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Wednesday, June 27, 1990 / University. Daily Kansan
Opinion
High Court ruling
Desires of family, friends should be respected ahead of the government's in euthanasia cases
F or the Cruzan family, there is no higher court they can appeal to; they are
court they can appeal to; they are forced to watch their daughter, Nancy, live off a feeding tube, in a vegetative state, for possibly many years to come. They have already seen her lay in a coma for more than seven years and it, understandably, has been painful for them.
What more can they do? The U.S. Supreme Court ruled they must keep Nancy's feeding tube attached, concluding that a state's interest in life is more important than a family's interest in letting a member die peacefully and with dignity.
But what is the state's interest in preserving
the life of someone who doctors say has no hope of recovery? What is the state's interest in Nancy Cruzan, among others? How can the state claim to know what's best for someone "the state" never met?
Only family and friends can remember what someone was like before a devastating and totally debilitating accident. The state cannot.
To get a little callous, the state could spend its money more wisely and at the same time allow the Cruzans to put their daughter's life, if that is what it could be called now, to an end the way they say she would have wanted it. They knew her best.
The editorial board
ANC leader not a militant
Apartheid, unfair government justification for Mandela's fight
P president Bush and his band of baboons have done it again — embarrassed the war — "we saw?" you ask. Nothing, obviously.
"I'm appalled that this man has been welcomed here so ecstatically. This man's appearance in the halls of this butcher's shop was an admission and this body of Congress," said one California Republican senator.
Who was he referring to? No, not Dan Quayle. He was referring to one of the most intelligent men to appear in Congress in a long time.
But a handful of Congressmen are not simply disturbed by the intelligence of African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela. They are disturbed because of his advocating and initiating the use of violence in the struggle against anarchist.
Pardon me, but isn't this the same Congress that was aroused to an estatic state over the violent capture of Manuel Noriega? A capture that, according to Catholic church officials in Panama, left thousands of civilians dead? A capture in which we dropped a bomb every two minutes for 13 hours? And we did all that for one man who is an alleged dictator and drug king.
David Hull
By looking at the amount of money our Congressmen spend every year on defense, I would agree that it is to be such peace-loving people.
Nevertheless, they are pointing
Of course some will argue, quite ignorantly, that Mandela and the ANC could have continued the peaceful protests. I suppose so, but Mandela had tried that for 20 years and those peaceful protections had been crushed by government violence all too often.
Guest columnist
But even in opting to use violence, the ANC used caution and had a tremendous regard for human life. This is evident since the form of violence they decided upon, sabotage, involved minimal danger to humans in the hands of an enemy or a destroy power plants, interfere with railway communications and other actions along those lines.
the finger at Mandela. But can it be simply because of his advocacy of violence? No. But couple that with his intelligence and it is easy to see why Bush and a handful of boxes are offended.
It was only after Mandela was
Mandela, you see, used unconventional wisdom, in the eyes of Congress anyway, before he called for the use of violence to stop the riots, thought before he acted. And violence was a last resort to the ANC and him.
jailed on counts of sabotage that the ANC scaled up its strategy to include guerrilla warfare, complete with military training. And that, considering the alternative of mass, anarchical and violent uprisings by the people, was the only sane option.
There is an old expression that says people should not comment on another person's situation until they have walked a mile in his or her shoes. I think that saying fits here.
Would these idios on Capitol Hill accuse the World War II allied forces of using unnecessary violence to conquer an oppressive empire? No, South Africa is no less a reality and is no less oppressive.
Accusing Mandela of not being a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., is unfitting and insulting. Mandela is not a militant no matter how much the government tries to paint him as one. Mandela and the ANC did not choose to implement violence after more than 20 years of nonviolent struggle. Rather, it was a choice forced upon them by governmental reaction to their nonviolent struggle — a reaction that meant continually crushing, by naked force, peaceful men and women struggling to be free in their own land.
David Hull is a Wichita sophomore majoring in journalism and Soviet and East European Studies.
