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Friday, March 18, 2005
The Convergence Is Complete
Here are the facts, as your Curmudgeon has them:
In 1990, Teresa Schindler-Schiavo's heart ceased to beat for several minutes. The resulting hypoxia caused severe brain damage, which left her helpless, unable to care for or feed herself. Doctors recently appointed by Florida courts have called her condition a "persistent vegetative state."
However, according to several witnesses, Terri still responds to various stimuli. She can't speak, and may not recognize specific persons or elements in her surroundings, but her sensorium is not yet wholly disconnected from her brain. Nor does her brain appear to have lost all its non-autonomic functions.
Michael Schiavo, Terri's husband, has petitioned to have Terri's feeding tube removed -- in effect, to starve his wife to death -- on the representation that she would have wanted it that way. He contends that she clearly expressed that desire to him, though no written records of such a desire exist. That is, there is no "living will" for Terri Schindler-Schiavo.
After protracted hearings and appellate decisions, the Florida courts have granted Michael Schiavo's request that Terri's feeding tube be removed. Unless federal authorities step in to prevent it, this will bring about Terri's death by starvation, a process that could take up to two weeks.
Several Congressmen are attempting to use Congress's subpoena power to delay the inception of this process of execution. Whether the Florida principals and the courts that have backed them will yield to superior federal authority remains to be seen.
For some years, Michael Schiavo has been living with another woman, who has borne him two children. He and Terri are spouses only in the eyes of the State. Yet he has refused to allow divorce proceedings that would transfer guardianship of Terri to her parents.
Michael Schiavo also stands to benefit monetarily from Terri's death. The amount is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. A philanthropist, sensing that this might be the true reason Michael wants Terri to die, has offered to buy her life for $1 million -- that is, to pay Michael Schiavo $1 million if he will only relinquish guardianship of his helpless wife. The offer was refused.
The Florida courts that granted Michael Schiavo's petition to starve his wife to death made a finding of fact, based solely on Michael's representations that Terri would have asked to die in these circumstances. Several persons who knew Terri testified that this was not the case, but to no avail.
Never before in the history of the United States has a man been sentenced to be slowly tortured to death.
Let's be perfectly candid about what Michael Schiavo intends for his helpless wife: he wants her dead. His claim that she would want the same is hopelessly tainted by his pecuniary interest in her demise. He insists on killing her even though the sole legal way to get her into her coffin is to subject her to two weeks of excruciating torment.
Were a condemned serial killer to be sentenced to the same ordeal, every civil-rights and humanist group in the country would be up in arms. Nay, it would arouse every such group in the world. Such groups cannot abide the death penalty even for men convicted of the most heinous crimes. The United States would be castigated in every organ known to Man for its callousness, its brutality, and its lack of respect for human life.
Strangely, those groups have been quite silent about the plight of Terri Schindler-Schiavo. A few have even trumpeted the "right to die" mantra, as if they possessed telepathic time-travel powers that allow them to read Terri's desires retroactively from this point in time.
Your Curmudgeon will note in passing that the overwhelming majority of those groups also proclaim a "woman's right to choose" -- to choose to kill a helpless, fully developed infant whose head has already entered the birth canal and who is on his way to beginning the adventure of life. Some also condemned Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, preferring to let dictators who had murdered uncounted thousands of helpless persons remain in power rather than allow American soldiers to liberate their subjects by force of arms.
As the years roll past, your Curmudgeon becomes ever more powerfully struck by the prescient insight of the great Clive Staples Lewis.
In his novel That Hideous Strength, Lewis paints a nightmare landscape of a fictional Britain that's fallen wholly to the mercies of the worst men in the world. Men who desire to torture and destroy as ends in themselves, but who have become skilled at representing their atrocities as "experimentation" or "remedial treatment." Men who lust for power over others as no other men have ever lusted, and who would raise a dead sorcerer from the grave to get it, but who would never admit that their "scientific outlook" could be conjoined with belief in a demon-conjuring wizard. Men whose loyalties have been so completely perverted that they've relocated entirely away from the human race, and away from life itself.
