The Candidates
Well, at least it gives us something to debate about that’s not already been endlessy discussed.
Bob Barr officially declared his candidacy:
WASHINGTON (AP) - Former Republican Rep. Bob Barr launched a Libertarian Party presidential bid Monday, saying voters are hungry for an alternative to the status quo who would dramatically cut the federal government.
His candidacy throws a wild card into the White House race that many believe could peel away votes from Republican Sen. John McCain given the candidates’ similar positions on fiscal policy.
May 14th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Oh Tommy, you are so out of the loop.
May 14th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Alex, first of all, she got her 40 point margin after all, the end result was 41 points in fact. Bob Barr however is a joke for many different reasons. Unhappy conservatives should express their anger in a different way.
May 14th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
Ah, yes, the first candidate to officially try and fill the 55-100 hole. Looks like a slightly saner version of Ron Paul to me: very strong fiscon and socon, and libertarian when it comes to defense issues. Of course, those defense issues are ultimately why many will not vote for him either.
May 14th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Here’s the thing on Barr… His schtick lately has basically been how civil liberties have been infringed on by the WoT.
That does sound like a raison d’etre that is going to attract a lot of Republicans. He may actually peel off more voters from Obama.
May 14th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
He’ll probably pull some votes from the Ron Paul crowd, and I know some disenchated conservatives who are very fond of him. That said, he doesn’t seem to have the same fundraising ability that Paul had, and it’s not looking like Paul will officially endorse him.
May 14th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
“Ah, yes, the first candidate to officially try and fill the 55-100 hole. Looks like a slightly saner version of Ron Paul to me: very strong fiscon and socon, and libertarian when it comes to defense issues. Of course, those defense issues are ultimately why many will not vote for him either.”
My thoughts as well. I’m going to look into what Barr’s full views on the war are. I know he’s been critical, but I’m not sure what his full position is.
May 14th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
I basically agree with Democrats and with Bob Barr on those civil liberties issues, but the things I don’t like about Barr are the fact that he’s big on the war on drugs (I’m more libertarian on that stuff). I also think he’s hypocritical because he was all about the Defense of Marriage Act and led the impeachment fight against Clinton, but he has been married three times himself. Plus voting for him is a wasted vote anyway.
May 14th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Clarence, Barr has become far more libertarian on drug-related issues.
Wonder if he’s still for DOMA.
DOMA is blatantly unconstitutional.
May 14th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
Well, I agree with him on DOMA. I just don’t like him being married three times.
May 14th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Too bad DOMA is unconstitutional, eh, Clarence?
May 14th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
On #9… out of curiosity, what if he had never married.. would that bother you?
May 14th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
#7: Wow, did someone take over Clarence’s computer? I had no idea you had libertarian tendencies, Clarence!
May 14th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Clarence,
Barr has done a complete 180 on the drug war since leaving the GOP. He is now totally and utterly against it, and will say flat-out that his prevous positions wer wrong.
May 14th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
Maybe it’s just because I’m fairly young, but I have no idea who this man is. If he’s crazy like Paul though, I can’t see myself voting for him. And I’m not really fond of McCain- but frankly isolationists live in a fantasy fairy world…I wish we could never have to fight a war again, but wishes aren’t reality.
May 14th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Barr is of no real concern because he has no money, but he does have name recognition. Some conservatives who want to voice their opposition to McCain will find Barr suitable as a caller into C-Span said this morning. Right now McCain’s stances on immigration, the environment, torture/Guantonamo and campaign finance are being ignored, but those issues will be thrust back into the spotlight once down ballot republicans campaign in earnest. They will be forced to distance themselves from McCain and that opens the door for the more conservative Barr.
May 14th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
Metro, if you use drugs, you are only hurting your own body, so I wouldn’t mind them being legal. If you have an abortion, you are killing someone else, that is totally different. And Ajay, if he had never been married, of course that wouldn’t bother me, that shows how little you understand of where I’m coming from. When someone gets married, they say “for better or worse till death do us part”, so anyone who leaves a spouse has automatically broken that promise. If you never marry, you aren’t violating anything. I am of the opinion that we should be able to stop terrorism without violating civil liberties. I disagree with Bush on a lot of that.