The defense of civil liberties is core of Creamer's crusade
In the midst of what has so often been referred to as the information age, I am constantly amazed at how so many people fail to comprehend the media arts of such a society, and in doing so, remarkably uninformed.
Of course, being arrogant is a highly valued freedom by many Americans - and who am I to tell them what they can and cannot enjoy? They are completely free to lead superficial lives, let others control their destinies, and even to flaunt their arrogance for all to see. Case in point: the gentleman who wrote the column about Mark Creainer which appeared adjacent to mine in last week's Kansan.
I won't criticize Mr. David Weldner's pathetic pseudo-satire about what Capitol Hill might be like if everyone there were to get high. Even though that alone demonstrated that he doesn't understand the point of Creamer's protest, it is, after all, his opinion, and he has a right to preach it, pathetic as it may be. What really bothered me is the
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"The tantalizing sight of an orange brought to an end the hunger strike for marijana legislation," Mr. Weidner writes. Let's see now . . . I would just hate to use the word liar in print . . . how about misinformed? You see, at the very same candlelight vigil which Mr. Weidner was kind enough to mention briefly in the midst of his narrow-minded literary crusade, Creamer's wife, Dale, began a hunger chain on behalf of her husband: a list of people who agreed to fast for one day each in order to continue making a public statement while at the same time hoping to prevent an idealistic man from dying in a struggle which might be solved by other means. The faster of the day is recognizable by a certain liberty
way he mishandled the facts
M. Bennett Cohn
Guest columnist
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It is probably for this very reason, however, that Creamer sees fit to put up such a struggle. The greatest losses of personal freedom are incurred little by little, over a long period of time. They are brought on too slowly and far apart to be attacked as a group, and when some courageous individual decides to battle one of them on an individual basis, his effort appears to be quixotic and absurd.
Some seem to sneer at what Creamer is doing, wondering why, in a country with so many problems, a man would put this much energy into fighting for a cause which seems to have so little relative importance.
memorial medallion worn around his or her neck - and, as of the writing of this little essay, the chain is still going. I know that because, as I type, I wear that same medallion around my own neck.
> M. Bennett Cohn is a Prairie Village sophomore with an undecided major.
And yet, if such struggles are never taken up, we risk the gradual erosion of our civil liberties. Just as minor tax increases may seem unworthy of heated debate on an individual basis, but end up being much more menacing after Congress has passed them, it is essential to have freedom to decide what substances we put into our own bodies is much more than a drug war issue; it represents exactly how much we, the citizena of this country, are willing to allow the government to interfere in our lives. To attempt to trivialize the fight for the restoration of any civil liberty, be it smoking marijuana, burning the flag, or keeping controversial books from being published in a safe and German, where the government established its brutal control party by taking away such liberties one at a time.
The wisdom of Yogi Berra applies to every public issue
In the flag flap, one elicite of choice is the observation that free speech does not protect somebody who shouts fire in a crowded theater.
another is the warning that to amand the Bill of Rights would set the government on a slippery slope toward censoring dissent.
One is pro, one is con, both were uttered again and as again as the House debated and rejected a constitutional amendment against flag desecration. After a full year of political argument, there isn't anything to be said that hasn't been said before, more than once.
For the record, the crowded theater argument is a slightly amended version of a 1919 observation by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
"The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic." Holmes wrote. Advocates of the constitutional amendment, President Bush among them, cited that argument in varied versions to contend that there are limits to free speech and that one of them should ban flat burning.
The other side — the winning side — said any tinkering with the First Amendment would erode freedoms too precious to put at risk, and make it easier to act against the next set of unpopular dissenters. They said an amendment now could lead to such a skid toward censorship later.
"I also went to law school and I know all about the slight of hand, slippery slope arguments like this one," said Sen. Robert Dole, R-Kan, the minority leader, who advocates
Walter R.
Mears
Syndicated
columnist
the amendment. He said he didn't buy the argument as a law student and doesn't buy it now.
