The End at New Ruskin College
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Lecture Notes: 04-21-05 The End
(Prerequisite Lecture Notes: 04-16-05) Photo of Children : Link at www.NewRuskinCollege.com
These children, are they part of the body of Christ?
Are you? Am I?
Are they just protoplasm, so many living beings, human animals?
They are shown here lined up for food. They are hungry. How about you?
Or have you hardened your heart against them too? If so what has it cost you to harden against them?
In order to harden your heart what have you had to give up? They are only hungry, but what about you? This photo was taken some time ago. They have eaten many times since then. Gone to bed; woken up. Played. Laughed. Lived.
But you, in order to harden your heart against them, what have you given up? Your life?
In the recent news coverage of the Roman Catholic Church the Church’s teaching on contraception, has been discussed, both in terms of its affect on global population, and in Africa the spread of AIDS. Theories of harm have been examined and the harm has been traced back to the Church’s teaching, all be it, it was generally allowed, an “unintended” effect.
The cause and effect relationship has been highlighted and contrasted. That harm should flow from good has been the focus of coverage on this aspect of the Church’s teaching.
Partisans have presented on this subject and the popes and the Church have received both critical and supportive examination.
What I have not seen anywhere, not even hinted at with sly irony, or any indication at all, by anyone, friend or foe, partisan or disinterested commentator, in fact an empty desert of bland vapid utterly unaware discussion, has continued for weeks; what I have not heard is can this same method of analysis be applied to us? Does no one else thirst for some insight into the human condition? Has no one thought to think that this line of reasoning might expose something more general about the human condition?
You have the issue of over population. You have the Roman Catholic Church. Pope John Paul the Great. And now the new pope. Major issue. Major institution. Major world figures. A fundamental question of “good” and . . . shall we say, ‘the human condition’, if not “evil” incarnate in our lives.
And AIDS, another major global issue. And the spread of AIDS which is associated with a method of contraception disallowed by the Church’s teaching. (A competing web site which also is focused on the role of technology and public policy, apparently in response to this coverage in the news, published an article disputing the question of AIDS in Africa, i.e. if AIDS is mainly spread by intercourse, pointing out that hypodermic needles are implicated by some researchers. (Our association of their article with a partisan defense of the RC Church is based on the timing of their article, and because their article did not dispute that upwards of 30% of the transmission of AIDS must still be associated with sexual intercourse. (http://www.techcentralstation.com/041505E.html ) 30% of those infected is still a big number (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=12665438 ). Clearly they were attempting to limit or dispute what degree of blame for the transmission of AIDS should be attributed to the use of condoms, or rather the failure to use condoms.) And now more recently they have explicitly risen to the defense of the pope on the use of condoms, (http://www.techcentralstation.com/042105D.html ) indicating a party preference. Does technology have a party preference? Does science?)
So we have in the news: over population, and AIDS in Africa. We have the association of the Church, an institution for “good” and we have the troubled ‘human condition’. We have these gigantic personalities, John Paul the Great, the new pope, historic figures. We have the disputed teaching. “Evil” arising from “good”. Tremendous issues. Overwhelming issues. The stuff of thousand page Russian novels. Enormous! Colossal!!
And in the news? What? . . . nothing.
But then, where does one start? And after starting where does one stop?
Only those who wander in the desert, or lost in the mountains, cloud hidden, the castoffs of society can talk about such things.
For if evils result from holiness, if good and great men destroy, if white becomes black, have we not run out of language? Is this not madness?
I no longer can think of a theme or connect one thought, fact, with another. With my approaching death a haze has descended. The world appears random. Good men. Evil men. Is there a difference?
These children . . . look at them . . . what is your relationship with them?
How many were born who would not have been born? How many brought into this world who would not have been brought into this world if their mothers and fathers had had a contraceptive? What if they had another choice? At this level of technical development how many can be, or are we saying ‘should be’, born, this year, this decade? And then there is the question, independent of these questions, of AIDS. How many contract AIDS simply being born into this world? What if they had a choice?
Ought we even be allowed to ask such questions? Are we “playing” God? Is any of this permissible?
How to think about John Paul the Great? What is the criterion? What is the scope of our discourse?
How ought we think of you dear reader? What criteria shall we use in our examination of you?
Where should we begin? Is there anything for which you will take responsibility?
How about these children here? Will the reader take responsibility for them? For starters?
If we look beyond intention, your intentions, what will you be responsible for? What can you be said to have “caused”?
In law you are held to account only for the reasonably foreseeable consequences of your acts? But let us start with your “acts.” Ought you be called to account for the acts of your party? Your country? Starting when? In preparing your defense do not imagine that there are any limits to your liability. We are no longer limited by time and place, we are unbounded now. Deranged?
Or have we already crossed the line into madness? Are we asking too many questions? Is this why we are already all alone in the media? Who wants to be the first to scoop this story?
We could start anywhere but let’s start here: Do you believe in an absolute or not? Is there a good? If it is good how can evil flow from it? Is it reasonable to hold the Church responsible for the spread of AIDS an the increase of unwanted children? Were these results reasonably foreseeable consequences of the Church’s teaching?
