When Sarah Palin talked about the \u201cdeath panel\u201d<\/strong> provisions residing within the Obamacare bill she was excoriated in the press and by the left for her inelegant and un-nuanced language, and \u2013because she is the left\u2019s Emmanuel Goldstein-in-training \u2013 for also being stupid and wrong, and a hick.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the Senate Finance Committee quietly scrapped the provision<\/a> to which Palin was referring. No, the words \u201cdeath panel\u201d had never existed in the bill, but Palin neatly identified the inevitable trend of government-managed healthcare toward rationing and the sort of \u201cend of life counseling\u201d sampled in the Veteran\u2019s Administration Handbook<\/a> called \u201cYour Life, Your Choices,\u201d of which the Wall Street Journal\u2019s Jim Towey writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u201cYour Life, Your Choices\u201d presents end-of-life choices in a way aimed at steering users toward predetermined conclusions, much like a political \u201cpush poll.\u201d For example, a worksheet on page 21 lists various scenarios and asks users to then decide whether their own life would be \u201cnot worth living.\u201d<\/p>\n The circumstances listed include ones common among the elderly and disabled: living in a nursing home, being in a wheelchair and not being able to \u201cshake the blues.\u201d There is a section which provocatively asks, \u201cHave you ever heard anyone say, \u2018If I\u2019m a vegetable, pull the plug\u2019?\u201d There also are guilt-inducing scenarios such as \u201cI can no longer contribute to my family\u2019s well being,\u201d \u201cI am a severe financial burden on my family\u201d and that the vet\u2019s situation \u201ccauses severe emotional burden for my family.\u201d<\/p>\n When the government can steer vulnerable individuals to conclude for themselves that life is not worth living, who needs a death panel?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Putting a human face on the fears of so many<\/strong>, blogger Kim Schratwieser<\/a> -daughter of an older American and mother of a \u201cspecial needs\u201d American Princess \u2013 writes to her representative about her Obamacare concerns; it is a shout from her heart<\/a>.<\/p>\n She\u2019s a loving girl. She loves listening to music. She\u2019s concerned when she thinks someone is sick or in pain. She\u2019s been known to ask people in wheelchairs if they are okay. Most see that she is special and take her concern as it is intended and tell her that yes, they are okay. . . We bought her a pioneer type bonnet there and she calls that her princess hat. She would touch the hat and say \u2018princess\u2019 and I\u2019d say yes and she\u2019d say, \u2018me?\u2019 I\u2019d tell her that yes, she is a princess. . . She is our princess and we don\u2019t want to see her treated as anything less.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The time has come to ask the question;<\/strong> Under government-managed healthcare, will rationing and bottom lines usurp the primacy of love?<\/p>\n This administration likes to talk about \u201cshared sacrifice\u201d but those families with \u201cspecial needs\u201d kids and beloved elderly, families whose members live with full-blown AIDS or life-changing brain accidents, know all about sacrifice. They know all about putting aside the \u201cme\u201d for the greater good of the \u201cother.\u201d Likely they could teach this moralizing president the meaning of genuine -as opposed to rhetorical- sacrifice.<\/p>\n Will Obamacare ask the rest of the nation to \u201cshare the sacrifice\u201d of such families as the Schratwieser\u2019s by really supporting them -with their extra needs, extra expenses, and their extra willingness to love, and to love, and to love? Or will government health boards determine that families asking the nation to subsidize the health needs of the less useful and productive members of society -often the most uncomplicated among us- are selfish wastrels dipping too deeply into the public coffers?<\/p>\n If Kim Schratwieser\u2019s story leaves you cold<\/strong>, what about this 26 year old blogger, Chelsea Zimmerman<\/a>, who is paralyzed from the chest down? She declares on her blog that she will never accept an embryo-destroying \u201ccure\u201d for her condition and writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n Despite being in a wheelchair I still live a relatively \u201cnormal\u201d life<\/a>. I still have the love of my family and the ability to love in return. Apart from working for my parents, I do a number of volunteer duties in my parish and my community. I am a self avowed pro-life activist, doing what I can to help defend the dignity of human life in my community and the nation. I want to help others, especially the youth to realize their Christian vocation to love as God loves and thus build up a culture of life in the world! I have a great life because I\u2019m a human being, dammit, and I know my life has value!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Zimmerman recently wondered at a ruling in Australia<\/a> which gave Christian Rossiter, 49 year-old quadriplegic, the legal right to starve himself to death<\/a>, if he so chooses. Since winning that court case, Rossiter -perhaps finding meaning and usefulness as the \u201cchampion of other quadriplegics who no longer find life worth living,\u201d has decided to seek further medical advice before killing himself; \u201cthere\u2019s a possibility,\u201d he says, \u201cI could still be dissuaded.