May 14th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
And Alex, I reject your premise that DOMA is unconstitutional.
May 14th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
I’d not mind legalizing marijuana (heck I could see my brothers more often if they weren’t always in jail for petty possession).
I’d want to regulate it as much as the tobacco and alcohol industries for the safety of children.
Legalizing heroin or meth or crack is idiotic and immature.
May 14th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Doug, I don’t really care about legalizing heroin either, but I don’t think the police should spend a lot of time going after it. They should focus on violent crimes. That’s what I hate about our Governor though, who is a moderate Democrat. He’s very liberal on abortion and gay issues and stuff like that, but when it comes to things like legalizing marijuana or anything having to do with police, he’s conservative. It just ticks me off.
May 14th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
“Metro, if you use drugs, you are only hurting your own body….”
Where are you on the legalization of suicide and euthanasia?
May 14th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Last year, my father, well into Parkinson’s, was forced to take extreme measures to end his life in an assisted living facility, because society left him no dignified option with which to exercise his ownership of his own life.
May 14th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
For those who missed it, here’s the link to a discussion on Hannity & Colmes with Democratic strategist Bob Beckel and former Romney spokesman, Kevin Madden:
http://www.foxnews.com/video2/video08.html?videoId=291735&sMPlaylistID=
While I usually disagree with Beckel, he was dead on with his “Jurassic Park” comment about social conservatives in the GOP, and their prehistoric positions regarding marijuana and needle exchange programs.
May 14th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
If you’re unable to watch the video, here’s the link to the transcript of Tuesday night’s show:
Who Is the Real Barack Obama? In Videotape Barack Obama Says War on Drugs Is an ‘Utter Failure’
http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,355305,00.html#
May 14th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Metro, there is a difference between doing something bad for you and killing yourself. Obviously eating junk food is not illegal, so I don’t think marijuana should be either. As far as euthanasia, I guess if someone kills themself on their own, the government can’t prosecute them anyway. I oppose assisted suicide. However, God should have been the one to decide when your father died. He should not have decided that on his own. He wasn’t “forced” to take any extreme measures. However, since your family is probably all secularists I bet, it would make little sense to live in pain since you guys don’t believe in eternity anyway.
May 14th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
Clarence, I didn’t ask for your personal views on the issue, or religious views… I asked if it should be illegal for people who think differently from you.
(And on the religious topic, how do you know whether his suicide was or was not part of “God’s plan”?)
May 14th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
His suicide was part of God’s plan, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t sinful. I would consider it sinful and selfish, but only God knows for sure. Now, as far as whether it should be illegal. I think if he wanted to kill himself, he should do it by himself. No one should assist him.
May 14th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
So, you think people should be forced to deal with the grave issues that come along with doing it yourself, such as the partial failure or failure of the attempt, the horrible unpleasantness of the various methods… AND you think that frail people who can barely move should be forced to do it that way? And yours is a morality of compassion?
You religious folk accuse we secularists of being condescending, but what is more condescending than to force use to live your way, when we do not with to do the opposite? (My political point.) And to think we are going to hell while you are going to heaven? (A side point, but literally nothing can be conceived of which is more condescending than that.)
May 14th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
By the way, because he was so feeble, it became apparent that he had devoted weeks if not months to having to plan this. That is how you forced him to spend his last days.
May 14th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Metro, first of all, if you don’t want to deal with the grave issues that come along with doing it yourself then there is one solution…DON’T COMMITT SUICIDE!! Secondly, I do not think you or any of your family or anyone else will go to hell. I have no idea. It depends on how you’ve lived your life. You may end up in heaven, and I may not. I am not a person who believes there is no salvation outside the church. If someone is a secularist, but they still don’t do many bad things, I think God would send them to heaven. God is loving, and I bet he would forgive you for not believing in him while you are alive.
