The War on Terri Part XVIII

How long can this poor, suffering soul endure?

I never thought I'd say this, but thank you, Jesse Jackson, for doing the right thing:

Jackson said he asked Michael Schiavo for permission to see the brain-damaged woman but was denied. George Felos, Michael Schiavo's attorney, declined comment.

Jackson also telephoned black legislators in a last-ditch effort to bring back a bill that would prohibit severely brain-damaged patients from being denied food and water if they didn't express their wishes in writing. Lawmakers rejected the legislation earlier this month and appeared unlikely to reconsider it.

One of those contacted by Jackson, Democratic state Sen. Gary Siplin, said he told Jackson the issue had been "thoroughly discussed." Senate Democratic leader Les Miller added, "I have voted. It's time to move on."

George Neumayr sums up the outrage better than almost anyone:

Consent" was perhaps the liberal media's favorite big lie over the weekend. This won't lead to killing the disabled and elderly unless they consent, went the lie. Anybody who believes this should count up the number of unborn children who have been aborted without their consent. Those saying, "This is what Terri wanted," are obviously saying, "This is what we want for her." Juan Williams on Fox, hot under the collar after panelists questioned his essential let's-kill-the-disabled position, fell back on the consent sophistry: I don't recall him ever worrying about the lack of consent in the million-plus abortions each year. It is a little late in the game for liberals to say that they are opposed to killing without consent

On PBS Bonnie Erbe, who is one liberal willing to be openly crass, bluntly asked her panelists why people with a low "quality of life" should continue to drain public health resources. Erbe's question will become commonplace. Under liberalism in America "the right to die" will rapidly become a duty to die: for the sake of liberal utopia, the disabled and elderly will be pressured into becoming accomplices to their own murders. Let the disabled bury the disabled. Life is for the living. That's the spirit of liberalism at this point.

Euthanasia has never been about ending the burdens of the ill but about ending the burdens of the living who don't want to care for the ill. It is not about "letting die" -- the media's dishonest description of what's happening to Schiavo -- but about killing someone who isn't dying but people wish would die.

That's the crux of it, isn't it?

Terri Schiavo offends us merely by continuing to live. She is utterly dependent upon her fellow man, unable to complete the most minor task, not even able to communicate with us. She is essentially useless, a drain on our money, medical resources, and energy. She is an affront to us, a constant indictment of our mortality.

Is this view of Terri Schiavo that much different than the Nazi view of the disabled? Did they not generate the same weak justifications for removing these undesirables from society?

This is why the Schiavo case causes such repulsion on the Right---we have seen the arguments Michael Schiavo and his supporters are making many times before, whether advanced by Nazi, Bolshevik, or Democrat.

Ben Stein recognizes this pattern:

I wonder if a poll of Aryan Germans would have found a majority who cared enough to pull a lever to save the Jews. I suspect a good majority -- voting in total secrecy, of course -- would have said, "Let them die. They're inferior and not worth providing food for." So now we are at that level.

But when Terri Schiavo is with her Maker let's be clear what happened: she was executed by the culture of death judiciary, the same ones who say no baby has a right to live until he's out of the womb by a few days -- and you can bet that's going to change so that babies who are less than perfect will soon be sentenced to death, too. She was executed, despite having committed no crime whatsoever, by thugs in black robes who would not know a law if it were on their breakfast plate.

This is what we have come to. The unelected judiciary has simply taken over, like a gangster governmental branch, from the rest of the government, and it is a judiciary of death. And this is with a Republican, right to life president. When a Democrat wins again, as will surely happen, God help us.

God won't help us if we've turned our back on the Terri Schiavos among us, the frail human beings who need our succor and care. Why should God help us when we won't help them?

David Klinghoffer wonders why more Jews don't see the hand of Hitlerism in this.

Nat Hentoff of The Village Voice is an atheist, and even he recoils in horror at this case and the callous treatment of it in the American media:

Greer has declared Terri Schiavo to be in a persistent vegetative state, but he has never gone to see her. His eyesight is very poor, but surely he could have visited her along with another member of his staff. Unlike people in a persistent vegetative state, Terri Schiavo is indeed responsive beyond mere reflexes.

While lawyers and judges have engaged in a minuet of death, the American Civil Liberties Union, 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.

Months ago, in discussing this case with ACLU executive director Anthony Romero, and later reading ACLU statements, I saw no sign that this bastion of the Bill of Rights has ever examined the facts concerning the egregious conflicts of interest of her husband and guardian Michael Schiavo, who has been living with another woman for years, with whom he has two children, and has violated a long list of his legal responsibilities as her guardian, some of them directly preventing her chances for improvement. Judge Greer has ignored all of them.

In February, Florida's Department of Children and Families presented Judge Greer with a 34-page document listing charges of neglect, abuse, and exploitation of Terri by her husband, with a request for 60 days to fully investigate the charges. Judge Greer, soon to remove Terri's feeding tube for the third time, rejected the 60-day extension. (The media have ignored these charges, and much of what follows in this article.)

Michael Schiavo, who says he loves and continues to be devoted to Terri, has provided no therapy or rehabilitation for his wife (the legal one) since 1993. He did have her tested for a time, but stopped all testing in 1993. He insists she once told him she didn't want to survive by artificial means, but he didn't mention her alleged wishes for years after her brain damage, while saying he would care for her for the rest of his life.

Is there a more disgraceful trio of Americans than Michael Schiavo, Judge Greer, and George Felos? They are the Unholy Trinity of American Decadence: the faithless husband, the merciless judge, the lawless lawyer.

National Review Editor Rich Lowry pulls back the facade evil has built:

A woman who might (or might not) be in a persistent vegetative state, but who is otherwise not ill and can continue to live for years despite her profound disability, is dying because we are refusing to give her sustenance. We are affirmatively ending her life, perhaps against her will, because there is no way now to know her will. Supporters of this act feel compelled to try to pretty it up.

