Schindler family attorney David Gibbs on Terri’s condition:

“Terri is not terminal,” he said. “If we feed Terri … she will live another 30 to 40 years.”

Asked why, if she can swallow, a feeding tube is necessary, Gibbs said he has inquired whether Schiavo could receive food by mouth, and “courts in Florida have said no. The order is to stop all food and water.”

It’s getting so easy in this country to kill someone. Hell, you don’t even need a good reason anymore. Used to be if you wanted an abortion, the “life or health of the mother” would have to be at stake.

Now you can get an abortion at seven months if your kid has a cleft palate. Ho-Hum. Just another “controversy.” Nothing to see here folks. Move along.

And when CBS aired it’s “Dr. Death” report on “60 Minutes” that had the media star and cult of death hero Jack Kevorkian “assisting” in the suicide of a man who, while in a lot of pain, was unnecessarily shot up with a lethal cocktail of drugs that deiberately ended his life, how did our good and compassionate Dr. Kevorkian feel about this?

MIKE WALLACE: You were engaged in a political, medical, macabre publicity venture, right?”

DR. KEVORKIAN: Well, that could be. I can’t argue with that. Maybe it is ghoulish, I don’t know -it appears that way to you, I can’t criticize you for that. But the main point is the last part of your statement — that the deed be done.

This guy is a hero to those who worship at the altar of death.

Societies used to have a trap door where ghouls like this would disappear after a fair trial. Now they write books and sing songs celebrating their deeds. They become cult figures gathering followers like the prophets of old and agitate for “the right to die” or, more accurately, “the right to end life whenever we damn well think it should be ended.”

The rules that societies set up nearly two thousand years ago to take the decision to end life out of the hands of humans and place it in the hands of the almighty were a radical departure from classical societies in the past. Both the Greeks and Romans routinely murdered the weak, the lame, even the sickly. Female children have been the target of post natal murders for thousands of years with the Chinese government going so far as feeling it had to issue an edict against the practice within the last two years.

But the radical values of Christianity that posited the notion that God was in every human being not just up on a mountain or in the sky started to mitigate against the wanton slaughter of the helpless ones. When nation states formed in the late middle ages, the strictures against these kinds of killings were put into law.

So what happened? Why has the cult of death re-emerged here and even more forcefully in Europe?

Part of the answer is the modern marvel of medical technology that, according to some medical ethicists, has advanced too quickly; that our ability to make moral judgements as to its proper use has lagged behind the rapid progress of medical science.

But the real answer has to do with what’s unfortunately come to be known as “secular humanism” or more accurately, ” human centrism.” This idea that we are the supreme arbiters of the universe (or at least this insignificant little corner of it) took hold at the turn of the 20th century as progressives fervently believed that both science and government, if used properly, could make this planet a secular Eden. All of the great scientific advances and social movements in the west including women’s sufferage, unionization of workers, product safety, unravelling the mysteries of the atom, and the huge advances in media and communications are a direct result of the progressive ideals embodied in western democracies.

But something happened on the road to paradise. Where most early 20th century progressives tempered their human centrism with the recognition that there was a power greater than themselves-a “final arbiter” or a deity of some kind-later progressives rejected the idea of a supreme being saying that man himself is moral enough that he can substitute for any superstitious nonsense our ancestors believed in.

A good example of this thinking is embodied in the bible of modern humanists, The Skeptical Inquirer magazine. This article by Paul Kurtz, professor emeritus at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and chairman of the Center for Inquiry - Transnational, entitled “Can the Sciences Help Us to Make Wise Ethical Judgments?” is indicitive of modern thinking on ethics.

I submit that ethical values should be amenable to inquiry. We need to ask, are they reliable? How do they stack up comparatively? Have they been tested in practice? Are they consistent? Many people seek to protect them as inviolable truths, immune to inquiry. This is particularly true of transcendental values based on religious faith and supported by custom and tradition. In this sense, ethical inquiry is similar to other forms of scientific inquiry. We should not presuppose that what we have inherited is true and beyond question. But where do we begin our inquiry? My response is, in the midst of life itself, focused on the practical problems, the concrete dilemmas, and contextual quandaries that we confront.

Reading the above you can begin to see where the ratioinale for killing Terri Schiavo comes from. Ethics and values are free floating and formless concepts, subject to reinterpretation whenever it suits us. Current thinking is that the wishes of Terri’s husband take precedence over anything Terri herself may want because, according to Michale Schiavo, Terri told him that “she wouldn’t want to live this way.” So despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, Terri is being put to death, sacrificed on the altar of human centric ideology with the blessings and complicity of the State of Florida.

This barbarous act will come back to haunt us. As we move closer to a society where people are judged not for who they are but for what they can contribute, new outrages will sicken us. But in the end what do we do?

Do we shake our heads sadly, shrug our shoulders in resignation, and go back to watching the Michael Jackson trial? Or do we finally start to hold our politicians to account from both parties who either actively work to promote this culture of death or turn their heads while we throw our brothers and sisters out like a sack of garbage?

Cross-Posted at Blogger News Network