Then by this theory of liability are we to judge the “good” as “relative” to the consequence? If so then your theory implies that good is “relativistic” to the consequence. It is then instrumental not absolute? The “good” will be determined by its instrumental value.
If you do not believe in an absolute value for good then how can you proceed in your life, for logically you can not know the consequence of your actions for some time to come in the future, possibly the results will be known only far in the future? How do you live your life? Play the odds? You propose gambling as an alternative to absolute values? (I have in mind the image of the soldiers playing dice at the crucifixion of Christ.)
And if the “good” is to be judged by the results what about a wrong? If you are trying to support the Church, wouldn’t a lie be justified? If the good is instrumental then why can not the same approach be applied to evil?
Can you lie for Christ? Is that permissible?
Photo of Terri Schiavo: Link at www.NewRuskinCollege.com
“A common cause of compression fractures is the disease osteoporosis. This disease thins the bones, often to the point that they are too weak to bear normal pressure. The thinning bones can collapse during normal activity, leading to a spinal compression fracture. In fact, spinal compression fractures are the most common type of osteoporotic fractures. Forty percent of all women will have at least one by the time they are 80 years old. These vertebral fractures can permanently alter the shape and strength of the spine. The fractures usually heal on their own and the pain goes away. However, sometimes the pain can persist if the crushed bone fails to heal adequately.” ---- Chief Editor , Kenneth Kurica, MD, Managing Editor Randale C. Sechrest, MD, Editorial Board Richard Lazar, MD Brent Dodge, RPT
Liars for Christ.
Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck both repeatedly claimed that Michael Schiavo had attempted to murder his wife. For proof of their charge both offered the evidence of a nurse who claimed she discovered an empty insulin bottle and multiple hypodermic needle holes in the patient Schiavo’s body. However neither Beck nor Hannity ever mentioned that the Schindlers declined to call the nurse to testify in a 2003 evidentiary hearing. Nor did they mention that the judge in that same hearing specifically mentioned the failure of the Schindlers to call the witness to give her evidence. These facts were never mentioned by Beck nor Hannity, and we learned of them only because of the reporting of Randi Rhoades. ((Only the liberal talk show host was willing to report the whole story, the facts, and let us decide.) I hate to be the one to break the news to you Randi, but you are a temporal being too.)
The nurse claimed that she contacted the police and reported the crime at the time of discovery. However, FOX News contacted the police department and reported that the nurse did not in fact contact the police as she claimed. Bill O’Reilly several times reported on the air that FOX had proven the nurse’s claim to be false. Yet Sean Hannity, who also works for FOX TV, not only did not correct the record but he continued to report the nurse’s claim that she had contacted the police; despite FOX’s reporting to the contrary. Why? This seems neither fair nor balanced. Can FOX report the same story several different ways? Does it have standards for accuracy or not?
Both Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck offered as further evidence of Michael Schiavo’s attempted murder the unsubstantiated claim that a “bone scan” had revealed that the patient Schiavo had numerous “compression fractures.” They both listed the bones with “compression fractures,” including a rib bone and a wrist bone. However, neither Sean Hannity nor Glenn Beck seemed to understand what a compression fracture indicated.
Bones do not normally fracture on compression. Fracturing on compression, in normal use, indicates that the bones have weakened. What might cause a bone to become so weak that it fractures in normal use? If, for example, the body were deprived of calcium in the patient’s diet, due to starvation, for example, then the body might compensate for the loss of dietary calcium by taking calcium from the body’s own bones, and thereby weakening them to the point that they would fracture.
Yet both Hannity and Beck pointed at Michael Schiavo as the cause of the compression fractures and demanded a criminal investigation. There was no claim of beatings of Terri Schiavo, who was seen regularly by both her family and friends prior to her heart attack. In fact Hannity and Beck offered no evidence except the unsubstantiated claim of the nurse, who was proven to be a liar by FOX, who was not called in 2003 by the Schindlers, and the “bone scan” which they claimed showed “compression fractures”. This latter evidence, if true, far from strengthening their claims, actually undermined their own arguments. It would rather serve as additional evidence that the patient’s eating disorder caused not only the heart attack but the bones to weaken to the point that they fractured in normal use.
That both Hannity and Beck appear not to have understood this, that they were undercutting their own argument, is not only not surprising but typical. And if you think that either of these Christian gentlemen will be ashamed of their repeated lies, now that they have been exposed here, you would be wrong. They believe they were lying for a good cause. They see themselves as liars for Christ.
Hannity has started bragging about his years of study in a seminary and Beck often will talk of his hour in the Garden of Gethsemane --- before making a sleazy segue to a commercial. (After we first mentioned his “wink wink” segue from Jesus to commercial, he complained on the air that he did have to after all have commercials. (But we were not criticizing the commercials but his smarminess.))
They both claim the absolute good of their convictions even as they lie. They claim righteousness yet when pressed defend lies by reference to the instrumental value of their lies.
