Centerfield

The opening point in the first paragraph is so wrong.

The author suggests that in the Schiavo case, Republicans were "interfering in the moral choices of families", instead of stopping government from doing exactly that. He cites the Schiavo case as an example of Republicans abandoning their libertarian leanings.

Isn't that turning reality on its head? Schiavo's own parents wanted to save her -- in what universe are a person's own parents not her "family"? When Republicans stand up for the moral choice of her own parents, aren't they standing up for the moral choice of her family instead of interfering with it?

Terri Schiavo had no fatal disease of any kind. She slowly died of intentional killing by dehydration, in a room full of carefully watered plants and flowers.

Who stopped her own parents from giving her the water we all need to live? The Florida police -- the government. The government stopped her own family from saving her as she was slowly intentionally killed. Which party was on the side of government interference in families moral choices again?

I did agree with this though:
Democrats can try to change the conversation by playing with language and definitions, but in the end, any meaningful re-evaluation of their approach to moral values -- like just about everything else on the Democratic agenda -- will require more intellectual rigor as well.

"Most Americans seem to understand that we are entering a time of complex, wrenching decisions that defy facile and self-righteous answers."

Most, but not you, Susan. Your comment is a prime example of a facile self-righteous answer. Well, maybe not facile. How many drafts and how many hours did it take to get it just right? The plants are such a nice touch. Reducing complex, tough issues down to such misleading one-sided descriptions does not help us to solve them.

You expected the conservative view from the NYT, Susan? In any case, the point is not to re-fight the details of Schiavo or play wrong-right, but to get to the attitudes of the voting public as relates to the extremism of the partisan divide. Don't skip the picture for the pixel. Forest, not tree.

The Schiavo fiasco was created by cynical manipulators of followers who have traded independent thought for blind adherence.
Any 'real religious fervor' in this case must have been accompanied by massive denial of reality, utterly inappropriate for real adults charged with making decisions. It was clearly and legally determined that Terry Schiavo didn't want to be kept alive in the condition she was in. To characterize the current Republican party as 'the party of life' is the most cynical kind of joke. Their support for life ends at birth. Once that occurs, they are the party of murderous neglect of the poor, of hatred and war against those with other viewpoints, and let's also remember the death penalty for often innocent criminals. I was once a moderate and independent voter who tended to vote Republican more often than not. But the party has morphed into radicalism attempting to hide behind doubletalk and deception.
clever words while they work to destroy everything I hold dear.

Forest, meet tree.

Geoff, At least we can agree on the motives of Ralph Nader and Jessie Jackson - two leaders whose followers have never had an independent thought.

Notherbob2, thank you for many insults, interesting way to disagree in a public forum. I am flattered you think what I wrote took me much time and many drafts to write. Feel free to demonize me further for believing it is wrong to intentionally kill someone against the wishes of their own parents.

Geoff says, "It was clearly and legally determined that Terry Schiavo didn't want to be kept alive in the condition she was in."

First of all courts sometimes make mistakes, they are not beyond critique. A court ruled OJ innocent, what do you think about that? The only evidence that Terry wanted to die was a claim from her husband, one he had not made for years before receiving a massive court settlement. Reasonable people can have doubts about whether Terri would have wanted to die. Whether Terri's husband should have had guardianship is another question, when he had moved in with another defacto wife and had children with her.

Also, sometimes laws are bad. In some countries, innocent people have been legally rounded up and killed. It is legitimate for people to form opinions about laws and strive to have them changed. Current law apparently puts governmental police in the way of parents who want to save their daughter's life with mere water, I think this governmental intervention should be changed.

Geoff calls those who disagree with him "cynical manipulators", while totally excluding the possibility that any politicians were moved by any sincere belief. Isn't that itself cynical? When the congressional black caucus voted in favor of the bill to save terry, was that a cynical manipulation? How about Ralph Nader? I wonder how Geoff will feel when his sincere beliefs are described as cynical manipulation and blind adherence to ideology.

Tully, I'm not sure why you think I would expect a conservative answer from NYT. I don't even see this issue as conservative or liberal. I am happy to critique forests and trees. In this case there wasn't much of a viable forest, because the individual trees were rotten, so I focused my attention there.

