I know, I know: No more about Terri Schiavo. But I just have to flag this astonishing statement from NRO’s Jack Dunphy:
IfTerri Schiavo were able, she would go to the nearest telephone, dial9-1-1, and tell the operator that people are trying to kill her.
“If Terri Schiavo were able”? Why, pray tell, is she not able? Could it be, perhaps, because she no longer has the ability to think?
The one useful thing about this mess is that it’s invited us tofigure out what conservatives mean by “culture of life.” I thinkDunphy’s statement just about explains it all. They see being alive much the sameway that liberals see paying taxes: Not something one just happens tobe doing, but something one must do out of an obligation to the rest ofhumanity. To people like Dunphy, the notion that death is a naturalpart of life, or that continuing to live could be a net negative, issimply unacceptible. This isn’t a culture of life. It’s a culture of publicly-owned life. It’s a culture of forced immortality.
