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Thursday, October 23, 2003 |
The Right To Die and Infancy Until Death
Those two statements are really what the case of Terri Schiavo boils down to.
One is whether a person or their legal guardian has the right to make the choice whether to continue life when life has become medically unbearable or untenable. I say yes, and when living in Oregon voted for the law allowing Oregonians the right to make that choice.
The other is the infantization of American society, where choices that previously were left to an adult and their chosen partner have now been taken over by the nanny-state and parents. As adults we used to be able to decide whether to smoke, drink and have sex but today the government has decided we're too dumb to make those choices for ourselves, and government will make them for us. In Schiavo's case her parents have decided that despite her marriage to her husband they have the right to decide for her, thusly extending her infancy into her 39th year.
Completely unsurprising is the role of Republicans and Governor Jeb Bush. They've been consistent in their advocacy of the inability of Americans to make choices about the use of their own bodies, whether it be in regards to abortion, sex or the right to die. Evidently people have the right to make money, spend money, carry guns and pollute the environment to their hearts greatest desire but not the right to end a pregnancy, have sex with the same sex or live in a clean and healthy community. Republican hypocrisy on this issue is not longer surprising but still makes one nauseous.
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5:17:55 PM 
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Salon Gets Clark Right, For Once
Today's Salon.com does a great job of portraying Clark's candidacy correctly. That is, showing that myself and the thousands of others who have gone to Clark Meetups, donated money and were involved in the Draft Clark movement are NOT some phantom army conjured up by a DNC afraid of Howard Dean. Instead we're committed and genuinely inspired by Clark's record of service to his country and by his clear articulation of a positive message for America. Contrast that with Dean, who always looks as if he's about to burst the neck of his shirt, and is generally shown red-faced and screaming at some adulating crowd like a modern-day Mussolini.
As a student of international relations I most admire Clark's steely determination to stop Serbian genocide in the Balkans. He kept together a fracticious NATO alliance and pushed to broaden the war, in a way that was very visible to the Serbs, and called their bluff that they would defend Kosovo to the "last man." When Milosevic saw that American, Italian and German engineers were preparing the road from the port of Durres in Albania to the Kosovo border so that it could be used by tanks and APCs he decided the Serbs would withdraw. Clark can be thanked for this, he kept up the pressure when many in Europe were calling for a ceasefire, even in the face of continuing Serbian atrocities.
As Clark's message deepens and broadens, as it has been doing with the campaign's articulation of new policies on taxes and volunteerism, so too will Americans continue to flock to him. Because Clark inspires people through the strength and power of his record and his words, not through rage and negativity like Howard Dean. Indeed, the reason so many Republicans have taken the time to attack Clark and ignore Dean is because they know which candidate they want to face in November 2004, and it isn't Wesley Clark.
3:50:40 PM
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Seattle's Gay City, Corrupt and Loathsome
Guiding us right into hell
Eli Sanders, a writer for the local weekly publication The Stranger, again hits the nail directly on the head when he accuses Gay City, a "Gay Men's Health organization" of advocating muder through its promotion of unsafe sex and the frequenting of gay sex clubs and bathouses.
Eli is correct, Gay City has presided over a skyrocketing increase in HIV and STD infections amongst gay men in Seattle. Any other organization with a record as poor as theirs would have been disbanded and/or de-funded. Instead Gay City keeps on raking in the public grants, basically fiddling while Rome burns.
The Stranger and Eli Sanders are to be commended for their coverage of this issue.
1:02:06 PM
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© Copyright 2003 Shane Hensinger.
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