Day: October 7, 2005

It’s been months… I thought these things had died out…

But then, just yesterday, doing an introspective retrospective (yeh, I just wanted to say tht), I recalled the spate of memes I was tagged for a few months back.

Well, the tagging thing is back… and Romeocat  tagged me for this one: Five Things About Five Things

Five things I plan to do before I die:

1. Sleep through at least one whole night. heh
2. Learn patience. Like now, OK?
3. See some grandkids. Preferably my own.
4. Fly. Ultrtalight will do.
5. Finish this house (no, really! I do plan to… )

Five things I can do:

1. Make anything I can “draw out” in my head.
2. Play some musical instruments
3. Write music
4. Fix most mechanical or computer things
5. Cook

Five things I can’t do:

1. Be a woman. (Or understand them 🙂
2. Drive behind slowly moving roadblocks (Park it off the road to count your cows, Jasper!)
3. Speak gently to a jackass
4. Lose those last few pounds (apparently)
5. Run a marathon (unless perhaps I got new knees 🙂

Five things that attract me to the opposite sex:

1. It’s the eyes, baby…
2. A genuine smile
3. Intelligence
4. Good legs
5. Reminds me in some way of my Wonder Woman (all the above plus any of her characteristics)

Five things I say a lot:

1. “Nothing is an awe-inspiring yet essentially undigested concept… ” and the rest of the P.L. Heath piece until I get the point across that “Nothing” is rarely an appropriate response to a query.
2. Would you like an apple or cherry pie with that; fries or a shake?” (No, never worked at McDonalds)
3. I’m sorry. (Well, probably need to say it more often, especially after #1)
4. Wanna buy a vowell?
5. What was your first clue, Sherlock?

And here’s where I deliberately introduce a viral mutation in this “meme”—when you post your “Five Things” take the top name/link off the list of five below and add your blogname/link at the bottom spot.

1. ArmyWifeToddlerMom
2. Fuzzilicious Thinking
3. Flight Pundit
4. Cathouse Chat
5. third world county

Then trackback—if you can–to the “meme” post of the person who tagged you to let ‘em know you high- (or low-) fived the thing. (If your blog interface doesn’t “do” trackbacks, you can get a free account at Haloscan or use the Whizbang! Trackback tool.) Not necessary, but a nice touch, I think.

Tag five. So, who to tag…

Christine of BTW, Diane of Diane’s Stuff, Rich of The English Guy, Mel of I’m Just a Girl, Dr. Phat Tony and Kat of Keep the Coffee Coming.  There, in case one just doesn’t feel like playing, I’ve tagged an extra. (But folks, don’t take that as an easy out. Even though I do have others I’d like to tag, too.)

Alpha Update: Rich gets to say “First!” 🙂

Beta Update: Mel’s on the ball, too… but I’d better watch my back for a while from the way she sounds. heh

Gamma Update: Diane has her 5X5 up, now, too.

Stop the ACLU

“In 1920, two German professors published a small book advocating the killing of people whose lives were “devoid of value.” Nineteen years later, the professors’ proposal became reality when Nazi Germany established a euthanasia program targeting physically and mentally disabled children, elderly patients in long-term care, and invalids from World War I.”_1_

Others worldwide agreed, among them such “leading intellectuals” as  George Bernard Shaw, Margaret Sanger, Francis Galton, Woodrow Wilson, Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis. Oh, and the not-so-intellectual Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin came on board as time went on, too.

“The theory of eugenics postulated a crisis of the gene pool leading to the deterioration of the human race. The best human beings were not breeding as rapidly as the inferior ones — the foreigners, immigrants, Jews, degenerates, the unfit, and the ‘feeble minded’ … As Margaret Sanger said, ‘Fostering the good-for-nothing at the expense of the good is an extreme cruelty … there is not greater curse to posterity than that of bequeathing them an increasing population of imbeciles.’ She spoke of the burden of caring for ‘this dead weight of human waste.’ ”_2_

Among other tools for eliminating “this dead weight of human waste” (“unwanted” human lives “not worth living”), eugenicists espoused euthanasia as a positive value.

Fast forward…

Euthanasia today is represented as a positive choice for people whose lives are a burden to themselves or others, but

“Informed consent is a sham, says Dr. Chevlen, ‘behind which doctors may hide the awful fact that it is really they who make the life-and-death decisions for their patients. Legalized euthanasia is not freedom to choose; it is not even freedom to die. It is freedom to be killed.’ “ _3_

and Lucy Gwin puts the issue firmly in perspective with an account of a group of disabled folk (of which she’s a member) fighting to retain their right to life.  Fighting, among others, the ACLU

“Harder for them to accept was the fact that the Right to Die is mis-named. Hey, I told them, you’ve got that right already. What’s missing now, and what the Right to Die provides, is the right for physician to kill patients without criminal penalty.” _4_

The whole thing is worth reading.

So, is the ACLU really philosophical bedfellows with Stalin, Hitler and Sanger on the issue of euthanasia?

Yep.

_5_, _6_, _7_

“Remember, it is the American Civil Liberties Union which is now behind all abortion on demand, euthanasia, and coming soon perhaps, infanticide for impaired babies.” (an O’Reilly’s Talking Points Memo excerpt)

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