3.28.2005
A Gloomier Twilight (LATimes.com)
By Michael Kinsley
March 27, 2005
Based on the two big domestic stories of last week — Terri Schiavo's feeding tube and Social Security personoramification (or whatever they want us to call it instead of privatization) — the Republican philosophy seems to be that people need more control over their own retirements, but less control over their own deaths. Based on recent polls, most people feel the exact opposite. They prefer the modest but certain Social Security check they get every month over the opportunity to spend their twilight years nursing their portfolios and worrying every time Alan Greenspan's successors open their mouths.
On the other hand, they want to set for themselves the rules about their own final departures. Specifically, people are terrified of being kept joylessly alive — active minds trapped in a shut-down body or lost minds mocking the dignity of a lifetime — just to prove somebody's political point.
The Schiavo case is not exactly about anyone's right to die, because we don't know for sure whether Schiavo would want to die in her current circumstances. But concern about being able to choose death over pain and/or extreme degradation is what has riveted people to her story.
This is far from illogical. A Congress that has diddled for decades while a growing fraction of the populace has no health insurance, and a president who lectures us constantly about the evils of big government, managed to pass and sign a law within a day trying to keep Schiavo on life supports for possibly another 15 or 30 or 45 years.
(More ... A Gloomier Twilight) ¶ 11:12
March 27, 2005
Based on the two big domestic stories of last week — Terri Schiavo's feeding tube and Social Security personoramification (or whatever they want us to call it instead of privatization) — the Republican philosophy seems to be that people need more control over their own retirements, but less control over their own deaths. Based on recent polls, most people feel the exact opposite. They prefer the modest but certain Social Security check they get every month over the opportunity to spend their twilight years nursing their portfolios and worrying every time Alan Greenspan's successors open their mouths.
On the other hand, they want to set for themselves the rules about their own final departures. Specifically, people are terrified of being kept joylessly alive — active minds trapped in a shut-down body or lost minds mocking the dignity of a lifetime — just to prove somebody's political point.
The Schiavo case is not exactly about anyone's right to die, because we don't know for sure whether Schiavo would want to die in her current circumstances. But concern about being able to choose death over pain and/or extreme degradation is what has riveted people to her story.
This is far from illogical. A Congress that has diddled for decades while a growing fraction of the populace has no health insurance, and a president who lectures us constantly about the evils of big government, managed to pass and sign a law within a day trying to keep Schiavo on life supports for possibly another 15 or 30 or 45 years.
(More ... A Gloomier Twilight) ¶ 11:12
