"No Lie Is Too Low For Them": What the Terri Schiavo Affair Can Teach Us About Today's R/W Zealots

"No Lie Is Too Low For Them": What the Terri Schiavo Affair Can Teach Us About Today's Right-Wing Zealots
Five years after the death of Terri Schiavo, right-wing opportunists continue to use her case to advance their political agenda.
March 31, 2010 |

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At the height of the Terri Schiavo affair, Rob Boston, a senior policy analyst for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, attended a conference on "judicial activism" organized by Rick Scarborough, a Texas-based conservative and Christian evangelical leader. "I've covered the Religious Right for a long time, and even I was taken aback by the rhetoric," Boston recalled, via e-mail exchange with AlterNet. "I remember the crude attacks on Judge Stanley F. Birch Jr., a conservative jurist who incurred the wrath of the right-wing by rebuking Congress for its intervention in the case. In another speech, David C. Gibbs III, the attorney for Schiavo's parents, accused Michael Schiavo of murder."

Boston pointed out that statements by Gibbs and others that Terri Schiavo was not in a vegetative state were a stark example of how these groups simply made up their own reality, and how "no lie is too low for them if it serves their larger political agenda."

"During the Schiavo controversy, the Religious Right's operational theory was 'the ends justify the means' and 'any lie is acceptable if it helps us get what we want,'" Boston said. "They bent the truth like taffy and then had the unmitigated gall to pretend to be operating from a superior ethical stance. And when an autopsy later showed that Terri Schiavo's brain had shrunken to half the normal size and there never was hope for recovery, they simply lied about that as well.""

Substitute the Tea Party movement for the Religious Right and, for anyone that has followed the past year's debate over health care reform it might be déjà vu.

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http://www.alternet.org/rights/146252/%22no_lie_is_too_low_for_them%22%3A_what_the_terri_schiavo_affair_can_teach_us_about_today%27s_right-wing_zealots?page=entire

leave the rest of us alone. But no, they all want to take us all to hell with them and they will do that by force if necessary. Dangerous times, dangerous people and widespread ignorance.

and willingness to embrace and defend it. The facts are meaningless to them which makes it next to impossible to engage in any kind of reasonable debate or apply any kind of logic to a situation. The majority of them don't even think for themselves, but prefer to let someone else tell them what they should think. To top it all off, even when their positions are proven wrong, they continue to repeat the same, tired talking points as though reality does not exist in their world.

reminds me of a sci fi film. Many worry about the threats from outside of the US, I worry more about the threats from within the US. It seems so many feel empowered to throw away our democracy in favor of a RW authoritative theocracy.

condemn others who don't support the lie, resort to violence if all else fails.

The RW republicans are just trash.

mark

to pass 'Teri's Law' when Bush flew home and Frist showed videos. He voted yes on this. With the Religious Right. He says he regrets that vote. But he cast it, with his people, the religious irrationals. Next up, opposing marriage equality, another area of deep agreement between Obama and the religious right wing.

was taken off life supports. I kept wondering if Tom DeLay was going to come crashing into her hospital room with some sort of legal challenge to let my mother die peacefully and with dignity (she was in Dallas). Mercifully, she died as she had wanted to, gently and with no pain. It was a great help to me to see that she was sedated and just slipped away...it will be the fifth anniversary of her death but I do not particularly commemorate it. I much prefer to honor my wonderful memories of her and her joie de vivre...

And we will never forget the micromanaged interference in this woman's private life by a meddling right wing zealot governor, Jeb Bush.

do nothing to shine the light on these idiots. They are willing to let the world see idiots try to take over this country all for the sake of fair and balance when we all know that fair and balance it ain't. When are the so called MSM media going to do their jobs. I am so sick and tired the right is always yelling msm is liberal, when the msm is lock stock step with the right.

Given enough time and prayer Terri Schiavo's brain could have been fully restored!