SWIFT CALL: A Modest Proposal
Neumayr, George
SWIFT CALL A Modest Proposal For Preventing the Disabled and Elderly in America From Being a Burden to Their Families or Country: by George Neumayr IT IS A MELANCHOLY OBJECT to those who travel...
...THERE IS A GREAT ADVANTAGE IN THIS SCHEME, that it will prevent those undignified lingering deaths of those with no hope of recovery, and that horrid practice of husbands murdering their wives, alas...
...SWIFT CALL A Modest Proposal For Preventing the Disabled and Elderly in America From Being a Burden to Their Families or Country: by George Neumayr IT IS A MELANCHOLY OBJECT to those who travel in America when they see the hospices and hospitals crowded with the disabled and elderly...
...I DESIRE THOSE POLITICIANS who dislike myoverture, and may perhaps be so bold as to attempt an answer, that theywill first ask the spouses of these mortals, whether they would not at this day think it a great happiness to have been starved for the sake of a death with dignity, thereby avoiding such aperpetual scene of misfortunes as they have since gone through by the oppression of their infirmity or age, the impossibility of sharing the costs their families must carry to care for them, and the most inevitable prospect of entailing the like or greater miseries upon their family for ever...
...For instance, the liberation of millions of dollars in Medicare fees with which to finance new Viagra payments for seniors not yet disabled...
...too frequent among us...
...BEFORE ANYONE ADVANCES a proposal in contradiction to my scheme, I desire the author or authors will be pleased maturely to consider two points...
...First, as things now stand, how they will be able to find Medicare resources for the millions of useless mouths and backs...
...I CAN THINK OF NO ONE OBJECTION, that will possibly be raised against this proposal, unless it should be urged, that the number of innocent people will be thereby much lessened in America, a risible objection at a time of obvious overpopulation...
...It is not improbable that some scrupulous person might be apt to censure such a practice (although indeed very unjustly and unconstitutionally), as a little bordering upon cruelty...
...and, there-fore, whoever could find out a fair, cheap, and easy method of euthanizing this class of the ill would deserve so well of the public as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation...
...It is very well known in the medical schools and courts of this country that these disabled will not recover and can't pursue lives of discernible purpose as any fair-minded magistrate would determine it, and thus the country and most 74 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 2005importantly themselves are happily delivered from the indignity of disability by starvation, dehyrdration, or injection...
...I THINK IT IS AGREED BY ALL PARTIES, at least within America's mainstream, that this prodigious number of disabled and elderly in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of their family members, and frequently of their isolated and deprived husbands, is in the present deplorable state of the country with its deficits, unsustainable Medicare costs, and Social Security crisis a very great additional grievance...
...YET MANY AMERICANS of searching conscience, many of them Democrats who have long supported the Special Olympics, are sincerely concerned about that vast number of disabled, who are aged, diseased, or irreversibly maimed...
...Many other advantages might be enumerated...
...IF NOTIUNG ELSE, this scheme would greatly lessen the number of papists and back-sliding Protestants in America, with whom we are yearly overrun, who pollute hospitals on purpose with a design to deliver America to a "culture of life...
...Let no man talk of selling our country and consciences for nothing, until he has at least some glimpse of hope that research on crushed embryos will cure the disabled and has a hearty and sincere commitment to put that research into practice...
...which, I confess, has always been with me the strongest objection against any project, how-ever so well intended...
...These people, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood or even show signs of meaningful mental life, impose severe burdens on the healthy...
...And, secondly, recognize that there are thousands and thousands of disabled throughout this country, whose whole subsistence put into a common stock would leave us in debt billions of dollars...
...I HAVE BEEN ASSURED by avery knowing Democrat of my acquaintance in Washington, that a disabled person can be dehydrated to death in eight to 12 days...
Vol. 38 • May 2005 • No. 4
