[Peace-discuss] Liberals and Schiavo

Fri Apr 1 14:42:33 CST 2005

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at alexia.lis.uiuc.edu>
To: "Chas. 'Mark' Bee" <c-bee1 at itg.uiuc.edu>
Cc: <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
Sent: Friday, April 01, 2005 12:45 PM
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Liberals and Schiavo

> I'm a bit concerned that this arrives on April 1, but nevertheless here
> are some comments:
>
> [1] The government also prohibited anyone from bringing her food and
> water.  She wasn't dying until then.

  Would the government have done so without guidance found in her last wishes?  No.  The government enforced her wishes. 
Basically, she 'pulled the trigger' herself.  Her husband enforced her will, and the government enforced his. - as 
required by long standing precedent.

>
> [2] The government that M. L. King called the greatest purveyor of
> violence in the world regularly ends human lives with impunity.  I was
> specifically referring to abortion.

  If I apply the same test you're using, human life, then every hangnail I pull is an abortion.  Any hangnail probably 
contains at least a hundred living cells, each with my unique blueprint, and each designed by the Creator with the 
potential of developing into a lil' mini-me in the right environment.  The real question in both cases is personhood. 
Until the fifth or sixth month, there's just nobody home.  Same for a flat EEG.  The porch light is out.

>
> [3] The undemocratic device that some liberals seem to be putting their
> hopes in, is the filibuster.

  Ah.  Guilty as charged.  A bullet can be stopped by a Bible or a hip flask.  It's not necessarily an elegant process 
either way.  Do you believe that packing the courts with religiowacks based on rigid litmus tests is the will of the 
people?  I would say that 'nonviolent, carefully designed, and already happening without incident for decades' is a 
pretty good description of a safe way to prevent it.  That's why the filibuster specifically is under attack.  We know 
it's a dishonorable attack by the fact that it wasn't brought by these same 'constitutional scholars' back when 3 times 
as many of Clinton's judges were being held out.

  BTW - I'm pretty sure segregationists also used the wheel and the lever.

>
> [4] I don't think you're attending to what Jefferson meant by
> "aristocrats," if you can't find five (and you only need four more). --CGE

  Me?  I simply assume Jefferson meant what you say he said.  You'll go a lot further before you find liberals desiring 
concentration of power at the top at the expense of the populace.  Mischaracterization of my position to match yours 
won't help.  The override of an innocent person's wishes for their physical body, their very corpus, by state 
intervention is exactly what you're advocating - and fits exactly what he describes.  (IIRC, you'll be hard pressed to 
find a single instance in his career to make us think he'd stand for it.  I'm thinking that's about all there is to 
that.)  -cmb

(p.s.  'Food' for thought - if it's OK for the government to jam food down someone's throat, why isn't it OK to jam a 
light stick up their butt?

.
.
.
.
 OK, April fools'...   =D)

>
>
> On Fri, 1 Apr 2005, Chas. 'Mark' Bee wrote:
>
>> > On Thu, 31 Mar 2005, Chas. 'Mark' Bee wrote:
>> >
>> >> ...That is the real issue here, it is what this case is being used for
>> >> by those who seek to eliminate choice...
>> >
>> > I think that you're right about this, in a sort of reversed fashion: those
>> > who insisted that the government must end the life of Terri Schiavo, who
>> > wasn't dying, did so because they feared that, unless they did, they'd
>> > have to admit that they couldn't end other human lives with impunity.
>>
>>    Nicely put, but quite wickety-wack.  The government did not end the life of Terri Schiavo.  It refused to allow 
>> right
>> wing nutters to interfere with her last wishes as they were understood by her guardian (and her friends).  Any child
>> sees this.  'State killing' is a straw man argument of the first degree here.  It should be a source of humiliation 
>> for
>> anyone of any intelligence caught using it.  Of course, not as much as the intimation that opposition to governmental
>> intrusion is motivated by who's involved.   And this new one - a desire to end other human lives with impunity. 
>> That's
>> a corker.  ;)
>>
>> >
>> >> ...Of course, this case - out of thousands over the past decade or so
>> >> - is also being given national publicity in order to generate enough
>> >> antipathy toward the judiciary branch to produce an army of useful
>> >> idiots, who will shortly run interference as the Republican congress
>> >> attempts to eliminate the filibuster for judicial nominees - in order
>> >> to put all of us under religious control for decades.
>> >
>> > Perhaps, instead of regarding them with contempt, we should talk to those
>> > "useful idiots" -- our fellow citizens -- about what should be done,
>>
>>   That's going to work.  Yes, certainly.  When you are accosted, tied up, and thrown in someone's trunk, or any other
>> organized main-force denial of rights for that matter, do you consult with them on what should be done while it's
>> happening?  If so, does it work?
>>
>> > instead of clutching onto a undemocratic device, long used by
>> > segregationists, as the savior of liberalism, and propounding fantasies of
>> > "all of us under religious control for decades."
>>
>>   Can't quite work out what this device is, from the clues you've given.  Are you talking about the judiciary branch?
>> Regarding religious control, here's a little Google:
>>
>> http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/3/30/22051/7199
>> http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/3/afa/292005gst.asp
>> http://www.yuricareport.com/Law%20&%20Legal/AConstitutionalCrisis.htm
>> http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/010205K.shtml
>> http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/391khfhv.asp
>> http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1370800/posts
>> http://judicialnetwork.org/
>> http://www.christianmusictv.com/leftjudicial_assault_.htm
>>
>>   Easy as falling off a log.  The stuff is everywhere, mostly coinciding with the Terri Sciavo publicity.  Certainly 
>> I
>> am not the one indulging fantasies here.  Attack on the independent judiciary is always one of the first steps in the
>> conversion to tyranny.  It is nothing less than corrupting the ability of human conscience to limit governmental 
>> action.
>> Tom Delay sounded the battle cry yesterday.  Since Incurious George was selected in the late 90s specifically as 
>> their
>> appointed standard-bearer, and our Democratic legislators are reeling from PR body blows delivered by nationally
>> organized religiowack constituents, I suspect we'll ride it out in the trunk.  Hopefully, by 2008 people will be sick 
>> of
>> the fumes.
>>
>> >
>> > Thomas Jefferson made an important distinction between "aristocrats" and
>> > "democrats." The aristocrats are "those who fear and distrust the people,
>> > and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher
>> > classes." The democrats, in contrast, "identify with the people, have
>> > confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the honest & safe ...
>> > depository of the public interest," *if not always "the most wise."*
>> >
>> > Many of our contemporary liberals are aristocrats in Jefferson's sense.
>>
>>    Haven't met any that I know of.  Bet you can't find me five.  Certainly in this case it is the anti-choicers who 
>> fear
>> and distrust the people and their power.  It's their standard MO - implicit in their every argument.
>>
>>   And now, up, up and away!  But I date myself.  No, not like that.   -cmb
>>
>> _______________________________________________ 