May 14th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
The war on drugs is a failure. I can get any drug I want with little risk and the money goes right into the blackmarket - no taxes paid. I would prefer the gov’t regulate and tax drugs, bringing the cost down, taking the guns and violence out and improving drug education. Drugs like meth need to be eradicated and could never be legalized, but marijuana should be legal.
Needle exchanges save lives. Nuf said.
May 14th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Metro, we didn’t force him to spend his last days that way. He chose to spend his last days that way.
May 14th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Metro, we didn’t force him to spend his last days that way. He chose to.
May 14th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Sorry, I didn’t realize I posted that twice.
May 14th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Pablo, I’m not sure about regulating and taxing drugs either though. That’s like legitimizing it.
May 14th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Clarence, you avoided the main issue. How is this different from your marijuana example? I find the banning of such far less offensive than the banning of suicide/euthansia.
More fundamentally, why must WE be forced live by YOUR morality? You’re just concerned we are alive, with no concern about liberty or quality of life. Why are WE the cattle and YOU the farmer?
May 14th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
“Metro, we didn’t force him to spend his last days that way. He chose to spend his last days that way.”
Good God. “The SS didn’t force the Jews to try to escape from Auschwitz when they shot them climbing the fence. They chose to try to escape.”
May 14th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
“Life is pretty much Aucschwitz”. I’ll be sure to get that on a bumper sticker. I’m somewhat ambivalent on legalized euthanasia. I’m absolutely opposed to doctor’s performing the procedure. Under no conceivable view is assisted consistent with “doing no harm”. If one begins with the premise that there is no after, which I think doctors sort of have to, then suicide is the extinction of all things. It is therefore meaningless to say you’re “doing no harm” in ending a life. You’re doing the ultimate and final harm. Nothing can be worse then nothing. Even if the individual ostensibly wants to end their life, this is true. Or we’re forced to confess that life doesn’t have intrinsic value, but only conditional value, conditioned on the arbitrary whims of the moment. Should you be allowed to kill me if I’m in a state of agonizing despair over a family loss, and can’t bear to continue living? What if I ask you to kill me?
Would you be morally justified in doing so, even though you know that my despair will likely pass, and I’ll have fuller moments in the future? Again, I would say certainly not. Now, you’re bound to say “my dad wasn’t depressed. he was dying. it wasn’t arbitrary. it was very real”. And you’d be quite right. And you’d also be quite wrong. Dying is certainly more severe then depression and more likely to be irreversible. But, both can be physiological experiences; both trigger negative reactions. They’re different in degree, not kind.
But, it seems to me, the best argument against assisted suicide by a physician goes to the sort of care physicians provide. Science is, in a word, precise. When a doctor gives you an ordinary treatment, he has a good idea about how it will impact you. He chooses it from a list of competing alternatives based on these potential effects, which he’s spent decades learning. He does not do a heart transplant surgery for minor angina, precisely because he’s learned that a heart transplant is likely to be fairly dangerous, expensive, and ill-suited to the nature of the problem; doing nothing is a far preferable remedy.
Death is nothing like this. No one, as far the doctor can know, has ever returned from a sustained state of death. The doctor has no means of evaluating whether or not death is a preferable outcome to “lots of pain”. Perhaps there’s a hell, and perhaps it’s fairly unpleasant. Perhaps the dead simply cease to exist. But, the doctor has never ceased to exist personally. He knows of no one else that has. There’s no means of weighing the pros and cons of ceasing to exist, vs lots of pain. It’s simply out of his area of expertise. He has no business getting involved; he’s not qualified. And perhaps no one is.
May 14th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Metro,
His is clearly a difference in philosophy. One says that society is benefited as a whole when its citizens value life. We therefore ban suicide and euthanasia. Others like you say, hey, if i am not directly hurting another person, why am i not free to do what i want with my body? i think both are legitimate. its just comes down to which you think is best.
euthanasia, in my opinion is not a good idea. You saw what happened during hurricane katrina. when people are so sick they can’t protect themselves, people will start pulling the plug just to save money. then you have people who will go around killing sick and vulnerable people thinking they are the hero because they are putting people out of their misery. that sounds just as arrogant to me as people saying you can’t help someone kill themself. It is inevitable that the value of life will diminish. i don’t want ot have to worry if i am really sick and in the hospital, but not sick enough to give up, that someone is going to kill me because they think they are doing me a favor.
by the way. i doubt metro’s dad is going to hell becuase he killed himself in the situation he was in. In fact, according to my faith, I know he is not. God is just, but he is also merciful. When people are under teh influence of a dabilitating disease, they are not going to be judged for the decisions they made while under that influence.
