should be scared. The government is going to trample all over your private and personal matters. It's outrageous that these people that we elect are not letting you have your civil liberties to choose what you want when you die." Americans were indeed scared that they might one day be in Terri Schiavo's predicament.
But Michael was speaking as though Terri Schiavo's wishes in the matter were clear and Republicans were determined to trample them anyway. Yet her wishes, as Didion says, were "essentially unconfirmable" and based on bits of hearsay reported by people whose interests were not obviously her own--Michael Schiavo and two of his relatives.
One hearsay comment--"no tubes for me" --came while Terri Schiavo was watching television. "Imagine it," Didion wrote. "You are in your early 20s. You are watching a movie, say on Lifetime, in which someone has a feeding tube. You pick up the empty chip bowl. 'No tubes for me,' you say as you get up to fill it. What are the chances you have given this even a passing thought?" According to studies cited last year in the Hastings Center Report, Didion reminds us, almost a third of written directives, after periods as short as two years, no longer reflect the wishes of those who made them. And here nothing was written down at all.
The autopsy confirms the extraordinary damage to Schiavo and discredits those who tried to depict the husband as a wife-beater. But the autopsy has nothing to say about the core moral issue: Do people with profound disabilities no longer have a right to live? That issue is still on the table.
Well, we know one thing for certain.
Greer didn't bother to meet with Terri, to determine how she felt about being starved and dehydrated.
I wonder what he would have learned from Terri, a few days into her starvation...
"[Nancy Cruzan, three days before her death from starvation]
turned and looked at me and stared at me with
a panicky look, sweating profusely,
and the thought I had was, she was thinking,
‘Oh, here’s a policeman, he’ll help me.’
But we weren’t allowed to do that,"...
Doug Seneker
I don't believe Randal thought such a law would pass...and he's probably right.
"The right to die people care not about the truth of their claims as long as the right people die."
I notice the "right to die" types won't do unto themselves as they would and have done unto others.
But if I don't want to live that way, butt out."
The above, for you, is the crux of the issue, and the motivation for the emotional, irrational stand regarding Terri's case you chose to take, despite the facts.
In otherwords, Terri's case was all about YOU!
Interesting.
"I thrive on it."
Pretty sick.
"I would hate to be in Terri's predicament, and have a hostile former husband, whose neutrality was blatantly compromised, decide that I should be put to death, on the basis of a quick, superficial remark I might have made when I was 22."
Yep.
Sadly, your logic will not persuade the death cultists on this thread.
Are you referring to my questioning why it is that
All were Schiavo's who "suddenly" remembered these remarks seven years AFTER Terri's mysterious collapse and AFTER her husband got the money. All those suddenly remembered remarks were casual, passing comments which were NOT uttered after serious reflection and consideration.
Two other people, one who had NO conflict of interest, testified to casual remarks Terri made which stated the exact OPPOSITE position. You NEVER mention them. Quite disingenuous of you.
"In otherwords, Terri's case was all about YOU!"
You nailed it!
"Are you referring to my questioning why it is that
All three "no tubes for Terri" testifiers had the last name "Schiavo""
I got it the first time.
Everybody knows what you're saying.
If you don't want to live that way - all you have to do is write a Living Will spelling it out. Terri did not have that and there was a 50% chance she did not want to die. And, we should always err on the side of life rather than the side of death.
And, dear friend, money is not the determining factor of life. Sure people will die if they do not get to the hospital, do not buy the drugs. But money must never be part of the criteria whereby a decision is made to terminate a life. (Even though I feel it is wrong to make a decision to terminate a non-dying life)
If money is the determining factor - get rid of all charity hospitals, all medicare, all medicaid. And, if you are a libertarian that will be exactly what you wish.
bump
She made five (5) similar remarks to three people on five different occasions. All three testified under oath, in a court of law, under penalty of perjury, and subject to cross examination, to that effect.
___Basically unconfirmable testimony. The judge simply decided to accept those views. He could have easily ruled another way.
I regard this as a test case for
true conservative values. Anyone who supports the Michael Schiavo position is a not a conservative, in my opinion, because when there is doubt, such a decision should be resolved in favor of life.
That is how disrespectful and irreverent we have become aobut LIFE. That emotionally reactive, casual, superficial comments (that may never have been uttered) which were countered by simlar comments reflecting an opposite opinion, should be the basis for STARVING and DEHYDRATING a person to death.
Who in Florida put these laws on the books? The scientologists? The euthanasists? Are you a member of either of those organizations? I want to know who is given the authority to write laws allowing citizens to be killed.
I will bet there was never any attempt to do as the people wished - these laws were written by someone deciding for them based on the views of that someone.
And, how you would wish to live has absolutely no bearing on what Terri might want.
And we have been told that 1/3 of those with Living Wills find that in 2 years their views have changed. And, if you look at life, you will see that there is a natural instinct to live and it does not depend on the state of life.
My mother was in a nursing home and had said all her life that she did not want to live when she could not take care of herself - over and over. Well, when she could do absolutely nothing for herself and had dementia, I asked what she would want if something happened to her heart. Would she want them to try and save her at her age?
Her answer? "Well, yes, anyone would I guess."
So, your younger view of what you would want when you are 80 has no correlation to what you will actually want at 80 as it denies the fact that man has an ability to adapt to his circumstances same as the animal kingdom does.
You no longer want to go shopping, to go on trips, to flaunt from party to party. It is no longer any fun doing those things. Now, at 80, you enjoy your comforts, the peace of your room and watching your shows.
But, everyone deserves the right to enjoy what they can of each stage of life. God created us with the capability of adaptation to our circumstances.
And the immature wisdom of the young cannot judge the value of a life or what a life will wish in its later years.
yep
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