March 25, 2005
TERRI’S GIFT
What’s God Got to Do with It? (Denis Boyles, National Review Online, March 25th, 2005)
To our traditional allies —them perfidious, unbelieving Frenchies and their Euro-kin — the controversy swirling around poor Terri Schiavo is yet another example of dumb American over-simplification grown fat, an outbreak of lunacy inspired by Upper Room Baptists and the like. The attempts by the Congress and the president to limit the damage done by a judiciary that is unresponsive, elitist, arrogant, dictatorial, self-protecting — something very much like the government of France, come to think of it — looks, to Eric Fottorino, writing in Le Monde, like proof that Bush will do anything, including rushing to the "bedside of an almost-dead person" in a "coma," to cement his relationship with the Bible-thumping, gel-haired, tele-mullahs of the right. To the Süüddeutsche Zeitung, the congressional intervention was a drama of "Life, Death and Power" with a grandstanding U.S. president bestirring himself from his Crawford ranch, something the paper claims he'd never do for a crisis or a mere war. In the leftwing Independent, the slow starvation of Terri Schiavo is how the paper's correspondent describes a death with "dignity," something Americans can't get right —no doubt because of what Tony Blair described to the Daily Telegraph as the "unhealthy" American penchant for giving religion a prominent role in election campaigns. For Libération, the whole save-Schiavo spectacle was enough to merit a sneering headline on a piece or two, but nothing more.Posted by Peter Burnet at March 25, 2005 10:59 AMNot that this kind of coverage is particularly surprising, of course. It reflects the general sentiment of the left toward muscular Christianity, something they find almost as appalling as actual muscles. Despite the fact that the New York Times has been in a persistent vegetative state for a lot longer than 15 years, the struggle to save Terri Schiavo was laughed off by one longtime columnist as part of the "God racket" —a "circus" of "religio-hucksterism." Times writers routinely ridicule the concerns of Americans for things like the life of Terri Schiavo as a predictable byproduct of a surplus of stupid red voters held hostage by Bible-thumping extremists. That America is where all Republican policies are spun to accommodate right-wing Christian nuts, where the poor all starve and where religious fervor sweeps the land like a great, darkening storm, blocking the sun of French-style reason and the grand traditions of that enlightenment thing.
This Easter weekend, let's pray to God they're right. If you ask me, the widespread grieving for Terri Schiavo is not only an indicator of the political significance of moral values but also a barometer of the nation's spiritual health. Did people go too far to try to pretzel-twist the judicial process and cheek-slap states' right? Maybe —but I don't think so, and anyway that's not the point. The alternative to being passionately engaged with the terrible fate of Terri Schiavo is to mutter a few words about how "sad and tragic" it all is and just move on. [...]
As I finish typing this early Friday morning, I don't know what Terri Schiavo's fate will be. But I do know that because of our affection for the "God racket," Terri Schiavo's body won't go unidentified, her passing won't be unnoticed, and, if the politicians have learned anything from this, the thousands of others like her without any written instructions concerning end-of-life care won't be shrugged off. Whether she's seen as an innocent woman neglected by an adulterous, grasping husband and murdered by dim judicial decree, or as programming fodder by news channels, or as a "sad and tragic" case by those inclined to side with the judge and the pseudo-husband (and by the way, where are all you timid feminists...?), everybody in America knows who Terri Schiavo is, where she is and what has happened to her, minute by horrible minute, slipping silently through Holy Week, from Maundy Thursday into Good Friday, while millions of Americans pray for her and for her family — and especially for those who torment her and ridicule the unshakable faith of her mother and her father. Those two know that for their daughter justice of one kind of another is absolutely inevitable.
Well, I believe food is food, food is not medicine. So you shouldn't withhold food from anyone. Unless, of course, they are dead already.
There's more than one way of withholding food, though.