For example, they introduced the fraud Dr. Hammesfahr as a “Nobel Prize nominee.” (He claims his congressman sent a letter to the Nobel committee.) They know that this constant association of this quack with the Nobel Prize is another lie but they feel these lies are justified to “save Terri’s life”.
Dr. Hammesfahr’s claim that the patient Schiavo could speak was not questioned by either of our Christian gentlemen liars. And they offered no reasoning to explain why this, their sole expert, was in the minority of doctors who had examined the patient. Nor could they explain why the judge in the case could find no published papers by their “Nobel Prize nominee.” Instead they repeatedly made the claim that “the majority of affidavits from medical doctors” support their position. Affidavits? See? Affidavits that is legal talk. That this coven of doctors had not actually seen the patient nor had any evidence to give in the case was of course never examined.
Nor did Beck nor Hannity ever mention the inconvenient facts about their Dr. Hammesfahr: “In February 2003, the Florida Board of Medicine ruled
. . .” ---- Media Matters (http://mediamatters.org/items/200503220002 ) .
Given their credulity of Hammesfahr’s claim that the patient Schiavo talked to him who can be surprised that Hannity and Beck accepted without question the Schindler family claim that the patient Schiavo told them “I want to live.”
What if the Schindler family had claimed that an Angel or that Mary, the mother of God, had appeared in the Hospice room? Would Hannity or Beck have questioned this testimony?
Indeed they spiraled down each day damaging their credibility. They began to exhort their audience to question not only the Florida judges but after an act of Congress the Federal judges too. Who are you going to believe Hannity and Beck or these State and Federal judges?
And the answer came back that the people agreed with the judges and not our Christian gentlemen liars. (http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/) So Hannity and Beck attacked the polls too! And the politicians that went along with the Liars for Christ also fell in the polls. Mr. Bush is still falling. (www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ articles/A43180-2005Apr11.html )
I was originally targeted by the liberal-radicals of the San Francisco Bay Area because I was a conservative Republican who had written letters to President Bush and the U. S. Senate. So you might suppose I would be sympathetic to his son’s fall in the polls. I am not. Nor do I feel anything but contempt for the “conservative” Congressman Mr. DeLay who joined in with Hannity and Beck in attacking the judges: “The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior.”
And how do I know Mr. DeLay was wrong? He has himself admitted his error. But not Hannity and Beck. Having dragged our party down they fell even further.
Both next targeted the Hospice. Both spoke with dark suspicion of the place that had by all reports kept the patient Schiavo in good health for years. And Beck joined Michael Weiner in describing the Hospice as a “death camp” for the “extermination” of patients. And what were Beck and Weiner’s exhortations but an attempt to provoke violence against the Hospice? If the Hospice is murdering people then isn’t violence justified against the murderers to prevent them from “killing” others?
Indeed isn’t this the reasonable interpretation of Mr. DeLay’s words? And is this not part of the reason for his apology for his words?
But Beck and Weiner did not apologize.
Indeed Laura Ingraham, “livid,” joined in. She accused those who disagreed with her, society, of being part of the “culture of death.” This is her accusation against the society that carefully reviewed this case for fifteen years, collecting and confirming, exhaustively, the overwhelming medical and scientific consensus that the patient was gone, had died years before. But “culture of death” was Laura Ingraham’s charge against a society that spends 50% of its medical dollars in the last six months of life. (http://www.bioethics.umn.edu/resources/topics/end_of_life.shtml#fact )
Half! We do everything we can do to stave off death. Everything that is humanly possible! Half our money spent in the last six months and this “livid” neurotic, in an emotional fit, accuses us of being “the culture of death.”
And when we first posted this criticism of her, (see Lecture Notes: March), Laura claimed that she was only concerned that there was no “documentary evidence” of the patient Schiavo’s intentions. Then in our next posting we called Laura Ingraham’s claim that she was concerned solely about the absence of “documentary” evidence, a lie. We pointed out that we expected better from a lawyer. We pointed out that her emotionalism was no help to anyone trying to decide how we should proceed.
So then in her next show she claimed that she could distinguish this case from the thousands of other cases that doctors and families must deal with every week . “Distinguish” cases. That is how they talk in law school. The young law students have to be taught how to “distinguish” cases.
She offered that she was only concerned with cases in which the family disagreed with the with drawl of life support.
Oh, great! That is a big help Laura. Yes thank you. Of course the only cases that come to court are the cases where some family member disagrees. That is all the cases. What we want to know is how to resolve the cases where there is disagreement! That is the whole point. Or are we going to give everyone a veto?
Now let us stop for a moment and remember that Laura is smarter than me. So why is she and the others making such obvious mistakes?
Nor does Laura Ingraham deal with the Texas law, signed by George Bush, that authorizes the withdrawal of life support in “futile cases.” Does not even mention it. Nor does Beck, Hannity, or Weiner. A fine pack of liars.
At any time Laura et al. could have organized a political campaign to write a Florida State statute on this subject. They did not. The judges followed the statute. Federal review determined that the petitioner failed to show a “substantial likelihood” that he would prevail, i.e. prove that the Florida courts failed to protect the rights of the patient Schiavo. Laura Ingraham never did explain how she would resolve disputes of a similar type, which take place every week.
