Editorial

Easter 2005

Joseph Parish

How ironic that upon this unique day recognizing the resurrection, our nation, founded upon the philosophy of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, will be condemning an innocent woman to die because this same government has ordered her to endure a slow and painful death. Worse yet, no one in our nation of cowards in government have the courage to do the right thing and instead engage in political football with an innocent and helpless woman’s life.

Has it come to this - which American citizens have developed into mere puppets of the state? – Phobia from our own laws incites us to inaction? Are we now in this country going to permit a person’s life to be contingent upon the findings of individuals who, interestingly enough wear black outfits and determine another person’s quality of life?

Terri Schiavo is not brain dead. If you are brain dead, you have suffered an irreparable loss of all functions of the brain. If confirmed by at least two physicians, which means you, are legally dead, such that your organs can be harvested to benefit other people.

As of Easter 2005 the feeding tube of Terri Schiavo has been removed by order of Judge George Greer and, unless a federal court intervenes, she will die a painful death by starvation in a short time possibly before this Easter ends. It seems to me that this case is essential a matter of morality and has been grossly disregarded. The dispute seems to rage about who has the final authority in sentencing her to death. Which legislature or court, state or federal? The husband or the family? This bypasses the central point: Should any political entity or any individual have the right to decree a person in a "persistent vegetative state" to death?

Terri is supposed to be in a "persistent vegetative state." That description has a regrettable, dehumanizing aspect. A vegetable is something that we eat. Ironically, it derives from the Latin vegetate, which means to enliven, activate, animate or quicken. Terri is not brain-dead or comatose. She is a human who cannot perform at full capacity. Humanity is something that we are, not something that we do. We are human beings, not human "doings."

Let’s be unmistakable on what is happening here. Removing the feeding tube from Terri is not "allowing nature to take its course" or "allowing her to die." If a man locks his daughter in a closet for two weeks and gives her no food or drink, he is causing her death. Nobody would speak of letting nature take its course but about homicide. We have here a court-ordered homicide.

If someone treated their dog this way as Terri is being treated, they would be arrested and prosecuted for animal cruelty. If someone did this to their child, they would be apprehended and charged with child endangerment.

And yet, dehumanizing the handicapped seems acceptable for if you’re a disabled person, its ok to dies a cruel and horrible death on the say-so of one person. The courts even endorse this.

No governmental agency or private individual should have authority to impose a sentence of this sort on an innocent human being. There's a fundamental dilemma, here.

Even convicted criminals and terrorists who have tried to kill us are entitled to three meals a day. On what grounds has our legal system denied food to Terri?

Dr. Kevorkian was jailed for helping to dispatch people who wanted to die. How is Terri's case any different?

I can not help but contemplate now, particularly since the Florida governor’s actions in requesting the court’s permission to take Terri Schiavo into protective custody, rather then just doing it like any department of Health & Human services would normally do to safeguard an individual that there must be some nature of political motivation. For years we have been hearing about judicial domination and judges manufacturing their own laws. These things come about only because the other separate but equal branches of our government, and we the people, have been brainwashed to the point where we find it acceptable to consent to it. Politician’s failure to implement their constitutional duty to save this innocent and helpless woman from an atrocious and slow death shows just how inadequately they truly understand our system of government, and exposes the fact that they are simple political cronies without courage or convictions. Where the political crusaders who claim to speak for those who have no voice?

American justice and human dignity has been violated with a perpetual dose of death. Innocent blood is surging unabated throughout our nation. It appears that the American dream of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness is hemorrhaging and becoming a nightmare right before our very eyes.

Our churches, schools, streets, and workplaces are not exempt from the bloodbath and have become targets for homegrown terrorists. America, it seems, has propagated death to high proportions and as such we will reap the results.

Our children perceive and our children gain knowledge from what we demonstrate. We exhibit violence and death we should rightfully expect them to digest these ideas. Our judges place death penalties on innocent people. Our children watch and learn quickly. Read the newspaper or watch TV and you will see just how much they really have learned. The nightly news lists the litany of woe and murderous rampages that are raping our land. "Four dead in Dallas," "Four dead in Atlanta," "Ten dead in Minnesota," "Nine year old girl strangled in Florida" and on and on the headlines churn out the grisly details of America's illicit love affair with death. Now we stand in awkward amazement that our children have learned their lesson with a vengeance.

I have been closely following Terri’s story for some time now and at this point I decline to dispute those who want to argue why this woman has a right to die or that in some way we are simply honoring her desires. For you to dispute these points you merely waste your time and mine and I have lost the patience to deal with this. For anyone to make these claims you must either be uninformed, or you have no comprehension or belief in the sanctity of life. It is not an issue of this sort at all. It involves power.

Terri will not die a "natural" death - in fact her death will be anything but natural. She will die as though she had been cast into the wilderness - except, in Terri's case, she will die with licensed "caregivers" positioned around watching, accompanied by those who declare their "love" for her. If this is love, let me die alone - as alone as Terri will surely be at her death.