As the novel's villains struggle to bring the reanimated Merlin into their fold, we are shown that a process centuries long is nearing completion. The process began with the displacement of reverence for innocent life by an ethic that deemed all things, and all lives, to be clay in the hands of human potters, to be shaped according to their untrammeled desires. It took time to evolve, because even those who most strongly advocated it had to shake off the restraints of tradition and upbringing; as Lewis puts it, their inherited morality stood firm against their intellectual rationalizations for the evil they'd sought to legitimize. But once their successors had cast off the fetters of tradition and lingering social disapproval, nothing stood in their way.
The moment had come for Hell's final advance against Man. The convergence of two mighty engines of death -- the reduction of a life to a mere bag of chemicals judged entirely by instrumental criteria, and the worship of power without regard for its source, its aims, or its uses -- could begin.
Over the millennia, men have killed one another in uncounted millions. It's not new, or particularly noteworthy, that one man should want to kill another -- not even that a husband should want to kill his wife, whom he's sworn before God and man to protect. What is new is the accelerating approval and support for such a desire among the "intellectual elite," including judges appointed to do justice, defend the innocent, and protect the helpless.
Europe is deeply mired in this trend. The Netherlands is the standard-bearer for "assisted suicide," and for the deliberate execution, with medical concurrence, of inconvenient babies and oldsters. The horror stories are legion -- so many, in fact, that the horror of them has begun to create calluses over our emotions. One can only hear about so many such villainies before stopping one's ears.
Europe is also the rallying point for the condemnation of the death penalty. The lives of men who've maliciously and unjustifiably destroyed the lives of others are therefore valued more highly than the lives of the helpless and utterly innocent.
America has been a bastion against this sort of viciousness...until now. European thinking -- utilitarian valuation of the "quality of life" of helpless persons by third parties -- has reached these shores and formed a beachhead. The abortion wars, as serious as they've been, were only a preliminary, a shelling of our moral defenses to soften them for a decisive breakthrough.
The Terri Schindler-Schiavo case will be that breakthrough, if Michael Schiavo gets his way.
Some have protested that Michael Schiavo must be sincere, since he was willing to turn down a million dollars for his wife's life. This does not follow. Once he'd made his representation that Terri would have wanted to die, Michael could not possibly back away from it in the face of a monetary inducement; that would have constituted an admission that he wants her dead specifically so that he could grab her money, and that he was ready to yield in the face of a better offer. Similarly, he has to resist all attempts to divorce him from Terri, and the Schindlers' impassioned pleas for a transfer of guardianship. To concede guardianship to anyone determined to keep Terri alive would implicitly admit that it was no wish of Terri's that mattered, but rather that he wants her dead for his own convenience. Either admission would indict and convict him of conspiracy to commit murder through a judicial process.
Terri Schindler-Schiavo's life matters to her husband-in-name in precisely one way: it's a barrier to something he wants. His willingness to sacrifice her is a declaration that in service to his ends, even the murder of the helpless woman whose well-being lies in his care is an acceptable means. It's a pledge of allegiance to the death cults.
This sickening story has a few scenes yet to run. Whether Terri Schindler-Schiavo will survive it is known only to God. But anyone willing to open his eyes can easily see that elements of opinion and organs of government here in the United States are aligning with the death cults.
Florida courts have ratified Michael Schiavo's desire to kill his helpless, innocent wife.
Groups that claim to hold life as sacred, that protest in droves at every execution, and that condemn the use of American military power regardless of the justifications or the delicacy of its application, are standing aside, content to watch as Terri is tortured to death.
Low creatures such as Peter Singer, so-called "ethical philosopher," have argued that creatures such as Terri have no right to life that others are bound to respect.
And as in Lewis's That Hideous Strength, the legions of Hell look on in delicious anticipation.
Pray.
Comments
Chilling. I look at this case and I truly cannot understand what’s going on. I just don’t get it. I’m willing to believe that there are credible scientific voices who say that Schiavo’s seeming consciousness is just automatic, and that she truly is a vegetable (that wouldn’t make me want to starve her to death, but it would make the pro-death side’s position at least comprehensible). But then there are credible voices who say that her reactions betray some sense of sense and presence, if only that of a baby.