The complaint about the courts was that the judges did not write new law, did not seek and outcome different from that which the People, meeting in the Legislature of the State of Florida, determined was the best way of resolving such disputes. Isn’t that what we mean by “judicial restraint”? Isn’t this what conservatives believe?
And as we take the inventory of casualties in this engagement, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Michael Weiner, Glenn Beck, George Bush, Tom DeLay, Rush Limbaugh, William Bennett, Bill “killing” Kristol, Tucker Carlson, Debra Saunders, and her husband, the author of the book, “the Culture of Death”, Wesley J. Smith, Barbara Simpson, Brian Sussman, Lee Rogers, and the despicable Mrs. Jack Swanson, what can we conclude?
What of the law? What of the science? Wither truth?
What are we to make of Beck and Weiner accusing society of “extermination” and the others whose accusations of “judicially sanctioned murder” were made not a month after a Federal judge in Chicago found her family in a pool of blood. And all of this at the same time Weiner is ridiculing the mentally ill abandoned on our sidewalks, or Beck the disabled children riding in the back of “short busses” with “helmets on their heads”?
Weiner advocated rounding the homeless up off the sidewalks and shipping them to death camps in the desert. Hannity and Beck both have segments on their shows were they call up people and ridicule their lack of knowledge of current affairs, etc. (In one broadcast a caller called in to stump Beck by showing that Beck could not spell the word “peace.” It worked. Beck was taken by surprise and his producer had to break in to explain, “p-e-a-c-e.” )
But these people, the mentally ill abandoned to the streets, or the ones in the “short busses,” these are exactly the ones we did not “kill,” these are the ones in those hospitals upon whom we spend 50% of our health dollars, these are the ones we try to keep alive. And these are the ones Hannity, Beck, and Weiner ridicule every week.
And of course, Weiner and Mrs. Jack Swanson are the ones who have for a period of years harassed me, following me from place to place, work place to work place, with Don Imus and Ron Owens and Michael Krasney. We know that in their private lives they are despicable people.
Then too so do many of you. You know and do nothing.
And here in this case of the patient Schiavo, we have seen them, hypocrites, liars, thoroughly dishonest.
Mr. Bush signed the law in Texas that provided for less review than this Florida case received. Mr. DeLay has himself apologized.
Not one of them discussed the CAT scan or even acknowledged that the consensus of medical opinion was on the other side of the case from their simple minded emotionalism.
Just in terms of debate tactics, one never leaves off and important piece of evidence. The CAT scan should have been at least mentioned if only in passing.
And more fundamentally if the collected evidence argues against your position why not revise your position if you can not explain the evidence? If the CAT scan suggests a Persistent Vegetative State why not alter your preconceived views?
They could not discuss the CAT scan because they knew it contradicted their position and they could not defend their opinion.
So the charges of NAZI and “the culture of death.” Call the Hospice a “death camp.” Call the judges, the legislature, then finally the public wrong.
Mrs. Jack Swanson boasts, “Oh, I’m vicious.”
I do not know how to separate out all this from what they have done to me. My mind turns first to the Red Comedian on the West Coast Weekend show on KQED, to Yvonne sitting in her office, lying to me, week after week, the secretary at GAB Robins going through my briefcase, the San Rafael Police dispatcher reporting on the movement of the “Colonial Motel Suspect,” the adjusters in Portland Maine talking about my mother’s death before I learned of it, the trash talking druggy Scott Bobro at Farmers, and that Farmers agent in Marin, insisting again and again that I tell him my address, “where do you live? Where do you live?” he demanded. The dishonesty. From top to bottom.
I do not understand you. How do you justify yourselves? How do you live with yourselves?
And then the new pope tells the cardinals that relativism "recognises nothing definitive and its final measure is no more than ego and desire". You see? They know the absolute. They are on the side of absolute Truth, Goodness, God. This is how they justify themselves. They are Liars for Christ.
“Destiny. My destiny! Droll thing life is-- that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself--that comes too late--a crop of unextinguishable regrets. I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable greyness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamour, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid scepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary. If such is the form of ultimate wisdom, then life is a greater riddle than some of us think it to be. I was within a hair's breadth of the last opportunity for pronouncement, and I found with humiliation that probably I would have nothing to say.” --- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Africa's last chance, World Bank warns
April 18, 2005Washington - World Bank president James Wolfensohn has urged global action to help Africa meet targets to slash Aids and poverty by 2015.He said that this year provided a "last opportunity" to make the necessary changes if Africa was to meet the so-called Millennium Development Goals."Looking ahead, and with just a decade to go to 2015, achieving the (goals) presents an enormous challenge," he told a meeting of the International Monetary Fund's policy-setting committee in Washington. Africa has been hardest hit by HIV infections. The Great Lakes region is home to more than 6-million people infected with the virus, according to World Bank figures.Last week the bank approved a $20-million (about R125-million) grant to step up the fight against Aids in the six Great Lakes countries: Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. - Sapa-AFP.
What are you doing?
