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Mar. 26, 2005 We are, unfortunately, witness to what is probably the beginning of the end of any claim we've ever had in America to a position of moral supremacy in the world. For the first time in my 63 years, I am profoundly ashamed of my country and would hesitate to admit to my nationality if asked. As a nation, we are sitting by and watching the murder of a totally innocent, helpless woman for the "crime" of being inconvenient and a financial burden. We're a gnat's hair away from the destruction of ANYONE we deem to be a financial burden or who some "judge" believes is living a useless, unproductive life. Before long we'll be killing people with Down's syndrome, spina bifida, ALS, muscular dystrophy and eventually, those who are blind, deaf or who, through accident, have become quadraplegic. The sad case of Terri Schiavo may be the first step (or one of the first) down that steep slope to the cesspool of civilization where the "imperfect" are considered to be disposable and in which the Nazis wallowed for about 15 years during the mid-20th Century. Remember, we tend to forget that the gas chambers and wholesale murder of humans by Nazi Germany didn't BEGIN with the Jews. It began with wholesale destruction of the "imperfect," the mentally handicapped, the crippled and others deemed to be a "burden" on German society. I am profoundly ashamed of our politicians who sit around and dither while this atrocity take place in plain sight of the whole world. No attention is paid to what's "RIGHT," but lots of attention is being paid to what will preserve their political "viability." What's technically "legal" is not always right. Dr. Martin Luther King and Mohandas Ghandi taught us that, but we don't seem to have learned that lesson very well. I'm reminded of the last exchange between Burt Lancaster and Spencer Tracy in the movie "Judgement at Nuremburg." Lancaster's character says to Tracy, after being convicted of war crimes and sentenced to death, "You must believe me. I didn't know it would come to that!" Tracy's character responded, "I came to that the first time you sentenced to death a man you knew to be innocent." We have developed a culture of death in this country, beginning with the insane decision in Roe vs. Wade in 1973 that it was "constitutional" to kill our unborn babies for being "inconvenient." The resulting 40 million-plus killings have hardened our collective hearts to the idea that there's value to the life of every, innocent, living human being. Admittedly, there are some lives that we should dispose of from time to time--the incorrigibly vicious criminal who rapes, mutilates and murders without compunction or remorse. In other words, the amoral, unredeemably vicious who commit especially heinous crimes against humanity. But that's NOT what we are witnessing here. Instead of ridding society of these pieces of human waste, we've degenerated into targeting our most vulnerable innocents. Even Michael Schiavo, who's spent the last 7 years trying to get his wife put to death, admits that he doesn't know what Terri would want for herself, even though he testified under oath to the contrary in 1990. Since NO ONE REALLY KNOWS what Terri would want for herself for certain, we should always err on the side of life. Instead, Judge George Greer has chosen to have her executed by neglect, and a neglect that's most painful and horrible to watch. He insists that, despite a myriad of evidence to the contrary, that Ms Schiavo is in what doctors refer to as Persistent Vegetative State, or PVS, and therefore cannot feel pain, pleasure or love and, in fact, has a "flat brain scan," meaning she's effectively "brain dead" without any cognitive ability whatsoever. If that is really true (and there's evidence that it's NOT) who would be harmed by turning custody over to her loved ones who've pledged to care for her. If she IS in a PVS, she wouldn't know it and keeping her fed with a feeding, hydration tube wouldn't be "tortured" merely by being kept alive. However, if she's NOT in a PVS, then the judge has no basis for having her killed in the first place, and his doing so is illegal under ANY law. We know that this judge believes that she's disposable. To my mind, the legal system that allows an innocent, brain-damaged woman to be killed--especially in this manner--is what's really "disposable." It doesn't seem like such a bad idea to me to scrap the whole system and start again from scratch as the founding fathers intended so that we don't have a judiciary in this country who're so arrogant as to ignore law and precedent and thumb their noses at the will of the people and rule the country by fiat from the bench according to their own political biases and personal feelings. We can start with the activist judges in Florida who think their decisions are sacrosanct and inviolable. ------------ About the author: David A. Jared is a news junkie, semi-retired and an avid golfer who's been writing his first book, "4000 years of chopsticks" for the last 20 years. Email: Pappadave@sbcglobal.net ------------- All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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