May 14th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
Clarence,
I’m actually pretty fine with decriminalization of marijuana too. From what I know about the drug, it doesn’t seem to be especially harmful, and it’s certainly less harmful to others then alcohol is. And I’ve never tried a drug and I never will. That said, it’s an issue sort of like the death penalty to me; it’s not important enough to alter my voting patterns. I’m mildly opposed to the death penalty, but it doesn’t much bother me that the GOP disagrees.
May 14th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Matthew, the point is, for someone whose life has become a living hell and wants out of it, life is not too dissimilar from Auschwitz. But the analogy holds even if the degree doesn’t.
Both #37 and #38 turn this into a murder situation rather than a suicide situation. You’re smarter than that. There is a slippery-slope argument, about people being pressured into making the choice, but there are all sorts of ways to safeguard against that, such as a long process involving multiple third parties doing professional assessments to make sure the individual has truly made the choice.
But what none of you have addressed, is why are WE to be forced to live according to YOUR religion? Why have YOU decided to take control over OUR bodies? Hello!?!?
May 14th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
Metro,
It has almost nothing to do with religion? Where did I mention religion? Physicians are tasked with making decisions within their area of expertise, based on likely outcomes, likely side-effects, etc. I would no more allow them to kill someone, an outcome they have no way of assessing, then I would allow them to build me a carburetor. They’re completely out of their element. Furthermore, as far as they can know, death is the ultimate harm. It’s the extinction of all things; this is purely secular stuff, as I personally don’t believe earthly death is the extinction of all things. But, as far as they can know, it’s the extinction of all things. Taking someone’s life is inherently harmful act in this view, and therefore, again, doctor’s have no business being involved because they’re tasked to “do no harm”. If you want to kill yourself, because you’re in loads of pain, and judge it your best outcome, go right ahead. Personal autonomy and all that. But, when you’re asking someone else to perform the act, you’re asking another individual and society to sanction an act which, as far as they can know, does the ultimate harm. And God hasn’t even appeared on the stage.
May 14th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
The idea that a doctor has no way of assessing if you are dead or not, or what might kill you, or what makes you feel pain, is a pretty ridiculous argument.
Are you opposed to hospice medicine, where terminal conditions are not treated, but just masked with pain-killers?
All of your argumentation ignores the fact that the life of the individual in question belongs to them. The fact that they need assistance is no different from the fact that many individuals are alive with a disability that requires assistance from others to sustain their life.
May 14th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
P.S. You do get kudos as usual, Matthew, for trying to frame SoCon arguments in a secular manner. Most of your fellow SoCons have no clue about that.
May 14th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
Metro,
The doctor has no way of assessing what death “is like”. When a doctor decides to prescribe various forms of codine, instead of sending you home with a bottle of aspirin, he does so on the basis of his knowledge of your condition and his knowledge of the medicines involved. If you’ve just gotten through severe back surgery, he can make an inference about which of the two alternatives is likely to be more effective. He’ll use his knowledge of neuro-chemistry, accumulated experiences with other patients who’ve had back surgeries, etc, and he may well decide that the aspirin is simply too mild; only the codine will suffice. To the extent that the doctor is qualified to make any decisions about treatment, it’s on this basis; his ability to weigh his knowledge of competing alternatives. That’s why they send them to medical school, and don’t allow bums off the street to perform lobotomies. In what sense does a doctor have this sort of experience with death? If he says to “oh yeah, a prior patient of mine died. He said it was no biggy”, he’s clearly lying. He simply has no referential points for the end state of his “treatment” (euthanising). He has no way of knowing whether death is better or worse then severe pain. He no way of assessing the treatment, and is therefore isn’t qualified to administer it. It’s beyond his pay-grade. It’s beyond all of our pay-grades. And the state has no business sanctioning it.
