"his "Life at all cost" mentality seems to be a fairly prevalant mentality in our society"

It's actually not all that prevalent. It's just that the proponents of that idea are very vocal. All the recent polls show that the majority (by 15-20%) of Americans think the courts have ruled correctly on the Schiavo case.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

"The law should always be on the side of "Life""


I think if people truly believed this:

There would be speed limits of 25mph everywhere including freeways, but this would cut into time and money so it isn't done. People would actually drive the speed limits if they believed that "Life" was so important. Everyone would be required to drive tanks or volvos.

Adventure sports wouldn't be allowed becuase they are "dangerous" to that precious life. Anything with a minimum of risk would not be allowed becuase "life" is so precious.

We would have universal health care, not just for a single case in FL but for every crack hoe and junky walking our streets today. Not just health care, but food and shelter for our friends on the street.

We put a value on "life" in so many many things in our society, funny how if you look at most of examples it would be the right wing wacked out republicans who would be arguing against them in the name of personal responsibility, personal rights to choose to be an idiot, and the value of the free market.

Ya dang right I want "life" protected, as long as it doesn't inconvience me.

"We put a value on "life" in so many many things in our society..."

I think you hit on something here that I was shooting at but probably didn't splain' so well.

Seems that in certain instances, dying of cancer, life support, vegitative state etc etc we are willing to "pull out all the stops" in order to "Save a life".

However each of us on a daily basis put ourselves at, often unnessecary, risk. Why is it that life seems to "precious" as it's about to end but we give it little reguard as we travel thru it on a daily basis?

My point here is that I think we are hitting upon something other than "life at all cost". We don't try and save the lung cancer patient to try and save a life, that could have been done much easier and better by never smoking. Seems to me that there is some other "motivition" there.

I think we have come to a cross roads in our society. A cross road that a desicion will be made on the true value of a human life. Certainly the price is not infinite and certainly it is worth more than box of peanuts, but what is it a human life worth? Should we be prolonging life despite cost and suffering? If so why? If not how do we determine the "line in the sand" that a life is worth?

I hate to sound calculating...ok no I don't, but a human life is only worth "X". Certain conditions raise and lower that value. Our society already plays this game but are unwilling to admit it.

~Matt

The value of life is relative and dynamic. I have seen it be very valuable, and then also treated as disposable. Different cultures view it differently. In some societies, ending a life is a viable, acceptable way of moderating circumstances. In others it is the highest crime.

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Tom Demerly
The Tri Shop.com

I would agree as stated in another post. However I wonder how many would agree and even more complex how many are willing to "put a price" on life.

Without doubt our society makes these desicions on a daily basis but most faced with question back away from admitting it.

My wife and I were discussing something along the lines a couple days ago. She used to work in the mental health field and had a couple cases "ruled as suicide" that were likely not. I think this sort of thing happens regularly as it's "easier" and the value of this particular life is not so great.

I personally have no problem with the value of life being reltive and dynamic. I do wonder how, as a society, how we will ever determine the ground rules for determining teh value. I also wonder how long it will be before we even breech the subject.

~Matt

[reply]I have seen it be very valuable, and then also treated as disposable. .[/reply]

Well, that's quite true, isn't it? Our soldiers, whom protect us and our prosperity and freedom and all that are considered disposable, while someone in Florida, who can no longer provide any contribution to society is highly valuable (at least in the minds of some very vocal people).

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Proud member of FISHTWITCH: doing a bit more than fish exercise now.

Nice strawman argument.

"Nice strawman argument. "

Huh?

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

Hey.. take it to the Lavende..... nevermind

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Proud member of FISHTWITCH: doing a bit more than fish exercise now.

I'm not aware of anyone that considers anyone in our military to be disposable. If this were the case, then we would not be doing our best to provide them with the best equipment and support that is possible and there would not be controversy when we, as human being, fail at accomplishing this end. That they do a job that is sometimes extraordinarily dangerous, but unfortunately necessary, does not mean they are considered disposable. It is why they, like police and firemen, are often considered heros.

I think the point is that the same people who will argue that every life is sacred, and we should always err on the side of "life", will also be perfectly willing to send young men and women into war. Either the lives are sacred and should be preserved, or not.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

Oh, you mean like body armor for all US personnel?

"I think that we generally use our military in situations where we believe that their sacrifices will make the world a safer and better place. For example, the 400,000 Americans that lost their lives in the Second World War helped save the world from being a place where far more people would have been slaughtered by totalitarian butchers. Simply surrendering to the Japanese and Germans would probably have cost far more American lives and certainly would have cost far more lives in Asia and Europe."

Except these same people are against stem cell research which is also meant to make the world a better and safer place.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

The point is that we didn't do "our best" - that would have been to provide the armor from the beginning, or certainly at the first sign that the troops were not propertly provisioned. Instead, Bush & Co. sent in too few troops, without proper armor, for an unjustified war based on fabrications and outright lies. It's hard to try and reconcile that with the whole "culture of life" that Bush supposedly values.

I'm pretty much in agreement with you. The controversy about expendability ties in with your (or anyone's) opinion of why we're there. If it's about oil, then one might think that's a sad and poor reason to risk a soldier's life. If it's liberating a country, well then, maybe, if you feel the country and the world (because it shouldn't be just us that benefits - that'd be greed, wouldn't it?) will benefit by that liberation. If the reason we're there keeps changing, then there's some credibility issues to deal with and then it's hard to justify the risk to a soldier's life.

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Proud member of FISHTWITCH: doing a bit more than fish exercise now.

According to your theory, President Bush lied about their being WMD in Iraq. If you are right and he was lying, then he knew that there were not any WMD there. Why, then, didn't he just have someone plant some WMD there? Wouldn't the right wing conspiracy be vast enough to accomplish that end?

Not being a member of the vast right-wing conspiracy, I can't say how their decisions are made. But, it would seem to me, that having Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, and Wolfowitz, etc, lie and cherry pick the intelligence is one thing; getting people on the ground to plant and then "find" the WMDs would be quite another, more difficult, lie, with much greater risk of getting caught.

We keep our cells separate so I really don't know how vast conspiracy is and the WMDs are in a totally separate part of the conspiracy from my part, but I'm sure we could do something as simple as plant a few WMDs.

By the way, were President Clinton, Secretary of State Albright and Senator Levin also lying when they said that Iraq had WMDs in 1998? Are they part of the vast right wing conspiracy? Or were they just duped by the neocons into saying this?

"By the way, were President Clinton, Secretary of State Albright and Senator Levin also lying when they said that Iraq had WMDs in 1998? Are they part of the vast right wing conspiracy? Or were they just duped by the neocons into saying this?"

Are you really trying to justiy going into Iraq based on the fact that the previous President thought there were WMDs in Iraq several years earlier? I personally think we should have gone into Iraq. But the WMD thing has proved a collosal mistake, whatever the cause.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

Don't you think there's a difference between simply stating that a country has WMDs, and sending 130,000 troops into battle based on that statement? If Clinton had invaded Iraq based on the existence of WMDs, like Bush did, your comparison might be valid.

No, I was only pointing out that everyone, including very prominent Democrats, thought that Iraq was at least trying very hard to develop WMDs. As a result, it is just absurd to suggest that President Bush and his administration were lying about them. Mistaken, yes, but so was just about everyone else.

The usual failure of intelligence is that we don't realize that the bad guys are as close to doing something like have fully functioning WMDs as they are. Two good examples of this would be Iraq in 1991 and Libya in 2004.