S hould the social construct known as the nation state maintain the power of life and death over its citizens? Here in America, government reserves the right to tell its citizens when to live and when to die.

Usually, this is done in the guise of recognizing and containing evil that threatens the existence of either the state or its citizens.

In the case of Terri Schiavo, the brain damaged woman in Florida who has been in a permanent vegetative state for the past decade, the evil rationale doesn't apply. Florida state law technically allows her husband Michael Schiavo to decide whether or not to pull the feeding tube from her mouth, and he has pulled it out. For the third time.

Yet a powerful right-to-life contingency fights to reinsert the tube. Michael Schiavo maintains that his wife would not want to live in this condition. Without the tube, Schiavo will starve to death, but she won't feel a thing because she hasn't had a brain wave in ten years.

It's kind of like the elderly monks who stop eating, and gracefully go into that good night. Or the old Eskimos who understand they are a burden to the survival of the tribe and step into the freezing water. But America jailed Jack Kevorkian for providing death with dignity.

Schiavo's immediate family, Gov. Jeb Bush, and the U.S. Congress proclaim the sanctity of life. No matter that Schiavo's quality of life is non-existent, the state is using every tool to keep her alive.

America is a culture of life, President George W. Bush declared when he signed the bill to reinsert the feeding tube Monday, March 21.

How do I swallow the fact that ol' Dubya Ð an avowed pro-lifer - as governor of Texas, laughed at the clemency petition of convicted murderer Karla Faye Tucker, and signed her death warrant (along with 151 others)? Now stomach the dead 1,519 American soldiers dead on his watch in Iraq, as well as the 100,000 dead Iraqi civilians.

It seems more like American culture and government suffers from schizophrenia in its approach to life and death. Is all life sacred or not?

If you've committed heinous crimes, your life is worthless. Convicted serial killer Michael Ross is so barbaric that - in the words of three different state lawmakers I talked to this week Ð he must pay the ultimate price. The logic of capital punishment rests on two motives: deterrence and revenge.

His execution Ð Connecticut's first in 40 years Ð would allegedly rescue his victims' families from their grief. At least one person will weep when Michael Ross dies. Who will exact vengeance for his father's agony?

Eye for an eye justice makes us all blind, Gandhi said. Unfortunately, he isn't serving in our state legislature. An upcoming bill to end capital punishment lacks the votes to pass, forget override pro-life Gov. M. Jodi Rell's promised veto. Why bother fighting for it?

Because you have to work for the world you want to see. Understanding that democracy flourishes on compromise, perhaps death penalty abolition advocates should work towards a moratorium instead.

That won't save Ross. As abhorrent as he is, the state has no right to kill him. Perhaps giving Ross life in jail is crueler than execution. Incarceration neutralizes the threat Ross poses to society. We don't need to kill him to prove what he did was evil. When the punishment is the same as the crime, the state loses moral authority.

The state gains moral authority when it respects the sacred nature of life and creates policies to enhance its citizens' quality of life: house the homeless, feed the hungry, heal the sick, educate the illiterate.

Rather than improving those conditions of life, the American political lens seems focused on dictating the conditions of our entrance and exit from this world; focused on maintaining the state monopoly on violence which grants cops, soldiers and hangmen the license to kill.

When we as a people determine that one of these instances of violence is unethical and thus unacceptable, then we must question the remaining two. In doing so, we Ð as self-governing citizens - deprive the state its ancient tools of control and dominance.

The United States may be decades, perhaps centuries, from civic institutions based on compassion, forgiveness and altruism. But that doesn't mean we must not journey towards that destination.

3/24/05

Email this to a friend.

"It seems more like American culture and government suffers from schizophrenia in its approach to life and death. Is all life sacred or not?"

Index Pages

Topics

Archives

One Nation, Playing God

"It seems more like American culture and government suffers from schizophrenia in its approach to life and death. Is all life sacred or not?"