Karen H. Pittman
Stealing heaven's fire
By Karen H. Pittman
As Terri Schindler-Schiavo lay drying out like a desert palm in a Pinellas Park nursing home, I am reminded of proud Prometheus, who once foolishly attempted to steal heaven's fire. In return, the gods punished him for his arrogance and presumption by chaining him to a rock, where eagles daily devoured his continually regenerating flesh. In this way, the gods made sure he never stole their fire again.
But today in Florida, Prometheus is once more on the prowl, and is even now filching the celestial flame. He is busy playing God, determining for us our appointed hour. Let loose by the guards who were sleeping at the gate, he shadows our every move, black-robed and insidious, a solemn statutory Grim Reaper.
Who now will step forth to bind him? Where is the man or institution with such courage? Where is Florida Governor Jeb Bush? Where is the state legislature? Where, for that matter, is the United States Congress which issued a subpoena it had no intention of enforcing? When, if ever, will our executive and legislative branches learn to say, with one clarion voice, as Andrew Jackson did, "Let the judges enforce their decisions?"
Whatever happened, along the way, to separate but equal? While that standard rightfully no longer applies to public education, it does still rightfully apply to our system of governance.
Regardless of partisan attempts to cloud this issue by politicizing it, it isn't grey and it isn't political. If you don't think so, just ask the Schindlers ！ they'll tell you: It's strictly black and white, a matter of life and death. A very real human being's very real being hangs in the balance. When even Jesse Jackson is willing to step up to the plate and call a spade a spade, you know something in America has gone gravely awry!
Where, I wonder, do we draw the line, if not here? Is this not, as poor Bob Schindler laments, judicial homicide? When, if not now, will we take our government back?
If I hear yet one more talking head say yet one more time that Congress had no right to intervene in "a private family matter" (as if the Schindlers were not Terri's real family, her blood relatives), I'm going to scream. Congress not only had a right to intervene, it had a duty. Why? Because we the people wanted it. Congress answers to us, and us alone.
Not so for these ethereal judges, who answer to no power higher than their own.
And if I hear just one more too-coldly-cerebral pundit pronounce this a precedent-setting Constitutional crisis, I'm going to wretch. This is one precedent that needs setting. As Mark Steyn observed, it's hardly likely Congress will grow drunk on its newfound power in defense of you and me, your average "Joe Schmoes of 37 Elm Street."
Despite the critics' ravings to the contrary, there is something stopping Congress from interfering with our personal affairs, and that's us. The legislature, unlike the judiciary, cannot rule by fiat and is periodically held to account for what it does. We the people are the inherent check built into the system which keeps Congress from running amok. And make no mistake: The legislature acted on Terri's Schiavo's behalf not just out of politics or principle, but for a reason eminently more practical ！ because the people they represent demanded it. Don't believe for one moment those skewed polls the media are force-feeding you. Had Congress remained silent, in a matter this dire, there would have been hell to pay at the polls come election day, as there may well yet be.
And let's not forget, the legislative and executive branches are the checks and balances which are supposed to keep the judiciary from running amok. So much for that.
Furthermore, liberal cant aside, I don't care who you are: You can't separate politics from morality. If you have a strongly held belief, you are obligated to act on it politically, period. Do we really think George Felos is doing less?
If this is a "family decision," as liberals are excessively fond of claiming, why then was Circuit Court Judge George Greer brought in on this in the first place? Why is it any more egregious for Congress and the executive branches to weigh in on the matter than for the judiciary to do so? They are all equally branches of government. Whichever side you come down on, government was bound to be involved, one way or the other, and indeed has been since 1993, when the cleft first opened between Michael Schiavo and the Schindlers.
In an increasingly litigious society, in a country consumed with the diurnal dramas of sensational courtroom cases, do we marvel that judges are revered as gods and held as sacrosanct? Are we stumped by their popular reputation as the inviolable last word on all mortal irreconcilable differences?
The truly disturbing thing about Terri's case, I think, is that few people believe she fell into her "vegetative" state naturally. Need I spell it out?
Okay, I will. The unspoken truth here ！ the elephant in the room ！ is that most of us who are pleading her cause really do suspect that Michael Schiavo may have been complicit in her collapse on that long-ago, fateful night in 1990, and that, if permitted to pull her tube, he will succeed not only in getting away with murder but also in destroying the evidence as well.
That is the real reason why emotions run so high in this extraordinary case.
Liberal ideologues, peculiarly, are curiously capable of showing more compassion for people in the abstract than in the particular. Thus Katrina Vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation, could opine with impunity on a recent episode of Scarborough Country that conservatives are way off base in worrying about this one single person when so many of the old folks in nursing homes have been left for dead by Medicaid and Social Security.
