They've made their cultural casket. Now they will die in it.
AS GOOD FRIDAY APPROACHES THE DEATH OF TERRI SCHIAVO is now only a matter of time but not of chance. Death is, for most of us, a matter of time and chance. But this death has, as all know, nothing of chance in it. It is something chosen for her by a husband and a legion of judges. They have all had their say. They have given or read depositions and testimony. They have looked at and argued the law. They have rendered and affirmed their decisions. This week they will all have their way with her.
At this point, watching the slow killing of her has become nearly as disgusting and excruciating as listening to those who are rooting for it with increasing bluntness. This sentiment from the always crass Chris Matthews is one of the "milder" versions: "The "her" in her, the personality, is basically an ink-well. It's basically a bottle of ink now.... " Elsewhere, commentators of all kinds have been at odds to stress "What a tragic and sad thing this is... I do so feel for the parents..." before launching into another report or an interview with another death expert that all comes down, in the end, to, "Kill her."
It matters little that, as we are constantly reminded by the statisticians of death, "this sort of thing goes on all the time." By dint of circumstance, this one death of this one woman has become other than a statistic -- it has become specific, up-close, and personal. Because of this specificity, because a "procedure" common to our culture has taken a name and a face, it has also become mythic. And faced with the brute power of myth and the meaning it contains, it is little wonder that most of us would choose to turn away; to examine the parochial and dismiss the profound. We will, it seems, always prefer the shallows to the depths.
In a time more in touch with the profound and the eternal, this entire episode would resolve itself as "Death triumphant. Love minus zero." But we are a silly and trivial people who seldom see beyond the pragmatic. Instead, as I glance about the media and the web, I see only two really trivial lessons that most people want you to know and to take away with you.
The first silly, gibbering lesson repeated ad nauseum is "My goodness, everybody get a living will now!" The more sophisticated version of this hoary chestnut is "Get really smart and get a durable power of attorney."
What a small and puerile insight this is. Is it really that obscure to people with a modicum of awareness that these are documents that all should have? The Euthanasia Party of America has been pushing this via the medical and legal 'professions' for well over a decade. After all, these documents make it much easier for you to be killed under the proper circumstances. You've a right to do this and, yes, you should. So what?
Anyone who has missed this fortnight's "urgent" lesson must have been in something like a coma for more than ten years. Who could that possibly be? Why, those unfortunates would have to rely on the testimony of, well, their husbands to make their will known. And that, as we have seen, makes killing them much more time consuming and expensive. It also brings the death machine's unremitting effort to kill them out of the hospices into the light. The death machine does not like the light, so its operators and acolytes repeat the need to fill out and notarize all the right forms that the death factories can function more smoothly without all these irritating protesters.
With this dinky "lesson" we move from a culture that holds "If it saves one life, it's worth it." (There's an expression you don't hear enough as a justification for expending limitless time and money.), to a culture of "If it makes it easier to kill one person, it's worth it." Live it, learn it, love it.
The second small and puerile lesson we learn from the endless line of law chanters who otherwise "have no opinion," is: "The Republicans really overstepped themselves this time. States rights! Bad law! Pure political grandstanding! Congress very bad. Courts very good. Just look at the HYPOCRISY!"
This is the spiel that comes right after the Standard Disclaimer, "I deeply sympathize with the family's pain...." and then is underscored by experts and citations until one is so numbed one is supposed to forget that, yes, politicians who hold power are at times inclined to use it -- for good purposes or simply to pander to those who gave them power.
For political junkies this is evidently really new news and their lesson is: "Don't let the will of Congress, mere representatives of the people, subvert the Founders' Intent as clearly expressed in the Constitution. The subversion of the Founders' Intent is a power expressly reserved for the courts." I note that all levels of the Federal court system were not slow in reminding Congress that the will of the courts now trumps the will of the people: "Silly Congress. Rights are for courts."
Fifteen years, endless litigation, national upheaval -- all combine to the bottom line of "Fill out the forms. Congress acts politically. Trust the court system. Die quietly."
