A blackness has settled over the land as Terri Schiavo has passed on. The forces of evil do not rest. Who among the weak and helpless shall be next? St. John wrote "The Light shines in the darkness and the darkness shall not overcome it." Therein lies our Hope and our Salvation...good will vanquish evil. Until then, war must be waged.
Thanks be to God for sending His only Son to die on the Cross so that we might be saved from despair and destruction. All praise to our Lord who was slain but has risen from the dead so that we may live...so that the battle may be won.
Our prayers are with Terri and all of those who cared and fought for her...especially her parents.
From the blog of Touchstone Magazine, http://merecomments.typepad.com
March 31, 2005
Robert George on Terri Schiavo
Some readers may have wondered, as we have, what Robert George, a senior editor of Touchstone and a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics, is thinking about what we as a nation have done to Terri Schiavo. National Review Online published this interview with George, Always to Care, Never to Kill, on Tuesday.
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Terri Schiavo & the Innocent Who Suffer
Kallistos Ware, an Eastern Orthodox bishop from England, took his Chicago audience on a tour of the Book of Job Tuesday evening that brought us face-to-face with the mystery of suffering. In Job we see someone who sufferes innocently and through that experience is granted an intercessory role—Job now may pray on behalf of his comforters, who in the end had nothing to say.
Only the experience of the divine presence resolves Job’s dilemma. But there is comfort in the fact that Job does not speak into a void, that God in fact responds to him, even if he does not explain his ways—he still enters into dialogue with Job, who prefers to repent and no longer speak. In just this way God, according to Hebrews 1:1, speaks to us now, not through the words of prophets, but by the very life of his Son, who like Job, suffered in innocence. Hebrews portrays Christ as the supreme intercessor, foreshadowed by Job, and also as the one who actually faced our temptations and lived among us, God-in-the-flesh who does not explain evil and suffering so much as accompany us through it.
In this light, there is little to be said in explaining the death of Terri Schiavo, whose name was mentioned on Tuesday night in the Q & A afterwards on suffering. All present, I believe, felt a solidarity with her and her family, and the prayers offered for the suffering included her most assuredly.
Terri Schiavo died today as a result of many forces beyond her control and the control of her parents, ultimately. The threads of some of these forces likely go back into recesses of time beyond our grasp. Given some of the statements of those who favored her death, it would seem also that some of the forces were truly aligned with the powers against which we struggle that are not flesh and blood.
We cannot view her death as a victory for evil, which in some way it certainly is, but as an opportunity in that it shows more clearly the grip that the culture of death holds on our society. We must continue to speak for life whatever the cost. If one needs motivation to do so, I cannot think of one better than the fate of Terri Schiavo. In the end, though, it is the faith of Job that sustains us, the faith that “my Redeemer lives.” Terri has left the hands of her abusers for the company of the One who touched the leper, placed his hands on the eyes of the blind, set his fingers upon the ears of the deaf, and called forth Lazarus from the day of corruption. If He did that among us before His Passion, then what He is capable of after His Resurrection must be beyond what we can even imagine.
Terri Schiavo, may she rest in peace, in the company of Christ and all his saints.
Posted by James M. Kushiner at 07:56 AM Permalink TrackBack (0)
Thursday, March 31, 2005
Marc A. Thiessen: The Blessed Sounds of Silence
March 31, 2005, 11:19 a.m.
The Blessed Sounds of Silence
Pope John Paul II, teacher.
By Marc A. Thiessen
http://www.nationalreview.com
For the first time in his 26-year pontificate, Pope John Paul II failed to come to his window Easter Monday, unable to deliver even a silent blessing to the crowd in St. Peter's Square. The day before, he did appear with an Easter Sunday address in hand — but when he opened his mouth, he was unable to speak. A tearful crowd watched as he tried repeatedly, in obvious pain, to deliver his prepared blessing, before slumping back into his chair — banging his fist in clear frustration.
But the pilgrims gathered at St. Peter's — and millions more watching across the world — received greater spiritual nourishment from his silent Easter witness than they ever could have from the text of his remarks. They know that, far from burdening on the Church, this time when John Paul is physically weakest may well be the greatest of his papacy. Here is why: The principal task of the pope is not the effective management of the Church bureaucracy — it is to serve as an effective witness for Christ in the world. John Paul does this more eloquently today, through his silent suffering, than he ever did with words. It does not really matter if he can use his voice intelligibly — or at all. By carrying on, despite his afflictions, he stands as a living rebuke to our utilitarian culture — and a living witness to the value of every life, especially the elderly and infirm.
In carrying on, John Paul also offers us a precious gift: his suffering. It is hard to see him suffer. But this pope does not ask for relief from his sufferings. To the contrary, a bishop once told me that the pope used to refuse medication precisely because it interfered with his suffering. He has a mystical relationship with his suffering, offering it up for us, and for the whole world — a world that increasingly embraces the culture of death, euthanasia, and the abortion of disabled fetuses, because it mistakenly believes there is no greater moral good than relief from suffering. In bearing his pain, John Paul says to us, in union with the Apostle Paul, "I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions." We need his example in this world filled with suffering. We need the lesson he is teaching us: that suffering is not useless; that it can have meaning, and salvific power.
As John Paul wrote in his 1984 encyclical On the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering, once this meaning and power are discovered, suffering actually becomes "a source of joy" because "faith in sharing the suffering of Christ brings with it the interior certainty that the suffering person...is serving, like Christ, the salvation of his brothers and sisters. Therefore he is carrying out an irreplaceable service."
It was one thing to hear such words delivered eleven years ago by a vigorous John Paul — the avid outdoorsman who loved to ski and climb mountains. It is quite another to see these words lived by a suffering John Paul, who has been forced by age and infirmity to give up such beloved pursuits — and who now struggles simply to say a Mass or deliver a homily. Today, as he struggles on, John Paul infuses a quarter-century of teaching with new credibility — and new meaning.
In his book The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis wrote, "You would like to know how I behave when I am experiencing pain, not just writing books about it....I will tell you; I am a great coward." Most of us are. So our world needs this struggling pope, who inspires millions of frail and elderly people. We need his example, which affirms the continuing value of every human person who feels isolated by illness and abandoned by a society. And we need to be reminded that we all have responsibilities to the weakest among us — to help them live in dignity, and to value the gift of their presence, whatever their condition, at every stage of their lives.In that encyclical over a decade ago, the Holy Father said this about the suffering of others: "When the body is gravely ill, totally incapacitated, and the person is almost incapable of living and acting, all the more do interior maturity and spiritual greatness become evident, constituting a touching lesson to those who are healthy and normal."
Today, as his own body grows increasingly incapacitated, and as he becomes less capable of living and acting, it is John Paul's spiritual greatness that is becoming all the more evident — and he is teaching the world anew. How blessed we are to have such a teacher in our midst; to receive the precious gift of his suffering; and to be living witnesses to what may one day be considered the greatest days of the greatest papacy in history. John Paul was once asked why he does not retire, and is said to have given this reply: "Because Christ did not come down from the Cross." The Lord will take him from us when He is ready. 'Til then, give us this silent pope.
— Marc A. Thiessen is a writer in Washington.
The Blessed Sounds of Silence
Pope John Paul II, teacher.
By Marc A. Thiessen
http://www.nationalreview.com
For the first time in his 26-year pontificate, Pope John Paul II failed to come to his window Easter Monday, unable to deliver even a silent blessing to the crowd in St. Peter's Square. The day before, he did appear with an Easter Sunday address in hand — but when he opened his mouth, he was unable to speak. A tearful crowd watched as he tried repeatedly, in obvious pain, to deliver his prepared blessing, before slumping back into his chair — banging his fist in clear frustration.
But the pilgrims gathered at St. Peter's — and millions more watching across the world — received greater spiritual nourishment from his silent Easter witness than they ever could have from the text of his remarks. They know that, far from burdening on the Church, this time when John Paul is physically weakest may well be the greatest of his papacy. Here is why: The principal task of the pope is not the effective management of the Church bureaucracy — it is to serve as an effective witness for Christ in the world. John Paul does this more eloquently today, through his silent suffering, than he ever did with words. It does not really matter if he can use his voice intelligibly — or at all. By carrying on, despite his afflictions, he stands as a living rebuke to our utilitarian culture — and a living witness to the value of every life, especially the elderly and infirm.
In carrying on, John Paul also offers us a precious gift: his suffering. It is hard to see him suffer. But this pope does not ask for relief from his sufferings. To the contrary, a bishop once told me that the pope used to refuse medication precisely because it interfered with his suffering. He has a mystical relationship with his suffering, offering it up for us, and for the whole world — a world that increasingly embraces the culture of death, euthanasia, and the abortion of disabled fetuses, because it mistakenly believes there is no greater moral good than relief from suffering. In bearing his pain, John Paul says to us, in union with the Apostle Paul, "I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions." We need his example in this world filled with suffering. We need the lesson he is teaching us: that suffering is not useless; that it can have meaning, and salvific power.
As John Paul wrote in his 1984 encyclical On the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering, once this meaning and power are discovered, suffering actually becomes "a source of joy" because "faith in sharing the suffering of Christ brings with it the interior certainty that the suffering person...is serving, like Christ, the salvation of his brothers and sisters. Therefore he is carrying out an irreplaceable service."
It was one thing to hear such words delivered eleven years ago by a vigorous John Paul — the avid outdoorsman who loved to ski and climb mountains. It is quite another to see these words lived by a suffering John Paul, who has been forced by age and infirmity to give up such beloved pursuits — and who now struggles simply to say a Mass or deliver a homily. Today, as he struggles on, John Paul infuses a quarter-century of teaching with new credibility — and new meaning.
In his book The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis wrote, "You would like to know how I behave when I am experiencing pain, not just writing books about it....I will tell you; I am a great coward." Most of us are. So our world needs this struggling pope, who inspires millions of frail and elderly people. We need his example, which affirms the continuing value of every human person who feels isolated by illness and abandoned by a society. And we need to be reminded that we all have responsibilities to the weakest among us — to help them live in dignity, and to value the gift of their presence, whatever their condition, at every stage of their lives.In that encyclical over a decade ago, the Holy Father said this about the suffering of others: "When the body is gravely ill, totally incapacitated, and the person is almost incapable of living and acting, all the more do interior maturity and spiritual greatness become evident, constituting a touching lesson to those who are healthy and normal."
Today, as his own body grows increasingly incapacitated, and as he becomes less capable of living and acting, it is John Paul's spiritual greatness that is becoming all the more evident — and he is teaching the world anew. How blessed we are to have such a teacher in our midst; to receive the precious gift of his suffering; and to be living witnesses to what may one day be considered the greatest days of the greatest papacy in history. John Paul was once asked why he does not retire, and is said to have given this reply: "Because Christ did not come down from the Cross." The Lord will take him from us when He is ready. 'Til then, give us this silent pope.
— Marc A. Thiessen is a writer in Washington.
Ann Coulter: The Emperor's New Robes
By Ann Coulter
http://www.frontpagemag.com/
March 31, 2005
On the bright side, after two weeks of TV coverage of the Terri Schiavo case, I think we have almost all liberals in America on record saying we can pull the plug on them. Of course, if my only means of entertainment were Air America radio, Barbra Streisand albums and reruns of "The West Wing," I too would be asking: "What kind of quality of life is this?"
There are a few glaring exceptions. On the anti-killing side, to one extent or another, are: former Clinton lawyer Lanny Davis, former Gore lawyer David Boies, former O.J. lawyer Alan Dershowitz, Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman, McGovern and Carter strategist Pat Caddell, liberal blogger Mickey Kaus, Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader and Rainbow Coalition leader Jesse Jackson, as well as several of my friends who are pro-abortion and pro-gay marriage but not Pro-Adulterous Husbands Who, After Taking Up With Another Woman, Suddenly Recall Their Wives' Clearly Stated Wish to Die.
Opinions about the Schiavo case seem to break down less on morals than on basic knowledge of the facts of the case.
There are a lot of telling facts, but two big ones are:
- The only family member lobbying for Terri's death is her husband, who is affianced to a woman he's been living with for several years and with whom he already has two children. (Today's brain twister: Would you rather be O.J.'s girlfriend or Michael Schiavo's fiancee?)
- Terri's husband has refused to allow her to be given either an MRI or a PET scan, which are also known as: "The tests that could determine whether Terri is even in a permanent vegetative state." (I believe his exact words were, "PET scan? MRI? What do I look like, a guy who just won a $1 million malpractice settlement?")
On the basis of these facts, Pinellas County Judge George Greer found that it was Terri's wish to be starved to death. She requires no life support; all she needs is food and water. If being (a) on a liquid diet, and (b) unresponsive to one's estranged husband are now considered grounds for a woman's execution, wait until this news hits Beverly Hills!
Greer made his finding based on the testimony of Terri's husband that Terri said she wouldn't want to live like this – a rather important fact the husband only remembered many years after Terri was first injured, but one year after he won a million-dollar malpractice award and began living with another woman. (Maybe when Terri said, "I wouldn't want to live like that" she was referring to being married to Michael Schiavo.)
Supporting the idea that positions on the Schiavo case are correlated with IQ, on the pro-killing side is Rep. Chris Shays, R-Conn., who denounced the legislation granting federal courts jurisdiction over Terri's case, saying the Republican Party "has become a party of theocracy." Yes, you remembered correctly: The House passed the bill overwhelmingly in a 203-58 vote, and the Senate passed it in a voice vote also with overwhelming support. (Surely, if anyone would defend the practice of being on a liquid diet, you'd think Ted Kennedy would.)
Also on the pro-killing side are conservatives still pissed off about the Civil Rights Act of 1964 who are desperately hoping to be elected "most consistent constitutionalist" by their local Federalist Society chapters.
You can't grow peanuts on your own land or install a toilet capable of disposing two tissues in one flush because of federal government intervention. But Congress demands a review of the process that goes into a governmental determination to kill an innocent American woman – and that goes too far!
It's not a radical extension of current constitutional doctrines – even the legitimate ones! – for the federal government to assert a constitutional right to life that cannot be denied without due process of law under the Fifth and 14th Amendments. Congress didn't ask for much, just the same due process John Wayne Gacy got.
But people even stupider than lawyers have picked up on the vague rumblings from "most consistent constitutionalist" aspirants and begun to claim that Congress' action is an affront to "limited government."
Of course, the most limited of all possible governments is a king. We don't have that sort of "limited government." What we have is divided government: three branches of government at the federal level and 50 states with their own versions of checks and balances.
Or at least that was the government designed for us by men smarter than we are. We haven't had that sort of government for decades.
Alexander Hamilton's famous last words in "The Federalist" described the judiciary as the "least dangerous branch," because it had neither force nor will. Now the judiciary is the most dangerous branch. It doesn't need force because it has smoke and mirrors and a lot of people defending the moronic scribblings of any judge as the perfect efflorescence of "the rule of law."
This week, an indisputably innocent woman will be killed by the government for one reason: Judge Greer of Pinellas County, Fla., ordered it.
Polls claim that a majority of Americans objected to action by the U.S. Congress in the Schiavo case as "government intrusion" into a "private family matter" – as if Judge Greer is not also the government. So twisted is our view of the judiciary that a judicial decree is treated like a naturally occurring phenomenon, like a rainbow or an act of God.
Our infallible, divine ruler is a county judge in Florida named George Greer, who has more authority in America than the U.S. Congress, the president and the governor. No wonder the Southern Baptist Church threw Greer out: Only one god per church!
It's a good system if you like monarchy and legally sanctioned murder. But spare me the paeans to "strict constructionism" and "limited government."
Ann Coulter is a bestselling author and syndicated columnist. Her most recent book is How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must).
http://www.frontpagemag.com/
March 31, 2005
On the bright side, after two weeks of TV coverage of the Terri Schiavo case, I think we have almost all liberals in America on record saying we can pull the plug on them. Of course, if my only means of entertainment were Air America radio, Barbra Streisand albums and reruns of "The West Wing," I too would be asking: "What kind of quality of life is this?"
There are a few glaring exceptions. On the anti-killing side, to one extent or another, are: former Clinton lawyer Lanny Davis, former Gore lawyer David Boies, former O.J. lawyer Alan Dershowitz, Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman, McGovern and Carter strategist Pat Caddell, liberal blogger Mickey Kaus, Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader and Rainbow Coalition leader Jesse Jackson, as well as several of my friends who are pro-abortion and pro-gay marriage but not Pro-Adulterous Husbands Who, After Taking Up With Another Woman, Suddenly Recall Their Wives' Clearly Stated Wish to Die.
Opinions about the Schiavo case seem to break down less on morals than on basic knowledge of the facts of the case.
There are a lot of telling facts, but two big ones are:
- The only family member lobbying for Terri's death is her husband, who is affianced to a woman he's been living with for several years and with whom he already has two children. (Today's brain twister: Would you rather be O.J.'s girlfriend or Michael Schiavo's fiancee?)
- Terri's husband has refused to allow her to be given either an MRI or a PET scan, which are also known as: "The tests that could determine whether Terri is even in a permanent vegetative state." (I believe his exact words were, "PET scan? MRI? What do I look like, a guy who just won a $1 million malpractice settlement?")
On the basis of these facts, Pinellas County Judge George Greer found that it was Terri's wish to be starved to death. She requires no life support; all she needs is food and water. If being (a) on a liquid diet, and (b) unresponsive to one's estranged husband are now considered grounds for a woman's execution, wait until this news hits Beverly Hills!
Greer made his finding based on the testimony of Terri's husband that Terri said she wouldn't want to live like this – a rather important fact the husband only remembered many years after Terri was first injured, but one year after he won a million-dollar malpractice award and began living with another woman. (Maybe when Terri said, "I wouldn't want to live like that" she was referring to being married to Michael Schiavo.)
