JADED AMERICANS

 

 

 

Dorothy A. Seese
March 21, 2005
NewsWithViews.com

There are a lot of wonderful Christians in this nation who still maintain respect for God-given life and view with horror and alarm the trend toward euthanasia, assisted suicide and the "right to die" that makes man the captain of his soul and the master of his fate. Even more alarming is a growing trend toward death by order of the court (a branch of government) when there is no written living will or other instrument upon which to make a live or die decision. Thus life and death of the helpless innocent as well as the guilty rests in the hands of the court and the wishes of court-appointed guardians.

Such deaths in the case of those who cannot speak for themselves cannot, by law, be as merciful as the deaths ordered for criminals convicted of capital crimes which is death by lethal injection. The death ordered for Terri Schiavo was removal of her sole means of taking nourishment, a feeding and hydration tube, causing death by starvation and dehydration. That is not the same type of life support as people were given in the days prior to the development of the polio vaccine, the hideous iron lung. But prior to 1955, when the Salk vaccine was announced, life in America was viewed as that which God gave and God took in His good time, with the exception of capital punishment for murder and other heinous crimes.

To all those who have written and said that the main difference between me (a disabled person) and Terry Schiavo is that I am not brain dead, let me assure you there are other readers who would gladly dispute that assertion. However, there are other differences -- I walk short distances, drive my truck, shop, go to my doctor appointments and laboratory exams unassisted -- in summary, I live almost like a person who isn't disabled as far as what is accomplished. But I am alive because of the medical procedure called angioplasty, used in August of 2004 to unclog an occluded left coronary artery of plaque and then insertion of a stent. The procedure was repeated in September for the right coronary artery. In each procedure, something could have gone wrong to place me in Terry Schiavo's plight. Only I have a living will that instructs the doctors to pull the plug.

I also have no money and Terri's guardian/spouse is custodian of the more than $1 million awarded to her for damages resulting from medical error.

The court has to believe that Terri, before her disability, expressed a desire to die rather than be kept alive by something that isn't really life support, a feeding tube. The court believed her guardian/husband who has a "second wife" or girlfriend, by whom he has two children and whom he might marry once his disabled wife has been starved to death and is out of the way. He is guardian because of the assurances he gave her family (prior to the award of the money) of the care he would provide, and no indication that he would seek her death. Mr. Schiavo has given sufficient indication of self-interest to allow a court to terminate his guardianship and leave it (and the cash) to her parents in the hope that in the next few years medical knowledge will increase sufficiently that she could once again be a functional person, even if disabled.

But those who presume to know God's will about life and death (and know nothing), along with those who view Terri as just a vegetable who will be better off dead (among whom we can number Judge Greer) are the people who are making America an ominous shadow of 1930's/1940's Nazi Germany under Hitler's secular, merciless regime that regarded only the able-bodied and able-minded as fit to live.

As an analyst of times, trends and events who writes those down as editorial articles, I don't like what I see in America and even more, dislike what I see in some Americans who take it upon themselves to determine what God wishes and the court should do -- commit legal homicide. It is the disregard for the sanctity of life that caused Roe v. Wade to be passed, and after thirty-some years in effect, an estimated fifty million unborns have lost their lives before they left the womb.

Now we're pressing on toward getting rid of the disabled, the elderly, the retarded, those whom the government may label "useless feeders." And, of course, enemies of the state.

Yet the people who will support the murder of Terri Schiavo by court order see no connection whatever between a nation's lack of regard for the sanctity of life and the Nazi mindset of genetic engineering and the Darwinian view of the survival of the fittest.

What about Terri's family? What about mercy upon those who must now watch their daughter die a slow death by starvation and dehydration ordered by a court of American law? What do you say to them? "Get over it, she's dead anyway." They don't think so. What have they done that the court should order such suffering for them?

Yet the Supreme Court recently set precedent by an opinion that murders committed by those under age eighteen cannot carry the death penalty, thus sparing the lives of those who go on killing rampages at age seventeen, or even sixteen.

America's priorities have capsized because their moral compass has been disabled by court orders since the early 1960's. Retribution is not always swift, but it always comes. Perhaps the invasion by the illegals is one form of judgment being passed on America, its land is being taken away by reconquista. Its jobs are being taken away by outsourcing offshore and importing foreign labor. Perhaps the "natural" disasters are a bit more than that, perhaps they are supernatural to show man his true impotence.

One thing is certain because it comes from an absolute and certain Source:

Galatians 6:7 Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

Those who cheer at Terri Schiavo's death might one day be faced with a circumstance at which they will weep with remorse. It is certain that one day we shall every one leave this earth for eternity, and those who say they don't fear death now may well find that as they look ahead to eternity, there are some very real uncertainties about their future.

The same is true for America, its future is more uncertain now than at any other time since the war of the 1860's. Look ahead, America, what are you becoming? Jaded? If so, be sure that what you sow is what you shall reap in due time, and that perhaps a hundredfold.

© 2005 Dorothy A. Seese - All Rights Reserved