Month: March 2005

From our Burying-The-Lead Department comes a surprising entry from John Allen Jr., ordinarily the Vatican correspondent who makes the National Catholic Reporter worth checking in on from time to time.  (Indeed, I think his book All the Pope’s Men is must reading for aspiring apologists.)

In his current column for NCRep, Allen includes but a brief mention of the Terri Schiavo case and the extraordinary Vatican response to it apparently as an afterthought at the very end of his column (titled "A Short Note on Terri Schiavo"):

"So much has been written and said about the Terry [sic] Schiavo case in the United States that I hesitate to add anything here. It’s already well-known that the Holy See has been outspoken; three senior Vatican officials have appealed directly on Schiavo’s behalf, including Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace; Cardinal Javier Lozano Barrigan, president of the Pontifical Council for the Health Care Pastoral; and Bishop Elio Sgreccia, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life.

"The American press, already accustomed to the engagement of religious conservatives on Schiavo’s behalf, has not given a great deal of attention to these Vatican interventions, treating them as largely pro forma.

"In fact, however, if one sees these statements through the lens of normal Vatican operating procedure rather than the particular contours of American debate, they’re really rather extraordinary. As a general rule, Vatican officials restrict themselves to enunciating general principles, treating particular cases, pieces of legislation or elections as something for local bishops to address. Readers will remember, for example, during the American debate over
[C]ommunion for pro-choice Catholic politicians, that Vatican officials outlined the general rules in
[C]hurch law but never even cited the name ‘John Kerry’ in doing so."

Now, granted, what Allen has to say about the Vatican response is a valuable insight into the Vatican’s usual modus operandi in cases like this, and into the Vatican’s suspension of it for Terri. But did he have to bury the blurb at the bottom of the column? And did he have to misspell Terri’s name? (Small peeve, I know, but I think it’s telling sometimes when journalists are not careful to double-check name spellings.  I should note that Terri’s name is spelled correctly in the headline.)

GET THE STORY. (Scroll to bottom of page.)

What Terri Schiavo’s case comes down to is not the non-existent "right to die", nor is it "privacy" or a matter of due process or jurisdiction. What has not been addressed, by anyone directly involved with the case, is the legal fiction that a feeding tube constitutes extrordinary means of sustaining life. That is the crux of the matter.

At least, that’s what I thought. But it just occurred to me, while watching re-run video of a brave 10-year-old being escorted to a police van, that protestors were not carrying feeding tubes as they tried to approach Terri’s hospice. They were carrying perfectly ordinary cups of water. Surely not even the mind of a Judge would be so highly trained as to classify an ordinary cup of water as "extrodinary" medical care. Were the protestors threatening to professionally administer these highly complex cups of water? No, they were not.

It has been my understanding that Terri does have the ability, with assistance, to swallow both food and water, without the aid of a feeding tube.

WITHOUT a feeding tube.

So the feeding tube has, apparently, been a colossal red herring all along. It must be (and I want badly to read the Judge’s findings) that there is some kind of injunction barring Terri from receiving any food or water of any kind from anyone. In other words, "this person will be starved to death, by any means necessary, come hell or high water."

A couple of days ago, in an interview on Fox News, Terri’s brother said that this was America, that we just don’t starve disabled people to death here.

I’m now terribly afraid that he was wrong.

What Terri Schiavo’s case comes down to is not the non-existent "right to die", nor is it "privacy" or a matter of due process or jurisdiction. What has not been addressed, by anyone directly involved with the case, is the legal fiction that a feeding tube constitutes extrordinary means of sustaining life. That is the crux of the matter.

At least, that’s what I thought. But it just occurred to me, while watching re-run video of a brave 10-year-old being escorted to a police van, that protestors were not carrying feeding tubes as they tried to approach Terri’s hospice. They were carrying perfectly ordinary cups of water. Surely not even the mind of a Judge would be so highly trained as to classify an ordinary cup of water as "extrodinary" medical care. Were the protestors threatening to professionally administer these highly complex cups of water? No, they were not.

It has been my understanding that Terri does have the ability, with assistance, to swallow both food and water, without the aid of a feeding tube.

WITHOUT a feeding tube.

So the feeding tube has, apparently, been a colossal red herring all along. It must be (and I want badly to read the Judge’s findings) that there is some kind of injunction barring Terri from receiving any food or water of any kind from anyone. In other words, "this person will be starved to death, by any means necessary, come hell or high water."

A couple of days ago, in an interview on Fox News, Terri’s brother said that this was America, that we just don’t starve disabled people to death here.

I’m now terribly afraid that he was wrong.

Recently I excerpted the Evil Overlord’s List (a classic of Internet humor). It consists of advice for evil overlords of the type you read about in sci-fi and fantasy. But ReasonOnline has some advice for real-world, third-world evil overlords.