Supporting the idea that positions on the Schiavo case are correlated with IQ, on the pro-killing side is Rep. Chris Shays, R-Conn., who denounced the legislation granting federal courts jurisdiction over Terri's case, saying the Republican Party "has become a party of theocracy." Yes, you remembered correctly: The House passed the bill overwhelmingly in a 203-58 vote, and the Senate passed it in a voice vote also with overwhelming support. (Surely, if anyone would defend the practice of being on a liquid diet, you'd think Ted Kennedy would.)
Also on the pro-killing side are conservatives still pissed off about the Civil Rights Act of 1964 who are desperately hoping to be elected "most consistent constitutionalist" by their local Federalist Society chapters.
You can't grow peanuts on your own land or install a toilet capable of disposing two tissues in one flush because of federal government intervention. But Congress demands a review of the process that goes into a governmental determination to kill an innocent American woman – and that goes too far!
It's not a radical extension of current constitutional doctrines – even the legitimate ones! – for the federal government to assert a constitutional right to life that cannot be denied without due process of law under the Fifth and 14th Amendments. Congress didn't ask for much, just the same due process John Wayne Gacy got.
But people even stupider than lawyers have picked up on the vague rumblings from "most consistent constitutionalist" aspirants and begun to claim that Congress' action is an affront to "limited government."
Of course, the most limited of all possible governments is a king. We don't have that sort of "limited government." What we have is divided government: three branches of government at the federal level and 50 states with their own versions of checks and balances.
Or at least that was the government designed for us by men smarter than we are. We haven't had that sort of government for decades.
Alexander Hamilton's famous last words in "The Federalist" described the judiciary as the "least dangerous branch," because it had neither force nor will. Now the judiciary is the most dangerous branch. It doesn't need force because it has smoke and mirrors and a lot of people defending the moronic scribblings of any judge as the perfect efflorescence of "the rule of law."
This week, an indisputably innocent woman will be killed by the government for one reason: Judge Greer of Pinellas County, Fla., ordered it.
Polls claim that a majority of Americans objected to action by the U.S. Congress in the Schiavo case as "government intrusion" into a "private family matter" – as if Judge Greer is not also the government. So twisted is our view of the judiciary that a judicial decree is treated like a naturally occurring phenomenon, like a rainbow or an act of God.
Our infallible, divine ruler is a county judge in Florida named George Greer, who has more authority in America than the U.S. Congress, the president and the governor. No wonder the Southern Baptist Church threw Greer out: Only one god per church!
It's a good system if you like monarchy and legally sanctioned murder. But spare me the paeans to "strict constructionism" and "limited government."
Ann Coulter is a bestselling author and syndicated columnist. Her most recent book is How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must).
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Michelle Malkin: The ACLU vs. America
30 March 2005
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/
On April Fool's Day, the American Civil Liberties Union will show us what a joke its commitment to American civil liberties really is.
April 1st, in case you haven't heard, is the launch of the Minuteman Project, an all-volunteer effort by law-abiding American citizens to call attention to the nation's wide open southern border. Hundreds of Americans from New York to Michigan to California will travel down to the U.S.-Mexico border for a month to monitor illegal aliens and alert immigration enforcement officials if they witness law-breaking.
Call it the mother of all neighborhood watch programs.
In doing so, the Minutemen will be exercising their constitutionally-protected freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Those would be fundamental civil liberties found in something called the, uh, First Amendment, of which the ACLU is supposed to be the foremost expert and champion. Or so the group and its celebrity supporters say. In sanctimonious new fund-raising ad campaigns, the organization features the likes of liberal actress Holly Hunter, who asks:
"Do you want to be heard without fear? I am not an American who believes that questioning or criticizing my government is unpatriotic."
Uh-huh. "Dissent is patriotic," the Left likes to preach. Except, apparently, if the questioning and criticizing deals with the government's abject failure to enforce immigration laws. Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist has been harassed by open-borders activists at his home. The group is reportedly being targeted by savage illegal alien gangsters from Mara Salvatrucha (a.k.a. MS-13). Mexican government officials are lobbying American law enforcement officials to suppress the Minutemen's rights to speak and assemble.
But instead of coming to the defense of the Minutemen who are challenging our government, the ACLU has warned the 1,000 volunteers that it will send monitors to document the Americans' activities. Moreover, the ACLU has already threatened lawsuits against the American dissenters for exercising their rights.
This bullying of pro-immigration enforcement activists comes as no surprise to those of us who have followed the ACLU's aggressive open-borders agenda — from its support for driver's licenses for illegal aliens, to its opposition to detaining illegal alien terror suspects after 9/11 and profiling foreign visitors from terror-friendly countries, to its efforts to stop local and state law enforcement officers from helping federal homeland security efforts.
ACLU spokesman Ray Ybarra argues that the mere presence of the Minutemen at the border constitutes "unlawful imprisonment" of illegal (excuse me "undocumented") aliens (excuse me, "migrants"). Ybarra told the Washington Times that the ACLU will have lawyers on standby ready to file civil cases against the volunteers. He warned that the Minutemen could "come to our state as 'vigilantes' and end up leaving as 'defendants.'"
The Minutemen have made it clear on their web site and in repeated statements that they "will not violate anyone's civil rights, and will not abuse anyone from any country…We will alert border patrol to the location of illegals, and wait for [the Border Patrol] to come and pick them up. We will follow illegal aliens from a distance and continue spotting them until authorities answer our cell phone and/or back-pack radio calls. All spotting, calls for assistance, and the response from the appropriate authorities will be chronicled and provided to any media representative."
Contrary to the ACLU and mainstream media representations of the group as racists and immigrant-bashers, the Minutemen are a diverse volunteer group that includes Americans of Mexican, Armenian, Russian, Lebanese, Indian, and Cuban descent; and black and Native American minorities. Also among the volunteers are 19 legal immigrants from Mexico, Peru, Russia, New Zealand, England, Australia, and the Philippines.
By recklessly linking the Minutemen to white separatists and casting them as outlaws, the civil liberties crowd engages in the very guilt-by-association smear tactics it has so loudly condemned. And in putting the protection of illegal aliens' rights over law-abiding Americans' civil liberties, the ACLU demonstrates which side of the border its true allegiances lie.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Michelle Malkin is the author of, most recently, "In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in World War II and the War on Terror". (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.)
To comment, please click here.
Michelle Malkin Archives
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/
On April Fool's Day, the American Civil Liberties Union will show us what a joke its commitment to American civil liberties really is.
April 1st, in case you haven't heard, is the launch of the Minuteman Project, an all-volunteer effort by law-abiding American citizens to call attention to the nation's wide open southern border. Hundreds of Americans from New York to Michigan to California will travel down to the U.S.-Mexico border for a month to monitor illegal aliens and alert immigration enforcement officials if they witness law-breaking.
Call it the mother of all neighborhood watch programs.
In doing so, the Minutemen will be exercising their constitutionally-protected freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Those would be fundamental civil liberties found in something called the, uh, First Amendment, of which the ACLU is supposed to be the foremost expert and champion. Or so the group and its celebrity supporters say. In sanctimonious new fund-raising ad campaigns, the organization features the likes of liberal actress Holly Hunter, who asks:
"Do you want to be heard without fear? I am not an American who believes that questioning or criticizing my government is unpatriotic."
Uh-huh. "Dissent is patriotic," the Left likes to preach. Except, apparently, if the questioning and criticizing deals with the government's abject failure to enforce immigration laws. Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist has been harassed by open-borders activists at his home. The group is reportedly being targeted by savage illegal alien gangsters from Mara Salvatrucha (a.k.a. MS-13). Mexican government officials are lobbying American law enforcement officials to suppress the Minutemen's rights to speak and assemble.
But instead of coming to the defense of the Minutemen who are challenging our government, the ACLU has warned the 1,000 volunteers that it will send monitors to document the Americans' activities. Moreover, the ACLU has already threatened lawsuits against the American dissenters for exercising their rights.
This bullying of pro-immigration enforcement activists comes as no surprise to those of us who have followed the ACLU's aggressive open-borders agenda — from its support for driver's licenses for illegal aliens, to its opposition to detaining illegal alien terror suspects after 9/11 and profiling foreign visitors from terror-friendly countries, to its efforts to stop local and state law enforcement officers from helping federal homeland security efforts.
ACLU spokesman Ray Ybarra argues that the mere presence of the Minutemen at the border constitutes "unlawful imprisonment" of illegal (excuse me "undocumented") aliens (excuse me, "migrants"). Ybarra told the Washington Times that the ACLU will have lawyers on standby ready to file civil cases against the volunteers. He warned that the Minutemen could "come to our state as 'vigilantes' and end up leaving as 'defendants.'"
The Minutemen have made it clear on their web site and in repeated statements that they "will not violate anyone's civil rights, and will not abuse anyone from any country…We will alert border patrol to the location of illegals, and wait for [the Border Patrol] to come and pick them up. We will follow illegal aliens from a distance and continue spotting them until authorities answer our cell phone and/or back-pack radio calls. All spotting, calls for assistance, and the response from the appropriate authorities will be chronicled and provided to any media representative."
Contrary to the ACLU and mainstream media representations of the group as racists and immigrant-bashers, the Minutemen are a diverse volunteer group that includes Americans of Mexican, Armenian, Russian, Lebanese, Indian, and Cuban descent; and black and Native American minorities. Also among the volunteers are 19 legal immigrants from Mexico, Peru, Russia, New Zealand, England, Australia, and the Philippines.
By recklessly linking the Minutemen to white separatists and casting them as outlaws, the civil liberties crowd engages in the very guilt-by-association smear tactics it has so loudly condemned. And in putting the protection of illegal aliens' rights over law-abiding Americans' civil liberties, the ACLU demonstrates which side of the border its true allegiances lie.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Michelle Malkin is the author of, most recently, "In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in World War II and the War on Terror". (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.)
To comment, please click here.
Michelle Malkin Archives
Nat Hentoff: Judicial Barbarism May End in Horrific Death
Nat Hentoff
28 March 2005
http://www.NewsandOpinion.com
Florida Circuit Court Judge George Greer has again ordered the removal of 41-year-old Terri Schiavo's feeding tube. As of this writing, attempts by the Republican Congressional leadership and some Democrats are being made to save her, through the courts, but the odds are long. If she dies of dehydration and starvation, this grave injustice can affect the rights of many disabled Americans who do not have clearly written directives as to their treatment when they can no longer speak their wishes.
The fundamental issue in Terri's case is disability rights — not the right to die. Throughout all the extensive media coverage of the case, there has been only slight mention — usually none at all — that nearly every major disability rights organization has filed legal briefs to prevent what they and I regard as judicial murder. The protests are not only from pro-lifers and the Christian Right.
Schiavo — who collapsed in 1990 from what may have been a potassium imbalance that temporarily stopped her heart and cut oxygen to her brain — has never been comatose, brain dead or in a persistent vegetative state (despite what some physicians have stated — and others have denied). She is responsive not only to her parents, brother and sister, but also when a new lawyer comes into the room — she turns, as she hears an unfamiliar voice. I have statements from people who have seen her and whose credibility I have reason to trust, as to her unmistakable responsiveness beyond mere reflexes.
She has not been attached to any machines — only to a small feeding tube by which she is fed three times a day.
The primary judge in her case, George Greer, has steadfastly found "clear and convincing evidence" to support the contention of her husband and guardian, Michael Schiavo, that before she collapsed in 1990, she said she would not want to continue to live in the state she's been in for 15 years. The only source for this claim is Michael Schiavo and two of his relatives. However, one of Terri's best friends, Diane Christine Meyer, has testified in court that Terri told her forcefully she would, indeed, want to live if she could no longer express her wishes. Judge Greer discounted the testimony.
As to Michael Schiavo's credibility, he has long been living with another woman, with whom he's had two children. He has forbidden therapy or rehabilitation for Terri since 1991, or any further tests since 1993. Terri has never even had an MRI or PET scan, let alone a complete neurological examination. As Republican majority leader, Dr. Bill Frist, who has had experience with disabled patients, said of Judge George Greer on the Senate floor:
"A Florida judge has ruled that Terri is in a persistent vegetative state. This same judge has denied a request for new testing and examinations of Terri by independent and qualified medical professionals. As a doctor, this troubles me. All the more so when the attorney for Terri's parents submitted 33 affidavits from doctors and other medical professionals that Terri should be re-evaluated." And a number of them believe that, with new tests and therapy, she may indeed improve.
Researchers supporting Terri allege Michael Schiavo has denied his wife, a Catholic, sacraments (an important rite in that religion), saying he doesn't want her to choke on the Communion wafer (his lawyer denies this). Yet he pressed for the removal of her feeding tube. On March 15, appearing on ABC-TV's "Nightline" in a disgracefully one-sided account of the case that should shame Ted Koppel (who wasn't on the show but was in charge), Michael Schiavo said that without the feeding tube, Terri "will drift off to a nice little sleep and eventually pass on and be with G-d."
In dread fact, Terri faces a horrific death from dehydration. In covering previous cases when feeding tubes have been removed, I've found out how terribly painful this way of dying is for someone like Terri who is not in a persistent vegetative state and can feel: By the eighth day, without water, her liver, spleen, kidneys, stomach, esophagus, tongue and eyeballs will swell and begin to crack.
All of her body's organs — by her ninth or 10th day — will have split and cracked. Not long after this agonizing ordeal, she will die.
Complicit in this egregious denial to Terri of due process and equal protection of the law has been the American Civil Liberties Union. It correctly called unconstitutional the Florida legislation pushed through by Gov. Jeb Bush in 2003 to reinsert the feeding tube because it applied to only one person.
But ever since, the ACLU has supported Michael Schiavo's insistence on putting Terri to death. But it has not shown any awareness of her husband's blatant conflicts of interest — with such results as his withdrawal of therapy and rehabilitation from her.
However, the ACLU would insist that a prison death row inmate receive vastly more civil liberties than Terri Schiavo has from the Florida courts.
As a Feb. 28 letter to the Washington Times from John Sobieski asks: "Who's next? Alzheimer's victims? The elderly in nursing homes? Will we be allowed to do to people what is illegal to do to dogs?"
The courts — and the ignorant coverage by most of the media of this crucial case — have until now appallingly failed Terri Schiavo and the community of the disabled ...
And who knows how may more innocent victims in the years ahead?
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Nat Hentoff is a nationally renowned authority on the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights and author of several books, including his current work, "The War on the Bill of Rights and the Gathering Resistance". Comment by clicking here.
Nat Hentoff Archives
28 March 2005
http://www.NewsandOpinion.com
Florida Circuit Court Judge George Greer has again ordered the removal of 41-year-old Terri Schiavo's feeding tube. As of this writing, attempts by the Republican Congressional leadership and some Democrats are being made to save her, through the courts, but the odds are long. If she dies of dehydration and starvation, this grave injustice can affect the rights of many disabled Americans who do not have clearly written directives as to their treatment when they can no longer speak their wishes.
The fundamental issue in Terri's case is disability rights — not the right to die. Throughout all the extensive media coverage of the case, there has been only slight mention — usually none at all — that nearly every major disability rights organization has filed legal briefs to prevent what they and I regard as judicial murder. The protests are not only from pro-lifers and the Christian Right.
Schiavo — who collapsed in 1990 from what may have been a potassium imbalance that temporarily stopped her heart and cut oxygen to her brain — has never been comatose, brain dead or in a persistent vegetative state (despite what some physicians have stated — and others have denied). She is responsive not only to her parents, brother and sister, but also when a new lawyer comes into the room — she turns, as she hears an unfamiliar voice. I have statements from people who have seen her and whose credibility I have reason to trust, as to her unmistakable responsiveness beyond mere reflexes.
She has not been attached to any machines — only to a small feeding tube by which she is fed three times a day.
The primary judge in her case, George Greer, has steadfastly found "clear and convincing evidence" to support the contention of her husband and guardian, Michael Schiavo, that before she collapsed in 1990, she said she would not want to continue to live in the state she's been in for 15 years. The only source for this claim is Michael Schiavo and two of his relatives. However, one of Terri's best friends, Diane Christine Meyer, has testified in court that Terri told her forcefully she would, indeed, want to live if she could no longer express her wishes. Judge Greer discounted the testimony.
As to Michael Schiavo's credibility, he has long been living with another woman, with whom he's had two children. He has forbidden therapy or rehabilitation for Terri since 1991, or any further tests since 1993. Terri has never even had an MRI or PET scan, let alone a complete neurological examination. As Republican majority leader, Dr. Bill Frist, who has had experience with disabled patients, said of Judge George Greer on the Senate floor:
"A Florida judge has ruled that Terri is in a persistent vegetative state. This same judge has denied a request for new testing and examinations of Terri by independent and qualified medical professionals. As a doctor, this troubles me. All the more so when the attorney for Terri's parents submitted 33 affidavits from doctors and other medical professionals that Terri should be re-evaluated." And a number of them believe that, with new tests and therapy, she may indeed improve.
Researchers supporting Terri allege Michael Schiavo has denied his wife, a Catholic, sacraments (an important rite in that religion), saying he doesn't want her to choke on the Communion wafer (his lawyer denies this). Yet he pressed for the removal of her feeding tube. On March 15, appearing on ABC-TV's "Nightline" in a disgracefully one-sided account of the case that should shame Ted Koppel (who wasn't on the show but was in charge), Michael Schiavo said that without the feeding tube, Terri "will drift off to a nice little sleep and eventually pass on and be with G-d."
In dread fact, Terri faces a horrific death from dehydration. In covering previous cases when feeding tubes have been removed, I've found out how terribly painful this way of dying is for someone like Terri who is not in a persistent vegetative state and can feel: By the eighth day, without water, her liver, spleen, kidneys, stomach, esophagus, tongue and eyeballs will swell and begin to crack.
All of her body's organs — by her ninth or 10th day — will have split and cracked. Not long after this agonizing ordeal, she will die.
Complicit in this egregious denial to Terri of due process and equal protection of the law has been the American Civil Liberties Union. It correctly called unconstitutional the Florida legislation pushed through by Gov. Jeb Bush in 2003 to reinsert the feeding tube because it applied to only one person.
But ever since, the ACLU has supported Michael Schiavo's insistence on putting Terri to death. But it has not shown any awareness of her husband's blatant conflicts of interest — with such results as his withdrawal of therapy and rehabilitation from her.
However, the ACLU would insist that a prison death row inmate receive vastly more civil liberties than Terri Schiavo has from the Florida courts.
As a Feb. 28 letter to the Washington Times from John Sobieski asks: "Who's next? Alzheimer's victims? The elderly in nursing homes? Will we be allowed to do to people what is illegal to do to dogs?"
The courts — and the ignorant coverage by most of the media of this crucial case — have until now appallingly failed Terri Schiavo and the community of the disabled ...
And who knows how may more innocent victims in the years ahead?
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Nat Hentoff is a nationally renowned authority on the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights and author of several books, including his current work, "The War on the Bill of Rights and the Gathering Resistance". Comment by clicking here.
Nat Hentoff Archives
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Ann Coulter: Starved for Justice
By Ann Coulter
FrontPageMagazine.com
March 24, 2005
Democrats have called out armed federal agents in order to: 1) prevent black children from attending a public school in Little Rock, Ark. (National Guard), 2) investigate an alleged violation of federal gun laws in Waco, Texas (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms), and 3) deport a small boy to Cuba (Immigration and Naturalization Service).
So how about a Republican governor sending in the National Guard to stop an innocent American woman from being starved to death in Florida? Republicans like the military. Democrats get excited about the use of military force only when it's against Americans.
In two of the three cases mentioned above, the Democrats' use of force was in direct contravention of court rulings. Admittedly, this was a very long time ago – back in U.S. history when the judiciary was only one of the three branches of our government. Democratic Gov. Orval Faubus called out the Arkansas National Guard expressly for purposes of defying rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court and lower federal courts.
The decadent buffoon Bill Clinton sent armed agents from the INS to seize a small boy from an American family – despite rulings by the majestic and infallible Florida courts granting custody of the boy to that very family.
None of these exercises of military force has gone down in history as a noble moment, but that's because of the underlying purpose of the force, not the fact that force was used.
To the contrary, what has gone down in history as a glorious moment for the republic was when President Dwight Eisenhower (Republican) called out military force of his own. In response to Gov. Faubus' abuse of the National Guard, Eisenhower simultaneously revoked Faubus' control of the National Guard and ordered the 101st Airborne Division to escort black students to school. (Minutes later, Democrats pronounced the Arkansas public schools a "hopeless quagmire" and demanded to know what Ike's exit strategy was.)
As important as it was to enforce the constitutional right to desegregated schools, isn't it also important to enforce Terri Schiavo's right to due process before she is killed by starvation?
Liberals' newfound respect for "federalism" is completely disingenuous. People who support a national policy on abortion are prohibited from ever using the word "federalism."
I note that whenever liberals talk about "federalism" or "states' rights," they are never talking about a state referendum or a law passed by the duly elected members of a state legislature – or anything voted on by the actual citizens of a state. What liberals mean by "federalism" is: a state court ruling. Just as "choice" refers to only one choice, "the rule of law" refers only to "the law as determined by a court."
As a practical matter, courts will generally have the last word in interpreting the law because courts decide cases. But that's a pragmatic point. There is nothing in the law, the Constitution or the concept of "federalism" that mandates giving courts the last word. Other public officials, including governors and presidents, are sworn to uphold the law, too.
It would be chaotic if public officials made a habit of disregarding court rulings simply because they disagreed with them. But a practice borne of practicality has led the courts to greater and greater flights of arrogance. Sublimely confident that no one will ever call their bluff, courts are now regularly discovering secret legal provisions requiring abortion and gay marriage and prohibiting public prayer and Ten Commandments displays.
Just once, we need an elected official to stand up to a clearly incorrect ruling by a court. Any incorrect ruling will do, but my vote is for a state court that has ordered a disabled woman to be starved to death at the request of her adulterous husband.
Florida state court Judge George Greer – last heard from when he denied an order of protection to a woman weeks before her husband stabbed her to death – determined that Terri would have wanted to be starved to death based on the testimony of her husband, who was then living with another woman. (The judge also took judicial notice of the positions of O.J. Simpson, Scott Peterson and Robert Blake.) The husband also happened to be the only person present when the oxygen was cut off to Terri's brain in the first place. He now has two children with another woman.
Greer has refused to order the most basic medical tests for brain damage before condemning a woman to death. Despite all those years of important, searching litigation we keep hearing about, Terri has yet to receive either an MRI or a PET scan – although she may be allowed to join a support group for women whose husbands are trying to kill them.
Greer has cut off the legal rights of Terri's real family and made her husband (now with a different family) her sole guardian, citing as precedent the landmark "Fox v. Henhouse" ruling of 1893. Throughout the process that would result in her death sentence, Terri was never permitted her own legal counsel. Evidently, they were all tied up defending the right to life of child-molesting murderers.
Given the country's fetishism about court rulings, this may be a rash assumption, but I presume if Greer had ordered that Terri Schiavo be shot at her husband's request – a more humane death, by the way – the whole country would not sit idly by, claiming to be bound by the court's ruling because of the "rule of law" and "federalism." President Bush would order the FBI to protect her and Gov. Bush would send in the state police.
What was supposed to be the "least dangerous" branch has become the most dangerous – literally to the point of ordering an innocent American woman to die, and willfully disregarding congressional subpoenas. They can't be stopped – solely because the entire country has agreed to treat the pronouncements of former ambulance-chasers as the word of God. The only power courts have is that everyone jumps when they say "jump." (Also, people seem a little intimidated by the black robes. From now on we should make all judges wear lime-green leisure suits.)
President Andrew Jackson is supposed to have said of a Supreme Court ruling he opposed: "Well, John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it." The court's ruling was ignored. And yet, somehow, the republic survived.
If Gov. Jeb Bush doesn't say something similar to the Florida courts that have ordered Terri Schiavo to die, he'll be the second Republican governor disgraced by the illiterate ramblings of a state judiciary. Gov. Mitt Romney will never recover from his acquiescence to the Massachusetts Supreme Court's miraculous discovery of a right to gay marriage. Neither will Gov. Bush if he doesn't stop the torture and murder of Terri Schiavo.
Ann Coulter is a bestselling author and syndicated columnist. Her most recent book is How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must).
FrontPageMagazine.com
March 24, 2005
Democrats have called out armed federal agents in order to: 1) prevent black children from attending a public school in Little Rock, Ark. (National Guard), 2) investigate an alleged violation of federal gun laws in Waco, Texas (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms), and 3) deport a small boy to Cuba (Immigration and Naturalization Service).
So how about a Republican governor sending in the National Guard to stop an innocent American woman from being starved to death in Florida? Republicans like the military. Democrats get excited about the use of military force only when it's against Americans.
In two of the three cases mentioned above, the Democrats' use of force was in direct contravention of court rulings. Admittedly, this was a very long time ago – back in U.S. history when the judiciary was only one of the three branches of our government. Democratic Gov. Orval Faubus called out the Arkansas National Guard expressly for purposes of defying rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court and lower federal courts.
The decadent buffoon Bill Clinton sent armed agents from the INS to seize a small boy from an American family – despite rulings by the majestic and infallible Florida courts granting custody of the boy to that very family.
None of these exercises of military force has gone down in history as a noble moment, but that's because of the underlying purpose of the force, not the fact that force was used.
To the contrary, what has gone down in history as a glorious moment for the republic was when President Dwight Eisenhower (Republican) called out military force of his own. In response to Gov. Faubus' abuse of the National Guard, Eisenhower simultaneously revoked Faubus' control of the National Guard and ordered the 101st Airborne Division to escort black students to school. (Minutes later, Democrats pronounced the Arkansas public schools a "hopeless quagmire" and demanded to know what Ike's exit strategy was.)
As important as it was to enforce the constitutional right to desegregated schools, isn't it also important to enforce Terri Schiavo's right to due process before she is killed by starvation?
Liberals' newfound respect for "federalism" is completely disingenuous. People who support a national policy on abortion are prohibited from ever using the word "federalism."
I note that whenever liberals talk about "federalism" or "states' rights," they are never talking about a state referendum or a law passed by the duly elected members of a state legislature – or anything voted on by the actual citizens of a state. What liberals mean by "federalism" is: a state court ruling. Just as "choice" refers to only one choice, "the rule of law" refers only to "the law as determined by a court."
As a practical matter, courts will generally have the last word in interpreting the law because courts decide cases. But that's a pragmatic point. There is nothing in the law, the Constitution or the concept of "federalism" that mandates giving courts the last word. Other public officials, including governors and presidents, are sworn to uphold the law, too.
It would be chaotic if public officials made a habit of disregarding court rulings simply because they disagreed with them. But a practice borne of practicality has led the courts to greater and greater flights of arrogance. Sublimely confident that no one will ever call their bluff, courts are now regularly discovering secret legal provisions requiring abortion and gay marriage and prohibiting public prayer and Ten Commandments displays.
Just once, we need an elected official to stand up to a clearly incorrect ruling by a court. Any incorrect ruling will do, but my vote is for a state court that has ordered a disabled woman to be starved to death at the request of her adulterous husband.
Florida state court Judge George Greer – last heard from when he denied an order of protection to a woman weeks before her husband stabbed her to death – determined that Terri would have wanted to be starved to death based on the testimony of her husband, who was then living with another woman. (The judge also took judicial notice of the positions of O.J. Simpson, Scott Peterson and Robert Blake.) The husband also happened to be the only person present when the oxygen was cut off to Terri's brain in the first place. He now has two children with another woman.
Greer has refused to order the most basic medical tests for brain damage before condemning a woman to death. Despite all those years of important, searching litigation we keep hearing about, Terri has yet to receive either an MRI or a PET scan – although she may be allowed to join a support group for women whose husbands are trying to kill them.
Greer has cut off the legal rights of Terri's real family and made her husband (now with a different family) her sole guardian, citing as precedent the landmark "Fox v. Henhouse" ruling of 1893. Throughout the process that would result in her death sentence, Terri was never permitted her own legal counsel. Evidently, they were all tied up defending the right to life of child-molesting murderers.
Given the country's fetishism about court rulings, this may be a rash assumption, but I presume if Greer had ordered that Terri Schiavo be shot at her husband's request – a more humane death, by the way – the whole country would not sit idly by, claiming to be bound by the court's ruling because of the "rule of law" and "federalism." President Bush would order the FBI to protect her and Gov. Bush would send in the state police.
What was supposed to be the "least dangerous" branch has become the most dangerous – literally to the point of ordering an innocent American woman to die, and willfully disregarding congressional subpoenas. They can't be stopped – solely because the entire country has agreed to treat the pronouncements of former ambulance-chasers as the word of God. The only power courts have is that everyone jumps when they say "jump." (Also, people seem a little intimidated by the black robes. From now on we should make all judges wear lime-green leisure suits.)
President Andrew Jackson is supposed to have said of a Supreme Court ruling he opposed: "Well, John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it." The court's ruling was ignored. And yet, somehow, the republic survived.
If Gov. Jeb Bush doesn't say something similar to the Florida courts that have ordered Terri Schiavo to die, he'll be the second Republican governor disgraced by the illiterate ramblings of a state judiciary. Gov. Mitt Romney will never recover from his acquiescence to the Massachusetts Supreme Court's miraculous discovery of a right to gay marriage. Neither will Gov. Bush if he doesn't stop the torture and murder of Terri Schiavo.
Ann Coulter is a bestselling author and syndicated columnist. Her most recent book is How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must).
Dennis Prager: The Case for Judeo-Christian Values, Part IX
Choose Life: The Case for Judeo-Christian Values: Part IX
By Dennis Prager
FrontPageMagazine.com March 29, 2005
There are good people on both sides of the Terri Schiavo tragedy, but chances are that if you affirm Judeo-Christian values, you have opposed pulling the feeding tubes from the severely brain damaged woman's body.
Why? Because if there is anything that Judeo-Christian values stand for, it is choosing life and rejecting death. As the Torah puts it, "I have put before you today life and death, and you shall choose life."
Even believing Jews and Christians are not fully aware of how much the rejection of death-oriented Egypt underlies the values and practices of the Torah, the first five books of the Bible held sacred by Judaism and Christianity.
Egyptian civilization was steeped in death. Its bible was the Book of the Dead, and its greatest monuments, its very symbols, the pyramids, were gigantic tombs. One of the Torah's first tasks was to destroy the connection between civilization (and, of course, religion) and death. That is the reason, I am convinced, for the absence of overt mention of the afterlife in the Old Testament -- it was greatly concerned with getting humanity preoccupied with life. With a few noble exceptions, preoccupation with the afterlife has led to denigration of life. The Islamic terrorists and the cultures that support them are only the most recent examples.
One of the greatest insights of Sigmund Freud, who, his atheism notwithstanding, was perhaps the greatest mind of the 20th century, was that human beings have a Death Instinct, a death wish that is as strong as the Life Instinct. He wrote this decades before Nazism and the Communist genocides of the 20th century proved his point.
Yet, he was only saying in psychoanalytical terminology what Moses had said in Deuteronomy thousands of years earlier.
The Torah began this transformation with its constant emphasis on rejecting everything Egypt stood for. The ban on eating or even owning bread during the seven days of Passover, the holiday commemorating the exodus from Egypt, the central Old Testament event after Creation, was primarily a symbolic rejection of Egypt. As noted in the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Egyptians essentially invented bread as we know it. "The Egyptians apparently discovered that allowing wheat doughs to ferment, thus forming gases, produced a light, expanded loaf, and they also developed baking ovens." (Fermented) bread symbolized Egypt as apple pie or hot dogs might represent America. Moreover, fermentation is likened to sin and death in both Jewish and Christian understandings of the Bible.
The Torah also banned Jewish priests from coming into contact with corpses. I know of no other religious system that banned its holiest members from any contact with the dead. This, too, was to separate life -- the role of the priest was to consecrate life -- from death; and most of all, to separate Israelite values from those of Egypt, where priests were regularly involved in religious activities revolving around death.
The Torah's ban on sexual intercourse during menstruation is also a separation of that which represents life (intercourse) from that which represents death (menstruation). Biblically, menstruation had nothing to do with women being "unclean." In fact, nearly the entire body of Torah instruction (found especially in Leviticus, the least known of the Five Books) concerning what is incorrectly translated as "unclean" or "impure" is actually about that which is touched by death. Substitute "touched by death" for "impure" or "unclean," and you will have a far better understanding of the text.
The somewhat better known ban on eating meat together with milk, emanating from the law in the Torah -- stated three times -- that prohibits the boiling of a kid in its mother's milk, is another example of separating life and death. Meat (i.e., a dead mammal) represents death; and milk, the life-giving food of mammals, represents life. (Jewish tradition only later added chicken, a non-mammal, to the list of mammals not to be eaten with milk; and major Talmudic rabbis did eat chicken with milk.)
The biblical and Judeo-Christian transformation of human thinking from death-to life-orientation has been a staggering accomplishment -- even though it has obviously not been entirely successful even in the contemporary Western world. The cavalier attitude about human life expressed among the leading opponents of Judeo-Christian values -- such as PETA, which equates barbecuing chickens with cremating Jews; the Princeton ethicist who believes that parents can commit infanticide under various conditions; those in the non Judeo-Christian West who lack a moral problem with abortion for whatever reason; modern film and art that portray death as kitsch; and the secular culture's contempt for those who call themselves 'pro-life' or believe that Terri Schiavo had a right to live -- are all examples of the contemporary attempt to undo the life wish of Judeo-Christian values and affirm the natural death wish that resides in the human soul.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk show host, columnist and author of four books, including Think a Second Time (HarperCollins), containing 44 of his essays.
By Dennis Prager
FrontPageMagazine.com March 29, 2005
There are good people on both sides of the Terri Schiavo tragedy, but chances are that if you affirm Judeo-Christian values, you have opposed pulling the feeding tubes from the severely brain damaged woman's body.
Why? Because if there is anything that Judeo-Christian values stand for, it is choosing life and rejecting death. As the Torah puts it, "I have put before you today life and death, and you shall choose life."
Even believing Jews and Christians are not fully aware of how much the rejection of death-oriented Egypt underlies the values and practices of the Torah, the first five books of the Bible held sacred by Judaism and Christianity.
Egyptian civilization was steeped in death. Its bible was the Book of the Dead, and its greatest monuments, its very symbols, the pyramids, were gigantic tombs. One of the Torah's first tasks was to destroy the connection between civilization (and, of course, religion) and death. That is the reason, I am convinced, for the absence of overt mention of the afterlife in the Old Testament -- it was greatly concerned with getting humanity preoccupied with life. With a few noble exceptions, preoccupation with the afterlife has led to denigration of life. The Islamic terrorists and the cultures that support them are only the most recent examples.
One of the greatest insights of Sigmund Freud, who, his atheism notwithstanding, was perhaps the greatest mind of the 20th century, was that human beings have a Death Instinct, a death wish that is as strong as the Life Instinct. He wrote this decades before Nazism and the Communist genocides of the 20th century proved his point.
Yet, he was only saying in psychoanalytical terminology what Moses had said in Deuteronomy thousands of years earlier.
The Torah began this transformation with its constant emphasis on rejecting everything Egypt stood for. The ban on eating or even owning bread during the seven days of Passover, the holiday commemorating the exodus from Egypt, the central Old Testament event after Creation, was primarily a symbolic rejection of Egypt. As noted in the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Egyptians essentially invented bread as we know it. "The Egyptians apparently discovered that allowing wheat doughs to ferment, thus forming gases, produced a light, expanded loaf, and they also developed baking ovens." (Fermented) bread symbolized Egypt as apple pie or hot dogs might represent America. Moreover, fermentation is likened to sin and death in both Jewish and Christian understandings of the Bible.
