The company you keep

Why does this man speak for the Schindlers?

Steve Sanders of Reason and Liberty wrote this a couple of days ago. I was thinking along these lines,. but he wrote an excellent essay on the subject. Hit the original artcle for links


Have the Schiavo parents crossed a dangerous line?

Here is how Terri Schiavo's father Bob Schindler, interviewed last night on CNN, interprets the array of laws and court proceedings that have attempted to safeguard his daughter's rights and determine what would be her intentions:

She has been really railroaded into a death sentence by this particular judge, the circuit court judge.... He has a crusade to kill this girl.

This was not an isolated outburst. Schindler has been quoted on Christian websites asking for help to rescue his daughter from the "clutches of death by judicial homicide."

Of course, no judge has decided in the abstract that Terri Schiavo would be better off dead than alive. Rather, multiple court proceedings have found clear and convincing evidence that it would be her intention to be liberated from artificial life support. The Schindler family, which refuses to accept this, has received every legal appeal and every measure of due process our system affords -- indeed, thanks to the extraordinary intervention of Congress, more appeals and due process than anyone else could expect in the same situation.

And so, no matter how deserving of our empathy he and his family might be, when Mr. Schindler goes before millions of people and incites contempt toward that system by calling a judge a murderer, he has crossed a dangerous line. His words become more than just the ravings of a man who has put his arguments before more than 20 different judges, including nine justices of the Supreme Court, and failed to see his position prevail. He has enlisted himself -- and allowed his daugher to be exploited -- in a larger enterprise of the American political right: to undermine trust in, and attack the legitimacy of, the judiciary, which they regard as a hindrance to shaping law according to their social and religious vision.

Consider that the Schindler family decided four years ago to seek the help of leading figures on the religious right -- most notably, the controversial anti-abortion extremist Randall Terry. And consider that two of the family's most powerful supporters, Republican leader Tom DeLay and former Family Research Council president Ken Connor, both are on record with the belief that laws, even the Constitution itself, should be overriden when higher moral and religious imperatives (identified, presumably, by people like them) are at stake. DeLay, who earlier this week said Mrs. Schiavo had been sent by God to help energize the conservative religious movement, wrote yesterday in USA Today:

Behind the law — and I would argue, above it — is the universal law of right and wrong.... If our laws don't prevent a helpless, disabled woman, capable of rehabilitation, from being starved and parched to death by an estranged husband with a clear, personal conflict of interest, then our laws are meaningless.

One begins to understand that for Mrs. Schaivo's parents, as for DeLay and Connor, law has indeed become meaningless. The only thing that matters is that their personal and religious positions prevail. And in that fight all is fair, including raw political muscle in the form of direct interventions by Congress and Jeb Bush; media spin that misleads the public about the actual legal questions involved; and irresponsible attacks that cast doubt on the integrity of judges and on the very idea of law as a system of neutral rules and objective inquiries.

This is, of course, a prescription for chaos. It betrays a taste for authortarianism. The very reason we have laws, courts, and a Constitution is to create a rational framework for weighing rights and applying law fairly and consistently to individual cases.

In the past three days, as attorneys for the Schindlers, Jeb Bush, and others have raced from federal district court, to federal appellate court, to the U.S. Supreme Court, back to a Florida state court, and tonight back again to federal district court, one almost wonders if one point of the whole enterprise isn't to pile up as many hopeless, if not downright frivolous, claims as possible, so that when they are all denied, the Schindlers and their allies will be able to say: "See? We told you all these judges had it in for us and for Terri from the start." Indeed, Bob Schindler has already said as much: "I don't think that the courts are going to be helpful at all. Actually they've banded together to uphold this one particular judge.... They're not hearing any of the evidence that we presented them.... [T]he judges are running this country. It's not the people any longer."

It's no doubt unreasonable to expect any family to think in detached and objective terms when the proceedings concern their dying daughter -- even when the best evidence has shown she would wish to be set free from the medical indignities and bodily invasions that have defined her condition.

But the Schindlers decided long ago to take their battle public. They have linked arms with a movement that believes courts must be brought to heel when judges decline to enforce the moral agendas of people like Tom DeLay, Ken Connor, and Jeb Bush.

The Schindlers have thus weakened their claim to our empathy, and raised troubling questions about the people, tactics, and messages they have chosen to fight this battle.

I would just add that they have permitted things like allowing children to be arrested in their cause, disrupting the hospice for all other patents. made claims that contradict their own testimony and have not called for calm and to reject violence.

There is a desperate selfishness here which is amazing. Everyone would be compassionate towards them as Terri lay dying. but they seem to endorse any reckless action in her name. They have done more than link to a movement which thinks the courts must be brought to heel, they have linked to people who advocate violence. And for all the charges of adultery around Michael Schiavo, they are represented by a deadbeat dad who doesn't talk to his children and abandoned his wife for a 22 year old.

What is most surprising is that in the quest to win this one battle, they have attacked the bonds of marriage, a stand which will come to haunt them in the future.

posted by Steve @ 8:37:00 PM