Rep. Robert Michel, R-Ill., the House GOP leader, complained that opponents "tell us our amendment is a foot in the door or a slippery slope and all the other clichés they can think of."
Deja vu.
Degra
"You tell the hours of talk, the flag debate hasn't produced major-league cliche. Maybe that's because nobody figured out a way to quote Yogi Berra on this one. The Hall of Fame Nankee catcher, later a manager, a 'nə senior baseball adviser to the Houston Astros, is being quoted by politicians on most everything else.
Budget, taxes, arms negotiation trades, trade talks. Berral's sometimes fractured adages are turning up regularly.
"It was like what Vogi Berra said, 'deja vu all over again.'" President Bush said a while back, when he visited his old Republican headquarters.
in a more scholarly mode, arms negotiator Richard Burt wrote early this month that "Yogi Berra's phrase, 'deja vu all over again,' best describes the current controversy surrounding the strategic arms
reduction talks."
reduction in costs.
"Like Yogi Berra said, when you reach the crossroads, take it," Rep. Leon Panetta, D-Calif., chairman of the House Budget Committee, said the other day in urging that the budget negotiations get rolling toward a solution.
"It's never over, as Yogi Berra said, until it's over," a Republican congressman from Illinois observed as he promised to keep pushing for more federal funds for a project back in his district.
Secretary of Commerce Robert Mosbacher, sending an aide to check on South Korean trade practices, reminded him of Berra's counsel: "You can observe a lot just by watching."
An expert on Soviet affairs said almost anything could happen in the political upheavals there. "To quote Yogi Berra," said Michael Mandelbaum of the Council of Foreign Affairs, that if anything dangerous, especially ones about the future. He would have made a good Sovietologist."
"He said, 'well, we made the wrong mistakes.' And I expect in this job I'll make plenty of mistakes, but I don't want to make the wrong mistakes." The flag debate could have used
Explaining his cautious policy toward Moscow on Lithuanian independence last spring, President Bush said. "I love the old expression of Yogi Berra's - you know - 'what happened to the Mets, Yogi?'
The flag debate could have used some Vogt.
> Walter R. Mears is a vice president, and columnist for the Associated Press.
Those super-intellects of the University of Michigan are finally getting down to what's important in academic life. They're debating the delicate issue of what to call a first-year college student.
Other Voices
in the chauvinistic days of yore,
when masculinity rippled through
the language like Arnold Schwarzenegger's peccs and biceps, there was a "man" implied in too many words, "Freshman" is such a word.
It refers to both male and female students. Why, then, have genera-
tions tagged a "man" onto "Fresh,"
thus denigrate female fresh?
That has no doubt been due to the lack of a more proper term. And that's what prompted the UM's University Record, a faculty and staff newspaper, to ask readers for their ideas. They came up with some good
It is manifest to us that many of those who dwell in the manse of academia must be emancipated. Down with gender mania! Let this linguistic manhole be plugged, if necessary, by a writ of mandum! Let every man of letters be shorn of the too-manifold mannings of the university nomenisms! Indeed, let Freshman be banished from the Mother Tongue!
And all the people said — "Amen!"
■ From the Jackson (Mich.) Citizen
Patriot, June 18.
ones: Rookie, Probationer, Tender-foot, Neophyte, Firsty, Alphamore. But the favorite was Freshmore.
Being in Detroit during a championship season is a little like being in Rome back when they fed Christians to the lions. Only this time, it's sports
fans.
tails.
In the aftermath of the Detroit Pistons' repeat as champions of the National Basketball Association, several people died in the Motor City when fans fled into the streets, celebrating the Pistons' victory over the Portland Trailblazers. . . .
There were cars plowing into pedestrians, a shooting, a fatality during a street celebration in a southern suburb—and someone fell off a roof and was critically injured. Deplio blame it on adherence.
But that's too easy. Sports in the United States, more than ever, have become excuses for excess.
It's a frightening aspect of spectator sports in the United States and around the world.
From the Milwaukee Sentinel, June 16.
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