The Torah also banned Jewish priests from coming into contact with corpses. I know of no other religious system that banned its holiest members from any contact with the dead. This, too, was to separate life -- the role of the priest was to consecrate life -- from death; and most of all, to separate Israelite values from those of Egypt, where priests were regularly involved in religious activities revolving around death.
The Torah's ban on sexual intercourse during menstruation is also a separation of that which represents life (intercourse) from that which represents death (menstruation). Biblically, menstruation had nothing to do with women being "unclean." In fact, nearly the entire body of Torah instruction (found especially in Leviticus, the least known of the Five Books) concerning what is incorrectly translated as "unclean" or "impure" is actually about that which is touched by death. Substitute "touched by death" for "impure" or "unclean," and you will have a far better understanding of the text.
The somewhat better known ban on eating meat together with milk, emanating from the law in the Torah -- stated three times -- that prohibits the boiling of a kid in its mother's milk, is another example of separating life and death. Meat (i.e., a dead mammal) represents death; and milk, the life-giving food of mammals, represents life. (Jewish tradition only later added chicken, a non-mammal, to the list of mammals not to be eaten with milk; and major Talmudic rabbis did eat chicken with milk.)
The biblical and Judeo-Christian transformation of human thinking from death-to life-orientation has been a staggering accomplishment -- even though it has obviously not been entirely successful even in the contemporary Western world. The cavalier attitude about human life expressed among the leading opponents of Judeo-Christian values -- such as PETA, which equates barbecuing chickens with cremating Jews; the Princeton ethicist who believes that parents can commit infanticide under various conditions; those in the non Judeo-Christian West who lack a moral problem with abortion for whatever reason; modern film and art that portray death as kitsch; and the secular culture's contempt for those who call themselves 'pro-life' or believe that Terri Schiavo had a right to live -- are all examples of the contemporary attempt to undo the life wish of Judeo-Christian values and affirm the natural death wish that resides in the human soul.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk show host, columnist and author of four books, including Think a Second Time (HarperCollins), containing 44 of his essays.
Mark Steyn: No Compelling Reason to Kill Terri Schiavo
March 27, 2005
BY MARK STEYN
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
A couple of decades back, north of the border, it was discovered that some overzealous types in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had been surreptitiously burning down the barns of Quebec separatists. The prime minister, Pierre Trudeau, shrugged off the controversy and blithely remarked that, if people were so upset by the Mounties illegally burning down barns, perhaps he'd make the burning of barns by Mounties legal. As the columnist George Jonas commented:
''It seemed not to occur to him that it isn't wrong to burn down barns because it's illegal, but it's illegal to burn down barns because it's wrong. Like other statist politicians, Mr. Trudeau . . . either didn't see, or resented, that right and wrong are only reflected by the laws, not determined by them.''
That's how I feel about the Terri Schiavo case. I'm neither a Floridian nor a lawyer, and, for all I know, it may be legal under Florida law for the state to order her to be starved to death. But it is still wrong.
This is not a criminal, not a murderer, not a person whose life should be in the gift of the state. So I find it repulsive, and indeed decadent, to have her continued existence framed in terms of ''plaintiffs'' and ''petitions'' and ''en banc review'' and ''de novo'' and all the other legalese. Mrs. Schiavo has been in her present condition for 15 years. Whoever she once was, this is who she is now -- and, after a decade and a half, there is no compelling reason to kill her. Any legal system with a decent respect for the status quo -- something too many American judges are increasingly disdainful of -- would recognize that her present life, in all its limitations, is now a well-established fact, and it is the most grotesque judicial overreaching for any court at this late stage to decide enough is enough. It would be one thing had a doctor decided to reach for the morphine and ''put her out of her misery'' after a week in her diminished state; after 15 years, for the courts to treat her like a Death Row killer who's exhausted her appeals is simply vile.
There seems to be a genuine dispute about her condition -- between those on her husband's side, who say she has ''no consciousness,'' and those on her parents' side, who say she is capable of basic, childlike reactions. If the latter are correct, ending her life is an act of murder. If the former are correct, what difference does it make? If she feels nothing -- if there's no there there -- she has no misery to be put out of. That being so, why not err in favor of the non-irreversible option?
The here's-your-shroud-and-what's-your-hurry crowd say, ah, yes, but you uptight conservatives are always boring on about the sanctity of marriage, and this is what her husband wants, and he's legally the next of kin.
Michael Schiavo is living in a common-law relationship with another woman, by whom he has fathered children. I make no judgment on that. Who of us can say how we would react in his circumstances? Maybe I'd pull my hat down over my face and slink off to the cathouse on the other side of town once a week. Maybe I'd embark on a discreet companionship with a lonely widow. But if I take on a new wife (in all but name) and make a new family, I would think it not unreasonable to forfeit any right of life or death over my previous wife.
Michael Schiavo took a vow to be faithful in sickness and in health, forsaking all others till death do them part. He's forsaken his wife and been unfaithful to her: She is, de facto, his ex-wife, yet, de jure, he appears to have the right to order her execution. This is preposterous. Suppose his current common-law partner were to fall victim to a disabling accident. Would he also be able to have her terminated? Can he exercise his spousal rights polygamously? The legal deference to Mr. Schiavo's position, to his rights overriding her parents', is at odds with reality.
As for the worthlessness of Terri Schiavo's existence, some years back I was discussing the death of a distinguished songwriter with one of his old colleagues. My then girlfriend, in her mid-20s, was getting twitchy to head for dinner and said airily, ''Oh, well, he had a good life. He was 87.'' ''That's easy for you to say,'' said his old pal. ''I'm 86.'' To say nobody would want to live in an iron lung or a wheelchair or a neck brace or with third-degree burns over 80 percent of your body is likewise easy for you to say.
We all have friends who are passionate about some activity -- They say, ''I live to ski,'' or dance, or play the cello. Then something happens and they can't. The ones I've known fall into two broad camps: There are those who give up and consider what's left of their lives a waste of time; and there are those who say they've learned to appreciate simple pleasures, like the morning sun through the spring blossom dappling their room each morning. Most of us roll our eyes and think, ''What a loser, mooning on about the blossom. He used to be a Hollywood vice president, for Pete's sake.''
But that's easy for us to say. We can't know which camp we'd fall into until it happens to us. And it behooves us to maintain a certain modesty about presuming to speak for others -- even those we know well. Example: ''Driving down there, I remember distinctly thinking that Chris would rather not live than be in this condition.'' That's Barbara Johnson recalling the 1995 accident of her son Christopher Reeve. Her instinct was to pull the plug; his was to live.
As to arguments about ''Congressional overreaching'' and ''states' rights,'' which is more likely? That Congress will use this precedent to pass bills keeping you -- yes, you, Joe Schmoe of 37 Elm Street -- alive till your 118th birthday. Or that the various third parties who intrude between patient and doctor in the American system -- next of kin, HMOs, insurers -- will see the Schiavo case as an important benchmark in what's already a drift toward a culture of convenience euthanasia. Here's a thought: Where do you go to get a living-will kit saying that in the event of a hideous accident I don't want to be put to death by a Florida judge or the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals? And, if you had such a living will, would any U.S. court recognize it?
BY MARK STEYN
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
A couple of decades back, north of the border, it was discovered that some overzealous types in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had been surreptitiously burning down the barns of Quebec separatists. The prime minister, Pierre Trudeau, shrugged off the controversy and blithely remarked that, if people were so upset by the Mounties illegally burning down barns, perhaps he'd make the burning of barns by Mounties legal. As the columnist George Jonas commented:
''It seemed not to occur to him that it isn't wrong to burn down barns because it's illegal, but it's illegal to burn down barns because it's wrong. Like other statist politicians, Mr. Trudeau . . . either didn't see, or resented, that right and wrong are only reflected by the laws, not determined by them.''
That's how I feel about the Terri Schiavo case. I'm neither a Floridian nor a lawyer, and, for all I know, it may be legal under Florida law for the state to order her to be starved to death. But it is still wrong.
This is not a criminal, not a murderer, not a person whose life should be in the gift of the state. So I find it repulsive, and indeed decadent, to have her continued existence framed in terms of ''plaintiffs'' and ''petitions'' and ''en banc review'' and ''de novo'' and all the other legalese. Mrs. Schiavo has been in her present condition for 15 years. Whoever she once was, this is who she is now -- and, after a decade and a half, there is no compelling reason to kill her. Any legal system with a decent respect for the status quo -- something too many American judges are increasingly disdainful of -- would recognize that her present life, in all its limitations, is now a well-established fact, and it is the most grotesque judicial overreaching for any court at this late stage to decide enough is enough. It would be one thing had a doctor decided to reach for the morphine and ''put her out of her misery'' after a week in her diminished state; after 15 years, for the courts to treat her like a Death Row killer who's exhausted her appeals is simply vile.
There seems to be a genuine dispute about her condition -- between those on her husband's side, who say she has ''no consciousness,'' and those on her parents' side, who say she is capable of basic, childlike reactions. If the latter are correct, ending her life is an act of murder. If the former are correct, what difference does it make? If she feels nothing -- if there's no there there -- she has no misery to be put out of. That being so, why not err in favor of the non-irreversible option?
The here's-your-shroud-and-what's-your-hurry crowd say, ah, yes, but you uptight conservatives are always boring on about the sanctity of marriage, and this is what her husband wants, and he's legally the next of kin.
Michael Schiavo is living in a common-law relationship with another woman, by whom he has fathered children. I make no judgment on that. Who of us can say how we would react in his circumstances? Maybe I'd pull my hat down over my face and slink off to the cathouse on the other side of town once a week. Maybe I'd embark on a discreet companionship with a lonely widow. But if I take on a new wife (in all but name) and make a new family, I would think it not unreasonable to forfeit any right of life or death over my previous wife.
Michael Schiavo took a vow to be faithful in sickness and in health, forsaking all others till death do them part. He's forsaken his wife and been unfaithful to her: She is, de facto, his ex-wife, yet, de jure, he appears to have the right to order her execution. This is preposterous. Suppose his current common-law partner were to fall victim to a disabling accident. Would he also be able to have her terminated? Can he exercise his spousal rights polygamously? The legal deference to Mr. Schiavo's position, to his rights overriding her parents', is at odds with reality.
As for the worthlessness of Terri Schiavo's existence, some years back I was discussing the death of a distinguished songwriter with one of his old colleagues. My then girlfriend, in her mid-20s, was getting twitchy to head for dinner and said airily, ''Oh, well, he had a good life. He was 87.'' ''That's easy for you to say,'' said his old pal. ''I'm 86.'' To say nobody would want to live in an iron lung or a wheelchair or a neck brace or with third-degree burns over 80 percent of your body is likewise easy for you to say.
We all have friends who are passionate about some activity -- They say, ''I live to ski,'' or dance, or play the cello. Then something happens and they can't. The ones I've known fall into two broad camps: There are those who give up and consider what's left of their lives a waste of time; and there are those who say they've learned to appreciate simple pleasures, like the morning sun through the spring blossom dappling their room each morning. Most of us roll our eyes and think, ''What a loser, mooning on about the blossom. He used to be a Hollywood vice president, for Pete's sake.''
But that's easy for us to say. We can't know which camp we'd fall into until it happens to us. And it behooves us to maintain a certain modesty about presuming to speak for others -- even those we know well. Example: ''Driving down there, I remember distinctly thinking that Chris would rather not live than be in this condition.'' That's Barbara Johnson recalling the 1995 accident of her son Christopher Reeve. Her instinct was to pull the plug; his was to live.
As to arguments about ''Congressional overreaching'' and ''states' rights,'' which is more likely? That Congress will use this precedent to pass bills keeping you -- yes, you, Joe Schmoe of 37 Elm Street -- alive till your 118th birthday. Or that the various third parties who intrude between patient and doctor in the American system -- next of kin, HMOs, insurers -- will see the Schiavo case as an important benchmark in what's already a drift toward a culture of convenience euthanasia. Here's a thought: Where do you go to get a living-will kit saying that in the event of a hideous accident I don't want to be put to death by a Florida judge or the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals? And, if you had such a living will, would any U.S. court recognize it?
Peggy Noonan: In Love With Death
The Wall Street Journal
In Love With Death
The bizarre passion of the pull-the-tube people.
Thursday, March 24, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST
God made the world or he didn't.
God made you or he didn't.
If he did, your little human life is, and has been, touched by the divine. If this is true, it would be true of all humans, not only some. And so--again, if it is true--each human life is precious, of infinite value, worthy of great respect.
Most--not all, but probably most--of those who support Terri Schiavo's right to live believe the above. This explains their passion and emotionalism. They believe they are fighting for an invaluable and irreplaceable human life. They are like the mother who is famously said to have lifted the back of a small car off the ground to save a child caught under a tire. You're desperate to save a life, you're shot through with adrenaline, your strength is for half a second superhuman, you do the impossible.
That is what they are trying to do.
They do not want an innocent human life ended for what appear to be primarily practical and worldly reasons--e.g., Mrs. Schiavo's quality of life is low, her life is pointless. They say: Who is to say it is pointless? And what does pointless even mean? Maybe life itself is the point.
**********
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.
If they care so much about her pain, why are they unconcerned at the suffering caused her by the denial of food and water? And why do those who argue for Mrs. Schiavo's death employ language and imagery that is so violent and aggressive? The chairman of the Democratic National Committee calls Republicans "brain dead." Michael Schiavo, the husband, calls House Majority Leader Tom DeLay "a slithering snake."
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.
What does Terri Schiavo's life symbolize to them? What does the idea that she might continue to live suggest to them?
Why does this prospect so unnerve them? Again, if you think Terri Schiavo is a precious human gift of God, your passion is explicable. The passion of the pull-the-tube people is not.
I do not understand their certainty. I don't "know" that any degree of progress or healing is possible for Terri Schiavo; I only hope they are. We can't know, but we can "err on the side of life." How do the pro-death forces "know" there is no possibility of progress, healing, miracles? They seem to think they know. They seem to love the phrases they bandy about: "vegetative state," "brain dead," "liquefied cortex."
*********
I do not understand why people who want to save the whales (so do I) find campaigns to save humans so much less arresting. I do not understand their lack of passion. But the save-the-whales people are somehow rarely the stop-abortion-please people.
The PETA people, who say they are committed to ending cruelty to animals, seem disinterested in the fact of late-term abortion, which is a cruel procedure performed on a human.
I do not understand why the don't-drill-in-Alaska-and-destroy-its-prime-beauty people do not join forces with the don't-end-a-life-that-holds-within-it-beauty people.
I do not understand why those who want a freeze on all death penalty cases in order to review each of them in light of DNA testing--an act of justice and compassion toward those who have been found guilty of crimes in a court of law--are uninterested in giving every last chance and every last test to a woman whom no one has ever accused of anything.
There are passionate groups of women in America who decry spousal abuse, give beaten wives shelter, insist that a woman is not a husband's chattel. This is good work. Why are they not taking part in the fight for Terri Schiavo? Again, what explains their lack of passion on this? If Mrs. Schiavo dies, it will be because her husband, and only her husband, insists she wanted to, or would want to, or said she wanted to in a hypothetical conversation long ago. A thin reed on which to base the killing of a human being.
**********
The pull-the-tube people say, "She must hate being brain-damaged." Well, yes, she must. (This line of argument presumes she is to some degree or in some way thinking or experiencing emotions.) Who wouldn't feel extreme sadness at being extremely disabled? I'd weep every day, wouldn't you? But consider your life. Are there not facets of it, or facts of it, that make you feel extremely sad, pained, frustrated, angry? But you're still glad you're alive, aren't you? Me too. No one enjoys a deathbed. Very few want to leave.
Terri Schiavo may well die. No good will come of it. Those who are half in love with death will only become more red-fanged and ravenous.
And those who are still learning--our children--oh, what terrible lessons they're learning. What terrible stories are shaping them. They're witnessing the Schiavo drama on television and hearing it on radio. They are seeing a society--their society, their people--on the verge of famously accepting, even embracing, the idea that a damaged life is a throwaway life.
Our children have been reared in the age of abortion, and are coming of age in a time when seemingly respectable people are enthusiastic for euthanasia. It cannot be good for our children, and the world they will make, that they are given this new lesson that human life is not precious, not touched by the divine, not of infinite value.
Once you "know" that--that human life is not so special after all--then everything is possible, and none of it is good. When a society comes to believe that human life is not inherently worth living, it is a slippery slope to the gas chamber. You wind up on a low road that twists past Columbine and leads toward Auschwitz. Today that road runs through Pinellas Park, Fla.
Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "A Heart, a Cross, and a Flag" (Wall Street Journal Books/Simon & Schuster), a collection of post-Sept. 11 columns, which you can buy from the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Thursdays.
In Love With Death
The bizarre passion of the pull-the-tube people.
Thursday, March 24, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST
God made the world or he didn't.
God made you or he didn't.
If he did, your little human life is, and has been, touched by the divine. If this is true, it would be true of all humans, not only some. And so--again, if it is true--each human life is precious, of infinite value, worthy of great respect.
Most--not all, but probably most--of those who support Terri Schiavo's right to live believe the above. This explains their passion and emotionalism. They believe they are fighting for an invaluable and irreplaceable human life. They are like the mother who is famously said to have lifted the back of a small car off the ground to save a child caught under a tire. You're desperate to save a life, you're shot through with adrenaline, your strength is for half a second superhuman, you do the impossible.
That is what they are trying to do.
They do not want an innocent human life ended for what appear to be primarily practical and worldly reasons--e.g., Mrs. Schiavo's quality of life is low, her life is pointless. They say: Who is to say it is pointless? And what does pointless even mean? Maybe life itself is the point.
**********
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.
If they care so much about her pain, why are they unconcerned at the suffering caused her by the denial of food and water? And why do those who argue for Mrs. Schiavo's death employ language and imagery that is so violent and aggressive? The chairman of the Democratic National Committee calls Republicans "brain dead." Michael Schiavo, the husband, calls House Majority Leader Tom DeLay "a slithering snake."