As a registered Republican and an evangelical Christian, I've never felt the Democrats didn't have "moral values". Some classic (at least in my lifetime) Democratic issues have long-histories within the Christian community also (anti-war, fighting poverty, anti-discrimination). (And I should add this isn't a fight between Christians and non-Christians. Its just that my faith gets co-opted into this fight so much.)

I would suggest that the Democratic party has found itself out of step with certain everyday "average joe" moral values (i.e. emphasizing free speech vs public decency). Free-speech is a moral value too. But when appears to be an "excuse" to justify "indecency" that doesn't play well in many areas.

This is really a fight from within the Democratic Party. I think Republicans make a BIG mistake by even tacitly approving the idea that Republicans are "for" moral values and Democrats are "against" moral values. Democrats will need to decide what their public image on "moral values" should be and then see how it plays out during elections. And if it plays poorly hopefully the won't then decide the voters are "sheeple"

Thank you for noticing the forest, Chris. Everyone else seems "stumped."

“demonize me further for believing it is wrong to intentionally kill someone against the wishes of their own parents.”
Susan, I am “demonizing” no one. I am criticizing you for reducing a complex issue down to a one-sided, emotionally loaded aphorism. We could reduce the O.J. case down to “If the glove don’t fit, you must acquit.” The point is that we shouldn’t. Since you stand behind your comment and even embroider it by reducing it to an even further non sequitur, you obviously believe that demonizing opponents with aphorisms is the proper way to discuss issues. You may very well be right about the Schiavo case. Reducing your position to an emotionally loaded aphorism is not the way to resolve the situation. Demonizing each other is not a good way to discuss disagreements. By the way, I believe that we should execute serial killers and other outrageous felons even if their parents adamantly do not want us to do so. Why I would demonize you about that, I don’t know.
Is there something about your comment that lifted it above criticism? If so, I apologize. Please send me an email so that I can correct my errant behavior.

Notherbob2,

I think you are being more then a little guilty of what you have accused Susan of... reread your own post criticaly if you really want to see it.

Firstly there was no call to describe Susans post as "facile". You do not know her and have no way of knowing what her beliefs are on the matter or how she arrived at them. The implication that she or anyone else who came to the same conclusion did so without significant contemplation of the issue is, indeed, demonification of her.

Furthermore, you go on to imply with .... "Well, maybe not facile. How many drafts and how many hours did it take to get it just right?".... that there is some amount of artifice in her post. That is a pretty cynical and "self-righteous" position to take about a complete stranger.

Furthermore, there was absolutely NOTHING about her origional position that entailed reduction of a complex issue or was a misleading description. Did you really mean to imply that people can't arrive at passionately held stances on complex issues without being duplicitious or self-righteous? Furthermore, if you read her post.... it is essentialy a refutation of NYT apparent position that the Republican stance in the Schiavo case was an abandonment of the libertarian principle of not "interfering in the moral choices of families". I would say that the NYT position was itself a prime example of "Reducing complex, tough issues down to such misleading one-sided descriptions" since it implies that one could not be consistant in supporting family/individual choice and oppose the court decision in the Schiavo case. Susan (IMO) merely reffuted that position by pointing out that the wishes of members of Terri's family were in conflict with one another..... and that there was considerable room for reasonable doubt about what Terri's own wishes might have been.

I don't think Susan's comments were facile, but they were a little reductionist. That's not a sin here. I agree with Cengel that NB is guilty of some of the sins he accuses Susan of...NB, maybe try to ratchet it down a bit? I'm as guilty as anyne else of getting all fired up, but I try to engage rather than name call.

Unless someone else starts it. :-)

Here's the part I wonder about:

The author suggests that in the Schiavo case, Republicans were "interfering in the moral choices of families", instead of stopping government from doing exactly that. He cites the Schiavo case as an example of Republicans abandoning their libertarian leanings.

Isn't that turning reality on its head? Schiavo's own parents wanted to save her -- in what universe are a person's own parents not her "family"? When Republicans stand up for the moral choice of her own parents, aren't they standing up for the moral choice of her family instead of interfering with it?

