Choice

No, this post i not about abortion although I think some of the arguments might be similar. 

Recently the state of California legalized physician assisted suicide.  Obviously the issue raises difficult moral and ethical questions.  I won't address them here except to say that difficult moral and ethical questions first and foremost need to be addressed by the person immediately facing them.  Of course there are social and community concerns that cannot be ignored but the struggle belongs to the individual facing the situation.

I have struggled with this question and my basic orientation always leans towards life.  My gut says that even in the most painful and difficult of times, there is something wondrous and wonderful about life and that should never be discounted.  At the same time I saw images on 9/11 that made me think differently.

We also saw peole jump from the towers to their deaths, knowing that they were committing suicide.  At the same time, death was imminent as the flames came towards them.  The choice was clearly between dying a painful death of burning or a quick one from the impact of a fall from the towers.  I don't know what I would have done if faced with that choice but I do know how I feel about burning and it is not a way that I would choose to die.  So, I asked myself, was the decision to jump an immoral one?  Did I have the right to condemn those who would choose one way to die over another, knowing that death was clearly coming? 

And so, I come to physician assisted suicide with a new perspective.  For those for whom death is clearly coming - a death that may be slow and painful and erase all that they are  - who am I to say that a choice of a quick and painless suicide might not be a reasonable decision for them to make? 

protecting America

Yesterday morning I was having breakfast with my friend Ben and we got talking about where we were and what we were doing when the first plane hit the towers some eleven years ago.  This led to a discussion about the mythologies of the Republican Party, in particular the line "Bush kept us safe..." to which Ben responded, "except that one time."  The reality is that one of the largest attacks on US soil happened under his watch. 

Shortly after the event, there were stories that claimed the Bush administration had intelligence which had been ignored which may have enabled them to stop the attacks.  An op-ed in yesterday's New York Times indicated that the degree of negligence was greater than previously reported.  Of course, the right wing talk radio world has become apoplectic, yelling that liberals are blaming Bush for 9/11. 

Yet, they give Bush praise for no attacks on his watch... other than the one, the only one since Pearl Harbor... but that doesn't count.  It does count.  And worse than that, while there may not have been another attack on US soil after that, the reality is that the Bush administration's policies destroyed any sense of security that we had as a people.  They played on our fears.  They curtailed our rights.  And perhaps worst of all, they destroyed our economy by rushing into two unnecessary wars which consumed incredible resources while at the same time cutting taxes.  They presided over the destruction of our economy, in large degree the results of their policy choices.  Losing one's job, one's home, one's future is anything but being "safe."

The Republicans want us to forget all of that.  They want to go back to the same economic policies that got us into this mess.  They are rattling sabres at Iran and threatening yet another protracted and expensive war while at the same time talking about more tax cuts.  They say that after creating one of the largest messes the country has ever experienced, because a Democratic administration has not cleaned it all up in four years while dealing with a congress that was/is of the least interested in actually solving problems of any congress ever, we should allow them back into power. 

Was Bush responsible for 9/11?  No.  Could he have stopped it?  Maybe.  Are the Republicans responsible for what happened afterwards which led to one of the largest recessions we've known and the slowest recovery, the loss of more lives than have been counted, and the virtual destruction of two countries on top of allowling ours to go down the toilet?  Absolutely.

So, if you want to protect America and to help keep it safe, do not vote for the party that has been working to destroy it since 9/11.

too much

It has been a while since I've posted to my blog. It hasn't been because I had nothing to say. Actually, I've had too much... and wasn't quite sure how to say it.

I wanted to write about Glenn Beck and how his connection with right wing Christians puzzles me when he is a Mormon. I wasn't sure how to say that without sounding like a religious bigot so I didn't finish the post.

Then I wanted to write about the Koran and a crazy who certainly got his 15 minutes of fame by threatening to burn Korans. I didn't want to give him any more attention than he was already getting... Just one piece I was going to say - many Americans see the Koran as being parallel to the Bible, a book that tells us about God's self-revelation. That is not a good analogy. Actually, as I understand it, the Koran is more parallel to Jesus than to the Bible as it is the revelation of God, not a book that points to that revelation. So burning Korans is not the same as burning any other book.

And I wanted to write about 9/11. I've been reading some of the 9/11 Truth stuff and I have to admit that I find at least some f the arguments pretty convincing that, at the very least, we are not getting the whole story. In my very core, I don't want to believe that my own government had anything to do with the horrors of that day but I wonder... and it makes me really, really depressed. So, I didn't write about that because I was afraid that some folk would think I'm crazy... and that if I wrote it down, I'd need to look more carefully and maybe make a decision about it.

So... no posts... but later today I'll write about the Cambridge Drive Concert Series. and that excites me!