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.
What does Terri Schiavo's life symbolize to them? What does the idea that she might continue to live suggest to them?
Why does this prospect so unnerve them? Again, if you think Terri Schiavo is a precious human gift of God, your passion is explicable. The passion of the pull-the-tube people is not.
I do not understand their certainty. I don't "know" that any degree of progress or healing is possible for Terri Schiavo; I only hope they are. We can't know, but we can "err on the side of life." How do the pro-death forces "know" there is no possibility of progress, healing, miracles? They seem to think they know. They seem to love the phrases they bandy about: "vegetative state," "brain dead," "liquefied cortex."
*********
I do not understand why people who want to save the whales (so do I) find campaigns to save humans so much less arresting. I do not understand their lack of passion. But the save-the-whales people are somehow rarely the stop-abortion-please people.
The PETA people, who say they are committed to ending cruelty to animals, seem disinterested in the fact of late-term abortion, which is a cruel procedure performed on a human.
I do not understand why the don't-drill-in-Alaska-and-destroy-its-prime-beauty people do not join forces with the don't-end-a-life-that-holds-within-it-beauty people.
I do not understand why those who want a freeze on all death penalty cases in order to review each of them in light of DNA testing--an act of justice and compassion toward those who have been found guilty of crimes in a court of law--are uninterested in giving every last chance and every last test to a woman whom no one has ever accused of anything.
There are passionate groups of women in America who decry spousal abuse, give beaten wives shelter, insist that a woman is not a husband's chattel. This is good work. Why are they not taking part in the fight for Terri Schiavo? Again, what explains their lack of passion on this? If Mrs. Schiavo dies, it will be because her husband, and only her husband, insists she wanted to, or would want to, or said she wanted to in a hypothetical conversation long ago. A thin reed on which to base the killing of a human being.
**********
The pull-the-tube people say, "She must hate being brain-damaged." Well, yes, she must. (This line of argument presumes she is to some degree or in some way thinking or experiencing emotions.) Who wouldn't feel extreme sadness at being extremely disabled? I'd weep every day, wouldn't you? But consider your life. Are there not facets of it, or facts of it, that make you feel extremely sad, pained, frustrated, angry? But you're still glad you're alive, aren't you? Me too. No one enjoys a deathbed. Very few want to leave.
Terri Schiavo may well die. No good will come of it. Those who are half in love with death will only become more red-fanged and ravenous.
And those who are still learning--our children--oh, what terrible lessons they're learning. What terrible stories are shaping them. They're witnessing the Schiavo drama on television and hearing it on radio. They are seeing a society--their society, their people--on the verge of famously accepting, even embracing, the idea that a damaged life is a throwaway life.
Our children have been reared in the age of abortion, and are coming of age in a time when seemingly respectable people are enthusiastic for euthanasia. It cannot be good for our children, and the world they will make, that they are given this new lesson that human life is not precious, not touched by the divine, not of infinite value.
Once you "know" that--that human life is not so special after all--then everything is possible, and none of it is good. When a society comes to believe that human life is not inherently worth living, it is a slippery slope to the gas chamber. You wind up on a low road that twists past Columbine and leads toward Auschwitz. Today that road runs through Pinellas Park, Fla.
Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "A Heart, a Cross, and a Flag" (Wall Street Journal Books/Simon & Schuster), a collection of post-Sept. 11 columns, which you can buy from the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Thursdays.
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Mark Steyn: The Strange Death of the Liberal West
(Filed: 22/03/2005)
The Daily Telegraph
I am, as Tony Blair might say, deeply passionately personally deeply personally opposed to abortion. But, unlike him, I think it ought to be an election issue.
Not because of my personal beliefs: I happen to believe a lot of what we call "late-term abortion" is in reality early-term infanticide, but, if you don't accept that that's a human life that's being destroyed, my deeply personal passionate beliefs aren't likely to sway you one way or another. That's where so-called progressive politicians such as Blair and John Kerry have it all backwards: the point about abortion is not that it's a "matter of conscience" for individuals to "wrestle with", but that it's a crucial part of the central political challenge of our time.
Almost every issue facing the EU - from immigration rates to crippling state pension liabilities - has at its heart the same glaringly plain root cause: a huge lack of babies. I could understand a disinclination by sunny politicians to peddle doom and gloom were it not for the fact that, in all other areas of public policy, our rulers embrace doomsday scenarios at the drop of a hat. Most 20-year projections - on global warming, fuel resources, etc - are almost laughably speculative. They fail to take into account the most important factor of all - human inventiveness: "We can't feed the world!" they shriek. But we develop more efficient farming methods with nary a thought. "The oil will run out by the year 2000!" But we develop new extraction methods and find we've got enough oil for as long as we'll need it.
But human inventiveness depends on humans - and that's the one thing we really are running out of. When it comes to forecasting the future, the birth rate is the nearest thing to hard numbers. If only a million babies are born in 2005, it's hard to have two million adults enter the workforce in 2025 (or 2033, or 2041, or whenever they get around to finishing their Anger Management, Systemic Racism and Gay Studies degrees). If that's not a political issue, what is? To cite only the most obviously affected corner of the realm, what's the long-term future of the Scottish National Party if there are no Scottish nationals?
When I've mentioned the birth dearth on previous occasions, pro-abortion correspondents have insisted it's due to other factors - the generally declining fertility rates that affect all materially prosperous societies, or the high taxes that make large families prohibitively expensive in materially prosperous societies. But this is a bit like arguing over which came first, the chicken or the egg - or, in this case, which came first, the lack of eggs or the scraggy old chicken-necked women desperate for one designer baby at the age of 48. How much of Europe's fertility woes derive from abortion is debatable. But what should be obvious is that the way the abortion issue is framed - as a Blairite issue of personal choice - is itself symptomatic of the broader crisis of the dying West.
Since 1945, a multiplicity of government interventions - state pensions, subsidised higher education, higher taxes to pay for everything - has so ruptured traditional patterns of inter-generational solidarity that in Europe a child is now an optional lifestyle accessory. By 2050, Estonia's population will have fallen by 52 per cent, Bulgaria's by 36 per cent, Italy's by 22 per cent. The hyper-rationalism of post-Christian Europe turns out to be wholly irrational: what's the point of creating a secular utopia if it's only for one generation?
Shortly after 9/11, I wrote in these pages about one of the most curious aspects of the new war - the assurance given to Islamist "martyrs" that 72 virgins were standing by to pleasure them for eternity. The notion that the after-life is a well-appointed brothel is a perplexing one to the Judaeo-Christian world, and I suggested that Americans would be sceptical if heaven were framed purely in terms of boundless earthly pleasures.
But, on reflection, if the Islamists are banal in portraying the next world purely in terms of sensual self-gratification, we're just as reductive in measuring this one the same way. America this Holy Week is following the frenzied efforts to halt the court-enforced starvation of a brain-damaged woman for no reason other than that her continued existence is an inconvenience to her husband. In Britain, two doctors escape prosecution for aborting an otherwise healthy baby with a treatable cleft palate because the authorities are satisfied they acted "in good faith". You can read similar stories in almost any corner of the developed world, except perhaps the Netherlands, where discretionary euthanasia is so advanced it's news if the kid makes it out of the maternity ward. As the New York Times reported the other day: "Babies born into what is certain to be a brief life of grievous suffering should have their lives ended by physicians under strict guidelines, according to two doctors in the Netherlands.
"The doctors, Eduard Verhagen and Pieter J. J. Sauer of the University Medical Center in Groningen, in an essay in today's New England Journal of Medicine, said they had developed guidelines, known as the Groningen protocol."
Ah, the protocols of the elders of science. Odd the way scientists have such little regard for scientific progress. It's highly likely that many birth defects - not just the bilateral cleft lips - will be treatable and correctible in the next decade or two. But once you start weighing the relative values of individual lives, there's no end to it. Much of that derives from the way abortion has redefined life - as a "choice", an option.
In practice, a culture that thinks Terri Schiavo's life in Florida or the cleft-lipped baby's in Herefordshire has no value winds up ascribing no value to life in general. Hence, the shrivelled fertility rates in Europe and in blue-state America: John Kerry won the 16 states with the lowest birth rates; George W Bush took 25 of the 26 states with the highest.
The 19th-century Shaker communities were forbidden from breeding and could increase their number only by conversion. The Euro-Canadian-Democratic Party welfare secularists seem to have chosen the same predicament voluntarily, and are likely to meet the same fate. The martyrdom culture of radical Islam is a literal dead end. But so is the slyer death culture of post-Christian radical narcissism. This is the political issue that will determine all the others: it's the demography, stupid.
The Daily Telegraph
I am, as Tony Blair might say, deeply passionately personally deeply personally opposed to abortion. But, unlike him, I think it ought to be an election issue.
Not because of my personal beliefs: I happen to believe a lot of what we call "late-term abortion" is in reality early-term infanticide, but, if you don't accept that that's a human life that's being destroyed, my deeply personal passionate beliefs aren't likely to sway you one way or another. That's where so-called progressive politicians such as Blair and John Kerry have it all backwards: the point about abortion is not that it's a "matter of conscience" for individuals to "wrestle with", but that it's a crucial part of the central political challenge of our time.
Almost every issue facing the EU - from immigration rates to crippling state pension liabilities - has at its heart the same glaringly plain root cause: a huge lack of babies. I could understand a disinclination by sunny politicians to peddle doom and gloom were it not for the fact that, in all other areas of public policy, our rulers embrace doomsday scenarios at the drop of a hat. Most 20-year projections - on global warming, fuel resources, etc - are almost laughably speculative. They fail to take into account the most important factor of all - human inventiveness: "We can't feed the world!" they shriek. But we develop more efficient farming methods with nary a thought. "The oil will run out by the year 2000!" But we develop new extraction methods and find we've got enough oil for as long as we'll need it.
But human inventiveness depends on humans - and that's the one thing we really are running out of. When it comes to forecasting the future, the birth rate is the nearest thing to hard numbers. If only a million babies are born in 2005, it's hard to have two million adults enter the workforce in 2025 (or 2033, or 2041, or whenever they get around to finishing their Anger Management, Systemic Racism and Gay Studies degrees). If that's not a political issue, what is? To cite only the most obviously affected corner of the realm, what's the long-term future of the Scottish National Party if there are no Scottish nationals?
When I've mentioned the birth dearth on previous occasions, pro-abortion correspondents have insisted it's due to other factors - the generally declining fertility rates that affect all materially prosperous societies, or the high taxes that make large families prohibitively expensive in materially prosperous societies. But this is a bit like arguing over which came first, the chicken or the egg - or, in this case, which came first, the lack of eggs or the scraggy old chicken-necked women desperate for one designer baby at the age of 48. How much of Europe's fertility woes derive from abortion is debatable. But what should be obvious is that the way the abortion issue is framed - as a Blairite issue of personal choice - is itself symptomatic of the broader crisis of the dying West.
Since 1945, a multiplicity of government interventions - state pensions, subsidised higher education, higher taxes to pay for everything - has so ruptured traditional patterns of inter-generational solidarity that in Europe a child is now an optional lifestyle accessory. By 2050, Estonia's population will have fallen by 52 per cent, Bulgaria's by 36 per cent, Italy's by 22 per cent. The hyper-rationalism of post-Christian Europe turns out to be wholly irrational: what's the point of creating a secular utopia if it's only for one generation?
Shortly after 9/11, I wrote in these pages about one of the most curious aspects of the new war - the assurance given to Islamist "martyrs" that 72 virgins were standing by to pleasure them for eternity. The notion that the after-life is a well-appointed brothel is a perplexing one to the Judaeo-Christian world, and I suggested that Americans would be sceptical if heaven were framed purely in terms of boundless earthly pleasures.
But, on reflection, if the Islamists are banal in portraying the next world purely in terms of sensual self-gratification, we're just as reductive in measuring this one the same way. America this Holy Week is following the frenzied efforts to halt the court-enforced starvation of a brain-damaged woman for no reason other than that her continued existence is an inconvenience to her husband. In Britain, two doctors escape prosecution for aborting an otherwise healthy baby with a treatable cleft palate because the authorities are satisfied they acted "in good faith". You can read similar stories in almost any corner of the developed world, except perhaps the Netherlands, where discretionary euthanasia is so advanced it's news if the kid makes it out of the maternity ward. As the New York Times reported the other day: "Babies born into what is certain to be a brief life of grievous suffering should have their lives ended by physicians under strict guidelines, according to two doctors in the Netherlands.
"The doctors, Eduard Verhagen and Pieter J. J. Sauer of the University Medical Center in Groningen, in an essay in today's New England Journal of Medicine, said they had developed guidelines, known as the Groningen protocol."
Ah, the protocols of the elders of science. Odd the way scientists have such little regard for scientific progress. It's highly likely that many birth defects - not just the bilateral cleft lips - will be treatable and correctible in the next decade or two. But once you start weighing the relative values of individual lives, there's no end to it. Much of that derives from the way abortion has redefined life - as a "choice", an option.
In practice, a culture that thinks Terri Schiavo's life in Florida or the cleft-lipped baby's in Herefordshire has no value winds up ascribing no value to life in general. Hence, the shrivelled fertility rates in Europe and in blue-state America: John Kerry won the 16 states with the lowest birth rates; George W Bush took 25 of the 26 states with the highest.
The 19th-century Shaker communities were forbidden from breeding and could increase their number only by conversion. The Euro-Canadian-Democratic Party welfare secularists seem to have chosen the same predicament voluntarily, and are likely to meet the same fate. The martyrdom culture of radical Islam is a literal dead end. But so is the slyer death culture of post-Christian radical narcissism. This is the political issue that will determine all the others: it's the demography, stupid.
James Robbins: Al Qaeda Plans New Attacks in U.S.
The Union of the Snake
Al Qaeda planning and possibilities.
http://www.nationalreview.com/
March 22, 2005, 7:49 a.m.
Recently several events have conspired to raise the question of whether the U.S. is due for another major domestic terror attack. A communiqué between Osama bin Laden and his chief lieutenant Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi was intercepted in which bin Laden suggested that Zarqawi turn his attentions away from Iraq and towards hitting the United States. Meanwhile the Department of Homeland Security's "National Planning Scenarios" report was accidentally posted to the web, causing a minor stir. The report posits a variety of forbidding possibilities (such as spreading pneumonic plague in airport bathrooms) in order to aid in budgeting, planning preemptive measures, and responding to terrorist attack. The scenarios are graphic and frightening, but also hypothetical, not those necessarily thought most likely to happen, or even suggested by actual terrorists. Around the same time, a confidential FBI report cast doubt that AQ could undertake any large-scale attacks inside the US, given their lack of infrastructure and the heightened security climate. Yet information purportedly from a top Zarqawi aid indicated that he would not be looking to repeat something like 9/11 but would aim at softer targets, such as "movie theaters, restaurants and schools."
So will it happen? Apparently, they have been thinking about it for some time, and with a good degree of frustration. This same top aide said that Zarqawi fumed about the "lack of willing martyrs," of people willing to die in the process of hitting the U.S. homeland. This is a significant admission, since the popular belief is that the terrorists can draw from a bottomless well of volunteers to conduct their missions. You would think that if there were volunteers ready to do anything they would be most keen to take on the Great Satan. Hitting U.S. targets is their version of the major leagues. Any terrorist worth the label would consider striking at us the very definition of success in his profession. And it is a quick ticket to immortality. Everyone remembers Mohammed Atta; operations in Iraq just do not get the same kind of coverage. Even al Qaeda press releases are unsatisfying for the fame-seeking vest bomber. Note for example this one from a February suicide attack in Baquba:
On Monday, a martyr was wed to Paradise, and what a good martyr he was! ...One of the monotheism lions from the Martyrdom-seekers Brigade of Al-Qa'ida of Jihad Organization in the Land of the Two Rivers carried out a martyrdom attack against the infidels and the apostates in Ba'qubah, may God grant it and the rest of the country freedom from its bondage. Congratulations to you, brother in monotheism!
O.K., but what was his name? Can't his friends and family get bragging rights for all those innocent people he blew up? Zarqawi needs to rethink his incentivization program. The jihad is not all about him.
Zarqawi may gripe privately about the sorry condition of terrorist voluntarism, but he has no problem heaping blame on the Iraqi people for not supporting him as he seeks to liberate them from the "humiliation" of freedom and democracy. In the first edition of his new online magazine, Dhurwat al-Sanam [literally the highest point on the camel's hump — in this context, the highest obligation] he published an editorial explaining why al Qaeda has lately been targeting policemen, Iraqi army troops and "everyone whose soul is debased and who assists infidels in their war against Muslims in the territory of Iraq." He has been forced to do it for their own good. The Iraqis have not mobilized their human resources to supply him with the foot soldiers he needs. They have not "united under one banner of clear vision" (i.e., al Qaeda's) to bring the fight to the infidels. They have not prevented vice where they see it. Moreover, they have the nerve to condemn the actions of the "fraternal [foreign] Mujahedin" that have come to Iraq to do the job the Iraqis should be doing for themselves. The editorial is thick with frustration. You get the idea he does not think they are winning.
Measured by al Qaeda's own strategic goals they surely are not. Recall that according to a letter captured over a year ago, al Qaeda was seeking actively to promote what many feared was going to be the natural course of events in post-Saddam Iraq, a civil war between the Shias, Kurds, and Sunnis. Al Qaeda's purpose was to promote this brand of chaos and then exploit it. However, despite their best efforts, the expected civil war did not materialize. Indeed, the Iraqis have been much more willing to live and let live than anyone would have given them credit for. Yes, there is violence, but not the full-scale ethnic conflict that many even in this country had predicted. Rationality won out over the supposed hatreds that these groups were said to harbor against each other. Al Qaeda has not given up on the strategy — witness the March 10 bombing at a Shia mosque in Kurdish Mosul, while across town representatives of the Shia List and the Kurdish Alliance were busy negotiating the details of the new government. But the bombing failed to derail the negotiations; the two sides know who the real enemy is.
