Several sources with dozens of combined years of political experience on campus agreed over beers last week: nothing gets the crazies riled up anymore save a good basketball game.
Chancellor Wiley wrote the student body Monday, pressing the typically hot button of diversity with such bright prose as to make Joe Student feel warm and fuzzy inside. The situation in Iraq is cautiously improving without a peep of acknowledgment on campus. PACE is holding meetings and ASM is holding elections solely to feel consequential. All is right with the world.
Setting Austin King’s recent comment that Madison isn’t the place for anyone who takes stock in the New Testament aside, the local news and political landscape is terribly placid amid the most sensational event to intersect the spheres of media, philosophy, law and politics since Elian Gonzalez.
The topic of many an eavesdropped side conversation on campus this week, Terri Schiavo’s story is so saturated by media attention it doesn’t warrant retelling. Scribblers of all stripes have engaged in struggles of one-up-manships for a new angle (or just a fresh headline) so vociferous no one can return to the humdrum of Social Security without chiming in. Why the obsession? For the first time in recent memory, a story is dominating American (and world) headlines for a lengthy period focusing on protest and outrage of the political right.
Congressional Republicans voted overwhelmingly last week to exercise a dubious injection of federal authority into the case, convening an emergency session over Easter recess. This is no small event. Wars tend to wait for the fish to stop biting or the last putt to drop before their day on Capitol Hill.
Ministers across the nation remembered Terri Schiavo in their Easter sermons this year, and countless families prayed for her health and safety. The issue has most inflamed those who would insert the feeding tube without hesitation, were they crowned king. Polls indicate many more Americans wish simply to avert their eyes.
Why, then, has the left been comfortable averting theirs? Why hasn’t Madison seen a single event on campus in support of Michael Schiavo and Terri’s “right to die?” Why isn’t Austin King leading the charge up Library Mall? Where is the ASM resolution? Why were so many Congressional Democrats content to stay out of the spotlight for the first time … well, ever?
Why are Susan Estrich, Gloria Steinem and other glitterati of the women’s movement not out challenging Michael Schiavo’s standing as the sole arbiter of his estranged wife’s fate? Is this not an example of masculine dominance worthy of shun and shame by those who would insist a man exercising his sovereign will over his enfeebled and estranged wife to be a crisis of law of the highest magnitude? With national media all too willing to include this message in its cacophony, where is the outrage? Terri Schiavo’s name doesn’t register on a search of the National Organization for Women’s website, news about the danger of a Republican filibuster on judges rule the day instead. Women’s advocacy groups haven’t been this quiet since Monica Lewinsky was sexually exploited by some powerful white male.
The mum nature with which the organized left handled this issue reveals the innate contradictions that slowly pushed conservatives and Republicans to power at many electoral levels. The party of Howard Dean, if one can indeed characterize a single pole that supports its tent, holds a general distaste (or at least discomfort) for the tenets of social and religious conservatism, especially among elites and grassroots activists.
Their answers to questions of life and death inevitably turn into questions of personal freedom and libertarian values. “It’s my body, not the government’s” holds a fundamental appeal that buoys opinion against legislation like that which Congress passed last week. “Terri’s Law” isn’t unpopular simply because it was a gross overreach of federalism. It is unpopular because the folks don’t want Congress in their hospital rooms. Americans value liberties and they value life. In this instance, liberty is the easier choice.
Conscience and circumstances may tell us otherwise this time. Terri Schiavo’s situation has little to do with liberty or personal choice, simply because she doesn’t have either. Her case is sensational because it cuts through the ambiguity on the political argument over “life” in a very literal and polarizing sense.
The left successfully ducked the crux of the issue and think they’ve scored a victory. It’s hard to yell from the rooftops about pulling feeding tubes or performing abortions. Frame the question about “choice” and make it palatable to the electorate. Stand on the wrong side of an issue of life and death, though, and stay the heck away from a TV camera.
Those yelling from the rooftops for life in Florida could still be heard loud and clear in public and in the media after all the court battles have been settled. The question for them was one of faith and principle and had little to do with legal standing, extensions of federalism or questions of choice. Just life and death. Does not ultimate victory stand on the side of willing vigilance amid towering circumstances? They wouldn’t go home or stand quietly. Bless them for it. They may have sparked a trend.
Eric B. Cullen ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in history.