I don’t think your other question is very relevant, given that you seem to have misunderstood my argument. No, I don’t oppose hospice treatment. The doctor has referential points for such treatment; he knows the degree to which it’ll reduce pain, because he has, again a knowledge of neurochemistry, and he has a past history of administering such treatments to others, and assessing their impact.
May 14th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
Metro,
While we’ve had a few minor disagreements during the last year, I sincerely hope that you won’t go to Hell. As for its reality, however, you should ask somebody who’s been there and ask them how they like it. Out of the tens of thousands of reported Near Death Experiences (NDE’s), approximately 7% involve people who have gone to Hell. There are a number of accounts of this in print, the most recent of which was a national bestseller entitled “23 Minutes In Hell”, by Bill Wiese. Check it out.
May 14th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Metro,
Or think of it by way of this analogy. Let’s say a doctor finds a unknown bottle of pills at the pharmacy. Excited, he wanders back to the hospital to examine them. When he arrives there, he finds that he has a patient waiting for him. The patient complains of severe headaches, but just before the doctor can suggest a prescription, the patient “gosh, these headaches are really bad. I can’t stand them, and I doubt I can wait til I get to the pharmacy to pick up the prescriptions. Why don’t you just give me those pills (referring to the unknown pills the doctor discovered)? I’m sure they’ll do something”. Would the doctor be justified in doing so? Would the state be justified in allowing him to do so? Of course not. Now the doctor of course knows that these pills are some sort of medicine-after all, he found them in a pharmacy. But, he has no way of assessing their potential impact on the patient. Death is rather like this. In a broad sense, a doctor can assess what happens immediately to a patient he’s euthanized. The heart and lungs stop. Oxygen stops flowing to the brain. Etc. But, these are physiological results without reference points. A doctor is tasked to make his patient “better”. In what sense can the doctor evaluate whether death is “better” or “worse”? A doctor is tasked to “improve” his patient’s condition. In what sense can a doctor evaluate whether death is an “improvement”?
May 14th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Matthew, doctors are agents we hire to achieve our ends. We come first, not the doctors.
May 14th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Since we are talking about marijuana here, I thought I should insert here that I saw an article that today’s marijuana is much more potent and addicitional than it was a generation ago. In other words, they have been breeded and spiked to hook you up, so your money could come along their ways. I do not follow the drug affairs as closely as I should — I have two teen boys, and we do talk about them and the facts of life often — enough to know whichever way we should go. But, do be careful with our assumptions here on what we know from a generation ago or so.
May 14th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
Here’s a relevant article I wrote three years ago during the Terri Schiavo ordeal that I wanted to share:
Monday, March 28, 2005
While I truly sympathize with her parents, having to contend with the heartache of seeing their child go before they do, I have a hard time understanding how some people are able to demonstrate compassion, humanity, selflessness and maturity in making these types of decisions regarding their pets, yet remain blinded to their actions that run absolutely to the contrary when it comes to their own flesh and blood.
Terri Schiavo, for all intents and purposes, has been dead for 15 years. It is revolting and selfish, absent any quality of life, to prolong a shell of a loved one’s existence merely to reinforce or propagate one’s own religious beliefs.
With all due respect, her parents are not doctors, and apparently are in such a deep state of denial, that they refuse to acknowledge the medical fact that Terri’s cerebral cortex is gone. It was destroyed by the loss of oxygen she suffered when she had a heart attack in 1990. Once gone, the cortex cannot grow back. The space it once occupied in Schiavo’s skull is now filled with spinal fluid. The cortex is responsible all of our thinking. Without it, you’re permanently and forever unconscious, unable to ever again think or feel. Terri Schiavo is awake but not aware. She cannot perceive thirst or hunger. What you or I would undeniably experience as excruciatingly torturous is not what Terri has had to suffer through. She’s effectively a breathing corpse, only sustained by the wonders of modern science.