Bin Laden's sense of entitlement has angered many Iraqis — a wealthy Saudi hiding in Afghanistan appoints a Jordanian malcontent the Prince of Iraq, and they proceed to declare any Muslims who participate in free elections heretics worthy of death? How many ways can al Qaeda find to offend people? This is probably why bin Laden wants to shift gears and get back to trying to attack the US directly. Bin Laden and Zarqawi are reportedly mulling over new strategies, trying to reach some kind of consensus. The Washington Post reported that some analysts have concluded from this that Zarqawi is an independent operator — despite the pledge of abject fealty to Osama he issued last October, and the fact that he renamed his group "Al Qaeda of the Two Rivers." Saddam is out of the picture yet the monomania to de-link Iraq and al Qaeda continues. It just goes to show that the government is still rife with analysts who seek to draw complexity out of simplicity whenever possible. No wonder we have not caught bin Laden yet.
Al Qaeda wants to hit us again. They have been threatening it for years. The fact that they have not managed to do so yet is a measure both of our effectiveness in combating terrorism and their relative weakness and disorganization. This does not mean they cannot attack — the soft-target scenario is especially troubling — but even if they did, it would hardly change the course of a war that they are without doubt losing badly.
— James S. Robbins is senior fellow in national-security affairs at the American Foreign Policy Council and an NRO contributor.
Al Qaeda planning and possibilities.
http://www.nationalreview.com/
March 22, 2005, 7:49 a.m.
Recently several events have conspired to raise the question of whether the U.S. is due for another major domestic terror attack. A communiqué between Osama bin Laden and his chief lieutenant Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi was intercepted in which bin Laden suggested that Zarqawi turn his attentions away from Iraq and towards hitting the United States. Meanwhile the Department of Homeland Security's "National Planning Scenarios" report was accidentally posted to the web, causing a minor stir. The report posits a variety of forbidding possibilities (such as spreading pneumonic plague in airport bathrooms) in order to aid in budgeting, planning preemptive measures, and responding to terrorist attack. The scenarios are graphic and frightening, but also hypothetical, not those necessarily thought most likely to happen, or even suggested by actual terrorists. Around the same time, a confidential FBI report cast doubt that AQ could undertake any large-scale attacks inside the US, given their lack of infrastructure and the heightened security climate. Yet information purportedly from a top Zarqawi aid indicated that he would not be looking to repeat something like 9/11 but would aim at softer targets, such as "movie theaters, restaurants and schools."
So will it happen? Apparently, they have been thinking about it for some time, and with a good degree of frustration. This same top aide said that Zarqawi fumed about the "lack of willing martyrs," of people willing to die in the process of hitting the U.S. homeland. This is a significant admission, since the popular belief is that the terrorists can draw from a bottomless well of volunteers to conduct their missions. You would think that if there were volunteers ready to do anything they would be most keen to take on the Great Satan. Hitting U.S. targets is their version of the major leagues. Any terrorist worth the label would consider striking at us the very definition of success in his profession. And it is a quick ticket to immortality. Everyone remembers Mohammed Atta; operations in Iraq just do not get the same kind of coverage. Even al Qaeda press releases are unsatisfying for the fame-seeking vest bomber. Note for example this one from a February suicide attack in Baquba:
On Monday, a martyr was wed to Paradise, and what a good martyr he was! ...One of the monotheism lions from the Martyrdom-seekers Brigade of Al-Qa'ida of Jihad Organization in the Land of the Two Rivers carried out a martyrdom attack against the infidels and the apostates in Ba'qubah, may God grant it and the rest of the country freedom from its bondage. Congratulations to you, brother in monotheism!
O.K., but what was his name? Can't his friends and family get bragging rights for all those innocent people he blew up? Zarqawi needs to rethink his incentivization program. The jihad is not all about him.
Zarqawi may gripe privately about the sorry condition of terrorist voluntarism, but he has no problem heaping blame on the Iraqi people for not supporting him as he seeks to liberate them from the "humiliation" of freedom and democracy. In the first edition of his new online magazine, Dhurwat al-Sanam [literally the highest point on the camel's hump — in this context, the highest obligation] he published an editorial explaining why al Qaeda has lately been targeting policemen, Iraqi army troops and "everyone whose soul is debased and who assists infidels in their war against Muslims in the territory of Iraq." He has been forced to do it for their own good. The Iraqis have not mobilized their human resources to supply him with the foot soldiers he needs. They have not "united under one banner of clear vision" (i.e., al Qaeda's) to bring the fight to the infidels. They have not prevented vice where they see it. Moreover, they have the nerve to condemn the actions of the "fraternal [foreign] Mujahedin" that have come to Iraq to do the job the Iraqis should be doing for themselves. The editorial is thick with frustration. You get the idea he does not think they are winning.
Measured by al Qaeda's own strategic goals they surely are not. Recall that according to a letter captured over a year ago, al Qaeda was seeking actively to promote what many feared was going to be the natural course of events in post-Saddam Iraq, a civil war between the Shias, Kurds, and Sunnis. Al Qaeda's purpose was to promote this brand of chaos and then exploit it. However, despite their best efforts, the expected civil war did not materialize. Indeed, the Iraqis have been much more willing to live and let live than anyone would have given them credit for. Yes, there is violence, but not the full-scale ethnic conflict that many even in this country had predicted. Rationality won out over the supposed hatreds that these groups were said to harbor against each other. Al Qaeda has not given up on the strategy — witness the March 10 bombing at a Shia mosque in Kurdish Mosul, while across town representatives of the Shia List and the Kurdish Alliance were busy negotiating the details of the new government. But the bombing failed to derail the negotiations; the two sides know who the real enemy is.
Bin Laden's sense of entitlement has angered many Iraqis — a wealthy Saudi hiding in Afghanistan appoints a Jordanian malcontent the Prince of Iraq, and they proceed to declare any Muslims who participate in free elections heretics worthy of death? How many ways can al Qaeda find to offend people? This is probably why bin Laden wants to shift gears and get back to trying to attack the US directly. Bin Laden and Zarqawi are reportedly mulling over new strategies, trying to reach some kind of consensus. The Washington Post reported that some analysts have concluded from this that Zarqawi is an independent operator — despite the pledge of abject fealty to Osama he issued last October, and the fact that he renamed his group "Al Qaeda of the Two Rivers." Saddam is out of the picture yet the monomania to de-link Iraq and al Qaeda continues. It just goes to show that the government is still rife with analysts who seek to draw complexity out of simplicity whenever possible. No wonder we have not caught bin Laden yet.
Al Qaeda wants to hit us again. They have been threatening it for years. The fact that they have not managed to do so yet is a measure both of our effectiveness in combating terrorism and their relative weakness and disorganization. This does not mean they cannot attack — the soft-target scenario is especially troubling — but even if they did, it would hardly change the course of a war that they are without doubt losing badly.
— James S. Robbins is senior fellow in national-security affairs at the American Foreign Policy Council and an NRO contributor.
Thomas Sowell: 'Cruel and Unusual'
Thomas Sowell (archive)
March 22, 2005
If the tragic case of Terri Schiavo shows nothing else, it shows how easily "the right to die" can become the right to kill. It is hard to believe that anyone, regardless of their position on euthanasia, would have chosen the agony of starvation and dehydration as the way to end someone's life.
A New York Times headline on March 20th tried to assure us: "Experts Say Ending Feeding Can Lead to a Gentle Death" but you can find experts to say anything. In a December 2, 2002 story in the same New York Times, people starving in India were reported as dying, "often clutching pained stomachs."
No murderer would be allowed to be killed this way, which would almost certainly be declared "cruel and unusual punishment," in violation of the Constitution, by virtually any court.
Terri Schiavo's only crime is that she has become an inconvenience -- and is caught in the merciless machinery of the law. Those who think law is the answer to our problems need to face the reality that law is a crude and blunt instrument.
Make no mistake about it, Terri Schiavo is being killed. She is not being "allowed to die."
She is not like someone whose breathing, blood circulation, kidney function, or other vital work of the body is being performed by machines. What she is getting by machine is what all of us get otherwise every day -- food and water. Depriving any of us of food and water would kill us just as surely, and just as agonizingly, as it is killing Terri Schiavo.
Would I want to be kept alive in Terri Schiavo's condition? No. Would I want to be killed so slowly and painfully? No. Would anyone? I doubt it.
Every member of Terri Schiavo's family wants her kept alive -- except the one person who has a vested interest in her death, her husband. Her death will allow him to marry the woman he has been living with, and having children by, for years. Legally, he is Terri's guardian and that legal technicality is all that gives him the right to starve her to death. Courts cannot remove guardians without serious reasons. But neither should they refuse to remove guardians with a clear conflict of interest.
There are no good solutions to this wrenching situation. It is the tragedy of the human condition in its most stark form.
The extraordinary session of Congress, calling members back from around the country, with the President flying back from his home in Texas in order to be ready to sign legislation dealing with Terri Schiavo, are things that do us credit as a nation.
Even if critics who claim that this is being done for political or ideological reasons are partially or even wholly correct, they still miss the point. It is the public's sense of concern -- in some cases, outrage -- that is reflected by their elected representatives.
What can Congress do -- and what effect will it have? We do not know and Congress does not know. Those who are pushing for legislation to save Terri Schiavo are obviously trying to avoid setting a precedent or upsetting the Constitutional balance.
It is an old truism that hard cases make bad law. No one wants all such cases to end up in either Congress or the federal courts. But neither do decent people want an innocent woman killed because she was inconvenient and a court refused to recognize the conflict of interests in her legal guardian.
The fervor of those who want to save Terri Schiavo's life is understandable and should be respected, even by those who disagree. What is harder to understand is the fervor and even venom of those liberals who have gone ballistic -- ostensibly over state's rights, over the Constitutional separation of powers, and even over the sanctity of family decisions.
These are not things that liberals have any track record of caring about. Is what really bothers them the idea of the sanctity of life and what that implies for their abortion issue? Or do they hate any challenge to the supremacy of judges -- on which the whole liberal agenda depends -- a supremacy that the Constitution never gave the judiciary?
If nothing else comes out of all this, there needs to be a national discussion of some humane way to end life in those cases when it has to be ended -- and this may not be one of those cases.
©2005 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Contact Thomas Sowell Read Sowell's biography
March 22, 2005
If the tragic case of Terri Schiavo shows nothing else, it shows how easily "the right to die" can become the right to kill. It is hard to believe that anyone, regardless of their position on euthanasia, would have chosen the agony of starvation and dehydration as the way to end someone's life.
A New York Times headline on March 20th tried to assure us: "Experts Say Ending Feeding Can Lead to a Gentle Death" but you can find experts to say anything. In a December 2, 2002 story in the same New York Times, people starving in India were reported as dying, "often clutching pained stomachs."
No murderer would be allowed to be killed this way, which would almost certainly be declared "cruel and unusual punishment," in violation of the Constitution, by virtually any court.
Terri Schiavo's only crime is that she has become an inconvenience -- and is caught in the merciless machinery of the law. Those who think law is the answer to our problems need to face the reality that law is a crude and blunt instrument.
Make no mistake about it, Terri Schiavo is being killed. She is not being "allowed to die."
She is not like someone whose breathing, blood circulation, kidney function, or other vital work of the body is being performed by machines. What she is getting by machine is what all of us get otherwise every day -- food and water. Depriving any of us of food and water would kill us just as surely, and just as agonizingly, as it is killing Terri Schiavo.
Would I want to be kept alive in Terri Schiavo's condition? No. Would I want to be killed so slowly and painfully? No. Would anyone? I doubt it.
Every member of Terri Schiavo's family wants her kept alive -- except the one person who has a vested interest in her death, her husband. Her death will allow him to marry the woman he has been living with, and having children by, for years. Legally, he is Terri's guardian and that legal technicality is all that gives him the right to starve her to death. Courts cannot remove guardians without serious reasons. But neither should they refuse to remove guardians with a clear conflict of interest.
There are no good solutions to this wrenching situation. It is the tragedy of the human condition in its most stark form.
The extraordinary session of Congress, calling members back from around the country, with the President flying back from his home in Texas in order to be ready to sign legislation dealing with Terri Schiavo, are things that do us credit as a nation.
Even if critics who claim that this is being done for political or ideological reasons are partially or even wholly correct, they still miss the point. It is the public's sense of concern -- in some cases, outrage -- that is reflected by their elected representatives.
What can Congress do -- and what effect will it have? We do not know and Congress does not know. Those who are pushing for legislation to save Terri Schiavo are obviously trying to avoid setting a precedent or upsetting the Constitutional balance.
It is an old truism that hard cases make bad law. No one wants all such cases to end up in either Congress or the federal courts. But neither do decent people want an innocent woman killed because she was inconvenient and a court refused to recognize the conflict of interests in her legal guardian.
The fervor of those who want to save Terri Schiavo's life is understandable and should be respected, even by those who disagree. What is harder to understand is the fervor and even venom of those liberals who have gone ballistic -- ostensibly over state's rights, over the Constitutional separation of powers, and even over the sanctity of family decisions.
These are not things that liberals have any track record of caring about. Is what really bothers them the idea of the sanctity of life and what that implies for their abortion issue? Or do they hate any challenge to the supremacy of judges -- on which the whole liberal agenda depends -- a supremacy that the Constitution never gave the judiciary?
If nothing else comes out of all this, there needs to be a national discussion of some humane way to end life in those cases when it has to be ended -- and this may not be one of those cases.
©2005 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Contact Thomas Sowell Read Sowell's biography
Monday, March 21, 2005
Malkin on High School Anti-War Spectacle and Jessica Lunsford Murder
[Michelle Malkin comments on an anti-war assembly in a Seattle high school and the evil perpetrated by John Evander Couey against Jessica Lunsford in Florida.]
SEATTLE ANTI-WAR SCHOOL SPECTACLE UPDATE
By Michelle Malkin · March 21, 2005 04:32 PM
You remember the West Seattle High School anti-war student assembly we blogged about last week. Sound Politics has a follow-up, posting a firsthand account of the appalling event from Maj. Terry Thomas, USMC, who sent a letter to the Seattle School Board. Here's an excerpt:
Upon entering the theater at 12:30 PM, approximately 15 minutes prior to the event, I was taken aback by what I witnessed. As I stood there in my Marine Corps Dress Blue uniform, there before me stood numerous kids running around in sloppily dressed and ill-fitted helmets and military fatigues with utter disrespect for the symbols and uniforms of the U.S. military. The walls were covered in camouflaged netting and the stage was covered with approximately twenty white, life-sized cut-out patterns in the shape of dead women and children, all of which were splattered in red-paint to depict human blood. Onstage, children were kneeling and weeping while dressed in ill-fitted Arabic headdress with white-faced masks similarly covered in red paint to depict human blood. At a podium, children were reading a monologue of how U.S. troops were killing civilians and shooting at women and children. Moreover, several grown adults were standing on stage in bright orange jump-suits, with black bags on and off their heads, some bound and tied, and some banging symbols and gongs in a crude depiction of what I believe were their efforts to depict victims of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse episode.
Within the auditorium, numerous adults appeared to have been supervising this behavior and children were literally running amok. What is going on in your classrooms and auditoriums? Who supervised this program? Who are these grown adults dressed as prisoners and performing such the attics on the stage of our public schools? Since when has it become Seattle School Board policy to take an official anti-troops position and declare returning combat veterans from Iraq such as myself as killers of innocent women and children as if this war were some sick sport. As an Iraq war veteran I am outraged by what I witnessed going on at West Seattle High School!
Read the whole thing, and don't forget to use the e-mail addresses of the Seattle School Board members listed at the end of the letter.
TrackBack <3>
THE SICKOS IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD
By Michelle Malkin · March 21, 2005 11:33 AM
New, horrid details are being reported on the Jessica Lunsford kidnapping/murder.
Suspect John Evander Couey was a registered sex offender who lived across from Lunsford's home.
Here is an online guide that provides links to every available state sex offender registry. Use it.
***Update: Couple of readers and bloggers remind me that Couey was visiting his sister-in-law, whose home was not the registered address for Couey. Noted.
Also, the online guide I linked to does not have current info on California's new database. It's here. (Hat tip to reader Doug Mason.)
New Jersey's, also not listed, is here.
The South Carolina link is broken. Here's a good one.
Pennsylvania's is here.
More: Ohio, Missouri
Update II: Jason Smith of Generation Why dug up Couey's criminal history...
Apparently John Evander Couey is nowhere to be found on Florida's Sex Offender Registry website. A search of PublicData.com reveals his convictions and the address in Homosassa, FL (listed as Marie Dixon's address) where he was released as an "inactive offender" on May 6, 1997. Other tidbits from his rapsheet include:
* Burglary/Forced Entry - residence - July 30, 1977 - sentenced to 10 years
* Burglary/Forced Entry - residence - July 31, 1977 - adjudication withheld
* Burglary - February 28, 1981 - sentenced to 7 years
* Lewd/Lascivious conduct with child under 16 - April 8, 1991 - sentenced to 5 years
* Forgery - April 9, 1995 - adjudication withheld
* Hot checks - February 22, 2001 - sentence unknown
This says alot about our system. A man can harm a child in the most disgusting way and get a sentence less than he would if he broke into a house. It also shows a spotty history of parole/probation supervision:
Supervision start date: Supervision end date:
* December 7, 1977 - January 19, 1978
* July 22, 1980 - July 21, 1982 - during this time he committed his 3rd burglary
* July 16, 1993 - April 5, 1996 - during this time he committed forgery
* May 6, 1997 - December 7, 1998
* April 24, 2001 - April 23, 2003
Update III: Here's Couey's Florida sex offender registry entry. (via Jason Smith)
Others blogging...
Chris Short on a sex offender in his family's neighborhood.