Katrina fails to see the symbolic significance of Terri Schindler-Schiavo's court-ordained mercy killing: This is but the first step toward euthanizing all of society's non-contributors, those selfsame, useless old folks, thereby making sure they never more burden the public coffers.
Sure, why not. Let the geriatrics withering in their nursing home beds be put out of their misery, by us, for us, for our convenience. Kill the cats we have de-clawed by depriving them of the nourishment they must receive, from us, their keepers, if they are to survive. Kill the babies who feed from our arms by pulling our arms away like the mechanical tubes they mimic. And if, unlike Terri, these least among us go on to outlast their infirmity, then, for the love of God, please, if nothing else, at least kill the ones who are maimed and afflicted, to end their agony. They, after all, have the right to die, with all the dignity and beauty bestowed by dehydration, an inalienable right which supercedes their right to live.
Sea changes in society have a way of creeping up, like pounds. We've all experienced this. At the holidays, for instance, you eat and eat for what seems like weeks on end without consequences, when all of a sudden you wake up one morning to realize you've turned into a tub of margarine. Voila! ！ the change is upon you, like that. It happened seemingly overnight, without your knowledge. It happened before you could do anything about it.
And by the time you realize it, it's too late. You are already emulsified. Then begins the long, slow struggle to shed the excess.
Change in society comes to us "overnight" too, though there is nothing "sudden" about it. As it turns out, it was there all along, just like the glutton's metabolism ratcheting down quietly, simmering under the surface. This is precisely what judicial watchers and constitutional experts like Larry Klayman and Mark Levin have been warning against for years. They saw the change coming before we did.
For us, we woke this morning knowing not that Terri Schindler is going to die because God and nature ran their course, but because a barbaric judge refused to feed her, and because a feckless, impotent Congress and Governor stood by and did nothing ！ indeed, less than nothing: They failed to honor even their word. They failed to make good on their empty rhetoric.
3/18 is our cultural 9/11. The Schindler-Schiavo tragedy has shocked us into wakefulness, in the most violent and gut-wrenching of ways. We, like Terri, are trying hard to open our eyes.
Now is the time to rope Prometheus and restore him to his rock, for good.
© Karen H. Pittman
As Terri Schindler-Schiavo lay drying out like a desert palm in a Pinellas Park nursing home, I am reminded of proud Prometheus, who once foolishly attempted to steal heaven's fire. In return, the gods punished him for his arrogance and presumption by chaining him to a rock, where eagles daily devoured his continually regenerating flesh. In this way, the gods made sure he never stole their fire again.
But today in Florida, Prometheus is once more on the prowl, and is even now filching the celestial flame. He is busy playing God, determining for us our appointed hour. Let loose by the guards who were sleeping at the gate, he shadows our every move, black-robed and insidious, a solemn statutory Grim Reaper.
Who now will step forth to bind him? Where is the man or institution with such courage? Where is Florida Governor Jeb Bush? Where is the state legislature? Where, for that matter, is the United States Congress which issued a subpoena it had no intention of enforcing? When, if ever, will our executive and legislative branches learn to say, with one clarion voice, as Andrew Jackson did, "Let the judges enforce their decisions?"
Whatever happened, along the way, to separate but equal? While that standard rightfully no longer applies to public education, it does still rightfully apply to our system of governance.
Regardless of partisan attempts to cloud this issue by politicizing it, it isn't grey and it isn't political. If you don't think so, just ask the Schindlers ！ they'll tell you: It's strictly black and white, a matter of life and death. A very real human being's very real being hangs in the balance. When even Jesse Jackson is willing to step up to the plate and call a spade a spade, you know something in America has gone gravely awry!
Where, I wonder, do we draw the line, if not here? Is this not, as poor Bob Schindler laments, judicial homicide? When, if not now, will we take our government back?
If I hear yet one more talking head say yet one more time that Congress had no right to intervene in "a private family matter" (as if the Schindlers were not Terri's real family, her blood relatives), I'm going to scream. Congress not only had a right to intervene, it had a duty. Why? Because we the people wanted it. Congress answers to us, and us alone.
Not so for these ethereal judges, who answer to no power higher than their own.
And if I hear just one more too-coldly-cerebral pundit pronounce this a precedent-setting Constitutional crisis, I'm going to wretch. This is one precedent that needs setting. As Mark Steyn observed, it's hardly likely Congress will grow drunk on its newfound power in defense of you and me, your average "Joe Schmoes of 37 Elm Street."
