Terri Shiavo's suffering and murder has had me riveted to the blogosphere all week. I've watched bloggers I once admired shrivel up under the blinding light of the fundamental moral choice Terri presented to us all. I gained new respect for other bloggers who understood significance of the choice Terri put before us, risked losing reputations and readers, and still found thoughtful and intelligent ways of defending a helpless woman from state-sanctioned murder.
I also spent a lot of time seeking out comments from the Other side of the political/intellectual spectrum, and I have come to the conclusion that the Philistines are a mess. They have spent more time on what Peter Brooks has aptly describes as process: "jurisdictions, legalisms, politics and procedures ." More important, the less politically adept among them have spent their ever-flowing self-righteousness dehumanizing Terri and advocating policies of euthanasia. If this is really what rank-and-file Philistines believe, they are not going to be winning any elections any time soon.
It's an amazing mess, and it belies those worthlessly biased polls produced this week. In the bright light of a basic moral choice, the Philistines shrieked and ran away, cursing the infirm and unborn along the way. They are no longer the Pro-Choice party; they've become the Pro-Death party, and they're finished.
This is going to be my last social/political post for a while. Terri has brought out the best, and worst, in me this week, and I have to admit, I'm tired. She'll be dead soon, perhaps sometime this weekend, but her legacy lives on, and the people most affected by her martyrdom have, as Peggy Noonan wrote last week, " have memories."
The schnook in all this is Michael Shiavo. Seven years ago he probably thought icing his brain damaged wife would be a slam-dunk. He'd get the cash, and he'd get to marry the other wife for real. What a fool! He's Gollum-like now, a pathetic, whimpering shade. God will not be kind to him. He'll write his book, sell the rights, but no one will care. The other wife will divorce him after a certain amount of time and money has accumulated, and get half. After that, I'd bet it won't take much time before he'll be sitting at a bar in southern Florida somewhere, drunk and telling tourists: "Remember me? I was the guy that got his wife's feeding tube pulled!"
Before I let this social/political issue pass I do have some suggestions [tongue in cheek] to Philistines everywhere:
1. Please keep on having abortions. Remember, practice what you preach. You don't want to be called hypocrites.
2. Please keep on advocating for the euthanasia of the disabled and infirm.
3. Please have this woman -- Barbara "Fetus People" O'Brien -- give a major address at the '08 Democratic Convention.
UPDATE:
Looks like Mark Steyn won't be getting an Instapundit nod this week:
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.