Now, when such doubt exists (and, not to mention, there exist ready and willing caregivers and resources to take up her care), how can people so enthusiastically fall on the side of death? When there is such inconclusive evidence also about the supposed wishes of Terri prior to her injury, how can people just blindly accept the compromised words of Michael Schiavo?
They are so eager to go through with this. So energetic about making it happen. It makes me think Michael Schiavo has truly evil ulterior motives (on top of the other - admittedly circumstantial and not wholly confirmed - evidence about shady finances), and as you say, that wouldn’t be anything new. But my God, I can’t, for the life of me, understand how he has so many rabid supporters.
I don’t get it. It makes me so angry I want to punch the walls or start crying. What the hell is in these people’s hearts and minds? I just don’t understand.
Posted by Russell Wardlow on 03/18/2005 at 01:02 PMThe House adjoined for vacation 75 minutes before the Senate passed their bill. Result: No conference committee to iron-out the differences last night and no the bill to send to the Prez in time to rescue Terri.
Today, a subpoena was sent to Terri to appear before both Houses of Congress… [insert macabre music here]
I heard that newsflash before I read this essay which I had been praying you’d write.
Then I got to your reference to That Hideous Strength. That head, as Lewis described it, immediately popped to mind.
I pray that it never comes to Terri having to appear. The contrast between the “shrine” of the novel and the scenario the subpoena sets up is a horror. For those who have never read that novel, I refuse to even explain this.
You are right in a way you had no way of knowing would transpire when you wrote this. Think of the monsters’ glee awaiting the prospect. Another convergence is about to be complete.
Posted by Pascal Fervor on 03/18/2005 at 01:03 PMRussell. I know.
Go and read C.S.Lewis’ Men without Chests, his first essay in The Abolition of Man.
He saw it coming. He warned our parents. He said it was inevitable consequence of the new books then being printed (1930s) to train teachers.
Those hearts, when intervention wasn’t forthcoming from parents and others who didn’t recognize the process, didn’t read or heed Lewis’ warning, who didn’t see it being done, were successfully removed by our educational institutions.
It’s not too late. It’s just more difficult. Unteach to your children all that the rotten system has been inculcating in them. You will be depriving the death culturists the fertile, unsecured minds they require.
Posted by Pascal Fervor on 03/18/2005 at 01:22 PMPF,
I will. Thanks for the suggestion. I’m reading Whittaker Chambers’ “Witness” currently, but as soon as I finish that I’ll check out both That Hideous Strength and Abolition of Man.
Posted by Russell Wardlow on 03/18/2005 at 03:51 PMRussell, you may want to read Out of the Silent Planet and then Perelandra before tackling That Hideous Strength. It’s the third of a trilogy, though it can be read on its own (the books aren’t a trilogy like Lord of the Rings, which is really one book split up into three parts by the publisher for sales purposes, but there are references in Strength that will puzzle people who haven’t read the other two books).
Posted by Andrea Harris on 03/18/2005 at 09:38 PM...and don’t forget to put Lewis’s Miracles on your reading list, either.
Posted by brandon davis on 03/18/2005 at 10:01 PMStill can’t make trackbacks work for me. But I’ve written an entry commenting on this post as Ideological absolutism and Terry Schiavo.
Posted by Matt on 03/19/2005 at 04:14 AMFrank, I am so so sorry it has taken me such a long time to re-acquaint/add you to my blog roll. Many thanks to Andrea for toggling you...I remember various conversations we had back in the days of Brazos de Dios Cantina, and hope I can benefit from your thoughts/writings as I try to hue logic out of my own wanderings over at Tributaries.
I have been looking for some books to read. I cannot believe I have not taken up Lewis’ other books sooner....
I have added you to my “Babbling Brooks” blog roll.
Best regards,
SharonPosted by Sharon Ferguson on 03/20/2005 at 04:03 PMMy father, a very proud and successful man, told me fairly often while I was growing up that he never wanted to be a burden to other people. He told me that in the event of a severe medical crisis, he never wanted to have any tubes inserted or live on machines for any period of time. This followed from his pride and never wanting to be a burden. Last year, my father died from lung cancer. I was fortunate to be with him at the end, and in fact my very last conversation with him was about this very fact, because I had to be sure. On the way to the hospital as his lungs were filling with fluid for the last time, and after he hadn’t eaten for several days straight, I calmly informed him that the doctors would likely want to insert feeding tubes and drain his lungs again. I asked him if he wanted this, and he clearly indicated that no, he did not want that to happen. And when we got to the hospital, that’s what my mom and I told the emergency room doctors, since my father had gone into respiratory arrest just as we pulled up to the hospital.