Despite the critics' ravings to the contrary, there is something stopping Congress from interfering with our personal affairs, and that's us. The legislature, unlike the judiciary, cannot rule by fiat and is periodically held to account for what it does. We the people are the inherent check built into the system which keeps Congress from running amok. And make no mistake: The legislature acted on Terri's Schiavo's behalf not just out of politics or principle, but for a reason eminently more practical ！ because the people they represent demanded it. Don't believe for one moment those skewed polls the media are force-feeding you. Had Congress remained silent, in a matter this dire, there would have been hell to pay at the polls come election day, as there may well yet be.
And let's not forget, the legislative and executive branches are the checks and balances which are supposed to keep the judiciary from running amok. So much for that.
Furthermore, liberal cant aside, I don't care who you are: You can't separate politics from morality. If you have a strongly held belief, you are obligated to act on it politically, period. Do we really think George Felos is doing less?
If this is a "family decision," as liberals are excessively fond of claiming, why then was Circuit Court Judge George Greer brought in on this in the first place? Why is it any more egregious for Congress and the executive branches to weigh in on the matter than for the judiciary to do so? They are all equally branches of government. Whichever side you come down on, government was bound to be involved, one way or the other, and indeed has been since 1993, when the cleft first opened between Michael Schiavo and the Schindlers.
In an increasingly litigious society, in a country consumed with the diurnal dramas of sensational courtroom cases, do we marvel that judges are revered as gods and held as sacrosanct? Are we stumped by their popular reputation as the inviolable last word on all mortal irreconcilable differences?
The truly disturbing thing about Terri's case, I think, is that few people believe she fell into her "vegetative" state naturally. Need I spell it out?
Okay, I will. The unspoken truth here ！ the elephant in the room ！ is that most of us who are pleading her cause really do suspect that Michael Schiavo may have been complicit in her collapse on that long-ago, fateful night in 1990, and that, if permitted to pull her tube, he will succeed not only in getting away with murder but also in destroying the evidence as well.
That is the real reason why emotions run so high in this extraordinary case.
Liberal ideologues, peculiarly, are curiously capable of showing more compassion for people in the abstract than in the particular. Thus Katrina Vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation, could opine with impunity on a recent episode of Scarborough Country that conservatives are way off base in worrying about this one single person when so many of the old folks in nursing homes have been left for dead by Medicaid and Social Security.
Katrina fails to see the symbolic significance of Terri Schindler-Schiavo's court-ordained mercy killing: This is but the first step toward euthanizing all of society's non-contributors, those selfsame, useless old folks, thereby making sure they never more burden the public coffers.
Sure, why not. Let the geriatrics withering in their nursing home beds be put out of their misery, by us, for us, for our convenience. Kill the cats we have de-clawed by depriving them of the nourishment they must receive, from us, their keepers, if they are to survive. Kill the babies who feed from our arms by pulling our arms away like the mechanical tubes they mimic. And if, unlike Terri, these least among us go on to outlast their infirmity, then, for the love of God, please, if nothing else, at least kill the ones who are maimed and afflicted, to end their agony. They, after all, have the right to die, with all the dignity and beauty bestowed by dehydration, an inalienable right which supercedes their right to live.
Sea changes in society have a way of creeping up, like pounds. We've all experienced this. At the holidays, for instance, you eat and eat for what seems like weeks on end without consequences, when all of a sudden you wake up one morning to realize you've turned into a tub of margarine. Voila! ！ the change is upon you, like that. It happened seemingly overnight, without your knowledge. It happened before you could do anything about it.
And by the time you realize it, it's too late. You are already emulsified. Then begins the long, slow struggle to shed the excess.
Change in society comes to us "overnight" too, though there is nothing "sudden" about it. As it turns out, it was there all along, just like the glutton's metabolism ratcheting down quietly, simmering under the surface. This is precisely what judicial watchers and constitutional experts like Larry Klayman and Mark Levin have been warning against for years. They saw the change coming before we did.
For us, we woke this morning knowing not that Terri Schindler is going to die because God and nature ran their course, but because a barbaric judge refused to feed her, and because a feckless, impotent Congress and Governor stood by and did nothing ！ indeed, less than nothing: They failed to honor even their word. They failed to make good on their empty rhetoric.
3/18 is our cultural 9/11. The Schindler-Schiavo tragedy has shocked us into wakefulness, in the most violent and gut-wrenching of ways. We, like Terri, are trying hard to open our eyes.
Now is the time to rope Prometheus and restore him to his rock, for good.
© Karen H. Pittman
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