You must excuse me if I find that this series of dull bromides from dead souls misses the meaning here by more than a country mile. And while the poet notes that "We had the experience but missed the meaning," the same poet also notes that "Human kind cannot bear / Very much reality." And the reality of the Schiavo Passion Play this Eastertide is very difficult to bear.
To me the lessons that should arise in our souls out of this sorry spectacle are twofold.
The first is that, more clearly than any moment I can recall, this case calls up the ancient demand of Deuteronomy:
"I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both you and your seed may live.... [Deuteronomy 30:19-20]. "
As a country we have, in this case, chosen death.
All our legal institutions have chosen death. The husband has chosen death. His lawyers have a long history of choosing death. The judge chose death and all the judges above the judge have now affirmed death. Death is where all our laws and all our "justices" have taken us.
If we are to believe the polls, our fellow citizens have chosen death in approximately the same numbers that chose John Kerry last November. Many of those citizens have in their lives, when confronted with an inconvenient life, chosen death before. This was not a hard choice since a culture which makes it a right to throw away new life has little trouble choosing slow death over disablement once it gets used to the notion. And there are large sectors of our culture who are very used to the notion. There are now large numbers of people among us who believe that whenever it is unknown whether or not a person would elect to die under certain conditions, the default state should be to kill them. Such is their cold choice.
Implicit in the imprecation of Deuteronomy above is the cost of choosing death over life; that your seed will not live. And, as we have seen, the seed of those among us who have chosen death across the decades is, in absolute numbers, declining. Given this disturbing demographic trend, I look for a movement among the willfully childless members of the American Death Trip to make the vote available to their cats or their dogs or whatever else is currently in vogue as a child substitute among them. After all, why shouldn't a family formed of a couple and a couple of pets have the same voting power as a family of four? How else can the continuity of death policies be assured?
The second lesson of Terri Schiavo is that, in this instance, the country has chosen evil over good, law over love.
It is well understood, though usually unmentionable, that in a society which has turned its morality over to lawyers, and made as many misdemeanors into felonies as it can find, the system churns out decisions every day that, while legal, are evil. In a society where secular law determines "right," and justice is often obtained with fees and remissions, evil outcomes are not only unavoidable, but desirable. Religious symbols such as The Ten Commandments lurking about the courts and the legislatures only serve to shame the legions of lawyers and judges, and hence must be expunged in order that evil can be forever hidden beneath the grimy robes of what is "legal."
Last week, Peggy Noonan wisely asked about the Shiavo case: "What good will come from killing her?" There has been no good answer to that question because there can be no good answer. The answer given this week by our society and our system is, "So that the law and evil and death can triumph over love and over life; that our will and not Thine be done."
One could say that God will punish those among us who created and who revel in this answer, but -- as I have noted elsewhere -- He already has. They've made their cultural casket. Now they will die in it.
Posted by Vanderleun at March 24, 2005 10:46 AM | TrackBackIf Judge Greer is successfully
Ignored, and Terry finally gets the
Treatment she should have received
Fifteen years ago,
The chance of her recovery is
Real.
But when she awakes,
And learns that so many wanted her
Dead, she must still experience a kind of
Death, with
Open eyes and a
Broken heart
And the bleak
Astonishment that for too many,
That for far too many,
She was simply a
Thing that needed to be
Unplugged.
With the guiding light of liberal logic shining bright in this case, we can now see clearly how to move forward.
There is another such case. She has been brain damaged since birth, evidenced by a persistent lateral gaze to the left, consistent with a diagnosis of severe brain trauma. She is paralyzed and kept alive only by a feeding tube. Though she is capable of some movement, there is no evidence to support a conclusion that these movements are purposeful, but rather are likely only reflexive and spastic movements caused by ectopic activity. In other words, it does not appear to be the brain that informs these activities, but local muscle activity alone. It may be disputed whether she is terminally ill, but examination recently conducted by experts illustrate that her general health is poor and likely deteriorating.
