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| Where do you stand on the Schiavo case? | | Date Created: Mar 25, 2005, 09:51 PM |
 It's not possible to ignore this case even if you ignore TV news and the usual MSM (mainstream media) outlets. This horrible tragedy has become a poster child for gauging opinions on this issue and it certainly doesn't break down cleanly along the one dimensional left-right political spectrum. In reading the cover story in The Week magazine, I'm amazed to find I agree with the NewYork Times, The Washington Post, and Slate.com while disagreeing with The Wall Street Journal and The Weekly Standard. The Week is worth reading for that diversity of opinion alone. But more importantly, I'm in disagreement with two pundits I nearly always agree with (Ann Coulter and Thomas Sowell). They're nominally conservatives but I thought Sowell was really a libertarian at heart. Not on this issue. He's just come out with his second essay on it and he commits the cardinal sin that conservatives sometimes make and liberals nearly always make -- that of acting (or at least writing) as if he knows what the situation at the personal, individual level is and what should be done about it by the authorities.
Here is the essay and comments in [ ].
Killing Terri Schiavo
Thomas Sowell
March 24, 2005
People who say that the government has no business interfering in a private decision like removing Terri Schiavo's feeding tube somehow have no problem with a squad of policemen preventing her parents (or anyone else) from giving their daughter food or water.
[This is bait and switch. I agree with the first part but I certainly don't have "no problem" with the latter. This is why such situations should be kept out of the courts as much as possible. But if they get to the court, the most local court should decide it after due process. This has been done. Court decisions should then be enforced or what's the point?]
Do those who want to keep the government out of private decisions think that the police are not the government?
[Another baiting argument. Of course they are. Now let's apply that reasoning to the very personal issue of reproductive decisions and abortion...]
Do they think that the judges who authorized this are not the government?
[Again, that's exactly the point. The courts/government should stay out of it but once they're in, a decision has to be made and enforced. That's the reason we have courts. They are to resolve disputes without violence and without the interference of those who have no business deciding these issues.]
Sadly, this is not the only Alice-in-Wonderland confusion of words and deeds in this tragic case.
We are being told
[By whom? This sounds like Sowell is already taking the media story as gospel]
that Terri Schiavo is being "allowed" to "die a natural death." Such an argument might make some sense if this were a terminally ill person. But Terri Schiavo is not dying from anything other than a lack of food and water, from which any of the rest of us would die.
[A variety of strawman argument. The first part is posited and defined by Sowell, the fact that the latter part doesn't follow speaks nothing to the issue.]
She is not dying a natural death. She is being killed.
[Actually Sowell is again defining these loaded terms. As Bill Clinton so aptly put it, "It depends on what the definition of 'is' is." I'd say neither are the case. Sowell and others might, perhaps, say the same thing about even an IUD]
What is being kept alive artificially is the liberal media version of events.
[Well I agree that the media is liberal but in this case I'd say it is Sowell's version of events that is being promoted.]
One side of this story is being repeated endlessly, as if it were gospel, but anyone saying something different -- including doctors and nurses who have actually seen or taken care of Terri Schiavo -- is unlikely to be reported.
[That just isn't the case here. From what I've seen, the parent's view and position (not to mention pictures) is what is most often portrayed]
The nature of death by starvation and dehydration is also being depicted as "gentle" in the words of the New York Times -- the same New York Times which in 2002 reported starving people in India dying "clutching pained stomachs."
[I don't buy what the NYT says as gospel either but this is another bait and switch argument for which Sowell is often the victim rather than the accuser. He should be able to see this. Because the NYT is inconsistent in things Sowell chooses to treat as equivalent doesn't prove his point of view is correct.]
This "gentle" death is the story line in the liberal media but a priest who has actually seen Terri Schiavo tells a wholly different story of her visibly deteriorating condition.
['story line in the liberal media' isn't an all-purpose trump card in arguments. And following it with an anecdote doesn't cut it either. That's just another 'liberal media' trick.]
If this is such an easy death, why not videotape it and show those of us who are less enlightened how mistaken we are? Instead, there is a ban on anyone's photographing Terri as she dies.
[Oh please. There's a good reason for not turning this into a media circus any more than it is. What purpose would that serve?]
Despite the oft-repeated claim that Terri Schiavo is being "allowed" to die, supposedly in accordance with her own wishes, the only person who says that these were her wishes is the one person who wants her dead and who personally stands to benefit from her death -- her husband, Michael Schiavo.