\u201d<\/p>\n There is some irony in Rossiter choosing to live<\/strong> so that he might be a \u201cright-to-die\u201d advocate, but beyond the irony is the powerful testament to the worthiness of life and individualism, both of which are threatened to be subsumed in the hazy notions of rationed healthcare and the \u201ccommon good.\u201d<\/p>\n The \u201cspecial\u201d people in our society are actually very useful to us; in truth, they are gifts. They force us to slow down for them, to take the focus off ourselves, to be thankful for what we have, to be generous with our time. They teach us patience and humility. Some teach us how to look at the world through innocent, not cynical, eyes. Others teach us about intrinsic human worth, about the mysterious spiritual richness that comes with suffering, about the dignity of being truly vulnerable, which puts us at the feet of mercy.<\/p>\n The lives of disabled or \u201cspecial\u201d people challenge us to look at things that are not always pleasant and fine, and to find the lovable person who still resides beneath all the medical trappings. If we take that challenge, and dare to love them, we will be led into something much deeper than mere materialism and cost-effectiveness, into something that cannot be entered into a ledger, or bottom-lined.<\/p>\n How terrifying that must seem to our bureaucrats who (when they are efficient) are famously, even stereotypically, \u201call about utilitarianism;\u201d they weigh costs against the perceived or codified \u201cvalues\u201d and then make decisions as to whether something or someone gets the funding they need to survive. Our \u201cdifferently-abled\u201d bring the great intangible gift: value-defying wisdom. They help to save us from our ignoble and destructive self-obsessions, and that makes them highly useful<\/em>, indeed.<\/p>\n Can the ghoulish death-advocates posing as \u201cScience Czars\u201d<\/a> who advise President Obama really be counted on to care about all the little and big, young and old princes and princesses who require more from their families (and thus will require more from the government under Obamacare)? When we\u2019re already seeing acknowledgment of healthcare rationing<\/a>, what chance will these \u201cspecial\u201d among us have?<\/p>\n These are deeply moral questions,<\/strong> being asked by hard-working people whose concerns are being trivialized -and who are being described as swastika-carrying mercenaries and agitators- by other, more elite people who like to moralize, but who won\u2019t give straight answers; they give soundbite-sized assurances, wrapped in platitudes.<\/p>\n In the past five years I have lost two brothers, and two brothers-in-law who were in every sense my true siblings; one died of AIDS after a long, long battle. Another died after thirty years of severe disability brought on by a stroke. Another died of an aggressive cancer for which advances in treatment are being made. One died of plain-old congestive heart failure, after job-related lung injuries. They were each the beneficiaries of healthcare providers and programs that allowed them to live their lives -the challenging lives they had- until they reached their culminations. Their deaths were not hastened by \u201ccompassionate\u201d needles and pills that came wrapped with the message that they were useless burdens to society<\/a> and therefore dispensable and unimportant.<\/p>\n President Obama and the Democrats,<\/strong> and their media minions are in a bit of a snit, just now; they have thus far been prevented from passing 1,000 pages of nearly incomprehensible legislation on their own terms, and without the \u201cvigorous debate\u201d to which they pay deceitful lip service. Those demanding debate and genuine dialogue have been identified as \u201cracist\u201d or \u201cfascist\u201d \u2013anything but \u201creasonably opposed people\u201d arguing in good faith.<\/p>\n This administration and their supporters, who respond to concerned constituents with variations of \u201cshut up\u201d and \u201ctrust us,\u201d and \u201cwe know what\u2019s best for you,\u201d cannot possibly know what is best for Kim Schratwieser\u2019s princess, because they do not know her. They cannot possibly know what is best for Chelsea Zimmerman, because they cannot gauge how indispensable she is to those who love her. The value of my own family\u2019s fallen princes is incalculable without factoring the insistent vector of love, which Obamacare cannot do.<\/p>\n Chelsea Zimmerman writes that her life is \u201crealitively \u2018normal'\u201d and her scare quotes are appropriate. Who can define what makes a life \u201cnormal,\u201d and why would we want a government to make that call for us? Our lives run courses both predictable and unique<\/a>. Perhaps \u201cnormal\u201d should only pertain to the notion that all of us are entitled to the lives we have, regardless of how unusual, challenging, strange, ironic or downright wasteful they might seem to the rest, and to live those lives with love given primacy, even over our bottom lines.<\/p>\n UPDATE:<\/strong> Via Margaret Cabannis over at Inside Catholic<\/a>, an inspiring story on the primacy of love and why it matters<\/a> \u2013 why allowing life to be born, and loved in this world, matters.<\/p>\n