August 12, 2009

Does Ezekiel Emanuel’s “Communitarian” perspective also include slob hunting?

by Bill Levinson

We previously compared Obamacare to the German Aktion T4, in which “life unworthy of living” was to be eliminated through denial of medical care or even palliatives such as Zyklon B. In fairness to the health care bill HR 3200, of which we downloaded a complete copy, the section on end of life counseling does not mandate or even encourage euthanasia. Sarah Palin’s recent comments on this are uninformed, and reinforce our belief that John McCain might have been better off with a better educated running mate. However, Ezekiel Emanuel (Rahm Emanuel’s brother, with close ties to Barack Obama) is on written record as advocating denial of “discretionary” medical care to patients with dementia such as Alzheimer’s Disease: a position entirely consistent with Germany’s Aktion T4 health care plan. The Hastings Center Report in question also talks about “communitarianism,” and the Communitarians are on record as advocating practices that all responsible hunters and firearm owners would define as slob hunting and vicious cruelty to animals.

Here is a link to a .pdf copy of “Where Civic Republicanism and Deliberative Democracy Meet” from the Hastings Center Report, and here is what Ezekiel Emanuel has to say:

This civic republican or deliberative democratic conception of the good provides both procedural and substantive insights for developing a just allocation of health care resources. Procedurally, it suggests the need for public forums to deliberate about which health services should be considered basic and should be socially guaranteed. Substantively, it suggests services that promote the continuation of the polity-those that ensure healthy future generations, ensure development of practical reasoning skills, and ensure full and active participation by citizens in public deliberations-are to be socially guaranteed as basic. Conversely, services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia. A less obvious example is guaranteeing neuropsychological services to ensure children with learning disabilities can read and learn to reason.

The entire article comes across to us as a barely comprehensible political diatribe from a beatnik professor’s political science class, and, as brevity is the soul of wit, we would have summarized this entire paragraph with two characters: “88.” Anyone who is familiar with white supremacist code knows what this means, and Godwin’s Law does not apply when somebody is really advocating ideas that originated in Germany during the late 1930s. As for “individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed,” this can be reduced to to “useless eaters” or “Lebensunwertes Leben;” German is a really useful language for these discussions.

The article also cites communitarianism, and here is what the Communitarians have to say about themselves. It is far better to let them speak for themselves than to let somebody like Rush Limbaugh or Michael Savage speak about them, because what they say about themselves is far more damaging.

One might take into account that the gun lobby has three subconstituencies. Gun collectors may be accommodated by provisions allowing them to keep their collection, but rendering them inoperative (cement in the barrel is my favorite technique). Hunters might be allowed (if one feels this “sport” must be tolerated) to use long guns that cannot be concealed, without sights or powerful bullets, making the event much more “sporting.” Finally, super-patriots, who still believe they need their right to bear arms to protect us from the Commies, might be deputized and invited to participate in the National Guard, as long as the weapons with which they are trained are kept in state controlled armories. All this is acceptable, as long as all other guns and bullets are removed from private hands.

The Communitarians are therefore on record, in their own words and from their own Web site, as advocating the use of sightless hunting weapons and bullets too small to kill large animals with a single hit. It is easy to imagine the consequences were these ideas to be put into effect: deer shot in the abdomen to die lingering deaths while the meat is rendered useless–both characteristics of what supporters of the Second Amendment call “slob hunting” but Ezekiel Emanuel’s Communitarian friends think is a good idea–or deer shot in the lungs instead of the heart with small-caliber rounds to run off, choke to death on their own blood, and then rot as opposed to having their meat put to constructive uses. We have a far better idea for the Communitarians: get on a train (a bus would work today), drive through the Great Plains, blast away at every buffalo they see, and leave the dead buffalo to rot. This practice of the late 19th century disgusted Native Americans who didn’t kill anything they weren’t going to use, it disgusts all decent Americans today, and the Communitarian suggestion to hunt with sightless small-caliber weapons is equally sickening. If Communitarianism is the place Ezekiel Emanuel is coming from, we doubt that anybody wants to go there.