Shameless
With the Terri Schiavo case, Republicans have outdone themselves. Anyone who thinks that the right wing hasn’t shed its last scruple should carefully consider how this poor woman has been used for short term political gain.
Conservatives have made political careers demanding that government get off the backs of the people. That phrase, get government off our backs, was made popular by Ronald Reagan, and has been echoed by his many political allies and offspring, including Dick Cheney, Tom Delay, Kenneth Starr, Arlen Specter, and I’m sure others who don’t come up on a quick Google search. These are the people who took over the government by convincing voters that the government was the enemy. Now, without any apparent hesitation or sense of irony, they have thrust themselves into the personal medical decisions of a single family.
For her own good.
Or so they say: a Republican staff memo circulated last week called the Schiavo case “a great political issue.” By which they mean, not a weighty political question, but a brilliant political opportunity to be grabbed. The religious right loves this stuff, and if Jeb Bush ignores the law, and a specific court order, to simply kidnap Terri Schiavo from her hospice, they will cheer.
Fortunately for Congressional panderers, if you can get elected to Congress, you automatically qualify as a neurologist. House Speaker Dennis Hastert asserts that Schiavo “is aware of her surroundings and is responsive to them”, which is not true of someone in a persistent vegetative state. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who actually has the benefit of a medical education, is able to diagnose at a distance with more accuracy than Schiavo’s own team of doctors, and says he doesn’t think she is in a vegetative state. This is the kind of blissful rejection of the facts that one would expect in this Brave W World we have constructed, but it’s still shocking, and it still should be shocking.
The next time conservatives talk about smaller government, about how government shouldn’t meddle in the lives of individuals, be sure to laugh bitterly. All that stuff about rights is for rich folks who want the right to pollute your air and sell cigarettes to your children, not for you.