I am appalled at how the judges have seized control of our country due to our ignorance in electing weak and ineffective politicians who are either naive or evil. Many can dispute that this issue revolves around the perception of ‘death with dignity’ ideology by which we consent for people to kill other human beings based on quality of life issues. If you aspiration to argue that point I necessitate to know on what authority anyone on earth is to determine what values are the sum of the quality of life, After all in Nazi Germany whether people lived or died was based upon what another human being decided was the standard for the quality of life. Are we now in this country going to allow a person’s life to be contingent on the judgment of people who wear black outfits, decide another person’s quality of life?

How did we arrive at this point that we are in dispute about denying food to a human being, about a culture of death rather than a culture of life?

We have two segments forming arguments. On one side you have those who hold to a secular worldview. Typically, they are the ones that demand the death of Terri. The philosophy that underpins this godless worldview is called "quality of life." The value of human life, according to this system of belief, is based upon ones usefulness, productivity, or being wanted in this self-indulgent world of ours. A review of developments in Nazi Germany might be enlightening. The Nazi atrocities were based on a philosophy that made the "quality of life" more important than the "sanctity of life."

It was this worldview that ran rampant in Nazi Germany. It is this philosophy that promotes the "Master Race" mentality. It views the world as a place with limited resources that are to be reserved for the elite, strong, and beautiful people of the world. Therefore, the less fortunate, the unfit, the downtrodden, certain minorities, and other outcasts need not apply. They have an obligation not to take up much space or use up precious resources. If these classes of "sub-humans" persist, however, to proliferate and prove a nuisance to our selfishness, greed, and lust, there are ways to handle these unnecessary burdens. It is called the "Final Solution".

In Nazi Germany, terms like "useless eaters" carried the culture of death to a horrible new low in the bloody history of man. Hitler started with abortion and then swiftly moved to eliminate disabled persons. About 150,000 Germans who were crippled or mentally ill were murdered. They were considered "life not worthy of life." Sounds strangely familiar, Terri Schiavo anyone?

There were seven recognizable steps to the holocaust.  The first step was acceptance of mercy killings to put people out of their misery. When Germany suffered a severe economic crunch efforts were made to remove "useless" expenses from the budget. That led to the killing of the chronically ill with no hope of recovery (Terri Schiavo?). Next came killing of the elderly who were without relatives and resources but were a burden to the state. This was followed by the elimination of bums, beggars, gypsies and hopelessly poor people. Then came the economy of eliminating people who were drawing welfare. It was then the turn of the ideologically unwanted, political enemies of the state, "religious extremists," "disloyal" individuals who were holding the government back from providing every citizen a better quality of life.  Finally there came those who in the ideology of the Nazis were evolutionally unfit such as Jew and those who were not pure Aryans. Once the first step, acceptance of euthanasia was taken, all other steps followed logically.

The madness continued to a full blown racial genocide that systematically murdered six million Jews, three million Poles, and four hundred thousand Gypsies etc. It took an entire world at war to end Hitler's reign of terror. What will be the rising costs today as segments of America are becoming more and more infected with this same deadly philosophy?

The culture of death has flourished as a result of the misuse of our courts. Perhaps, the plight of Terri Schiavo will finally build some backbone into our Executive and Legislative branches of government once again. They need to arise and place the "Constitutional Chains" back on the tyrannical courts of our day. For decades, judges in black robes have ignored the Constitution, thwarted the will of the people, and pretended the other branches of government did not even exist. They have made a mockery of our Representative Republic. They have become an Oligarchy that has unleashed a torrent of bloodshed and perversion that is drowning us in a sea of perdition. Their reign of terror must end or America will continue down the primrose path to ruin!

Unfortunately our ignorance will also affect the lives of many others. You simply can not have a free society and expect to have laws governing every aspect of life. Our founding fathers knew that a free society could not be governed solely by laws, but by a belief in a higher power and the concept of having a moral fortitude.

Do we want the government to allow people to be starved to death? We are not speaking here of extraordinary means of life support, but human feeding. Are we now going to kill Alzheimer's patients who have lost all capacity for memory and are unable to function without guidance? What about Parkinson's patients? If sentencing the handicapped to death continues, people are going to die under the guise of compassion and understanding when the decision will not really be about them at all but about the convenience of others. We will be making life-and-death decisions based on how much trouble it will be for us to let them live.

I indeed tremble for my country, because I believe justice can not sleep forever. Benjamin Franklin once stated that "A nation of well informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the region of ignorance that tyranny begins." Thomas Jefferson made this statement about the role of civil government. Pay close attention to his words. He stated, "The care of human life and not its destruction is the one and only object of good government."  

I will spend the Easter holiday with my family, we will eat, drink, and I will try to be merry. Terri Schiavo will die, perhaps on this same day, after succumbing to a slow and painful suffering due to the deprivation of food or water. This will be caused because our elected and appointed leaders lack the kind of principals and fortitude that empowered brave men and women to create this great nation. I will think of her on this day, and from this day forward I will remember Easter 2005 as the day our nation turned the corner from Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, towards Death, Tyranny, and the Pursuit of Evil.

And if Terri Schiavo dies, let us make sure she does not die in vain, but let the culture of death die with her.