Random Musings of a Mom asks: "Why does Martha Stewart have to wear a monitoring bracelet on her ankle and pond scum, human debris like John Evander Couey (the confessed child killer -- a convicted sex offender -- in Homosassa, Fla.) did NOT?"
The Palmetto Pundit says the story hit too close to home.
Lorie Byrd writes about the sicko in her neighborhood.
Urban Grounds wonders about the wealthy sickos in Austin, Tx.
Update IV: Couey charged with capital murder.
TrackBack <7>
SEATTLE ANTI-WAR SCHOOL SPECTACLE UPDATE
By Michelle Malkin · March 21, 2005 04:32 PM
You remember the West Seattle High School anti-war student assembly we blogged about last week. Sound Politics has a follow-up, posting a firsthand account of the appalling event from Maj. Terry Thomas, USMC, who sent a letter to the Seattle School Board. Here's an excerpt:
Upon entering the theater at 12:30 PM, approximately 15 minutes prior to the event, I was taken aback by what I witnessed. As I stood there in my Marine Corps Dress Blue uniform, there before me stood numerous kids running around in sloppily dressed and ill-fitted helmets and military fatigues with utter disrespect for the symbols and uniforms of the U.S. military. The walls were covered in camouflaged netting and the stage was covered with approximately twenty white, life-sized cut-out patterns in the shape of dead women and children, all of which were splattered in red-paint to depict human blood. Onstage, children were kneeling and weeping while dressed in ill-fitted Arabic headdress with white-faced masks similarly covered in red paint to depict human blood. At a podium, children were reading a monologue of how U.S. troops were killing civilians and shooting at women and children. Moreover, several grown adults were standing on stage in bright orange jump-suits, with black bags on and off their heads, some bound and tied, and some banging symbols and gongs in a crude depiction of what I believe were their efforts to depict victims of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse episode.
Within the auditorium, numerous adults appeared to have been supervising this behavior and children were literally running amok. What is going on in your classrooms and auditoriums? Who supervised this program? Who are these grown adults dressed as prisoners and performing such the attics on the stage of our public schools? Since when has it become Seattle School Board policy to take an official anti-troops position and declare returning combat veterans from Iraq such as myself as killers of innocent women and children as if this war were some sick sport. As an Iraq war veteran I am outraged by what I witnessed going on at West Seattle High School!
Read the whole thing, and don't forget to use the e-mail addresses of the Seattle School Board members listed at the end of the letter.
TrackBack <3>
THE SICKOS IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD
By Michelle Malkin · March 21, 2005 11:33 AM
New, horrid details are being reported on the Jessica Lunsford kidnapping/murder.
Suspect John Evander Couey was a registered sex offender who lived across from Lunsford's home.
Here is an online guide that provides links to every available state sex offender registry. Use it.
***Update: Couple of readers and bloggers remind me that Couey was visiting his sister-in-law, whose home was not the registered address for Couey. Noted.
Also, the online guide I linked to does not have current info on California's new database. It's here. (Hat tip to reader Doug Mason.)
New Jersey's, also not listed, is here.
The South Carolina link is broken. Here's a good one.
Pennsylvania's is here.
More: Ohio, Missouri
Update II: Jason Smith of Generation Why dug up Couey's criminal history...
Apparently John Evander Couey is nowhere to be found on Florida's Sex Offender Registry website. A search of PublicData.com reveals his convictions and the address in Homosassa, FL (listed as Marie Dixon's address) where he was released as an "inactive offender" on May 6, 1997. Other tidbits from his rapsheet include:
* Burglary/Forced Entry - residence - July 30, 1977 - sentenced to 10 years
* Burglary/Forced Entry - residence - July 31, 1977 - adjudication withheld
* Burglary - February 28, 1981 - sentenced to 7 years
* Lewd/Lascivious conduct with child under 16 - April 8, 1991 - sentenced to 5 years
* Forgery - April 9, 1995 - adjudication withheld
* Hot checks - February 22, 2001 - sentence unknown
This says alot about our system. A man can harm a child in the most disgusting way and get a sentence less than he would if he broke into a house. It also shows a spotty history of parole/probation supervision:
Supervision start date: Supervision end date:
* December 7, 1977 - January 19, 1978
* July 22, 1980 - July 21, 1982 - during this time he committed his 3rd burglary
* July 16, 1993 - April 5, 1996 - during this time he committed forgery
* May 6, 1997 - December 7, 1998
* April 24, 2001 - April 23, 2003
Update III: Here's Couey's Florida sex offender registry entry. (via Jason Smith)
Others blogging...
Chris Short on a sex offender in his family's neighborhood.
Random Musings of a Mom asks: "Why does Martha Stewart have to wear a monitoring bracelet on her ankle and pond scum, human debris like John Evander Couey (the confessed child killer -- a convicted sex offender -- in Homosassa, Fla.) did NOT?"
The Palmetto Pundit says the story hit too close to home.
Lorie Byrd writes about the sicko in her neighborhood.
Urban Grounds wonders about the wealthy sickos in Austin, Tx.
Update IV: Couey charged with capital murder.
TrackBack <7>
USA Today: Knight Mellows Out on Return to Sweet 16
Posted 3/20/2005 11:17 PM
By Greg Boeck, USA TODAY
TUCSON — Not long ago, Bob Knight was cast as the Scrooge of college basketball, the bah-humbug bad boy who threw chairs, bullied players, berated students and bashed the media. Once, he even insulted a country.
Times, and people, can change, as evidenced by Knight playfully whispering in one of his players ears for all to hear that he's "a lot like a latter-day Santa Claus" — and everybody, past media critics included, buying in with laughter.
This much is certain: Christmas came in March for Knight and his Texas Tech Red Raiders. Their surprising run as a No. 6 seed in the NCAA Tournament's Albuquerque Regional continues against West Virginia on Thursday, part of an improbable journey from zero tolerance to the Sweet 16 for Knight.
The onetime incorrigible coach appears to have come full cycle since last taking a team — Indiana — to the Sweet 16 in 1994. Then, he was a ticking time bomb six years from losing his job for violating a zero-tolerance policy imposed by the basketball-crazed school after repeated behavior issues.
Now, in a far-off football hotbed where he has enjoyed life under the radar the last four years, a more mellowed Knight returns to the Sweet 16, which launched three of his Indiana teams to the national championship.
Make no mistake. At 64, 26 wins shy of surpassing Dean Smith's Division I men's record of 879 victories, Knight still brings a sarcastic wit, tart tongue and fiery passion for winning to the sidelines. Asked about approaching Smith's record, he said, "I really haven't given it any thought. I've just been trying to figure out what flies I'm going to use next time I go fishing."
But bookend Sweet 16 to bookend Sweet 16, a different coach has evolved the last 11 years.
Ask his son, Pat Knight. He was on the bench as a player for that last Sweet 16 team. Saturday, as the Red Raiders (22-10) roared from 13 points behind to eliminate No. 3 seed Gonzaga 71-69, he was on the bench as his father's associate coach.
"He won't say it," the son said, "but he's a little more laid-back. Everybody thinks he chews everybody's (tail) out. But he doesn't. You're not going to turn on "SportsCenter" if he has his arm around some guy. He's his own worst enemy. They play all the bad stuff. But he doesn't get enough credit. He's really matured over the years. He's more mellow in a sense. It's an adjustment."
Life in Lubbock, said his son, has added years to his career.
"He would have already been retired" if he had stayed in Indiana, the younger Knight said. "We're kind of in the middle of nowhere. There's only one newspaper. You don't hear a lot about him. He likes it that way. People in town are great. It's not Mayberry, but no one bothers you."
Having a blast in Lubbock
With Knight's return to the Sweet 16, there's no hiding anymore.
Knight still coaches with the driven demeanor of a man on a mission, but he appears at peace with himself, his surroundings and, mostly, his players. He has particularly taken to 6-2 guard Ronald Ross, the former walk-on who has emerged as the team leader as a senior.
"I'm not sure in my time of coaching there's been a better story than Ronald Ross," Knight said. "The kid has had such a tremendous determination to be a good player."
"He could have been bitching and whining that he didn't have a scholarship, but I never heard the kid complain about anything. I've never had a kid I have more admiration for, particularly when he hit that three" to help beat Gonzaga.
Knight smiled, an occurrence that comes easier these days.
He still challenges the media. Asked about reports he had been contacted about the Tennessee basketball vacancy, he said, "I read something at some time during the season where I was interested in coaching a job that would be one of the last jobs — I mean I'd quit before I'd have taken it. I've got a little bit tired of that over my time in coaching."
Pressed whether that was a yes or no, he answered, "If you can't get an answer from that, you ought to go back to school."
He still gets in his players faces, perhaps none more so than Ross, who will make a triumphant return to his home state of New Mexico (he's from Hobbs) as the leader of a team few expected to get this far.
In Saturday's win, Knight pulled Ross aside during a break and unceremoniously chewed him out. Ross, who scored 52 points in the first two rounds, embraced the lashing — and then nailed a three-pointer with 1:09 left to give Tech the lead for good.
"It's all learning, teaching," Ross said. "When he gets on me, I listen and observe."
Knight, his son said, picks his spots and his players these days. He doesn't treat everybody the same. "We have a couple players he puts his arm around. No one sees that."
The Red Raiders, to a player, talk in admiring, almost loving terms about their coach. Asked the biggest misconception of Knight, Ross said, "People stereotype him and his ambition to win by saying that he yells too much."
Added sophomore guard Jarrius Jackson, "A lot of people confuse his desire to win when he is just trying to be competitive. He wants to win every game, and he expects the exact same thing from his players."
The respect appears mutual. Knight is clearly fond of this bunch of overachievers and has bonded with them. His son echoed the sentiment of Knight's longtime friend, teaching guru and Hall of Fame coach Pete Newell, who said this is one of Knight's better coaching jobs.
Knight doesn't agree. "If Pete thinks that, I appreciate that," he said. "But it's not as good as 32-0," a reference to his undefeated 1976 NCAA championship team at Indiana.
Even that team, however, takes a back seat in enjoyment for Knight to this one, a season he said has been a "wonderful experience."
"It's as enjoyable a team to watch and to be around as any I've ever had."
Still has the fire but mellower
Knight is embracing the moment. The big smile, the heartfelt hug with his wife, Karen, after the win against Gonzaga and the laughter with his players during the postgame news conference all portray a more approachable Knight.
He even poked fun at himself after the victory.
Asked about bringing his wife, a former coach, on the court, where they embraced, Knight said, "My wife is a better coach than I am. I wanted to thank her for all the help she'd given me in preparing for this game and season. She deserved to be a real part of this because she doesn't always agree with the way I coach. She thinks I do a lousy job with our post players."
Few would challenge the job he has done since arriving in Lubbock, however. The Red Raiders, always second fiddle to the football team, reached the Sweet 16 in 1996 and had another winning season before four consecutive losing seasons.
Enter Knight for the 2001-02 season. With Texas Tech's little tradition and even less of a recruiting base to build on, he has produced four consecutive 20-plus win seasons, three trips to the NCAA Tournament and now a Sweet 16 appearance.
He has done it with a team short on talent but long on desire. The Red Raiders play hard for their coach.
Down the stretch Saturday, forward Devonne Giles saved the game by grabbing one rebound with his pants falling off and another falling out of bounds before he called timeout.
That's the moxie and heart Knight has infused in this team.
"We're a good family, and with Coach Knight there are no limits," Ross said. "He's been really relaxed, but at the same time he's let us know what to do.
"People always ask, "Has he mellowed out?' But I don't think his desire to win has come down any. People doubted us, but with Coach Knight, you can never doubt anybody."
Knight's son acknowledged that getting back to the Sweet 16 "meant everything" to his father, but Dad defiantly balked. It was time to defend himself against critics who pointed out he was 3-8 in the NCAA Tournament since 1994 coming into this season's first round.
"In the years we had difficult times getting anywhere in the NCAA, maybe, just maybe, it was a real positive that we'd gotten that far and maybe we'd just run out of gas," Knight said.
"I don't think we were ever seeded lower than eighth. I never felt any real remorse for not going any farther than we did."
He's feeling a lot different now, bah-humbug.
By Greg Boeck, USA TODAY
TUCSON — Not long ago, Bob Knight was cast as the Scrooge of college basketball, the bah-humbug bad boy who threw chairs, bullied players, berated students and bashed the media. Once, he even insulted a country.
Times, and people, can change, as evidenced by Knight playfully whispering in one of his players ears for all to hear that he's "a lot like a latter-day Santa Claus" — and everybody, past media critics included, buying in with laughter.
This much is certain: Christmas came in March for Knight and his Texas Tech Red Raiders. Their surprising run as a No. 6 seed in the NCAA Tournament's Albuquerque Regional continues against West Virginia on Thursday, part of an improbable journey from zero tolerance to the Sweet 16 for Knight.
The onetime incorrigible coach appears to have come full cycle since last taking a team — Indiana — to the Sweet 16 in 1994. Then, he was a ticking time bomb six years from losing his job for violating a zero-tolerance policy imposed by the basketball-crazed school after repeated behavior issues.
Now, in a far-off football hotbed where he has enjoyed life under the radar the last four years, a more mellowed Knight returns to the Sweet 16, which launched three of his Indiana teams to the national championship.
Make no mistake. At 64, 26 wins shy of surpassing Dean Smith's Division I men's record of 879 victories, Knight still brings a sarcastic wit, tart tongue and fiery passion for winning to the sidelines. Asked about approaching Smith's record, he said, "I really haven't given it any thought. I've just been trying to figure out what flies I'm going to use next time I go fishing."
But bookend Sweet 16 to bookend Sweet 16, a different coach has evolved the last 11 years.
Ask his son, Pat Knight. He was on the bench as a player for that last Sweet 16 team. Saturday, as the Red Raiders (22-10) roared from 13 points behind to eliminate No. 3 seed Gonzaga 71-69, he was on the bench as his father's associate coach.
"He won't say it," the son said, "but he's a little more laid-back. Everybody thinks he chews everybody's (tail) out. But he doesn't. You're not going to turn on "SportsCenter" if he has his arm around some guy. He's his own worst enemy. They play all the bad stuff. But he doesn't get enough credit. He's really matured over the years. He's more mellow in a sense. It's an adjustment."
Life in Lubbock, said his son, has added years to his career.
"He would have already been retired" if he had stayed in Indiana, the younger Knight said. "We're kind of in the middle of nowhere. There's only one newspaper. You don't hear a lot about him. He likes it that way. People in town are great. It's not Mayberry, but no one bothers you."
Having a blast in Lubbock
With Knight's return to the Sweet 16, there's no hiding anymore.
Knight still coaches with the driven demeanor of a man on a mission, but he appears at peace with himself, his surroundings and, mostly, his players. He has particularly taken to 6-2 guard Ronald Ross, the former walk-on who has emerged as the team leader as a senior.
"I'm not sure in my time of coaching there's been a better story than Ronald Ross," Knight said. "The kid has had such a tremendous determination to be a good player."
"He could have been bitching and whining that he didn't have a scholarship, but I never heard the kid complain about anything. I've never had a kid I have more admiration for, particularly when he hit that three" to help beat Gonzaga.
Knight smiled, an occurrence that comes easier these days.
He still challenges the media. Asked about reports he had been contacted about the Tennessee basketball vacancy, he said, "I read something at some time during the season where I was interested in coaching a job that would be one of the last jobs — I mean I'd quit before I'd have taken it. I've got a little bit tired of that over my time in coaching."
Pressed whether that was a yes or no, he answered, "If you can't get an answer from that, you ought to go back to school."
He still gets in his players faces, perhaps none more so than Ross, who will make a triumphant return to his home state of New Mexico (he's from Hobbs) as the leader of a team few expected to get this far.
In Saturday's win, Knight pulled Ross aside during a break and unceremoniously chewed him out. Ross, who scored 52 points in the first two rounds, embraced the lashing — and then nailed a three-pointer with 1:09 left to give Tech the lead for good.
"It's all learning, teaching," Ross said. "When he gets on me, I listen and observe."
Knight, his son said, picks his spots and his players these days. He doesn't treat everybody the same. "We have a couple players he puts his arm around. No one sees that."
The Red Raiders, to a player, talk in admiring, almost loving terms about their coach. Asked the biggest misconception of Knight, Ross said, "People stereotype him and his ambition to win by saying that he yells too much."
Added sophomore guard Jarrius Jackson, "A lot of people confuse his desire to win when he is just trying to be competitive. He wants to win every game, and he expects the exact same thing from his players."
The respect appears mutual. Knight is clearly fond of this bunch of overachievers and has bonded with them. His son echoed the sentiment of Knight's longtime friend, teaching guru and Hall of Fame coach Pete Newell, who said this is one of Knight's better coaching jobs.
Knight doesn't agree. "If Pete thinks that, I appreciate that," he said. "But it's not as good as 32-0," a reference to his undefeated 1976 NCAA championship team at Indiana.
Even that team, however, takes a back seat in enjoyment for Knight to this one, a season he said has been a "wonderful experience."
"It's as enjoyable a team to watch and to be around as any I've ever had."
Still has the fire but mellower
Knight is embracing the moment. The big smile, the heartfelt hug with his wife, Karen, after the win against Gonzaga and the laughter with his players during the postgame news conference all portray a more approachable Knight.
He even poked fun at himself after the victory.
Asked about bringing his wife, a former coach, on the court, where they embraced, Knight said, "My wife is a better coach than I am. I wanted to thank her for all the help she'd given me in preparing for this game and season. She deserved to be a real part of this because she doesn't always agree with the way I coach. She thinks I do a lousy job with our post players."
Few would challenge the job he has done since arriving in Lubbock, however. The Red Raiders, always second fiddle to the football team, reached the Sweet 16 in 1996 and had another winning season before four consecutive losing seasons.
Enter Knight for the 2001-02 season. With Texas Tech's little tradition and even less of a recruiting base to build on, he has produced four consecutive 20-plus win seasons, three trips to the NCAA Tournament and now a Sweet 16 appearance.
