Political Games - Where the fuck’s the reset button?

Following the first execution in Connecticut in 45 years, Athenae has this to say about the so-called “Culture of Life”:

How can I compare a convicted killer to Terri Schaivo, by all accounts a nice girl who did nothing wrong? Isn’t that false, unfair, asymmetrical?

But, culture of life, they said, during the long month or so when all we did was talk and talk and talk about Terri Schaivo. It’s about valuing life, it’s that simple. Life. Life. Life. Just life. No matter what kind, no matter of what quality, no matter the patient’s will or that of her kin. We value life. We err on the side of it. We want life.

Michael Ross led, by all accounts, a vile and reprehensible life. A life, however. A life. On which side did we err in his case?

In fact it’s the idea, the assumption of innocence we truly value, not life. It’s the innocence we confer upon embryos as we condemn their mothers for being poor or scared or desperate, it’s the innocence we confer upon the old and the sick and the persistently vegetative, not for a moment knowing a single thing about their lives. It’s the innocence that allows us to stare at an underpass stain that looks like the Virgin Mary, and walk past a homeless man to do so, without so much as a backward glance. Because we know, don’t we, who deserve that culture of life and who doesn’t. We know who deserves a tax break for making a million and who gets his panhandling cup shoved away because, after all, he’ll just spend it on booze. We know what others’ lives are like, and we know who deserves our time and attention and news conferences and prayer vigils, our unsolicited advice, our human compassion, our love.

We wailed and gnashed our teeth over Terri Schaivo and we ignored Michael Ross because we know who deserves to live and who deserves to die.

All emphasis/italics mine. Go read the rest.

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