[Now we're getting to the crux of the matter and where Sowell's apparently conservative ideology derails him. It can reasonably be argued that anybody in a dispute personally stands to benefit. How could you have a dispute where someone doesn't stand to benefit in some way? It depends on who's doing the deciding about who's benefiting, for what, and how much. The classic example to me are the plaintiff attorneys who stand to benefit by making millions of dollars over the decision of a jury in a complicated and/or tragic case. How's that for vested interest?]
When Sean Hannity said this on the Fox News channel's "Hannity & Colmes" program, he was assured by a lawyer who was defending the removal of the feeding tube that Michael Schiavo was not the only one to hear Terri say this. But, when Hannity demanded to know the name of just one other person, the lawyer followed an old lawyer's maxim: "When your case is weak, shout louder!" He shouted and waxed indignant -- but did not produce the name of any other person.
[Big deal. Lawyers are just hired guns and (IMHO) often professional liars. The lawyers for the other side would be happy to make unsupported statements to the media. It's even possible the lawyer could not ethically mention the other names. This is small potatoes.]
This case is one where many people speak with certainty about very uncertain things
[Yes, and unfortunately Sowell is engaging in the same thing.]
-- and the certainties of one side contradict the certainties of the other.
[That's the essence of a dispute isn't it? Seems to be the case with malpractice trials for example.]
Many seem certain that Terri Schiavo is vegetative, does not understand what is going on around her and cannot respond. But Carla Sauer Iyer, a nurse who attended Mrs. Schiavo for more than a year, has contradicted all of this. Moreover, she has painted a very different picture of Michael Schiavo than the one he presents to the courts and to the media.
[Two things here. The Iyer story is another anecdote and an example of what Sowell just complained of -- 'many people speak with certainty of very uncertain things'. The other is that Michael Schiavo is no saint. I don't like the guy and don't trust him for his malpractice claim alone, but he did all the court asked and won the judgment. It may be the wrong decision and Michael Schiavo may have far less than pure motives. OJ Simpson was aquitted of two murders he committed. We don't get to retry him (at least on criminal charges) and the US Congress can't step in. We have to accept it.]
But you are not likely to find her eyewitness account of events in the mainstream media.
[Wow. And when has that ever happened before?]
According to this nurse, Michael Schiavo complained that his wife wasn't dying fast enough -- only the word he used was not wife or woman but a word that cannot be repeated in a family newspaper.
[Maybe yes, maybe no. But this is an extremely low form of arguing and another example that Sowell seems to know the truth of the matter and how it should have been decided. The point is that it was decided. We can't second guess every decision by the courts we don't like even if we think we know the truth of the matter.]
The nurse's sworn statement, under penalty of perjury, is that she reported to the police that she had found Terri in both medical and emotional distress after a closed door visit by her husband -- and that she also found a vial of insulin, as well as needle marks on Terri, after Michael Schiavo's visit.
[It took something like seven years for the court to finally decide this. I find it hard to believe that this wasn't considered. How many times have we seen people with an ax to grind make damning statements. If this evidence was creditable it should have been taken into account. If it's true and it was ignored then it's possible a poor decision was rendered. But again, you can't second guess every court case that you don't like the outcome (or just because it got major media attention).]
The same mainstream media that will scour the country to find individuals to quote in support of killing Terri Schiavo will not lift a finger to investigate the chilling charges this nurse filed with the police years ago. It might disturb the picture they are trying to paint.
[Well Sowell just raised it. I thought bloggers were having such a powerful influence on events these days. It really smacks of conspiracy theory which I guess conservatives aren't immune to.]
Terri Schiavo is being killed because she is inconvenient to her husband
[Sowell is entitled to his opinion and that's about it. Again you could make the same argument about a first term abortion. That doesn't mean you can call in the feds.]
and because she is inconvenient to those who do not want the idea of the sanctity of life to be strengthened and become an impediment to abortion.
[Ah, so there is a connection here. I wonder what Sowell thinks of the movie, Million Dollar Baby. This is really a 'decisions at the end of life' issue. The connection to the abortion issue is that the courts had to render a decision, they made it, and Sowell can't interfere every time someone carries out something consistent with the decision of the court. If we did we'd have even more chaos than we already do with civil trials after criminal trials and endless tort litigation cases.]
Nor do they want the supremacy of judges to be challenged, when judges are the liberals' last refuge.
They should be the 'last refuge' of all law-abiding US citizens. I wouldn't want to leave it up to the liberals or the conservatives. |
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