It is a melancholy object to those who travel in America when
they see the hospices and hospitals crowded with the disabled and
elderly. These people, instead of being able to work for their
honest livelihood or even show signs of meaningful mental life,
impose severe burdens on the healthy.
I think it is agreed by all parties, at least within America’s
mainstream, that this prodigious number of disabled and elderly in
the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of their family members,
and frequently of their isolated and deprived husbands, is in the
present deplorable state of the country with its deficits,
unsustainable Medicare costs, and Social Security crisis a very
great additional grievance; and, therefore, whoever could find out
a fair, cheap, and easy method of euthanizing this class of the ill
would deserve so well of the public as to have his statue set up
for a preserver of the nation.
There is a great advantage in this scheme, that it will prevent
those undignified lingering deaths of those with no hope of
recovery, and that horrid practice of husbands murdering their
wives, alas! too frequent among us!
I have been assured by a very knowing Democrat of my
acquaintance in Washington, that a disabled person can be
dehydrated to death in 8 to 12 days. It is not improbable that some
scrupulous person might be apt to censure such a practice (although
indeed very unjustly and unconstitutionally), as a little bordering
upon cruelty; which, I confess, has always been with me the
strongest objection against any project, however so well
intended.
Yet many Americans of searching conscience, many of them
Democrats who have long supported the Special Olympics, are
sincerely concerned about that vast number of disabled, who are
aged, diseased, or irreversibly maimed. It is very well known in
the medical schools and courts of this country that these disabled
will not recover and can’t pursue lives of discernible purpose as
any fair-minded magistrate would determine it, and thus the country
and most importantly themselves are happily delivered from the
indignity of disability by starvation, dehyrdration, or
injection.
If nothing else, this scheme would greatly lessen the number of
papists and back-sliding Protestants in America, with whom we are
yearly overrun, who pollute hospitals on purpose with a design to
deliver America to a “culture of life.” Many other advantages might
be enumerated. For instance, the liberation of millions of dollars
in Medicare fees with which to finance new Viagra payments for
seniors not yet disabled.
I can think of no one objection, that will possibly be raised
against this proposal, unless it should be urged, that the number
of innocent people will be thereby much lessened in America, a
risible objection at a time of obvious overpopulation. Let no man
talk of selling our country and consciences for nothing, until he
has at least some glimpse of hope that research on crushed embryos
will cure the disabled and has a hearty and sincere commitment to
put that research into practice.
Before anyone advances a proposal in contradiction to my scheme,
I desire the author or authors will be pleased maturely to consider
two points. First, as things now stand, how they will be able to
find Medicare resources for the millions of useless mouths and
backs. And, secondly, recognize that there are thousands and
thousands of disabled throughout this country, whose whole
subsistence put into a common stock would leave us in debt billions
of dollars.
I desire those politicians who dislike my overture, and may
perhaps be so bold as to attempt an answer, that they will first
ask the spouses of these mortals, whether they would not at this
day think it a great happiness to have been starved for the sake of
a death with dignity, thereby avoiding such a perpetual scene of
misfortunes as they have since gone through by the oppression of
their infirmity or age, the impossibility of sharing the costs
their families must carry to care for them, and the most inevitable
prospect of entailing the like or greater miseries upon their
family for ever.