I mean, you gotta feel for those guys. It’s hard to be an evil overlord in a world where democracy is on the march and the global economy has developed to the point that bone-crushing poverty is the exception rather than the norm. Today if you’re not careful, your people will start entrepeneuring their way to prosperity and then they’ll take a hankering to ideologies that are hard to square with evil overlordism, like . . . democracy.

No, the best thing is to nip this problem in the bud by keeping your people bone-crushingly poor. You need their per capita gross domestic production to be like Korea’s $1,000 or Cuba’s $1,700. Let them get up to America’s $36,200 GDP and they’re sure to overthrow you.

So here’s some advice from ReasonOnline’s evil overlord list for third-world dictators (and the imitators in more developed countries):

First, make sure that your country’s money is no good. Print money like there’s no tomorrow. Hyperinflation is one of the easiest and most popular ways to dismantle an economy. Another popular monetary gambit is to make sure your currency is not convertible. This guarantees that no one will ever want to invest in your country.

To further discourage investment, be sure to nationalize all major Industries. Nationalization has additional poverty-enhancing benefits. For example, it will ensure that the nationalized industries never improve technologically or become more efficient, and it makes workers pathetically dependent on their political masters, namely you.

Of course, you may find it too tiresome to nationalize everything, in which case it is very important that you establish high tariffs that insulate your country’s remaining private industries (usually owned by your cronies anyway) from competition.

In addition, your legal system should make it nearly impossible for anyone to license a new business, however small. This will offer opportunities for your bureaucrats to make a living through corruption and will protect your cronies from domestic competition. An added advantage is that most commerce will be made illegal and subject to arbitrary enforcement.

This leads to the point that property is critical. Once people start to own something, they invest in it and improve it, leading inexorably to the creation of wealth. Again, the legal system can help to make it impossible to issue clear titles so that your citizens can’t buy, sell, or borrow against their "property." Also, force your farmers to sell their crops to government commodity boards at below-market rates. This will discourage them from investing in anything more advanced than subsistence agriculture, and you will be able to sell whatever crops you do seize at low prices to keep the urban populations quiet.

Another popular policy is confiscatory taxes. This strategy, which allows you to claim that you are soaking the rich in the name of equity, has long been fashionable among the genteelly stagnating economies of Europe.

READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE.

Recently I excerpted the Evil Overlord’s List (a classic of Internet humor). It consists of advice for evil overlords of the type you read about in sci-fi and fantasy. But ReasonOnline has some advice for real-world, third-world evil overlords.

I mean, you gotta feel for those guys. It’s hard to be an evil overlord in a world where democracy is on the march and the global economy has developed to the point that bone-crushing poverty is the exception rather than the norm. Today if you’re not careful, your people will start entrepeneuring their way to prosperity and then they’ll take a hankering to ideologies that are hard to square with evil overlordism, like . . . democracy.

No, the best thing is to nip this problem in the bud by keeping your people bone-crushingly poor. You need their per capita gross domestic production to be like Korea’s $1,000 or Cuba’s $1,700. Let them get up to America’s $36,200 GDP and they’re sure to overthrow you.

So here’s some advice from ReasonOnline’s evil overlord list for third-world dictators (and the imitators in more developed countries):

First, make sure that your country’s money is no good. Print money like there’s no tomorrow. Hyperinflation is one of the easiest and most popular ways to dismantle an economy. Another popular monetary gambit is to make sure your currency is not convertible. This guarantees that no one will ever want to invest in your country.

To further discourage investment, be sure to nationalize all major Industries. Nationalization has additional poverty-enhancing benefits. For example, it will ensure that the nationalized industries never improve technologically or become more efficient, and it makes workers pathetically dependent on their political masters, namely you.

Of course, you may find it too tiresome to nationalize everything, in which case it is very important that you establish high tariffs that insulate your country’s remaining private industries (usually owned by your cronies anyway) from competition.

In addition, your legal system should make it nearly impossible for anyone to license a new business, however small. This will offer opportunities for your bureaucrats to make a living through corruption and will protect your cronies from domestic competition. An added advantage is that most commerce will be made illegal and subject to arbitrary enforcement.

This leads to the point that property is critical. Once people start to own something, they invest in it and improve it, leading inexorably to the creation of wealth. Again, the legal system can help to make it impossible to issue clear titles so that your citizens can’t buy, sell, or borrow against their "property." Also, force your farmers to sell their crops to government commodity boards at below-market rates. This will discourage them from investing in anything more advanced than subsistence agriculture, and you will be able to sell whatever crops you do seize at low prices to keep the urban populations quiet.

Another popular policy is confiscatory taxes. This strategy, which allows you to claim that you are soaking the rich in the name of equity, has long been fashionable among the genteelly stagnating economies of Europe.

READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE.