The American Spectator

Reader Mail

Vital Signs

4.3.09 @ 6:01AM

A VERY BAD SIGN
Re: Daniel Allott's The Doctor Will Kill You Now:

Some weeks ago my 82-year-old mother called me with a view and worry. I knew that she was "fixing" to tell me something dear to her heart and I actually saw this coming about a year ago, when rumblings of managed health care raised its ugly head. What was mother’s concern? Well, I have a 53-year-old brother. He’s autistic and due to a doctor's mistake, now retarded as well. He's also invalid due to many seizures, in bed and cared for by a family member who quit his job to be my brother’s solitary caretaker. The love and sacrifice in our family has never been any less. Mother’s tearful concern was that when all this health care that Obama wants to start, that David Lee will be subject of "not necessary to society." And she is right.

The circumstances of his birth and life have been nothing short of tragic. Yet, mother and dad never collected in SSI government handout for him, as in my father's words, "The government didn’t have David Lee, we did." End of subject. They sacrificed to build a trust fund to care for him after they leave this earth. They paid for his and their own health insurance, not easy for any rancher, but they did, until about five years ago. At that time no insurance company would cover David Lee. So, my Dad sought an attorney’s help to only be able to get Social Security enough to get disability insurance under Medicare for him. But even then, Dad voiced his real concern, and it was the same as my dear mother's. He said then, and I quote, "We are headed for a time when folks that are handicapped, like my dear brother, will face the government deciding whether they are worth living, and I fear they will, as Nazi Germany, decide that they are too great a weight on society."

So, we are there now. We hear the stirrings of the government deciding who is fit to live and who must be "set aside," as they are a strain on limited resources. We are experimenting with aborted fetuses, and trying to validate using them to "extend life and heal injuries." But years before I knew for certain we were headed this way when the president of our country could not grant a reprieve of any sort, or proclamation, to keep Terri Schiavo from being starved to death. Her entire trial of weeks is noted in my Bible, as a mark on my heart, of this once great nation, allowing a handicapped person to be starved to death. The Heavens shook when that happened.

I must add, that since my brother has a trust fund, he has paid huge taxes for many years, on what he was gifted for by my parents. I suspect the government would love to seize that fund as well. As I watch this amazing "hope and change" in less than 100 days change us so radically, I weep for my country, or as my veteran husband says so well, "I have lost the country I fought and nearly died for."  I couldn’t say this better myself.

Now, I must send my son back to a war that our president and vice president declared as unwinnable a few weeks ago. So, besides trying to reassure my mother that we will do all we must do for David Lee after their death, I must wonder, "What is my son fighting for?" May God help us for we are certainly watching the authorship of our own destruction as the once greatest democratic nation in the world.
-- Beverly Gunn
Texas

For those "Americans who considered assisted suicide morally acceptable," as we said in childhood, "You go first."
-- Ira M. Kessel
Rochester, New York

"A WHIFF OF FASCISM"
Re: Quin Hillyer's Il Duce, Redux?

Apparently affirmative votes from only two more states are needed before a new Constitutional Convention can be called. If that happens kiss the First, Second and Fifth Amendments (as well as that pesky 22nd one) good-bye. Heck, why not just use that moth-eaten old rag to line the budgie’s cage -- that’s about all it will be good for.

I wonder -- will Obama's "campuses" have signs reading "Labor Liberates" (Arbeit macht frei) posted over the entrances?
-- Gretchen L. Chellson
Alexandria, Virginia

Mr. Hillyer's piece brought tears to my eyes. Not a joke.  I had to force myself to respond here.

Max Lerner wrote this about 50 years ago:

"The most destructive imperialisms of the world have been those of men who have elevated their preferences to the pinnacle of moral imperative and who have then confidently proceeded to impose those imperatives on others."

Sound familiar?

And this from Nicolo Machiavelli, who, although he "described," is far too often seen as having "prescribed": someone disposed to do evil in a republic cannot bring about any changes for the worse unless the republic is already corrupt.

Letter to the Editor