Are you responsible for anything?
www.NewRuskinCollege.com
Lecture Notes: 04-21-05 The End
(Prerequisite Lecture Notes: 04-16-05) Photo of Children : Link at www.NewRuskinCollege.com
These children, are they part of the body of Christ?
Are you? Am I?
Are they just protoplasm, so many living beings, human animals?
They are shown here lined up for food. They are hungry. How about you?
Or have you hardened your heart against them too? If so what has it cost you to harden against them?
In order to harden your heart what have you had to give up? They are only hungry, but what about you? This photo was taken some time ago. They have eaten many times since then. Gone to bed; woken up. Played. Laughed. Lived.
But you, in order to harden your heart against them, what have you given up? Your life?
In the recent news coverage of the Roman Catholic Church the Church’s teaching on contraception, has been discussed, both in terms of its affect on global population, and in Africa the spread of AIDS. Theories of harm have been examined and the harm has been traced back to the Church’s teaching, all be it, it was generally allowed, an “unintended” effect.
The cause and effect relationship has been highlighted and contrasted. That harm should flow from good has been the focus of coverage on this aspect of the Church’s teaching.
Partisans have presented on this subject and the popes and the Church have received both critical and supportive examination.
What I have not seen anywhere, not even hinted at with sly irony, or any indication at all, by anyone, friend or foe, partisan or disinterested commentator, in fact an empty desert of bland vapid utterly unaware discussion, has continued for weeks; what I have not heard is can this same method of analysis be applied to us? Does no one else thirst for some insight into the human condition? Has no one thought to think that this line of reasoning might expose something more general about the human condition?
You have the issue of over population. You have the Roman Catholic Church. Pope John Paul the Great. And now the new pope. Major issue. Major institution. Major world figures. A fundamental question of “good” and . . . shall we say, ‘the human condition’, if not “evil” incarnate in our lives.
And AIDS, another major global issue. And the spread of AIDS which is associated with a method of contraception disallowed by the Church’s teaching. (A competing web site which also is focused on the role of technology and public policy, apparently in response to this coverage in the news, published an article disputing the question of AIDS in Africa, i.e. if AIDS is mainly spread by intercourse, pointing out that hypodermic needles are implicated by some researchers. (Our association of their article with a partisan defense of the RC Church is based on the timing of their article, and because their article did not dispute that upwards of 30% of the transmission of AIDS must still be associated with sexual intercourse. (http://www.techcentralstation.com/041505E.html ) 30% of those infected is still a big number (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=12665438 ). Clearly they were attempting to limit or dispute what degree of blame for the transmission of AIDS should be attributed to the use of condoms, or rather the failure to use condoms.) And now more recently they have explicitly risen to the defense of the pope on the use of condoms, (http://www.techcentralstation.com/042105D.html ) indicating a party preference. Does technology have a party preference? Does science?)
So we have in the news: over population, and AIDS in Africa. We have the association of the Church, an institution for “good” and we have the troubled ‘human condition’. We have these gigantic personalities, John Paul the Great, the new pope, historic figures. We have the disputed teaching. “Evil” arising from “good”. Tremendous issues. Overwhelming issues. The stuff of thousand page Russian novels. Enormous! Colossal!!
And in the news? What? . . . nothing.
But then, where does one start? And after starting where does one stop?
Only those who wander in the desert, or lost in the mountains, cloud hidden, the castoffs of society can talk about such things.
For if evils result from holiness, if good and great men destroy, if white becomes black, have we not run out of language? Is this not madness?
I no longer can think of a theme or connect one thought, fact, with another. With my approaching death a haze has descended. The world appears random. Good men. Evil men. Is there a difference?
These children . . . look at them . . . what is your relationship with them?
How many were born who would not have been born? How many brought into this world who would not have been brought into this world if their mothers and fathers had had a contraceptive? What if they had another choice? At this level of technical development how many can be, or are we saying ‘should be’, born, this year, this decade? And then there is the question, independent of these questions, of AIDS. How many contract AIDS simply being born into this world? What if they had a choice?
Ought we even be allowed to ask such questions? Are we “playing” God? Is any of this permissible?
How to think about John Paul the Great? What is the criterion? What is the scope of our discourse?
How ought we think of you dear reader? What criteria shall we use in our examination of you?
Where should we begin? Is there anything for which you will take responsibility?
How about these children here? Will the reader take responsibility for them? For starters?
If we look beyond intention, your intentions, what will you be responsible for? What can you be said to have “caused”?
In law you are held to account only for the reasonably foreseeable consequences of your acts? But let us start with your “acts.” Ought you be called to account for the acts of your party? Your country? Starting when? In preparing your defense do not imagine that there are any limits to your liability. We are no longer limited by time and place, we are unbounded now. Deranged?
Or have we already crossed the line into madness? Are we asking too many questions? Is this why we are already all alone in the media? Who wants to be the first to scoop this story?
We could start anywhere but let’s start here: Do you believe in an absolute or not? Is there a good? If it is good how can evil flow from it? Is it reasonable to hold the Church responsible for the spread of AIDS an the increase of unwanted children? Were these results reasonably foreseeable consequences of the Church’s teaching?
