Nickel Rant^™:  Inconvenient Lives
by Edgar J. Steele

March 28, 2005

(Good:  mp3 audio, 610 kb):  http://www.conspiracypenpal.com/rants/lives16-44.mp3)  (streaming mp3)
(Better: mp3 audio, 1.2 mb):  http://www.conspiracypenpal.com/rants/lives32-44.mp3)  (streaming mp3)
(Best:  mp3 audio 1.8 mb):  http://www.conspiracypenpal.com/rants/lives48-44.mp3)  (streaming mp3)

My name is Edgar J. Steele and this is a 5-minute Nickel Rant.

Recently, a brain-damaged lady by the name of Terri Shiavo was slowly starved to death in a Florida hospital...by court order. Her husband sought the order. Her parents opposed it.

The struggle over Mrs. Shiavo’s life illustrates the growing American phenomenon we pretend to call euthanasia and which more accurately is known as murder. 

Terri Shiavo had become inconvenient to a great many people. In our throw-away society, inconvenience implies uselessness, which in turn is equated with disposability. 

Never mind that Mrs. Shiavo made it clear that she was conscious and had a strong desire to live. She became inconvenient.  Inconvenient to Mr. Shiavo, first and foremost, but also inconvenient to the hospital where she lay and to the State of Florida. Terri Shiavo was disposable. 

And Terri Shiavo wasn’t the first. We have millions of inconvenient lives sitting around out there right now, all across America. Inconvenient. Useless. Disposable. And each of these inconvenient lives is every bit as vulnerable as was Terri Shiavo's.

Are you over 65? You are inconvenient to a great many people, most of whom you never even have met. Go into a hospital with a grave illness and you risk coming out in a body bag simply because you are inconvenient.

Euthanasia is the great secret of the medical world, where older patients or, in fact, anybody with disabilities or serious illnesses of a recurring nature are given death sentences by nurses, doctors, even nurses’ aides, a great many of whom feel entitled to decide who lives and who dies.

The New England Journal of Medicine reports that 1 out of 5 critical-care nurses admit to “helping along” those they deem to be terminally ill. And those are just the nurses!

Do you have a living will, directing others to make life or death decisions should you become incapacitated? If you do, take it out after you listen to this broadcast and cross out the title. Directly over that old title, scrawl in the words “Death Warrant,” because that is exactly what that document is – your death warrant.

By law, doctors now are required to promote living wills to their patients. Why? Because it makes the lives of hospitals, Medicare, governments, doctors and husbands like Mr. Shiavo so much easier if they can simply decide on their own if you live or die, rather than having to mess around with the hassle of getting a court order.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I want there be a huge hassle before anybody pulls my plug. Despite our legal system’s being corrupt and riddled with injustice, the hassle required to obtain a court order to pull my plug might give me just enough time to come to my senses, rise up out of my bed and run screaming from the hospital – just as Terri Shiavo most assuredly would if she had been physically capable of doing so.

Living Will? What a sick joke. A contradiction in terms, like military intelligence or Patriot Act. If you have one, take it out and tear it up. Make sure you get any copies you may have provided to medical providers. Give yourself every chance for life. If you truly become a vegetable, believe me, it will be all too easy for your next of kin to get the appropriate court order to pull your plug. Don’t make it too easy for the self-appointed grim reapers posing as doctors and nurses throughout the hospitals of America.

Once you cross the line and start killing people because they are inconvenient... because they are useless...because they are, in a word, disposable...it becomes very difficult to tell where to stop – especially when you consider yourself qualified to decide who lives and who dies. Ask yourself when the merely poor will become inconvenient. Or political dissidents like myself. Or Democrats, perhaps. Or you.

My name is Edgar J. Steele. Thanks for listening. Check my web site at www.ConspiracyPenPal.com for other messages just like this one.

Copyright ©2005, Edgar J. Steele

Forward as you wish.  Permission is granted to circulate both the written and audio version of this Nickel Rant™ among private individuals and groups, post on all Internet sites and publish in full in all not-for-profit publications.   The audio version of this Nickel Rant may also be freely used in its entirety by for-profit broadcasting entities, but is not to be included in any recorded format which then is sold to others.  The audio version may be rebroadcast, either live or archived on the Internet, either copied or linked directly to my web site, profit and nonprofit alike, so long as it is used in its entirety.  In fact, I encourage any and all radio hosts to use it freely.  Contact author for all other rights, which are reserved.

On-Line link to this rant in HTML format:  http://www.conspiracypenpal.com/rants/lives.htm