Food is being withheld from people by the million in Darfur, and that doesn't seem to carry any weight with the people who are objecting to withholding food from Schiavo.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at March 25, 2005 12:02 PMHarry:
Quite to the contrary, the only folks who care about Darfur and have done something about it are the very same Evangelicals and the Administration.
Posted by: oj at March 25, 2005 12:20 PMHarry, that is really just so much crap and the standard, tired response of leftists to people who actually do something. Invade Iraq? Well, what about Zimbabwe? Serve at the Salvation Army Christmas dinner? What, with millions starving in India? How can you adopt an unwanted child when there are thousands of urchins in the slums of Rio?
In the end, all they want to do is protest self-indulgently and pass resolutions in UN working groups.
Posted by: Peter B at March 25, 2005 12:26 PMWell, Harry, I'm glad to see you're in favor of preserving Terri's life. I mean--that's what you're saying, right? If food should not be withheld from the millions of Darfur, then it should not be withheld from one sick woman in Florida. Charity begins at home. Relieving Terri Schiavo requires nothing more than the reinsertion of her feeding tube.
Terri is going to go down as the Dred Scott of the pro-euthanasia/anti-euthanasia conflict.
This is a wonderful country, driven since the founding by the spirit of people moving beyond their roots, and governed by the most humane and resilient political system ever devised. It's easy to forget that in the heat of zealotry.
Posted by: ghostcat at March 25, 2005 2:32 PMNo opinion about Schiavo, pontius, because I don't know whether she is dead or alive.
Depends, in part, on whether you accept brain death as taking care of the whole shebang. I do that.
But I don't know.
If she's already dead, putting the tube back in doesn't help her.
On the other hand, shooting down the Sudanese helicopters, and other simple actions, would unquestionably stop the starvation of thousands and thousands.
Orrin is fantasizing. The administration has done nothing in Darfur, and the death rate there is either unchanged or going up.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at March 25, 2005 2:35 PMSo, the U.S. is the only country that can shoot down a few helicopters? Take it to the French, Harry, and see how far you get. Funny, that -- they're thoroughly secular, and so obviously must be full of concern for their fellow man; one would think they'd get right on it.
Posted by: joe shropshire at March 25, 2005 2:44 PMYou're right, joe. Anybody could.
But nobody is.
I have not noticed the French posturing about Schiavo, though, so here is a rare instance when they cannot be accused of hypocrisy.
You guys are, in general, takers of Pascal's Wager. Well, here's where it's a sure thing, and you're not covering the bet.
I have no idea why. Christianity is so puzzling.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at March 25, 2005 2:59 PMIf there is one thing that is absolutely clear here, it is that Terri Schiavo is not brain dead. Breathing on her own is incompatible with brain death. If she were brain dead, no one's permission would be needed to do anything, because brain dead is dead.
Posted by: David Cohen at March 25, 2005 3:24 PMWell, here's a sure thing, and you're not covering the bet. Christianity is so puzzling. Once again, not Christian, but I should think that cuts both ways here, Harry. You've always presented yourself as the Hammer Against False Piety; okay, here's your sure thing. If there's anything that reeks of false piety like this husband claiming it's for the wife's own good; well, my sense of smell just got overpowered. As far as posturing, my desires for the Schiavo case are modest: I'd like to see the husband stand up and admit he wants her dead for his sake not hers; I'd like to see the courts to approve it, if they do, on that basis; and see to it that the job gets done in a way that's up to the standard of your local dog pound. If you mean to kill, then admit it, and don't make a hash of it. What's so puzzling to you about that?
Posted by: joe shropshire at March 25, 2005 5:55 PMOne aspect of this matter has been mentioned only in passing: since Terri Schiavo will die intestate, Michael Schiavo stands to gain a considerable amount by her death. Doesn't anyone think it peculiar that he has the final say under these circumstances?
Posted by: Josh Silverman at March 25, 2005 7:31 PMharry doesn't care about terri because only the living can care, and harry died a long time ago, if he was ever alive to begin with.
Posted by: cjm at March 25, 2005 11:48 PM