Good points, Betty, However, "conservatiives" are boogeymen too, although not as
bad as "liberals"  What I'd like to see is the right to life be transformed into
the right not to be discriminated against because of disabilitity. Liberals and
conservatives still have a long way to go to understand disability issues.
Conservatives tend to be patronizing,  and want to protect us, whereas  liberals
tend to be the ones who think we have no business living.

Betty B wrote:

> I know I'm nervous.  Hitler and the Nazi influence is probably not a bad
> analogy either.  Take a look at Peter Singer.  He's in a position of great
> influence with potential power under the right administration.  Why do I say
> that?
>
> Harold Shapiro, the president of Princeton University, sat on a federally
> established bioethics committee as a Clinton appointee.  That was in between
> the two time periods that Peter Singer came to Princeton.  The second time
> Singer came was to accept a tenure position: The Ira W. DeCamp chair.
> Shapiro knew what he was getting.  Singer isn't teaching statistical analysis
> or random photon underwater basketweaving.  He's teaching bioethics.  He's
> teaching his theories, and one of his theories is that some disabled people
> aren't persons.
>
> Singer advocates in his book, Animal Liberation, that infants under the age
> of 28 days, as well as humans who are not self aware, should not be accorded
> the status of "persons," nor should they be entitled to life (primates are,
> however).  Moreover, he believes that parents who have infants with
> disabilities under the age of 28 days should be able to have their infants
> euthanized so that the family can have a normal child, thereby increasing the
> happiness of that family.
>
> "Dutch Minister 'Not Against' Suicide Pill
> Very old people who are sick of life should be allowed to kill themselves
> with a suicide pill, the Dutch health minister said in an interview."
>
> That is the headline and bio for an AOL article currently running.  The
> Netherlands just legalized euthanasia, although in one way or another, the
> Netherlands has tolerated euthanasia for the past two decades.
>
> The right-to-die movement is busy at work in America too, and I predict that
> this nation will see the legalization of euthanasia long before disabled
> people are regarded as equal.  Euthanasia is quietly tolerated now.  If that
> were not true, then Jack Kavorkian would have been convicted after the first
> time he gave assistance to someone who wanted to commit suicide.  He wasn't
> though, and went on to kill other people, including two who's disabilities
> were not life threatening, at least not at the time of their demise.
>
> The public has never said anything about those two people.  Why would they?
> They have been conditioned from the beginning of man's existence to believe
> that no one with a severe disability could logically want to live.  That's
> one of the reasons why so many of them patronizingly pat us on our precious
> little heads.  They really believe that we don't want to live, and
> congratulate us when we smile anyway.  That's beside the point though.  I
> will digress, as you know.
>
> The percentage of elderly people is increasing, and will continue to do so.
> Due to disability rights legislation, we are enjoying ever increasing
> visibility.  This is wonderful for elderly and disabled people, but we must
> be ever mindful that we are doing all of this in a society filled with those
> who believe in Darwin's survival of the fittest theory, and who have no
> apparent compunction about applying that theory to the human race.
>
> In my not-so-humble opinion, we'd better quit worrying about whether people
> call us "gimps" or "persons with disabilities," and start worrying about the
> people who want to kill us.  If you have a severe disability, and even if you
> don't, it's important for you to realize the implications of our increasing
> rates of survival, and increasing visibility, in a society that thinks we are
> its drain.
>
> I submit to you that Darwinism is synonymous with able body supremacy.
>
> None of that scares me nearly as much, however, as coming to a list like
> this, and asking for vocal support for the lives of conjoined twins, lives
> that someone said should have been terminated for the betterment of society,
> and not getting any.  That scares the hell out of me.
>
> I've heard a number of people say that Gore would have been the disability
> community's friend as President.  Personally, I don't think Gore is a bad
> guy.  But he would have been a lot more likely to support right-to-die
> legislation than Bush.  Additionally, and perhaps most immediately important,
> with a major government on this planet that still subscribes (as should now
> be obvious to the casual observer) to the maxim "Political power grows out of
> the barrel of a gun," I want a guy like Dick Cheney close at hand.  Again
> though, I digress (told ya I would).
>
> International politics notwithstanding (even though it very much is), I
> wanted to see one element that could serve to hurt us, albeit
> unintentionally, out of the loop.  That is why I supported George W. Bush.  I
> don't care for him, but for now I think he is the best person of the two to
> have in the White House.  For disability rights purposes, I don't want the
> party that loves Harold Shapiro -- who loves Peter Singer -- to be in power.
> That, in conjunction with these other elements I have mentioned, might have
> been a more potentially dangerous cocktail than some may realize.
>
> Moreover, we find the environmentalist movement firmly rooted in the
> Democratic party.  Where can we find more "Darwinettes" than in the
> environmentalist movement?  Again I mention the survival of the fittest
> theory.  Those people scare me, because they do not realize how much
> influence Peter Singer has already had on the way they think.  If you go to
> Amazon.com, and search "Animal Liberation," you will see that the reviews on
> the first page give laud and praise to Singer, all except one, who targeted
> Singer's sanction of infanticide and euthanasia.  The first review calls his
> book the most important of the 20th century, and shares how it will change
> the way people think about animal rights.
>
> It has already done more than that.  Singer has been influencing the
> environmentalist movement for a long time.  I haven't the proof to offer, but
> I have heard that PETA based the tenets of their organization on Singer's
> book, Animal Liberation.  If you pay close attention to that Amazon.com
> reviews, you will see that the rave reviews on the first page make no mention
> of infanticide or euthanasia.  They didn't miss reading about that, they just
> missed putting it in the forefront of their thinking.
>
> The point I am making is that when someone says some among us should die, it
> is critically important that we not be silent.  It is not sufficient in a
> society such as this to complain only amongst ourselves.
>
> Someone once told me that many disabled people were afraid to speak up for
> fear of what they may lose -- for fear of repercussion.  Is that not the
> moment of truth for any human being?
>
> Respectfully submitted,
> Betty Alfred