A Response to John's criticism...

Via my friend Nick's blog, I ventured over to John's blog. In addition to his comment below on my page, he posted on the Schiavo matter on his own, attempting to take me to task (sort of).

While he didn't for me, I will link to his blog so that you can decide if I am accurately portraying his views in this response.

First off, I should say that I appreciate that John took the time to read/respond to my posts. It's fairly obvious that he and I operate with entirely different lenses to the world, including our moral system. So in all seriousness, I appreciate that he extended the courtesy of responding to my thoughts given that he thinks, I gather, they are utterly devoid of meaning.

So now to begin:

In his comments on this page, John ties me into some sort of Axis with The Nation and FoxNews' Bill O'Reilly. He states:

"I feel like you, the Nation, and O'Reilly have all honed in on Schiavo's ability to feel pain, and then blamed it on a NYTimes conspiracy and a stronger foothold on a 'culture of death' (an obvious alliteration to abortion which I think you agree with me has a completely differently grounded set of arguments)."

If I am deciphering what he was actually trying to say (since I don't think he means to imply that my supposed 'cabal' is arguing that the NYTimes is the cause of Schiavo's ability to feel pain), then I think he is implying that I am singling out the NYTimes for promoting a 'culture of death,' as evident in their dealings with the Schiavo case.

This is simply a false attribution. I've never even mentioned the NY Times in any of my writings on Schiavo. His reference, I assume, is to my post entitled "It's hard to admit...". It should be fairly obvious that the references to the NY Times in my post are from an extended quote from Andy McCarthy of the National Review. McCarthy made claims regarding the NYTimes. I did not.

To the extent that I liked the piece I quoted from (and said so in the post, referring to it as "great"), it was in the context of his observations of a general trend among people to move on and forget about tragic circumstances. In truth, I actually didn't pick up on the anti-Times sentiment until I reread it later. My immediate thought was it was bizarre to single out the Times in such a regard.

In sum, John's observation is simply wrong: I'm not singling the Times out for anything.

Now regarding the notion of Schiavo feeling pain:

John is nice enough to provide a medical text from a Chicago-based hospital analyzing Persistent Vegetative States (PVS). I'll grant that the hospital certainly has more medical authority than I do to proclaim medical knowledge. But it would be quite an inductive fallacy to imply that one text can embody the entire spectrum of medical thought on a given topic. As I have repeatedly noted, there is disagreement among doctors at large (as well as Schiavo's attending physicians) over PVS cases, and to Schiavo's cognizance, inclusive of her ability to feel pain. I have also provided anecdotal evidence that at least one recovered victim of PVS has told of her ability to perceive pain during her ordeal. To this end, John's source is helpful, but it is merely another voice in a chorus of disagreement.

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Ok, now to my main point of contention with John's views, as presented in his blog post. It is two-fold.

First, he begins with "My two pennies worth for Terri Schiavo: I don't care.". Now, aside from the irony that he states this and then proceeds to write over 600 words analyzing the issue that he purportedly doesn't give a hoot about, it's a rather disgusting thought to throw around to so cavalierly. He doesn't care at all about a person dying after a terrible ordeal that lasted a decade? His reasoning? Well, apparently he is a utilitarian.

Indeed, further along in his blogpost, after once again pinning a quote of another person to me, he makes a passing reference to utilitarianism (in the context of euthanasia). I'll try not to get too bogged down in lingo, but the problem with utilitarian thought is that it falsely purports to get beyond any principle value in its advocacy. Yet when assigning a value-system with which to grade given options, it MUST rely on arbitrarily decided principles (be it hedonism or whathaveyou).

For example, let's say Option A results in the death of 100 people. Option B results in the death of 10 people. Utilitarianism, arguing with a "greater-good" principle, advocates either A or B, depending on the decided value that either it is either better or worse to kill more people. This in itself is a principle. This is the fundamental (self-negating) paradox of utilitarianism.

In reality, then, to advocate a utilitarian argument in the case of Schiavo (as John appears to (half-heartedly do) is merely to say that your guiding value for what life is worth saving does not include Terri. Again, that is his prerogative, but it precisely proves my initial argument that advocates of killing Schiavo do so by using an arbitrary value as to what is a "worthy" life.

But as I said, the utilitarian notion seemed only presented half-heartedly.

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The main thrust of John's argument revolves around priorities. John poses questions about whether we care more about a "white middle-class Christian American woman whose heart stopped because of her anorexic condition" than a series of humanitarian disasters around the world. The implication being that we're misplacing our outrage. Where to begin with this?

First, it's disgusting and pathetic that John would refer to Schiavo as being "anorexic." (And I should note I sincerely hope that he wasn't implying "Anorexia Nervosa," which is often described as merely "anorexia.") Since John likes internet health encyclopedia's, let me provide a definition of Anorexia from the Joint Center for Radiation Treatment at Harvard University:

Anorexia: "A loss of appetite."

Anorexia, then, has no relation to Terri Schiavo. Schiavo is being forcibly deprived of food. Does John seriously think that deprivation is tantamount to a refusal to eat? Are those Ethiopians -- who John implies we should care more about than Schiavo -- all "anorexic" as well because their barren surroundings resulted in epidemic starvation on a catastrophic level? Anorexia is a proactive word. It cannot be ascribed to individuals who are forced to starve to death by their surrounding situation. To do so is to blame the victim for their demise, which is contemptible.

But I want to get beyond mere language analysis. The fundamental fallacy of John's thinking is that by arguing that we should care more about the series of calamities that he described, he is endorsing a false dichotomy.

The simply fact is that whether or not one feels injustice is being served upon Schiavo has no relation whatsoever to any of the tragedies that John writes about. I can care BOTH about Schiavo AND victims of genocide the world over. John's argument, therefore is hollow.