Is Sarah Palin crazy?

American Thinker ^ | 9-6-09 | Howard Lurie

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September 06, 2009

Is Sarah Palin crazy?

By Howard Lurie

Is Sarah Palin crazy?  Was she out of her mind when she implied that the Obama health care bill was going to create a "death panel" that would encourage the elderly to check out early if their illness or infirmity was draining too many dollars from the system?

Sure, there is a provision in the bill for end-of-life counseling by doctors, but it does not establish "death panels."  And yes, it does call for explanations of orders regarding life sustaining treatments, and why such orders might be beneficial to the individual and the individual's family, but there is no language in the bill mandating the individual's death.

Of course, as we have learned, the absence of specific language in the Constitution or a statute doesn't mean that something isn't there.  There is no language in the Constitution guaranteeing a right to abortion, but that didn't stop the Supreme Court from concluding that such a right exists.  The right to an abortion arose out of the right of privacy that also lacks any textual support in the Constitution.

A corollary concept is that specific language in the Constitution prohibiting something doesn't mean that it is actually prohibited.  The Constitution clearly and specifically declares that no Senator can be appointed to an office in the United States if the salary for that office was increased during the term for which the Senator was elected.  The salary of the Secretary of State was increased during the term of Senator Hillary Clinton.  Nonetheless, she was appointed and confirmed by the Senate to that office.

We have also seen that despite the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection of the law, a compelling state interest can exist that renders unequal treatment permissible.  An elite state law school's desire for a racially diverse student body was held by the Supreme Court to permit the law school to treat white applicants less favorably than non-white applicants.  The Court deferred to the law school's judgment that diversity was a compelling state interest.

If the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is subordinate to "a compelling state interest," one could reasonably fear that the Amendment's guarantee that no person should be deprived "life, liberty, or property" without due process of law is likewise subordinate to "a compelling state interest."  Arguably, the preservation of dwindling government health care dollars is "a compelling state interest."

Before dismissing the above argument as ludicrous, I hasten to remind the reader that it was not too long ago that, in the interest of the greater good, states were forcibly sterilizing the mentally retarded.  "It is better for all the world" said the eminent jurist Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. speaking for the Supreme Court in Buck v. Bell (1927), if "society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.  The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes.  Three generations of imbeciles is enough."

In 1932, the Public Health Service, working with the Tuskegee Institute, began a study of untreated syphilis in black males.  The study began with 399 black men with syphilis.  The men were falsely told that they were going to be treated, but they were never given the proper treatment to cure their illness.  Even in 1947 when penicillin became the drug of choice for syphilis, it was not offered to the men.  The study went on for 40 years, but the men were never given adequate treatment for their disease.  Despite the Hippocratic Oath that doctors supposedly take to "do no harm," a number of doctors participated in the study in the interest of medical research. 

Today, over one million abortions a year are performed.  This deliberate killing takes place with the sanction of the highest court of our land, and with the approval of our President.  These abortions are to prevent the birth of unwanted children who might become a financial burden for their mothers, families, or society.  Many of these abortions are paid for by taxpayers through agencies of our federal and state governments.

If the burden of the unwanted justifies their extermination prior to birth, it is not unreasonable to wonder whether the burden of the unwanted ill and infirm elderly would constitute a justification for their early exit from this world.  Will some number of ill and infirm aged be "enough"?

There are but a few steps between government mandated end-of-life counseling, and the "better for all the world" ending of life by government mandates. 

Sarah Palin is not crazy.

Howard Lurie is emeritus professor, School of Law, Villanova University, Villanova, Pennsylvania. Contact him at hlurie1@inbox.com. 

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/09/is_sarah_palin_crazy.html at September 06, 2009 - 09:22:48 PM EDT

[WVKayaker]

[new cruelty]

Read more of the article. He poses the initial question to draw in the opposition, who happen to think Sarah Palin is crazy, and after citing instances where the government has done the very thing that Palin has warned us against. He then concludes that Palin is not crazy.

