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The first part of your response was simply throwing words around. However, you did refer to your impression of reality in the latter part, so I will respond.

I have not seen but a couple of the Schiavo tapes. But the ones that I saw, were ones that the family claimed showed her responding. Frankly, she did not appear to be as responsive as even a two month old baby, much less a two to four year old.

But the real point of my essay, and the real point that you choose to ignore is that we have a system of local justice in America--one of the principles fought for in the Revolution--and you refuse to accept the result, simply because it doesn't fit your spectator notion of what the result should have been. If you do not see how quickly this type of reasoning leads to absolute anarchy, where no body respects anyone else's legal rights--one of the ideas you claim to agree is important, at least by implication--you are simply too focused on your own immediate perceptions.

Again, I am not going to try to repeat the whole article, endlessly. My essay touches upon many of the things that you express concern over, and tries to put them into a broader context, both legal, historic, cultural and ethical. It won't, I am sure, convince you, when you can redefine words the way that you did at the beginning of your post, but it is at Terry Schiavo.

Frankly, she did not appear to be as responsive as even a two month old baby, much less a two to four year old.

Maybe so. There are a variety of opinions. But, no matter which opinion you hold, I do not see how the physical condition of a citizen of this land who has not been found guilty of a capital offense would somehow invalidate what had heretofore been taken to be an unalienable right. Let me ask the legal theorists here this question: is the right of a person to live under what are arguably difficult circumstances, absent criminality, subject to government dispensation? IOW, does a person's (perhaps profound) physical impairment invalidate their right to life, or does it become merely a case of Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens?

"The first part of your response was simply throwing words around."

Stating that murder, killing, forced euthanasia is wrong and should never be a private family matter is hardly throwing words around.

The law in Florida, right now, might read that you can murder a person in Terri's shape but that doesn't mean it's right.

The Nazi's had laws about murdering innocents, too, and Nuremburg has shown that one can't commit crimes against humanity or crimes of murder and say that one is just following orders or that it was the law so it's ok.

You know - you can talk all day long about what mental age Terri was, that she had no brain or whatever. It does not change the fact that we do not kill.

We don't have the authority to judge the worth of other's lives. And, even though we judge it, we sure are not authorized to kill it.

Now, call me radical - but I don't believe it is very wise for man to start on the road to judging other's ability to live on earth. It is cruel, inhuman, and insures that man will seek ever more souls to make judgements on. To me, this is the beginning of horror.

And, it is the beginning of nazism by another name - "I would not want to live like that" judgements, euthanasia, or just plain killing.

And, I have every right to speak up about it. Sorry you think it is radical - but I think you are totally unable to see what is going on here (for whatever reason) or you are in agreement with what is going on in Florida.