Some interested parties believe she could improve with adequate rehabilitation, but on the whole, there is no foundation in scientific fact to support such a conclusion. Further evaluation might give an improved picture of her condition and prognosis for recovery, but with the Schiavo case as precedent, we do not believe this to be necessary or appropriate.
“She” is the United Nations, and it is now time that the United States remove her feeding tube, stopping the flow of life-sustaining cash into her bowels so she can experience the blissful and dignified death by starvation she deserves.
Let us also hasten to remove the "life support" of social security, medicare, medicaid and welfare from those who are only kept alive by these extraordinary means. After all, who would want to live like that?
At last we can hunt down the last of the endangered species, that languish and continue to suffer with no real hope of recovery, kept from extinction only by our extraordinary means.
Finally, we can stop worrying about famine-swept Africa. We now know our past efforts to bring food to those poor people was misguided; we only kept them from the bliss of starvation.
It is also comforting to know that it is okay with liberals for the execution of death-row inmates to move forward, unimpeded by the appeals process.
What infallible logic the left has. Welcome to Logan's Run.
That one, Steve, gets promoted to an entry on the main page.
Posted by: Gerard Van Der Leun at March 24, 2005 12:52 PMThere are two pandas left in the world, one male and one female. During one tragic afternoon, these two pandas, safely in the confines of some zoo, undoubtedly not mating to the chagrin of their keepers, are playing at sport in which pandas might engage. The female panda, we'll call her Ling, suffers from what experts call a cardiac seizure due to electrolyte loss, causing heart failure and unconsciousness. Though the zoo medical personnel are able to restart her heart, her brain has been deprived of oxygen too long, and the veterinarians fear she may never breathe or eat again without the aid of machines.
The case is somewhat unprecedented, due to the fact that the pandas are endangered and they are, of course, animals. The veterinarian community tries for years to find solutions, even going so far as to try regenerative therapy using panda scents and the only other living panda, Xing (who still shows no interest in mating) to stimulate her to regain consciousness.
Still, the case seems grim, and due to the costs of maintaining Ling on a machine for air and food, the zoo can no longer keep up medical coverage, even with public donations and taxpayer dollars going toward her upkeep. Zoologists prepare a statement, indicating their intention to take Ling off the machines and allow her to die in peace. However, they've preserved her DNA, so that future pandas may, some day, exist again.
What would the world say to that, I wonder?
Posted by: Jeremiah at March 24, 2005 1:21 PMI can't get that bit of Lincoln about "every drop of blood drawn with the lash" out of my head.
I fear we are all going to pay a horrible price for this someday.
Posted by: DTLV at March 24, 2005 2:09 PMLike you, I've noticed that a lot of commentators have been thinking like lawyers rather than human beings in regard to this case. We have a problem when people confuse courtroom logic in an adversarial system with common morality. "Legal" is not always "right", nor is the winner of the debate.
Posted by: Kurt at March 24, 2005 5:59 PMThere seems to be a terrible inertia to the law, not a slippery slope type of motion, but rather a glacial creeping toward somewhere--in this case, toward death.
Ruling by arcane ruling, motion by motion, hearing by hearing--none typically understood by we the people--we've let the judiciary order an innocent woman to die without the same due process that a condemned murderer would enjoy.
I think we must be legally insane, or, perhaps, we're in our own legal PVS.
9/11 was a horrible wake up call. The Schiavo tragedy is another.
In some ways, the glacial creep of the law offers a terrific and conservative protection. It's hard to hijack a glacier. On the other hand, it's easy to bury a small injustice here, a cryptic but criminal verdict there because most of us simply do not pay attention until the crime or the injustice comes into our living room. Well one has.
There is much that is great about American justice, but there is something awesome and terrible about it, too. And it's in our power to remedy this tragedy. Terry Schiavo will be just as dead, but perhaps we can find the political will to outlaw death sentences based hearsay and on facts that do not pass the muster of beyond a reasonable doubt. True, these are not the current standards of jurisprudence in Florida, but, perhaps, they should be.
Posted by: Old Dad at March 25, 2005 10:14 AM"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated to combat spam and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.