Then by this theory of liability are we to judge the “good” as “relative” to the consequence? If so then your theory implies that good is “relativistic” to the consequence. It is then instrumental not absolute? The “good” will be determined by its instrumental value.
If you do not believe in an absolute value for good then how can you proceed in your life, for logically you can not know the consequence of your actions for some time to come in the future, possibly the results will be known only far in the future? How do you live your life? Play the odds? You propose gambling as an alternative to absolute values? (I have in mind the image of the soldiers playing dice at the crucifixion of Christ.)
And if the “good” is to be judged by the results what about a wrong? If you are trying to support the Church, wouldn’t a lie be justified? If the good is instrumental then why can not the same approach be applied to evil?
Can you lie for Christ? Is that permissible?
Photo of Terri Schiavo: Link at www.NewRuskinCollege.com
“A common cause of compression fractures is the disease osteoporosis. This disease thins the bones, often to the point that they are too weak to bear normal pressure. The thinning bones can collapse during normal activity, leading to a spinal compression fracture. In fact, spinal compression fractures are the most common type of osteoporotic fractures. Forty percent of all women will have at least one by the time they are 80 years old. These vertebral fractures can permanently alter the shape and strength of the spine. The fractures usually heal on their own and the pain goes away. However, sometimes the pain can persist if the crushed bone fails to heal adequately.” ---- Chief Editor , Kenneth Kurica, MD, Managing Editor Randale C. Sechrest, MD, Editorial Board Richard Lazar, MD Brent Dodge, RPT
Liars for Christ.
Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck both repeatedly claimed that Michael Schiavo had attempted to murder his wife. For proof of their charge both offered the evidence of a nurse who claimed she discovered an empty insulin bottle and multiple hypodermic needle holes in the patient Schiavo’s body. However neither Beck nor Hannity ever mentioned that the Schindlers declined to call the nurse to testify in a 2003 evidentiary hearing. Nor did they mention that the judge in that same hearing specifically mentioned the failure of the Schindlers to call the witness to give her evidence. These facts were never mentioned by Beck nor Hannity, and we learned of them only because of the reporting of Randi Rhoades. ((Only the liberal talk show host was willing to report the whole story, the facts, and let us decide.) I hate to be the one to break the news to you Randi, but you are a temporal being too.)
The nurse claimed that she contacted the police and reported the crime at the time of discovery. However, FOX News contacted the police department and reported that the nurse did not in fact contact the police as she claimed. Bill O’Reilly several times reported on the air that FOX had proven the nurse’s claim to be false. Yet Sean Hannity, who also works for FOX TV, not only did not correct the record but he continued to report the nurse’s claim that she had contacted the police; despite FOX’s reporting to the contrary. Why? This seems neither fair nor balanced. Can FOX report the same story several different ways? Does it have standards for accuracy or not?
Both Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck offered as further evidence of Michael Schiavo’s attempted murder the unsubstantiated claim that a “bone scan” had revealed that the patient Schiavo had numerous “compression fractures.” They both listed the bones with “compression fractures,” including a rib bone and a wrist bone. However, neither Sean Hannity nor Glenn Beck seemed to understand what a compression fracture indicated.
Bones do not normally fracture on compression. Fracturing on compression, in normal use, indicates that the bones have weakened. What might cause a bone to become so weak that it fractures in normal use? If, for example, the body were deprived of calcium in the patient’s diet, due to starvation, for example, then the body might compensate for the loss of dietary calcium by taking calcium from the body’s own bones, and thereby weakening them to the point that they would fracture.
Yet both Hannity and Beck pointed at Michael Schiavo as the cause of the compression fractures and demanded a criminal investigation. There was no claim of beatings of Terri Schiavo, who was seen regularly by both her family and friends prior to her heart attack. In fact Hannity and Beck offered no evidence except the unsubstantiated claim of the nurse, who was proven to be a liar by FOX, who was not called in 2003 by the Schindlers, and the “bone scan” which they claimed showed “compression fractures”. This latter evidence, if true, far from strengthening their claims, actually undermined their own arguments. It would rather serve as additional evidence that the patient’s eating disorder caused not only the heart attack but the bones to weaken to the point that they fractured in normal use.
That both Hannity and Beck appear not to have understood this, that they were undercutting their own argument, is not only not surprising but typical. And if you think that either of these Christian gentlemen will be ashamed of their repeated lies, now that they have been exposed here, you would be wrong. They believe they were lying for a good cause. They see themselves as liars for Christ.
Hannity has started bragging about his years of study in a seminary and Beck often will talk of his hour in the Garden of Gethsemane --- before making a sleazy segue to a commercial. (After we first mentioned his “wink wink” segue from Jesus to commercial, he complained on the air that he did have to after all have commercials. (But we were not criticizing the commercials but his smarminess.))
They both claim the absolute good of their convictions even as they lie. They claim righteousness yet when pressed defend lies by reference to the instrumental value of their lies.