I think we need to be clear about who we are talking about when we say "family" here. Sure the parents are family, but legally, they don't have the same standing as the husband. Congress was clearly interjecting itself into a long legal battle that had been adjudicated at length. The legal process determined who in the family had the standing to make the legal call on the future of Terry Schiavo, or what remained of her.

And the conservatives in Congress that were leading the interjection weren''t standing up for the "family" but more precisely for one particular faction within the family, and against the lengthy state legal process that made the decision. They were picking a side. And in doing so, they surely were "interfering in the moral choices of families" in the sense of attempting to overrule the decision made by the person that the state courts had decided had the authority to make the decision.

BK,

Sure, in the same token that preventing a legal guardian from beating thier 4 yeard old child to death could be construed as "interfering in the moral choices of families". Forgive the overly inflamitory example. I am simply using it to illustrate that "respect for family choices" shouldn't be construed as carte blanche excuse to allow ANY behavior whatsoever perpetrated within a family.

I'm not trying to argue in favor of one side or the other in the case. I am merely trying to point out that a person can be consistant in supporting the sanctity of marriage, the sanctity of the family, and the sanctity of personal choice and still oppose a court decision which allows a legal guardian to cause the death of dependant through starvation/dehydration.

For instance, my sympathies are fairly libertarian and I am in favor of allowing physician assisted suicide. At the same time I was left unconfortable by the Schiavo case due to the patients inability to express her consent in the matter, questions about the motivations/character of her husband and serious doubts about the standards of evidence applied to determine what her wishes MIGHT have been. These are NOT neccesarly inconsistant positions (although I'm sure that the NYT would imply that they were).

The thread here was about demonizing the other side on complex issues that really do not have only two sides. BTW implying that even a newspaper like the NYT cannot ever have a thoughtful article is demonizing. If ever an issue had more than two sides it was the Schiavo case. One of the base principles that makes our society possible (and I don’t believe that I am overstating this point) is that we have courts to settle disputes that cannot be resolved any other way. If you have forgotten history, if one really does not accept that a court decision is final after all appeals have been exhausted, one reaches for the sword and makes war (see “Braveheart”). Otherwise, a good citizen grumbles, tries to pacify hotheads and gets on with business. Perhaps they work within the system to change future outcomes in similar circumstances. Whether or not removing funding from courts, impeachment or other actions are within the system can be argued. The Schiavo case will be cited as the opening battle in the new civil war between the secularists and the faith based. Sort of like a rhetorical Bull Run. We may yet see the sword. In the meantime, it is up to the centrists to keep things as calm as they can be. Rhetoric like Susan’s, most specifically on a centrist blog, seems to me to be inappropriate and I stated my objections. That is about as down as I can ratchet.

I guess demonstration by example is also somewhat (sub-) adequate.

More on "the divide" can be found in my post on Sully's TNR article and Chris' Wal-Mart observations. Both articles well worth reading.

Yeah Cengel, but that stuff was ajudicated, too. It was a very long battle, the husband's motives and character were impeached, but ultimately his authority was upheld. I think this makes your analogy a little bit inapt.

You are of course right that at some point the state indeed DOES have an obligation to "interfere' into family matters. This depends on the circumstances, and the devil is all in the hows and whens.

What I am getting from a lot of people is that they think that under circumstances such as Schiavo's, unless the incapacitated person has documented or otherwise clearly established thier wishes under such circumstances, their body must be kept alive under the assumption that the person is still there in some substantial fmental/spiritual form.

I understand this sentiment, which generally seems to be summed up as erring on the side of caution as regards human life. I have respect for this sentiment. Yet it troubles me. My personal feeling is that in such instances, the person we once knew is irrevocably gone. But what bothers me is that even if I am wrong, then that person still resides mentally and spiritually in the broken vessel of their body, incommunicado, beyond reach of genuine human contact. That sounds hellish to me.

I just don't see any reason whatsoever beyond that of blind reasonless hope to think that Terry Schiavo was still there or might somehow come back...

I guess demonstration by example is also somewhat (sub-) adequate.

More on "the divide" can be found...