He has done it with a team short on talent but long on desire. The Red Raiders play hard for their coach.
Down the stretch Saturday, forward Devonne Giles saved the game by grabbing one rebound with his pants falling off and another falling out of bounds before he called timeout.
That's the moxie and heart Knight has infused in this team.
"We're a good family, and with Coach Knight there are no limits," Ross said. "He's been really relaxed, but at the same time he's let us know what to do.
"People always ask, "Has he mellowed out?' But I don't think his desire to win has come down any. People doubted us, but with Coach Knight, you can never doubt anybody."
Knight's son acknowledged that getting back to the Sweet 16 "meant everything" to his father, but Dad defiantly balked. It was time to defend himself against critics who pointed out he was 3-8 in the NCAA Tournament since 1994 coming into this season's first round.
"In the years we had difficult times getting anywhere in the NCAA, maybe, just maybe, it was a real positive that we'd gotten that far and maybe we'd just run out of gas," Knight said.
"I don't think we were ever seeded lower than eighth. I never felt any real remorse for not going any farther than we did."
He's feeling a lot different now, bah-humbug.
Byron York: Hillary's Election Scam Bill
By Byron York
The Hill
March 21, 2005
Let’s say it’s Election Day 2008. You really, really, really want to vote for the Democratic nominee for president, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), but you’re not registered to vote. You also don’t have a driver’s license or any sort of official photo identification that would tell the people down at the polling place who you are.You don’t even have anything to show that you’re an American citizen.But it’s Election Day, and you still want to vote for Clinton. What do you do?
Well, you go right down to that polling place, tell them you want to register, on the spot, and vote. And if anybody questions you, tell them you don’t need a prior registration, or a photo ID, proof of citizenship or anything else.
Clinton said so.
She really did — just a few weeks ago, in the form of her new bill, the Count Every Vote Act of 2005.
Although Clinton calls the measure “critical to restoring America’s faith in our voting system,” it might more accurately be described as the most wide-ranging assault ever on the idea that there should be minimum enforceable standards for voters. Just look at some of its provisions.
One section says, “Each state shall permit an individual on the day of a Federal election to register to vote in such election at the polling place ... [and] to cast a vote in such election and have that vote counted in the same manner as a vote cast by an eligible voter who properly registered during the regular registration period.”
Another provision says, “Each state and jurisdiction shall accept and process a voter registration application for an election for Federal office unless there is a material omission or information that specifically affects the eligibility of the voter. There shall be a presumption that persons who submit voter registration applications should be registered.”
And a third section adds, “The following shall not constitute a ‘material omission or information that specifically affects the eligibility of the voter’: (1) The failure to provide a Social Security number or driver’s license number. (2) The failure to provide information concerning citizenship or age in a manner other than” a simple statement that one is a citizen.
Put all those together and you have a recipe for chaos. Anyone can show up on Election Day, register and vote, and officials would have no way of knowing whether that person was eligible to vote or not. All Clinton would require is that the person “affirm” that he or she is eligible to vote.
And, as they say, that’s not all.
The Count Every Vote Act of 2005 would also require states to allow anyone to cast a provisional vote anywhere in a state, no questions asked. The number of provisional votes one might cast would be limited only by the number of polling places that could be visited in a day.
The bill would also allow felons to vote after they’ve done their time and are off probation (this is the provision that attracted a lot of criticism from conservatives, although it’s hardly the worst thing in the bill). And it would require that the federal government force states to ensure “an equal waiting time for all voters” at all polling places.Seriously. The bill actually directs the federal Election Assistance Commission to devise a formula for voting line length.
That formula would be based on “the voting age population; voter turnout in past elections; the number of voters registered; the number of voters who have registered since the most recent federal election; Census data for the population served by such voting site; the educational levels and socio-economic factors of the population served by such voting site; the needs and numbers of disabled voters and voters with limited English proficiency; [and] the type of voting systems used.”
And those are not even the most important parts of the bill, at least according to Clinton. The most crucial provision, she says, is the one requiring that voting machines produce an “individual voter-verifiable paper record” of each vote. That’s a nod to those Democrats who believe that Karl Rove somehow personally hacked the touch-screen voting machines in Ohio to deny Sen. John Kerry his rightful victory.
Making touch-screen machines produce a paper record turns out to be quite complicated, introducing new possibilities for error into the process. But what the hell? — Clinton’s entire bill introduces all sorts of new possibilities for error into the process.
In fact, the Count Every Vote Act of 2005 might be viewed as a massive, wholly intentional attempt to introduce new possibilities for error into the system, with the hope that most of the errors will benefit Democrats.
Clinton says her bill will “improve the franchise and truly improve our democracy.”
Even if she has to wreck the system to do it.
The Hill
March 21, 2005
Let’s say it’s Election Day 2008. You really, really, really want to vote for the Democratic nominee for president, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), but you’re not registered to vote. You also don’t have a driver’s license or any sort of official photo identification that would tell the people down at the polling place who you are.You don’t even have anything to show that you’re an American citizen.But it’s Election Day, and you still want to vote for Clinton. What do you do?
Well, you go right down to that polling place, tell them you want to register, on the spot, and vote. And if anybody questions you, tell them you don’t need a prior registration, or a photo ID, proof of citizenship or anything else.
Clinton said so.
She really did — just a few weeks ago, in the form of her new bill, the Count Every Vote Act of 2005.
Although Clinton calls the measure “critical to restoring America’s faith in our voting system,” it might more accurately be described as the most wide-ranging assault ever on the idea that there should be minimum enforceable standards for voters. Just look at some of its provisions.
One section says, “Each state shall permit an individual on the day of a Federal election to register to vote in such election at the polling place ... [and] to cast a vote in such election and have that vote counted in the same manner as a vote cast by an eligible voter who properly registered during the regular registration period.”
Another provision says, “Each state and jurisdiction shall accept and process a voter registration application for an election for Federal office unless there is a material omission or information that specifically affects the eligibility of the voter. There shall be a presumption that persons who submit voter registration applications should be registered.”
And a third section adds, “The following shall not constitute a ‘material omission or information that specifically affects the eligibility of the voter’: (1) The failure to provide a Social Security number or driver’s license number. (2) The failure to provide information concerning citizenship or age in a manner other than” a simple statement that one is a citizen.
Put all those together and you have a recipe for chaos. Anyone can show up on Election Day, register and vote, and officials would have no way of knowing whether that person was eligible to vote or not. All Clinton would require is that the person “affirm” that he or she is eligible to vote.
And, as they say, that’s not all.
The Count Every Vote Act of 2005 would also require states to allow anyone to cast a provisional vote anywhere in a state, no questions asked. The number of provisional votes one might cast would be limited only by the number of polling places that could be visited in a day.
The bill would also allow felons to vote after they’ve done their time and are off probation (this is the provision that attracted a lot of criticism from conservatives, although it’s hardly the worst thing in the bill). And it would require that the federal government force states to ensure “an equal waiting time for all voters” at all polling places.Seriously. The bill actually directs the federal Election Assistance Commission to devise a formula for voting line length.
That formula would be based on “the voting age population; voter turnout in past elections; the number of voters registered; the number of voters who have registered since the most recent federal election; Census data for the population served by such voting site; the educational levels and socio-economic factors of the population served by such voting site; the needs and numbers of disabled voters and voters with limited English proficiency; [and] the type of voting systems used.”
And those are not even the most important parts of the bill, at least according to Clinton. The most crucial provision, she says, is the one requiring that voting machines produce an “individual voter-verifiable paper record” of each vote. That’s a nod to those Democrats who believe that Karl Rove somehow personally hacked the touch-screen voting machines in Ohio to deny Sen. John Kerry his rightful victory.
Making touch-screen machines produce a paper record turns out to be quite complicated, introducing new possibilities for error into the process. But what the hell? — Clinton’s entire bill introduces all sorts of new possibilities for error into the process.
In fact, the Count Every Vote Act of 2005 might be viewed as a massive, wholly intentional attempt to introduce new possibilities for error into the system, with the hope that most of the errors will benefit Democrats.
Clinton says her bill will “improve the franchise and truly improve our democracy.”
Even if she has to wreck the system to do it.
Peggy Noonan: 'Don't Kick It'
PEGGY NOONAN
If Terri Schiavo is killed, Republicans will pay a political price.
Friday, March 18, 2005 1:37 p.m. EST
The Wall Street Journal
It appears we've reached the pivotal moment in the Terri Schiavo case, and it also appears our politicians, our senators and congressmen, might benefit from some observations.
In America today all big stories have three dimensions: a legal angle, a public-relations angle and a political angle. In the Schiavo case some of our politicians seem not to be fully appreciating the second and third. This is odd.
Here's both a political and a public-relations reality: The Republican Party controls the Senate, the House and the White House. The Republicans are in charge. They have the power. If they can't save this woman's life, they will face a reckoning from a sizable portion of their own base.
And they will of course deserve it.
This should concentrate their minds.
So should this: America is watching. As the deadline for removal of Mrs. Schiavo's feeding tube approaches, the story has broken through as never before in the media.
*******************
There is a passionate, highly motivated and sincere group of voters and activists who care deeply about whether Terri Schiavo is allowed to live. Their reasoning, ultimately, is this: Be on the side of life. They remind me of what Winston Churchill said once when he became home secretary in charge of England's prisons. He was seated at dinner with a jabbery lady who said that if she were ever given a life sentence she'd rather die than serve it. He reared back. No, he said, always choose life! "Death's the only thing you can't get out of!"
Just so. Life is full of surprise and lightning-like lurches. The person in a coma today wakes up tomorrow and says, "Is that you, mom?" Life is unknowable. Always give it a chance to shake your soul and upend reality.
The supporters of Terri Schiavo's right to continue living have fought for her heroically, through the courts and through the legislatures. They're still fighting. They really mean it. And they have memories.
On the other side of this debate, one would assume there is an equally well organized and passionate group of organizations deeply committed to removing Terri Schiavo's feeding tube. But that's not true. There's just about no one on the other side. Or rather there is one person, a disaffected husband who insists Terri once told him she didn't want to be kept alive by extraordinary measures.
He has fought the battle to kill her with a determination that at this point seems not single-minded or passionate but strange. His former wife's parents and family are eager to care for her and do care for her, every day. He doesn't have to do a thing. His wife is not kept alive by extraordinary measures--she breathes on her own, is not on a respirator. All she needs to continue existing--and to continue being alive so that life can produce whatever miracle it may produce--is a feeding tube.
It doesn't seem a lot.
So politically this is a struggle between many serious people who really mean it and one, just one, strange-o. And the few bearded and depressed-looking academics he's drawn to his side.
It is not at all in the political interests of senators and congressmen to earn the wrath of the pro-Schiavo group and the gratitude of the anti-Schiavo husband, by doing nothing.
So let me write a sentence I never thought I'd write: Politicians, please, think of yourselves! Move to help Terri Schiavo, and no one will be mad at you, and you'll keep a human being alive. Do nothing and you reap bitterness and help someone die.
This isn't hard, is it?
At the heart of the case at this point is a question: Is Terri Schiavo brain-dead? That is, is remedy, healing, physiologically impossible?
No. Oddly enough anyone who sees the film and tape of her can see that her brain tells her lungs to breathe, that she can open her eyes, that she seems to respond at times and to some degree to her family. She can laugh. (I heard it this morning on the news. It's a childlike chuckle.) In the language of computers she appears not to be a broken hard drive but a computer in deep hibernation. She looks like one of those coma cases that wind up in the news because the patient, for no clear reason, snaps to and returns to life and says, "Is it 1983? Is there still McDonald's? Can I have a burger?"
Again, life is mysterious. Medicine is full of happenings and events that leave brilliant doctors scratching their heads.
But in the end, it comes down to this: Why kill her? What is gained? What is good about it? Ronald Reagan used to say, in the early days of the abortion debate, when people would argue that the fetus may not really be a person, he'd say, "Well, if you come across a paper bag in the gutter and it seems something's in it and you don't know if it's alive, you don't kick it, do you?"
No, you don't.
So Congress: don't kick it. Let her live. Hard cases make bad law, but let her live. Precedents can begin to cascade, special pleas can become a flood, but let her live. Because she's human, and you're human.
*******************
A final note to the Republican leadership in the House and Senate: You have to pull out all the stops. You have to run over your chairmen if they're being obstructionist for this niggling reason and that. Run over their egos, run past their fatigue. You have to win on this. If you don't, you can't imagine how much you're going to lose. And from people who have faith in you.
Bill Frist and Tom DeLay and Jim Sensenbrenner and Denny Hastert and all the rest would be better off risking looking ridiculous and flying down to Florida, standing outside Terri Schiavo's room and physically restraining the poor harassed staff who may be told soon to remove her feeding tube, than standing by in Washington, helpless and tied in legislative knots, and doing nothing.
Issue whatever subpoena, call whatever witnesses, pass whatever emergency bill, but don't let this woman die.
Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "A Heart, a Cross, and a Flag" (Wall Street Journal Books/Simon & Schuster), a collection of post-Sept. 11 columns, which you can buy from the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Thursdays.
If Terri Schiavo is killed, Republicans will pay a political price.
Friday, March 18, 2005 1:37 p.m. EST
The Wall Street Journal
It appears we've reached the pivotal moment in the Terri Schiavo case, and it also appears our politicians, our senators and congressmen, might benefit from some observations.
In America today all big stories have three dimensions: a legal angle, a public-relations angle and a political angle. In the Schiavo case some of our politicians seem not to be fully appreciating the second and third. This is odd.
Here's both a political and a public-relations reality: The Republican Party controls the Senate, the House and the White House. The Republicans are in charge. They have the power. If they can't save this woman's life, they will face a reckoning from a sizable portion of their own base.
And they will of course deserve it.
This should concentrate their minds.
So should this: America is watching. As the deadline for removal of Mrs. Schiavo's feeding tube approaches, the story has broken through as never before in the media.
*******************
There is a passionate, highly motivated and sincere group of voters and activists who care deeply about whether Terri Schiavo is allowed to live. Their reasoning, ultimately, is this: Be on the side of life. They remind me of what Winston Churchill said once when he became home secretary in charge of England's prisons. He was seated at dinner with a jabbery lady who said that if she were ever given a life sentence she'd rather die than serve it. He reared back. No, he said, always choose life! "Death's the only thing you can't get out of!"
Just so. Life is full of surprise and lightning-like lurches. The person in a coma today wakes up tomorrow and says, "Is that you, mom?" Life is unknowable. Always give it a chance to shake your soul and upend reality.
The supporters of Terri Schiavo's right to continue living have fought for her heroically, through the courts and through the legislatures. They're still fighting. They really mean it. And they have memories.
On the other side of this debate, one would assume there is an equally well organized and passionate group of organizations deeply committed to removing Terri Schiavo's feeding tube. But that's not true. There's just about no one on the other side. Or rather there is one person, a disaffected husband who insists Terri once told him she didn't want to be kept alive by extraordinary measures.
He has fought the battle to kill her with a determination that at this point seems not single-minded or passionate but strange. His former wife's parents and family are eager to care for her and do care for her, every day. He doesn't have to do a thing. His wife is not kept alive by extraordinary measures--she breathes on her own, is not on a respirator. All she needs to continue existing--and to continue being alive so that life can produce whatever miracle it may produce--is a feeding tube.
It doesn't seem a lot.
So politically this is a struggle between many serious people who really mean it and one, just one, strange-o. And the few bearded and depressed-looking academics he's drawn to his side.
It is not at all in the political interests of senators and congressmen to earn the wrath of the pro-Schiavo group and the gratitude of the anti-Schiavo husband, by doing nothing.
So let me write a sentence I never thought I'd write: Politicians, please, think of yourselves! Move to help Terri Schiavo, and no one will be mad at you, and you'll keep a human being alive. Do nothing and you reap bitterness and help someone die.
This isn't hard, is it?
At the heart of the case at this point is a question: Is Terri Schiavo brain-dead? That is, is remedy, healing, physiologically impossible?
No. Oddly enough anyone who sees the film and tape of her can see that her brain tells her lungs to breathe, that she can open her eyes, that she seems to respond at times and to some degree to her family. She can laugh. (I heard it this morning on the news. It's a childlike chuckle.) In the language of computers she appears not to be a broken hard drive but a computer in deep hibernation. She looks like one of those coma cases that wind up in the news because the patient, for no clear reason, snaps to and returns to life and says, "Is it 1983? Is there still McDonald's? Can I have a burger?"
Again, life is mysterious. Medicine is full of happenings and events that leave brilliant doctors scratching their heads.
But in the end, it comes down to this: Why kill her? What is gained? What is good about it? Ronald Reagan used to say, in the early days of the abortion debate, when people would argue that the fetus may not really be a person, he'd say, "Well, if you come across a paper bag in the gutter and it seems something's in it and you don't know if it's alive, you don't kick it, do you?"
No, you don't.
So Congress: don't kick it. Let her live. Hard cases make bad law, but let her live. Precedents can begin to cascade, special pleas can become a flood, but let her live. Because she's human, and you're human.
*******************
A final note to the Republican leadership in the House and Senate: You have to pull out all the stops. You have to run over your chairmen if they're being obstructionist for this niggling reason and that. Run over their egos, run past their fatigue. You have to win on this. If you don't, you can't imagine how much you're going to lose. And from people who have faith in you.
Bill Frist and Tom DeLay and Jim Sensenbrenner and Denny Hastert and all the rest would be better off risking looking ridiculous and flying down to Florida, standing outside Terri Schiavo's room and physically restraining the poor harassed staff who may be told soon to remove her feeding tube, than standing by in Washington, helpless and tied in legislative knots, and doing nothing.
Issue whatever subpoena, call whatever witnesses, pass whatever emergency bill, but don't let this woman die.
Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "A Heart, a Cross, and a Flag" (Wall Street Journal Books/Simon & Schuster), a collection of post-Sept. 11 columns, which you can buy from the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Thursdays.
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