Those Death-worshipping Lefties

In recent days many Conservative hosts on TV and Radio, (clearly following the latest RNC Talking Points) have begun to claim that Liberals love Death.

From the March 23 edition of The Rush Limbaugh Show:

LIMBAUGH: A question for those of you who are our friends on the left. Just answer it honestly to yourself: How many of you want Terri Schiavo to die simply because some Christian conservatives want her to live? How many of you have rejoiced when a death row inmate has been saved because of later investigation into DNA? Do you want Terri Schiavo to die because some Christian conservatives want her to live? Is that it?

From the March 24 edition of MSNBC's Scarborough Country:

SCARBOROUGH: Why is that the same activists who fight to save the whales, the spotted owls, and a snail darter, for God's sake, sit quietly by while the U.S. government helps kill Terri Schiavo? Why do we see the visceral reaction by leftist organizations to the attempts to save Terri Schiavo's life? Do these liberals really hate George Bush so much? And that's all you ever hear about, George Bush. You never hear about Terri Schiavo.

From Noonan's March 24 Wall Street Journal column:

I do not understand the emotionalism of the pull-the-tube people. What is driving their engagement? Is it because they are compassionate, and their hearts bleed at the thought that Mrs. Schiavo suffers? But throughout this case no one has testified that she is in persistent pain, as those with terminal cancer are.

[...]

Everyone who has written in defense of Mrs. Schiavo's right to live has received e-mail blasts full of attacks that appear to have been dictated by the unstable and typed by the unhinged. On Democratic Underground they crowed about having "kicked the sh-- out of the fascists." On Tuesday James Carville's face was swept with a sneer so convulsive you could see his gums as he damned the Republicans trying to help Mrs. Schiavo. It would have seemed demonic if he weren't a buffoon.

Why are they so committed to this woman's death?

They seem to have fallen half in love with death.

From the March 24 broadcast of Westwood One's The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly:

O'REILLY: Number one, there are a lot of Americans who simply want the woman to die. They just want her to die for a number of different reasons. There are some left-wing newspaper columnists, Maureen Dowd in The New York Times today, Richard Cohen, that despicable weasel down in The Washington Post. Oh, God! He is -- believe me. Anyway, they want her to die. And I'm sayin' to myself -- why? Why do you care whether she lives or dies?

From the March 25 edition of CNN's Inside Politics:

BAY BUCHANAN: This is an issue that -- the polls have been influenced by the press, and the press has suggested that there's two compelling principles here. But there is not. When the facts are out there, there's only one reason that they want this person to die, and that's because they've decided this woman is the property of her husband and he can do what he wants. He is not an honorable person, and that is quite clear if you look at the information. I ask you: where are the feminists? They are treating this woman like she is the property of her husband, that he can just go in and starve her to death because he doesn't like the quality of her life at this stage. ... This judge has basically told her husband, here, take a gun and shoot her. It's the same thing.

What these commentators don't understand - or maybe they do understand but simply want to obscure - is the fact that those who support the removal of the feeding-tube also stand with Terri. They stand with her wishes and desires, as have been shown in court and upheld many times, and even though they may not like those wishes or even agree with them - they respect them. For them, this is an issue of freedom and Liberty. The rights of a person to self-determine, to make choices about their own life and their own body.

Conservatives, particular those of the fundamentalist/facist bent don't seem to understand how to respect privacy or protect the sanctity personal freedom. They feel that they already know what is right, based on their own interpretation of God's Law, and wish simply to impose that interpretation on the rest of us. It's my opinion that they don't truly believe in freedom for all - they believe that those who God have blessed with financial success are more deserving that those God has cursed with trepidation and despair. Therefore they support the new bankruptcy bill which granted dozens of loopholes and escape hatches for the affluent, yet foreclosed the oppurtunity for those in dire straights for a second chance.

They've shown a complete disdain for truth and fact, simply to continue to support their own partisan idealogical agenda.

They don't believe in preserving life, only in controlling it. This is why they rail against abortion, yet oppose offering all positive choices which would make abortion unneccesary, such as ensuring the best information and access to contraception, comprehensive pre-natal care for all women regardless of income, pediactic care for all children, safe and affordable day-care services, reforms in our adoption services to make them more open and less traumatic, and expansion of foster-care support. This is why they claim to "protect marriage" by not allowing more people to get married, simply because they happen to be Gay - and they refuse to respect their right to that choice - yet now stand in lock-step in defiance of the so-called santity of marriage in the Schiavo case claiming that the will of the Parents is somehow more fundamental than the vows and commitment shared between husband and wife.

I feel that if of you claim to be Pro-Life, you also have to be Pro-Living! - whereas, living involves all the myriad of choices and freedoms that are supposed to be protected by our deepest moral convictions and codified in our Constitution, or else you stand to be accused of hypocrisy. Such as the Hypocrisy of Tom Delay:

From the March 27 Los Angeles Times article:

More than 16 years ago, far from the political passions that have defined the Schiavo controversy, the DeLay family endured its own wrenching end-of-life crisis. The man in a coma, kept alive by intravenous lines and oxygen equipment, was DeLay's father, Charles Ray DeLay.

Then, freshly reelected to a third term in the House, the 41-year-old DeLay waited, all but helpless, for the verdict of doctors.

Today, as House Majority Leader, DeLay has teamed with his Senate counterpart, Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), to champion political intervention in the Schiavo case. They pushed emergency legislation through Congress to shift the legal case from Florida state courts to the federal judiciary.

And DeLay is among the strongest advocates of keeping the woman, who doctors say has been in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years, connected to her feeding tube. DeLay has denounced Schiavo's husband, as well as judges, for committing what he calls "an act of barbarism" in removing the tube.

In 1988, however, there was no such fiery rhetoric as the congressman quietly joined the sad family consensus to let his father die.

"There was no point to even really talking about it," Maxine DeLay, the congressman's 81-year-old widowed mother, recalled in an interview last week. "There was no way [Charles] wanted to live like that. Tom knew -- we all knew -- his father wouldn't have wanted to live that way."

In addition to making the decision to end the life of his own father, Delay and his family also sued the bearing manufacturer claiming that shoddy workmanship was responsible for the accident that cause his fathers enventually fatal injuries. So it seems, that Delay want to be able make these types of decisions within his own family and to seek redress for incompetent and negligence by corporate agents when it affects his own family, but not when it affects families like the Schaivo's and Schindlers who have been using the money from a malpractice suit to help pay for Terri's $80,000/year care costs for the last decade.

I'm very glad that Jesse Jackson has stepped forward and begun to show those on the right how it's done, when it comes to being a true humanitarian. Although I disagree with Jesse, he has carried himself with grace and refrained from making inflammatory accusations toward those who don't agree with his position. Rather than take the bait offered by Sean Hannity, Jackson refused to denigrate the motives of Michael Schaivo. He's shown them respect. He has not attempted to use this sad situation as a method to put forth a political, partisan or idealogical agenda against our judiciary and the tenents of the Constitution as have those on the right. He has not called for Gov. Jeb Bush to "storm the gates" of the Terri's Hospice in defiance of a court order and the law. Instead he's chosen to work with the Florida Legislature to find a compromise bill that might give Terri at least some temporary relief.

I think ultimately that his efforts will fail, that even if Gov Bush does sign a new version of Terri's Law which can withstand Constitutional challenge - that it will be far too little, and far too late.

Vyan