"To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing,
if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?"
-- Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803

Thursday, August 11, 2005

I just want to throw in my $0.02 about some of the things I’ve read about Cindy Sheehan from the commenters and posters at various forums, blogs, and websites, including both Right-Thinking and MOOREWATCH.  I’m not singling out anyone, or any particular comment, or any particular thread, so if you read this and get a guilty conscience, then that’s something for you to think about.

I’ve been pretty disgusted with some of the vitriolic commentary I’ve read over the past few days regarding Cindy.  Before I go into my thoughts on those comments, allow me to share with you my own opinions of her.  She’s obviously someone who loved her son deeply, and her life has been destroyed by his death.  Anyone who has a child can only begin to imagine the sense of loss she felt when the news of Casey’s death reached her.  I think her sense of loss was compounded exponentially by the fact that she never supported her son’s decision to join the military in the first place, nor his decision to reenlist and serve in Iraq, and she certainly has never been a fan of President Bush.  Imagine if one of your kids, who you had tried to raise as a regular, patriotic American, ran off to live in some kind of deranged anti-American hippie commune, where he ended up taking his own life as a protest against capitalism.  Wouldn’t you feel some degree of resentment towards the foreign belief system that sucked him in?  Of course you would, to do otherwise would be to deny human nature.  So not only did Cindy Sheehan lose her son, but she lost him to something she didn’t believe in, something that she as a mother couldn’t protect him from.  It’s hard enough for some overly protective parents when their children go away to college; Cindy lost hers to the military, and the military eventually took him from her forever.  Imagine the pain for a second.

Many people, after suffering a terrible loss, channel that loss into something positive.  John Walsh, for example, lost his son Adam to a serial killer.  A great many of the laws and police procedures regarding child abductions that are in place today are there because of his tireless efforts, to say nothing of almost two decades of America’s Most Wanted, which has resulted in over 800 fugitives caught and off the streets.  During WWII, when the five Sullivan brothers were killed in a single day of action, their parents immediately became national symbols of the necessity of sacrifice in defeating Hitler’s evil.  They went out and spoke on behalf of the war effort, encouraging families to buy war bonds and plant liberty gardens.  Only after the war was over did they fade from public life and grieve for their sons.  Channeling grief is something people do in the face of immense loss.  It’s one of our better qualities.  And, for better or worse, this is exactly what Cindy Sheehan has done.

I don’t agree with her views on the war or on Bush or probably on much of anything.  She was most likely a barking moonbat before the war, and in the wake of her son’s death she has found solace in like-minded individuals on the anti-war left.  Much like the War Department used the Sullivans as figureheads for their cause, so the despicable radical left is using her for theirs.  Who can’t help but feel sympathy for a grieving mother?  By using her in this manner it gives Michael Moore, MoveOn, and their ilk a virtually bullet-proof martyr.  Anyone who dares state anything critical of her is immediately accused of attacking the mother of a dead soldier.  “How low will the fascist right go to support their war for oil?”

By holding herself out as the hood ornament for the anti-war left, Sheehan has certainly opened the door for legitimate criticism of her motives and beliefs.  You won’t find anyone more supporting of that than me.  But all too often I have seen a real degree of contempt for the woman creep in to what should otherwise be legitimate comments, and I think that’s absolutely fucking shameful.  This woman lost her son, and while you are and should be free to discuss her recent political activism, cut the woman some slack in the other areas.  I think some of the things she has said and done recently have been absolutely disgraceful and I have said as much, but I’m not going to attack the mother of a wounded soldier.

Let me put it this way.  As Jim rightfully wrote earlier today, the real focus here should be Casey and his sacrifice for a cause he believed in.  That being said, this is the woman who gave birth to Casey; who breast fed him, and wiped his behind, and taught him to walk, and pinned his corsage on his prom tuxedo, and loved him for every year of his life.  I have no doubt that Casey loved his mother in return.  No matter how much he might have disagreed with his mother on certain political views, I don’t doubt for a second that if Casey could read some of the things that “patriotic Americans” have said about his mother he would be absolutely devastated, and were he here in person there’s a whole lot of people who would find themselves knocked on their asses by him.

Have some fucking respect.