[Congressman Billybob]

The "Standards of Care" Committee is NOT in the proposed health care bills. It has already been passed into law in the original Stimulus Bill. Like similar Committees in English and Canadian laws, these Committees set levels of approved care which deny care to the elderly, the disabled, and other disfavored people.

The word death is never used. But in some cases, that is the necessary consequence.

Congressman Billybob

Latest article, "Birth of a New Party"

"Ben Franklin will be in D.C., speaking and dressed this way."

[Terpfen]

Which is well and good, but it’s not what I’m talking about.

When Palin made her death panels post, her justification was that the combination of mandatory end of life counseling plus the creation of a health choices commissioner who unilaterally decides who will get what benefits equals a death panel, as in some sort of body that will decide that people are not worth caring for and must be abandoned by the system.

So when the author bashes Palin by saying there’s nothing in the part about mandatory end of life care that establishes a death panel, and then goes on to say that governments make things up, he misses the freakin’ point, to put it charitably. They don’t have to make anything up, because it’s already in the damn bill.

[Terpfen]

Exactly right, the foundation for this was laid in the porkulus. But that’s not what’s being specifically referred to here. Read my post 21.

[Terpfen]

I’m sorry, post 24, not 21.

[RichInOC]

She’s saner than a lot of the people calling her crazy.

[smoothsailing]

Crazy? She defeated the bill only using facebook. What a maroon.

Catchy title, wasn't it? :-)

[carolina71]

I agree with youe post !

and, to the person who asked if I read it all the way through, no, I didn’t but I did read enough.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

Indirectly, he pointed out something that the medical community has tap danced around for years. The abandonment of the Hippocratic oath, or its debasement to an empty ritual, devoid of meaning.

Since the time of the fictional Dr. Frankenstein, medical ethics has been under attack. Today, a doctor will not be condemned for inhumanity and violating the cardinal rules of life, but be honored by his peers for breaching ethics in such an interesting way. Relativistic ethics on a par with journalistic ethics, meaning no ethics.

While the public are still shocked and horrified by the medical experiments conducted by the Nazis and Imperial Japanese war machine, or the Tuskegee experiment, the medical community is not. Unconcerned with life, and humanity, they hide behind science as justification for any barbarity.

For this reason, it is a reasonable question to ask if doctors are any longer able or willing to police their own ethics, or if a public agency should be able to intervene in their practices and tell them to discontinue a practice or experiment, because it has passed the boundaries the public is willing to tolerate.

[Paladin2]

Is Sarah Palin crazy?"

Like the fox (that she is).

Sarah's playing checkers while 0be's losing big time at chess.

[meyer]

You’re painting with way too broad a brush.

[freedumb2003]

I question whether or not the author has actually read Palin's post on Facebook.

Read the whole article. It clearly is saying that the lack of a direct link doesn't mean one is not or can not be implied.

They are defending her.

[ZULU]

If she is crazy, so is Steve Marlsburg and NUMEROUS other conservative analysts who have stated the same thing.

The American Thinker needs a good laxative to clear his brains out.

[smoothsailing]

It certainly is, and the title is a masterstroke! :)

[crazydad]

For god sakes I am a Phlebotomist and I took the Hipocratic oath and I follow it to a tee every day... Now an abortion doctor in my opinion can’t be considered a doctor due to him breaking his Hipacratic oath.

[new cruelty]

The first four sentences (the parts you likely disagree with) are there to draw in those that think Palin is crazy.

The writer gets to his point by the first sentence of the third paragraph - Of course, as we have learned, the absence of specific language in the Constitution or a statute doesn't mean that something isn't there.

The remainder of the article is in strong support of Palin's stance that the suggestion of "death panels" is not ludicrous.

[Deagle]

Like a fox... and just she is one. Brains, looks, and political acumen. That leaves the left out in the cold and screaming their heads off...heh.

[Terpfen]

Read the whole article.

Read my post 24.

[Tempest]

I like the efficiency of private insurance companies better. whenever they think that their bottom line is being threatened they'll just cancel the patients policy.

You see no panel needed, just a faceless bean-counter deciding your fate.