They say that Terri is being “allowed to die.” No. She is being made to die. All across America, in hospitals, mental wards, and institutions for the severely disabled, there are people who, if we withdrew our care for them, would die. We wouldn’t call this “allowing” them to die. We would call it scandalous neglect.

George Felos, the lawyer for Terri’s husband, Michael, explains his position in the case thusly: “I firmly believe in the right of individuals to make their own medical-treatment choices.” But Terri is not making her medical choices. Choices are being made for her, perhaps (if you believe Michael Schiavo) on the basis of things she said a decade ago, perhaps (if you don’t) in the absence of any stated preference.

After visiting her bedside recently, Felos declared, “In all the years I’ve seen Mrs. Schiavo, I’ve never seen such a look of peace and beauty upon her.” Maybe Felos has forgotten: If she is indeed in a persistent vegetative state, as he maintains, she can’t feel anything, let alone a sense of peace that would make her radiant with beauty.

One expert told the New York Times that “no one is denying this woman food and water.” Really? Then why is she dying? Is it merely a coincidence that she might experience kidney failure from dehydration at any time?

This expert’s argument is that, since she is in a persistent vegetative state, she has “no knowledge of food.” By this logic it would be morally acceptable to suffocate her with a pillow since she has “no knowledge of air.” She could be dropped out of a 15-story window because she has “no knowledge of gravity.” She could be shot because she has “no knowledge of ballistics.”

If so many Americans favor what is being done to Terri Schiavo by such a strong majority, why are such euphemisms necessary? Why do those who want her to die have to resort to such distortions? Why can't we set up the Death Cam on C-SPAN and enjoy the ongoing spectacle of a woman's triumphant death with dignity?

Ann Coulter, as always, gets right to the heart of the matter (no permalink):

Greer has cut off the legal rights of Terri's real family and made her husband (now with a different family) her sole guardian, citing as precedent the landmark "Fox v. Henhouse" ruling of 1893. Throughout the process that would result in her death sentence, Terri was never permitted her own legal counsel. Evidently, they were all tied up defending the right to life of child-molesting murderers.

Given the country's fetishism about court rulings, this may be a rash assumption, but I presume if Greer had ordered that Terri Schiavo be shot at her husband's request — a more humane death, by the way — the whole country would not sit idly by, claiming to be bound by the court's ruling because of the "rule of law" and "federalism." President Bush would order the FBI to protect her and Gov. Bush would send in the state police.

What was supposed to be the "least dangerous" branch has become the most dangerous — literally to the point of ordering an innocent American woman to die, and willfully disregarding congressional subpoenas. They can't be stopped — solely because the entire country has agreed to treat the pronouncements of former ambulance-chasers as the word of God.

If the Founders had desired an oligarchy, we surely would have had one. Why must we have one now?

John Podhoretz thinks the GOP may well pay for their attempt to save this woman:

Sad to say, the American public wants Terri Schiavo gone. And people seem to understand that if the GOP had let this matter lie, they would not have been subjected to two weeks' worth of headlines and breathless news coverage.

George W. Bush and his Republican Party insisted that the American people become mindful and aware of this horrible story, for which there could never be a happy ending. I think the public is blaming the messenger.

We certainly paid for opposing slavery and abortion---in the short term. It's a price well worth paying to keep America a moral beacon in a benighted world.

Wesley J. Smith says our trouble is largely that we lack true ethics:

Wesley Smith: Bill, do you think Terri is a person?

Bill Allen: No, I do not. I think having awareness is an essential criterion for personhood. Even minimal awareness would support some criterion of personhood, but I don't think complete absence of awareness does.

If you want to know how it became acceptable to remove tube-supplied food and water from people with profound cognitive disabilities, this exchange brings you to the nub of the Schiavo case — the “first principle,” if you will. Bluntly stated, most bioethicists do not believe that membership in the human species accords any of us intrinsic moral worth. Rather, what matters is whether “a being” or “an organism,” or even a machine, is a “person,” a status achieved by having sufficient cognitive capacities. Those who don’t measure up are denigrated as “non-persons.”

When we've begun viewing disabled human beings as inhuman, we've lost the right to deem ourselves moral or ethical. We've lost more than that, too. We've lost our souls.

I want to close with the perspective of Joe Ford, someone who might well have been considered a "non-person" by "enlightened" Americans today:

“Misery can only be removed from the world by painless extermination of the miserable.”
—a Nazi writer quoted by Robert J. Lifton in The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide

The case of Terri Schiavo has been framed by the media as the battle between the “right to die” and pro-life groups, with the latter often referred to as “right-wing Christians.” Little attention has been paid to the more than twenty major disability rights organizations firmly supporting Schiavo’s right to nutrition and hydration. Terri Schindler-Schiavo, a severely disabled woman, is being starved and dehydrated to death in the name of supposed “dignity.” Polls show that most Americans believe that her death is a private matter and that her removal from a feeding tube—a low-tech, simple and inexpensive device used to feed many sick and disabled people—is a reasonable solution to the conflict between her husband and her parents over her right to life.

The reason for this public support of removal from ordinary sustenance, I believe, is not that most people understand or care about Terri Schiavo. Like many others with disabilities, I believe that the American public, to one degree or another, holds that disabled people are better off dead.

Read the whole thing.

That is, read it if you've got the guts to look down the barrel of what America is becoming before our eyes.

I'm reminded of the English hymn:

"O God of Earth and altar,
Bow down and hear our cry
Our earthly rulers falter,
Our people drift and die

The walls of gold entomb us,
The swords of scorn divide
Take not thy thunder from us
Take away our pride."

May God forgive us and set us back on the path to righteousness.