It is only the parts of her brain that control reflexes and other basic bodily functions that still work. She can sleep, breathe, blink and make other reflexive moves that only deceive and cruelly tease those who want to believe there’s someone home inside her head.
Hopefully, this will trigger a national awareness campaign to encourage all adults, especially those who are married, to have a living will drafted, to ensure our wishes are respected, even if we can no longer communicate. This battle between the husband and her parents was avoidable, and there’s a lesson to be learned in that.
Why would anyone who thinks she’s really ‘alive’ and has been ‘in there’ all this time, for the past 15 years, want to prolong what would be suffering nothing but an unfathomable, vacuous, grueling, interminable, torturous living hell I would never wish upon my worst enemy?
The humane thing is to let her die.
Had she not been artificially preserved on life support for the past 15 years, she would have died within two weeks of her severe bulimia-induced heart attack.
Why do those who see this as interfering in God’s work, at the same time, rabidly support taking the unnatural measure of surgically implanting a feeding tube directly into her abdomen to artificially sustain life?
If we can all agree that her wishes should be paramount, and that roughly 9 in 10 would never want to be preserved on life support in the condition Terri is in, doesn’t common sense dictate that, of all people, Terri, who ended up in the condition she’s in because of her own self-loathing, would be about the last person who’d want to be kept alive as she’s been for the past 15 years?
The fact that Terri Schiavo was severely bulimic; a woman with such a poor, maladjusted self-image that she’d rather slowly, deliberately, painfully take her own life, than to have food in her stomach, leaves me unable to comprehend how anyone could possibly think someone who ended up where she is as a result of a severe eating disorder, would choose to be force fed through a feeding tube, when she obviously didn’t appreciate and love herself when she was young and alive, and had a future to look forward to.
This issue has revealed a disturbingly sizable segment of our population that remains ignorant and uneducated about how our healthcare system operates. By the rhetoric and vitriol being spewed, it’s evident that many are completely unfamiliar with the concept of hospice care. Two of my grandparents were terminally ill; one with cancer, the other with advanced Parkinson’s, and both were humanely allowed to die in hospice care, by discontinuing their nourishment.
I highly recommend taking the time to visit a hospice and understand how our nation has been humanely addressing the end-of-life process for terminally ill patients and those like Terri Schiavo, who long ago passed the point of no return.
If my dog could not eat on his own or was as brain damaged as Terri Schiavo, I would take my pet who I love dearly and regard as a member of my family, to his veterinarian, who would inject Charlie with a shot of sodium pentobarbital, so he wouldn’t have to endure his final days in discomfort.
Hopefully, from all of this, the US Supreme Court, which has been increasingly looking to the court of public opinion for guidance, will respect the wishes of the vast majority of Americans who want to die with dignity, to not be forced by government to endure an existence devoid of any quality of life, and will uphold Oregon’s assisted-suicide laws when they hear the case later this year.
What made Terri Schiavo, in life, unique from every other being in the animal kingdom were her brains. Today, every dog and cat in living rooms across America have more brains than Terri. How is that showing a human being compassion? Or, is this to placate the selfish parents who continue to bring anguish upon themselves by remaining in a delusion state of denial 15 years after they lost their daughter?
What purpose is there to continue artificially sustaining her life, other than to placate her parents?
If nature ran its course, and doctors didn’t interfere in ‘God’s work’, she would have died 15 years ago when she could no longer naturally receive nourishment or hydration. Since 1990, she has been on artificial life support, preserved only by the surgical implant of a feeding tube directly into her stomach. No one in their right mind would want to live the vacant existence of Terri Schiavo over the past 15 years, let alone opt to continue lingering that way indefinitely, with no medically reasonable expectation of any kind of recovery. Factor in the sad reality that Terri Schiavo came to be in this condition as a result of her own self-destructive behavior, and it pretty much removes any doubt whether a woman who was severely bulimic, and had such a negative self-image of herself, would choose to be kept alive in the vegetative state she’s been in. If Terri had consciousness, but remained incapacitated as she’s been, I think she would have sooner starved herself to death.
