Some years back there was a study that found a high percentage of Americans could not name their federal senators or congressman. I remember being appalled. - - Today, I have no idea who my senators or congressman currently are, nor do I care to know. And am a bit sorry I do know who the sitting president is.
Which is apparently a long way indeed from my days right out of school working on the hill in DC or as press and pro-life liaison on the federal congressional campaign trail. But then again, when I walked away from politics I also walked away wiser for wear and cynical of the process, and vowed if I ever returned I would only work for causes and amendments because those couldn't demand of me to cut the truth with a razor's edge as was typical when talking to delegates, the press, or whoever.
Today, following federal politics has less appeal to me than following the weather channel, (not withstanding I don’t have a tv to follow with), because while I can’t change the weather either, I can at least prepare myself for it’s hailstorms and bitter winds.
Anti-war.com used to be my homepage back when I used to spend far too much time arguing online against those defending US aggression, a past time I quit after the last US invasion of Iraq. Soon afterward I quit Anti-war.com as my homepage, and soon after that began to read the web page only on occasion. Am I any the worse off for it? Not really.
Of course every once in a while a useful story will come up as a bellwether signifying a further slip down the slippery slope. Such as the recent story of the all girl combat squad in Afghanistan, or the even more recent story of the prisoner who was given parole because she donated a kidney. But we already knew those would come, just as we know the draft for our daughters into combat will come. And forced donations of body parts will come. “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” Nor can we change the wind.
Isn't organ transplants a form of direct cannibalism?
ReplyDeleteSigh, I, too, am weary with cynicism. I only read Lew Rockwell occasionally when I used to devour it.
I spend more time these days on Facebook. I feel better afterwards.
Dean May writes : "Isn't organ transplants a form of direct cannibalism"
ReplyDeleteThat's an interesting observation. If cannibalism is the consumption of human flesh, and organ transplanting is in turn a type of consumption, then it would follow that organ transplants are a form of cannibalism.
Which in turn would not make it necessarily immoral since a man can eat a dead man in order to preserve his life because preservation of life is a higher good. But cannibalism would be the evil committed in the unjust taking and using of another man's flesh.