"We don't believe there is a better world to which she is going. "

No one really knows, of course, but oft in the stilly night I feel the communion of saints myself.

"Oh, nane sall ken where he is gaen" sing the old Scots ballad, "and o'er his banes when they are bare, the wind sall blaw forever mair." Death will be with of course until the end of the world.

"Wise though his plans are
artful beyond dreaming
they carry him both to evil and to good.
But for death he has found no cure.' (Antigone; Sophocles).

Now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: no i know in part; but then I shall know even as I am known. (1 Cor 13)

Terri believed as far as I know and so do her parents. There can be no proof of this; there can be no argument. This is a matter of the heart not the head.

Yes, some of us are gang as they used to say to the land o' the leal as we leave the land o' the livin'.

The Saints shall be with God; "he will dwell with them. and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God." (Rev 22)

There is an old song:

Oh, glorious hour! Oh, blessed abode!
I shall be near and like my God;
And flesh and sin no more control
The sacred pleasures of the soul.

Now the even's come at last
O Son of Mary!
There is peace on every hill
O Son of Mary!

will put my house in order
as I set to cross the border
Thou are near and in my heart
O SON OF MARY!

(ancient Scottish Song)

I prefer the song of mystery to the silence of the darkness. If I am wrong, I will sleep in peace without a care when my turn comes for the earth will have its portion.

Sorry, but I’m not really a fan of this article--my attention was lost among the myriad of extreme and irrelevant assumptions and analogies. The tone is condescending, and the text is that of someone trying too hard to sound “smart.” And the references--God, the references!--are utterly ridiculous. For example, the title of this article references Andrew Marvell’s classic poem “To His Coy Mistress.” The lines quoted--“The graves a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace“--are hardly appropriate, given the nature and scope of the topic being discussed. In Marvell’s poem, the narrator uses these lines in an attempt to coax his virginal lover into bed--kind of like a salesman. The speaker of this poem is basically saying “sleep with me now, before you’re too old, too ugly, or dead!” Though the lines by themselves do seem to add to the ideas portrayed in this article, the poem to which they refer, and the ideas that arise from said reference, are inappropriate, and arguably offensive.

I don’t have time to criticize the entire article at length--honestly, I’m still not finished complaining about the title! But a few other big problems are worth noting: first, the article is fraught with unwarranted assumptions: for example, the author observes that it is impossible to know whether Schiavo, during the last few weeks of her life, wanted to continue living; furthermore, Schiavo’s fifteen-year-old statements--saying she never wanted to live as a “vegetable“--are irrelevant, according to the author, because such statements tell us nothing about what she wanted while IN a vegetative state. From this, apparently, euthanasia is unjustified in the case of Terri Schiavo.

But, dear author, it’s important to be equally critical of your own criticism: given the principles you’ve provided, it is still unwarranted to assume that just because we cannot determine Schiavo’s preferences in a vegetative state, that euthanasia is therefore unjustifiable in her case. In other words, your principles give us reason to doubt the relevance of some of the evidence as to whether euthanasia is justifiable in Schiavo’s case. But your principles do not come close to proving that euthanasia is unjustifiable in her case--the flaw you make is one of reverse causation, a classic logical leap.

Furthermore, the author adds a flawed analogy to strengthen the above claims: “the offhand comments of a healthy young woman are about as relevant to the reality of her situation many years later as the dorm room musings of an inexperienced adolescent about the meaning of life.” Hmmm, the author seems to ignore a few significant differences between the examples (s)he compares: for starters, Schiavo’s statements refer directly to the situation she eventually faced: whether or not to live in a persistently vegetative state. The dorm room musings to which the author so playfully refers would only be relevant if the life of the adolescent who made those comments would eventually depend on them. The comparison seems absurd--which is a judgment the author hastily (and ironically) makes of so many other lines of reasoning.

Finally--and I’m seriously stopping after this!--, I scrolled to the bottom of the article, in hopes of finding a strong conclusion or summation to compensate for the article’s thoroughly irritating first half; but my hopes were aggravated--literally aggravated: my temperature rose nearly 350 degrees, burning all my homework and textbooks to ashes--yes, I‘m referring to the author’s inappropriate reference to Fahrenheit 451!

Sorry, but I think the author could have referenced a number of more suitable novels to warn of the dangers of government funded euthanasia. What the novel has in common with the author’s fear is a state that funds the destruction of a group of entities. But even this “commonality” seems generous, because the entities in the former (Fahrenheit 451) are books, and the entities in the latter (the author’s fear) are human beings. Moreover, I fail to see where the legalization of euthanasia strengthens the government or its powers--and the ills of government supremacy is one of most important lessons (arguably THE most important lesson) of Fahrenheit 451! If anything, the legalization of euthanasia would add another right to citizens--the right to decide not to live--by taking away the government‘s unchecked power to force life on, well, vegetables!

I feel ridiculous even pointing out that health care providers who practice euthanasia are not “state [employed]…angels of death.” And, don’t worry, so long as all citizens read Marvell and Bradbury as critically as the author has, the “angels of death” won’t practice medicine--they’ll stick to politics. Better that than burn books and sleep with virgins, I guess..

Respectfully,

Jon Piron

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