I believe the reason her parents have not been able to let go all these years is a result of guilt they’re ridden with, having encouraged Terri to diet or lose weight when she was a depressed teenager who weighed over 200 pounds.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is already campaigning for the Presidency in 2008, and his first mission was to solidify the Christian conservative base of his party, knowing that he’s most likely to go unchallenged for those constituents, considering who his in-party competition is. Maybe Jeb Bush, sticking his neck out like this, is an audition to be Frist’s Veep, and in prime position for a run, himself, in 2012. If the GOP continues to pander to the religious right, just as the Dems did, aligning themselves with the radical leftists Michael Moore, George Soros and moveon.org, and most recently with Howard Dean heading the DNC, they may stir a segment of their constituency into a frothing frenzy, but will ultimately alienate many more voters who will be so repulsed and turned off by their actions, that they will sooner remain disgusted with both parties, and just not vote. And, if the Dems get their act together, and nominate a moderate like Joe Lieberman or Evan Bayh, there’s no doubt the GOP will have thrown away what’s been there for the taking.
Had Jeb Bush interceded against the court’s order, it could well have signaled the beginning of the end of GOP executive, legislative, judicial, and gubernatorial rule. The only logic I see to such drastic action is that it was yet another disingenuous, noisy gesture of political grandstanding, and the GOP must feel it has the political capital to spend (or waste), with the expectations that the Dems will be the ones to really shoot themselves in the foot when they shut down Congress after the Republicans implement the ‘nuclear option’ to protect Bush judicial nominees from being filibustered.
While Congress clearly overstepped its boundaries, perhaps they can redeem themselves by enacting legislation that, in the future, where there is no living will or advance directive, the spouse’s irrefutable right to make this decision are protected without the possibility of legal interference from her parents or other parties.
Thousands of people are taken off artificial life support in hospitals and hospices across the US every day, without ever involving the court system. Had her husband sacrificed his own life as well, remaining ‘faithful’ to a breathing corpse for the past 15 years, then no one would have ever heard of this case. This has all to do with political in-fighting within the GOP. Pro-choice, pro-gay rights Rudy Giuliani is currently the frontrunner for his party’s nomination in 2008, and the religious right wing of the party is saying ‘Over our dead bodies!’ That’s why Bill Frist, the opportunistic Senate Majority Leader, and newly-discredited physician, is trying to pander to and secure the vote of the Christian conservatives who are there for the taking.
The fact that Frist rendered a diagnosis based solely on a repeating loop of intentionally misleading video left no doubt that his credibility went out the window as fast as Mark McGwire’s. This has gotten to the point of such absurdity that I almost wish Michael Schiavo, the minute Terri actually dies, has her moved to a cryogenics lab, and tells the Schindlers that they can continue to see their daughter every day, and visit her preserved corpse just as they’ve been for the past 15 years.
As for those who have questioned Michael Schiavo’s integrity — no one should expect him or anyone else to sacrifice their own life, and stay by a spouse who’s been in a PVS for 15+ years, especially when he was only 26 at the time she effectively died, and never had the chance with Terri to have a family of his own. In fact, Terri’s bulimia was so severe, she had stopped menstruating. It is a good thing that he was able to let go and move on with his life. Had he sacrificed his own happiness, it would have only further compounded the tragedy.
Wouldn’t it be ironic if those on the religious right, who think Terri is being “tortured” to death without her feeding tube, now join the liberal left in the pending Supreme Court case on euthanasia, so anyone who’s terminally ill, or in a PVS like Terri can die with dignity without families having to watch their loved ones’ last days being deprived of hydration and nourishment?
May 14th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
7. Clarence “Plus voting for him is a wasted vote anyway.”
Huh? Any single person’s vote won’t make a difference in the outcome, unless the election is decided by one vote.
May 14th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Here we go,
http://www.bobbarr2008.com/
May 14th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
I live in Maryland.
If Maryland looks to be obviously tilted toward Obama, I’ll consider voting for Barr if McCain keeps pissing all over economic conservatism.