For example, they introduced the fraud Dr. Hammesfahr as a “Nobel Prize nominee.” (He claims his congressman sent a letter to the Nobel committee.) They know that this constant association of this quack with the Nobel Prize is another lie but they feel these lies are justified to “save Terri’s life”.
Dr. Hammesfahr’s claim that the patient Schiavo could speak was not questioned by either of our Christian gentlemen liars. And they offered no reasoning to explain why this, their sole expert, was in the minority of doctors who had examined the patient. Nor could they explain why the judge in the case could find no published papers by their “Nobel Prize nominee.” Instead they repeatedly made the claim that “the majority of affidavits from medical doctors” support their position. Affidavits? See? Affidavits that is legal talk. That this coven of doctors had not actually seen the patient nor had any evidence to give in the case was of course never examined.
Nor did Beck nor Hannity ever mention the inconvenient facts about their Dr. Hammesfahr: “In February 2003, the Florida Board of Medicine ruled
. . .” ---- Media Matters (http://mediamatters.org/items/200503220002 ) .
Given their credulity of Hammesfahr’s claim that the patient Schiavo talked to him who can be surprised that Hannity and Beck accepted without question the Schindler family claim that the patient Schiavo told them “I want to live.”
What if the Schindler family had claimed that an Angel or that Mary, the mother of God, had appeared in the Hospice room? Would Hannity or Beck have questioned this testimony?
Indeed they spiraled down each day damaging their credibility. They began to exhort their audience to question not only the Florida judges but after an act of Congress the Federal judges too. Who are you going to believe Hannity and Beck or these State and Federal judges?
And the answer came back that the people agreed with the judges and not our Christian gentlemen liars. (http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/) So Hannity and Beck attacked the polls too! And the politicians that went along with the Liars for Christ also fell in the polls. Mr. Bush is still falling. (www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ articles/A43180-2005Apr11.html )
I was originally targeted by the liberal-radicals of the San Francisco Bay Area because I was a conservative Republican who had written letters to President Bush and the U. S. Senate. So you might suppose I would be sympathetic to his son’s fall in the polls. I am not. Nor do I feel anything but contempt for the “conservative” Congressman Mr. DeLay who joined in with Hannity and Beck in attacking the judges: “The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior.”
And how do I know Mr. DeLay was wrong? He has himself admitted his error. But not Hannity and Beck. Having dragged our party down they fell even further.
Both next targeted the Hospice. Both spoke with dark suspicion of the place that had by all reports kept the patient Schiavo in good health for years. And Beck joined Michael Weiner in describing the Hospice as a “death camp” for the “extermination” of patients. And what were Beck and Weiner’s exhortations but an attempt to provoke violence against the Hospice? If the Hospice is murdering people then isn’t violence justified against the murderers to prevent them from “killing” others?
Indeed isn’t this the reasonable interpretation of Mr. DeLay’s words? And is this not part of the reason for his apology for his words?
But Beck and Weiner did not apologize.
Indeed Laura Ingraham, “livid,” joined in. She accused those who disagreed with her, society, of being part of the “culture of death.” This is her accusation against the society that carefully reviewed this case for fifteen years, collecting and confirming, exhaustively, the overwhelming medical and scientific consensus that the patient was gone, had died years before. But “culture of death” was Laura Ingraham’s charge against a society that spends 50% of its medical dollars in the last six months of life. (http://www.bioethics.umn.edu/resources/topics/end_of_life.shtml#fact )
Half! We do everything we can do to stave off death. Everything that is humanly possible! Half our money spent in the last six months and this “livid” neurotic, in an emotional fit, accuses us of being “the culture of death.”
And when we first posted this criticism of her, (see Lecture Notes: March), Laura claimed that she was only concerned that there was no “documentary evidence” of the patient Schiavo’s intentions. Then in our next posting we called Laura Ingraham’s claim that she was concerned solely about the absence of “documentary” evidence, a lie. We pointed out that we expected better from a lawyer. We pointed out that her emotionalism was no help to anyone trying to decide how we should proceed.
So then in her next show she claimed that she could distinguish this case from the thousands of other cases that doctors and families must deal with every week . “Distinguish” cases. That is how they talk in law school. The young law students have to be taught how to “distinguish” cases.
She offered that she was only concerned with cases in which the family disagreed with the with drawl of life support.
Oh, great! That is a big help Laura. Yes thank you. Of course the only cases that come to court are the cases where some family member disagrees. That is all the cases. What we want to know is how to resolve the cases where there is disagreement! That is the whole point. Or are we going to give everyone a veto?
Now let us stop for a moment and remember that Laura is smarter than me. So why is she and the others making such obvious mistakes?
Nor does Laura Ingraham deal with the Texas law, signed by George Bush, that authorizes the withdrawal of life support in “futile cases.” Does not even mention it. Nor does Beck, Hannity, or Weiner. A fine pack of liars.
At any time Laura et al. could have organized a political campaign to write a Florida State statute on this subject. They did not. The judges followed the statute. Federal review determined that the petitioner failed to show a “substantial likelihood” that he would prevail, i.e. prove that the Florida courts failed to protect the rights of the patient Schiavo. Laura Ingraham never did explain how she would resolve disputes of a similar type, which take place every week.
