The Dish

Thanks for all your outraged emails. For the record, I think the benefit of the doubt in this case should go to keeping Schiavo nourished. But keeping a vegetative person nourished for decades in order to placate that person’s relatives – even when she has virtually no chance of reviving, and when her nearest kin opposes it – does not strike me as indisputably humane. And allowing someone to die a natural death is not the same as killing them. Here’s the Catholic Catechism on exactly that point:

Discontinuing medical procedures that are burdensome, dangerous, extraordinary or disproportionate to the expected outcome can be legitimate; it is the refusal of ‘overzealous’ treatment. Here one does not will to cause death; one’s inability to impede it is merely accepted. The decisions should be made by the patient if he is competent and able or, if not, by those legally entitled to act for the patient, whose reasonable and legitimate interests must always be respected.

The current papacy, in its extreme innovations with respect to the absolute primacy of life in all circumstances, strikes me as somewhat unbalanced. The message of Christ, after all, was that life begins in all its real glory after death. The extreme defense of keeping people on earth at all costs seems an odd priority for a Christian church. That is not to say that we should support euthanasia or abortion, but that we should also understand that for many people, death is not a catastrophe; it is a release. There is balance to be found here. But the Wojtila-adherents disagree. (More feedback on the Letters Page.)

WHAT ATTACK ADS? Will Saletan and Jake Weisberg helpfully debunk a Kerry-Gephardt meme that Howard Dean has gone negative in his latest ads. TNR’s blog also usefully debunks another piece of conventional campaign wisdom – based on a dubious Iowa poll.

The economy may do for 43 what it failed to do for 41: re-elect a Bush.

AZNAR RISES: The Spanish premier recovers from his stance on the Iraq war. Just as Schroder sinks. Hehe.

“IGNORING” AFGHANISTAN: Another batch of Qaeda terrorists killed near the Pakistan border. The long, hard slog continues …

“Fear breeds hatred, and Bush’s policies create a lot of both. U.S. citizens like Jose Padilla and Yasser Hamdi disappear into the night, never to be heard from again. A concentration camp rises at Guantánamo. Stasi-like spies tap our phones and read our mail; thanks to the ironically-named Patriot Act, these thugs don’t even need a warrant. As individual rights are trampled, corporate profits are sacrosanct. An aggressive, expansionist military invades other nations “preemptively” to eliminate the threat of non-existent weapons, and American troops die to enrich a company that buys off the Vice President.” – Ted Rall, proud Bush-hater.

THE WEEKLY FISK: I take on Clark and Kerry in Sunday’s depressing Democratic debate.

An emailer makes a point that had already occurred to me. The Schiavo case is one in which the religious right are attacking the rights of traditional marriage:

There is an aspect of the case, however, that I have not seen discussed. It seems to me that in attacking the husband’s decision, the religious right has also attacked one of the key aspects of marriage. Part of marriage is that our spouse is supposed to be able to speak for us in medical and other areas when we are not able. It is one of the rights that gay and lesbian couples so justly demand. Clearly, if there were indications of wrong doing or illegal activities the spouse could and should be challenged, but there ares are no such indications in this case that I know of. It does not appear that she created a legal document giving someone other than her husband the power to make these decisions. Where is the outrage from the religious right on this attack on marriage?

I guess the answer is that life trumps marriage. But their complete insouciance toward Schiavo’s husband’s rights is telling, I think. Their defense of heterosexual marriage is far more connected to their loathing of homosexuality than with their concern for marriage as such. It’s essentially a negative, exclusionary impulse at heart. That’s why they’re not proposing a Constitutional Amendment to ban divorce, or forbid civil marriage.

The alliance that John Kerry decried last night was very close to the alliance that landed at Normandy. Was that coalition fraudulent?

It’s all part of a new wave in the culture wars in which conservative ideas are making real headway. From Fox to blogs to Cartman, it’s a phenomenon, according to Brian Anderson in the new City Journal. It’s a long, complex piece, but here’s one money-quote:

Talk to right-leaning college students, and it’s clear that Sullivan is onto something. Arizona State undergrad Eric Spratling says the definition fits him and his Republican pals perfectly. “The label is really about rejecting the image of conservatives as uptight squares-crusty old men or nerdy kids in blue blazers. We might have long hair, smoke cigarettes, get drunk on weekends, have sex before marriage, watch R-rated movies, cuss like sailors-and also happen to be conservative, or at least libertarian.” Recent Stanford grad Craig Albrecht says most of his young Bush-supporter friends “absolutely cherish” South Park-style comedy “for its illumination of hypocrisy and stupidity in all spheres of life.” It just so happens, he adds, “that most hypocrisy and stupidity take place within the liberal camp.”

Further supporting Sullivan’s contention, Gavin McInnes, co-founder of Vice-a “punk-rock-capitalist” entertainment corporation that publishes the hipster bible Vice magazine, produces CDs and films, runs clothing stores, and claims (plausibly) to have been “deep inside the heads of 18-30s for the past 10 years”-spots “a new trend of young people tired of being lied to for the sake of the ‘greater good.'” Especially on military matters, McInnes believes, many twenty-somethings are disgusted with the Left. The knee-jerk Left’s days “are numbered,” McInnes tells The American Conservative. “They are slowly but surely being replaced with a new breed of kid that isn’t afraid to embrace conservatism.”

But not the humorless, puritanical conservatism of the religious right.

The Washington Post’s ombudsman offers a verdict on Tina Brown’s first column: “This precious, egocentric piece was about the worst and most irrelevant thing I’ve read in my three years on the job.” He added that he was “embarassed for the paper and also for the Web site.” Hey, I’m sure Sally loved it.

This new wave of terrorist violence only underscores how the war is unfinished. It makes it all the more important that we find and kill Saddam Hussein; and that we aim more lethally at the Islamist forces that are desperate to prevent democracy of any kind coming to the Arab world. This is no reason to retreat. It’s reason to intensify. These people are testing our will. We have to test their survival skills.

Not exactly a surprise – but is this the first time that French-made munitions have been used in an attempt to murder a member of the U.S. government?

“It is, I think, true to say that the intelligentsia have been more wrong about the progress of the war than the common people, and that they were more swayed by partisan feelings. The average intellectual of the Left believed, for instance, that the war was lost in 1940, that the Germans were bound to overrun Egypt in 1942, that the Japanese would never be driven out of the lands they had conquered, and that the Anglo-American bombing offensive was making no impression on Germany. He could believe these things because his hatred for the British ruling class forbade him to admit that British plans could succeed. There is no limit to the follies that can be swallowed if one is under the influence of feelings of this kind. I have heard it confidently stated, for instance, that the American troops had been brought to Europe not to fight the Germans but to crush an English revolution. One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.” – from Notes on Nationalism. It’s a helpful quote when slogging through yet another left-liberal column on why we can’t win in Iraq.

KERRY ON THE BRITS: They’re part of a “fraudulent” coalition, according to the Senator from Massachusetts last night:

This president has done it wrong every step of the way. He promised that he would have a real coalition. He has a fraudulent coalition. He promised he would go through the United Nations and honor the inspections process. He did not. He promised he would go to war as a last resort, words that mean something to me as a veteran. He did not.

Some questions. How was the coalition “fraudulent”? Is going to the U.N., getting a resolution and trying extremely hard for a second resolution not going through the U.N.? Are twelve years of inspections not respecting the inspections process? Is John Kerry a serious candidate for the presidency of the United States?

“IMMINENT THREAT” WATCH: Wesley Clark used it at least twice last night. Grrr.