Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Reality Checks

In a world going increasingly off the rails, we offer these occasional rants and reality checks as a public service.

Just how mad is the world? Or rather, how much madder is it since our last rant (what, three days ago?)? More importantly, is it correct grammar to nest question marks like we just did?

We'll discuss some recent happenings, and you can decide for yourself.

Item: A particular brand of baby crib has been on the market from 1993 to 2008. That's 15 years. It comes to light just now, a year after the model has been discontinued, that 4 babies have died wile sleeping in these cribs. Suddenly, the Government has risen to respond to this "outrage" and the offense du jour is the recall of these cribs. After 16 years?! It's been all over the news, what with interviews with outraged parents who can't get through on the telephone when trying to claim credit for the fifty or a hundred bucks they spent a decade ago for this crib.

To put this travesty in perspective -- in other words, to demonstrate just how ridiculous the idea of a recall and the ensuing public overreaction is, consider that more babies die in car crashes in a day (or less) in the United States than have ever died in all these cribs ever sold over 16 years. Where's the outrage?

And then, too, is this comparison: three babies will die each and ever minute of each and every day by abortion. This includes some babies who might have survived a mishandled attempt at abortion, and were killed after live delivery (a practice President Obama supports). Where's the outrage?

So, getting back to this crib thing, can you say, "manufactured crisis?"

Item: The pending "healthcare" bills before congress authorize the government and its agents to influence or make life and death decisions -- who gets what medical treatments, who is "worth treating," who should be thinking of getting his house in order with "end of life counseling" -- for the citizens of the US. This is unheard of and so clearly outside the proper authority of any just government. No wonder, then, it's being peddled as "healthcare," and that its supporters are sinking to unheard-of moral lows by declaring that "if this bill isn't passed, employers will begin denying healthcare coverage" -- an outright lie, a scare tactic. One must always ask the question, "why are they working so hard to make me believe this," when he hears something on the popular news channels, or when a politician's mouth is moving.

Let's consider precedent: you don't have to be a lawyer to feel your blood going a bit cold when you consider that Terri Schiavo was denied food and water by a court order in a very public legal battle that her loving parents -- and Terri -- eventually lost -- denied the right to feed their own daughter, here in the U.S. of A. (We acknowledge that the blood of most lawyers is cold to begin with).

Mind you, the state worked overtime to starve this woman to death, and simply would not, under any circumstances, accede to or acknowledge the principal of the sanctity of human life but instead relentlessly asserted its absolute authority to end a person's life on the flimsiest of legal arguments. The issue was simply the state's right to decide and Terri Schiavo was merely its prop.

Dear readers, do you need a roadmap to see the "moral hazard" such a precedent sets in a context of a government that has asserted on its own behalf the decision of who lives and who does not?

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home