The complaint about the courts was that the judges did not write new law, did not seek and outcome different from that which the People, meeting in the Legislature of the State of Florida, determined was the best way of resolving such disputes. Isn’t that what we mean by “judicial restraint”? Isn’t this what conservatives believe?
And as we take the inventory of casualties in this engagement, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Michael Weiner, Glenn Beck, George Bush, Tom DeLay, Rush Limbaugh, William Bennett, Bill “killing” Kristol, Tucker Carlson, Debra Saunders, and her husband, the author of the book, “the Culture of Death”, Wesley J. Smith, Barbara Simpson, Brian Sussman, Lee Rogers, and the despicable Mrs. Jack Swanson, what can we conclude?
What of the law? What of the science? Wither truth?
What are we to make of Beck and Weiner accusing society of “extermination” and the others whose accusations of “judicially sanctioned murder” were made not a month after a Federal judge in Chicago found her family in a pool of blood. And all of this at the same time Weiner is ridiculing the mentally ill abandoned on our sidewalks, or Beck the disabled children riding in the back of “short busses” with “helmets on their heads”?
Weiner advocated rounding the homeless up off the sidewalks and shipping them to death camps in the desert. Hannity and Beck both have segments on their shows were they call up people and ridicule their lack of knowledge of current affairs, etc. (In one broadcast a caller called in to stump Beck by showing that Beck could not spell the word “peace.” It worked. Beck was taken by surprise and his producer had to break in to explain, “p-e-a-c-e.” )
But these people, the mentally ill abandoned to the streets, or the ones in the “short busses,” these are exactly the ones we did not “kill,” these are the ones in those hospitals upon whom we spend 50% of our health dollars, these are the ones we try to keep alive. And these are the ones Hannity, Beck, and Weiner ridicule every week.
And of course, Weiner and Mrs. Jack Swanson are the ones who have for a period of years harassed me, following me from place to place, work place to work place, with Don Imus and Ron Owens and Michael Krasney. We know that in their private lives they are despicable people.
Then too so do many of you. You know and do nothing.
And here in this case of the patient Schiavo, we have seen them, hypocrites, liars, thoroughly dishonest.
Mr. Bush signed the law in Texas that provided for less review than this Florida case received. Mr. DeLay has himself apologized.
Not one of them discussed the CAT scan or even acknowledged that the consensus of medical opinion was on the other side of the case from their simple minded emotionalism.
Just in terms of debate tactics, one never leaves off and important piece of evidence. The CAT scan should have been at least mentioned if only in passing.
And more fundamentally if the collected evidence argues against your position why not revise your position if you can not explain the evidence? If the CAT scan suggests a Persistent Vegetative State why not alter your preconceived views?
They could not discuss the CAT scan because they knew it contradicted their position and they could not defend their opinion.
So the charges of NAZI and “the culture of death.” Call the Hospice a “death camp.” Call the judges, the legislature, then finally the public wrong.
Mrs. Jack Swanson boasts, “Oh, I’m vicious.”
I do not know how to separate out all this from what they have done to me. My mind turns first to the Red Comedian on the West Coast Weekend show on KQED, to Yvonne sitting in her office, lying to me, week after week, the secretary at GAB Robins going through my briefcase, the San Rafael Police dispatcher reporting on the movement of the “Colonial Motel Suspect,” the adjusters in Portland Maine talking about my mother’s death before I learned of it, the trash talking druggy Scott Bobro at Farmers, and that Farmers agent in Marin, insisting again and again that I tell him my address, “where do you live? Where do you live?” he demanded. The dishonesty. From top to bottom.
I do not understand you. How do you justify yourselves? How do you live with yourselves?
And then the new pope tells the cardinals that relativism "recognises nothing definitive and its final measure is no more than ego and desire". You see? They know the absolute. They are on the side of absolute Truth, Goodness, God. This is how they justify themselves. They are Liars for Christ.
“Destiny. My destiny! Droll thing life is-- that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself--that comes too late--a crop of unextinguishable regrets. I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable greyness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamour, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid scepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary. If such is the form of ultimate wisdom, then life is a greater riddle than some of us think it to be. I was within a hair's breadth of the last opportunity for pronouncement, and I found with humiliation that probably I would have nothing to say.” --- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Africa's last chance, World Bank warns
April 18, 2005Washington - World Bank president James Wolfensohn has urged global action to help Africa meet targets to slash Aids and poverty by 2015.He said that this year provided a "last opportunity" to make the necessary changes if Africa was to meet the so-called Millennium Development Goals."Looking ahead, and with just a decade to go to 2015, achieving the (goals) presents an enormous challenge," he told a meeting of the International Monetary Fund's policy-setting committee in Washington. Africa has been hardest hit by HIV infections. The Great Lakes region is home to more than 6-million people infected with the virus, according to World Bank figures.Last week the bank approved a $20-million (about R125-million) grant to step up the fight against Aids in the six Great Lakes countries: Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. - Sapa-AFP.
What are you doing?
Are you responsible for anything?
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