What if Terry Schiavo was a proud woman who, like my father, didn’t want to be kept alive by extraordinary measures as a vegetable? What if she didn’t want to be a burden? Michael Schiavo has been offered a million dollars to give up custody of his wife, and he walked away from it. The only reason that makes sense is that his wife had clearly expressed to him that she did not want to be kept alive in a state like that, and Michael is being true to that. If Michael Schiavo were really willing to let his wife die for money, if you really believe that the man is capable of that much evil, then he has no pride and it makes no sense whatsoever that he would turn down more money to let his wife live because of hypothetical wounded pride.
If anyone had seriously tried to intervene on me on my fathers case, or questioned the last conversation I had with my father on this earth, or the numerous ones he had had with me (and my mother) in the past, or accused me (or my mother) of being after his money, I would have gone ballistic. If anyone had offered me money, I would have refused.
We all revere life, but we are all going to die someday. We do not worship life; we are supposed to worship God. My father understood that, but I wonder if those who are determined to “save” the life of Terry Schiavo really understand that. At the same time I have nothing but sympathy for her parents, and I don’t blame them at all for their pain. But I do feel that the political posturing by various groups here is making an absolute mockery of what God intended for us.
Posted by on 03/21/2005 at 01:41 AMWell said, Francis.
Posted by David C on 03/21/2005 at 03:16 AMI agree with David: very well said and something that needed saying.
Posted by akaky on 03/21/2005 at 05:56 PMWith the last paragraph of The strange death of the liberal West we have Mark Steyn outright agreeing, finally, with our diagnosis Francis:
He led up to this with:The martyrdom culture of radical Islam is a literal dead end. But so is the slyer death culture of post-Christian radical narcissism.
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.
And Steyn led up to that with his assessment of the apologetics by two Dutch doctors, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, who undoubtedly see, in Terri’s imminent demise, a hopeful sign in America’s “progress” toward their way of thinking:
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 other words, Steyn is saying with all this hopeful progress, somehow these scientists are even more worried. What could be plaguing them so?
You all know what I think the answer to that question is: All these medical advances are leading us to let more people live in a world allegedly on a collision course with limited resources. While those, like the majority of readers at your site Francis, see the medical advances as great news, our betters know how stupid we are to think this is good news.
I feel compelled to end my observations with something else that C. S. Lewis wrote in The Great Divorce. He wrote of:
“the desire [of some] to extend Hell, to bring it bodily if they could, into Heaven.... Tub-thumpers, who in thin, bat-like voices urged the blessed spirits to shake off their fetters, to escape from their imprisonment in happiness, to tear down [the surrounding majestic beauty] with their hands, to seize Heaven ‘for their own’: Hell offered her cooperation.”
Posted by Pascal Fervor on 03/22/2005 at 05:34 AMMen without chests refuse to make moral choices because the act of choosing will automatically sort the subjects into a heierarchy. This cannot be done for fear that someone else may rank them in a low position.
Anyone who acquaints themselves with the details of this case will recognize the ambiguity of it. It devolves into a he said/she said situation. This invites individuals to examine the behavior of the principals involved.
Examination of the behavior of Michael Schiavo, in my opinion, will lead most people to conclude that he is acting selfishly. This conclusion will come as a natural result of familiarity with human behavior. It cannot be proven, but it is there. I would venture to guess that even his most vociferous supporters feel, deep down, that his motivation is his own self-interest. It seems to me that his behavior bears a more than casual resemblance to that of Scott Peterson, who found very little support.
Having come to this conclusion, the individual must then either accept the conclusion, which places Michael Schiavo in a low position, or ignore it. A person who refuses to ignore it must then make a moral choice between the principals. This choice is what the men without chests shrink from. For having made the choice, the conscience will then insist that justice be done.
Posted by on 03/22/2005 at 03:01 PM
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