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Some things just aren't that pressing. Mailing that
tbank-you letter to Aunt Mabel for the birthday gilt
she sent you in January hasn't cost you a night's
sleep yet. Your life doesn't depend on it.
But here in Nebraska, people's lives are at stake.
The situation presses harder and harder on those"
lives, the lives of Nebraska farmers and all the peo
ple they feed.
Gov. Bob Kerrey can't feel the pressure, because
he is leaning away from it. He is leaning away from
calling a special session of the Legislature to solve
the question of differences in agriculture and com
mercial land valuation.
Nebraskans have struggled for several months
with the Nebraska Supreme Court decision brought
by the owners of the Kearney Holiday Inn. The
owners contested the inn's tax valuation on the
basis of low tax valuations for surrounding farm
lands. But the issue goes beyond whether commercial
landowners should pay a higher property tax rate
than farm owners. It bumps into thearea of farming
in general.
For the past year, Nebraskans have heard and
read about the crumbling state of farming in gen
eral: More farms are going bankrupt, more are sink
ing into indebtedness, and the government state
or federal does nothing concrete to remedy the
situation. '
Kerrey went to Denver early in the spring for an
agricultural summit meetingwith 12 other Midwest
governors. According to the Lincoln Journal, they
agreed that the problem with farm foreclosures and
indebtedness was growing. And the traditional help
ing agencies were not doing their jobs.
Minnesota agriculture commissioner Jim Nichols
said part of the problem could be solved if the fed-.
eral Farmers Home Administration would release t
about $1.5 billion in unallocated loan funds. FmHA
chief Charles Shuman had said at the summit ear
lier that he agency had only $200 million to loan to
farmers each year. Somewhere there is a descrep
ancy. July's National Governor's Association meeting in
Tennessee might help other states' governors realize
the farmer's plight. Having the meeting might help
spawn ideas of how to solve the farmer's problems.
But solutions don't always come from the outside.
Nebraska should start with Nebraska. Kerrey doesn't
need to call a special session of the Legislature to
figure out property tax rates. He needs to call one
for the future of the farmers and the state they live
in.
,.,
Oh, to live in a worl
not even winnin
What a luxurious feeling. An epidemic of goose
bumps spread from the beaches of Normandy to the
beaches of California. Words came out of mothballs
like World War II planes and crisscrossed the skies
of 1984: Heroism, sacrifice, valor.
Most Americans, born after D-Day, got at least a
hint of a far-gone time when fighting was unequi
vocably the. right thing to do. We relived a conflict
Goodman
that was without ambiguity, without doubts or dis
sension. A time when Americans were the good
guys.
Forty years ago, Reagan had been billeted on a
movie lot in Culver City. But last week, he got a
cnance to play a starring role in this D-Day extrava
ganza and he did it brilliantly. This was, after all, The
War, imprinted in his political memory as a conflict
between white hats and black hats, a moral struggle
against evil. It's The War he regards as the rule of
combat, rather than the exception.
On a windy bluff, Reagan gave a speech that
sounded like the speech many would like to give
him. "The men of Normandy had faith that what
they were doing was right . . " he said. There is a
profound moral difference between the use of force
Right to live, die belongs to individual
An article in the Los Angeles Times last week told
the story of a 70-year-old man who has five fatal
illnesses. He currently is hospitalized but has taken
his doctors to court to force them to turn off his life
support systems.
His doctors say, while none of the illnesses are
immediately life threatening, if his medication and
Jeff Goodwin
life support systems were cut off the man would die
within a few hours.
An issue like this touches everyone because old
age is something that is going to effect everyone. No
one escapes it. It must be thought about.
This case, and others like it, raise the issue of the
quality of life that the patient is leading. Is a life
really worth living if it has to be sustained by a
machine? What is the value of living if all you have to
look forward to is the prospect of slowly wasting
away until you're little more than a skeleton?
It could be argued (and people always do) that
there's always hope and scientists could invent a
cure any day. -
Maybe so, but I'm not buying it. My grandmother
died of cancer last year and the truth is I was glad
no, relieved when she died because I knew that
she had been in great pain. The last few weeks of her
life she had stopped living and merely was existing.
Page 6
The only thing that kept her going as long as she did
five weeks were painkilling drugs.
Nothing could have helped my grandmother. But
many people thanks to modern technology can
be kept alive for months and even years after most
of their body has stopped running. Machines can
keep a body alive even after the brain has ceased to
function.
All of this presents a dilemma for the medical
profession. They are sworn to save lives and stop
suffering, yet, in the context of modern medicine,
they may actually prolong the suffering of a patient
by keeping the alive.
There is another part to this dilemma: money.
Keeping someone hooked up to a life support sys
tem can cost thousands of dollars. And in many
cases, insurance companies won't pay for the entire
bill. A major illness or hospitalization can literally
bankrupt a family. America is threatened with th e spec
ter of a'health system that only the rich can afford.
So what is the solution? I don't know. One of the
basic human rights should be to choose whether or
not you want to jive. No power should be able to
determine that for a person.
But the medical community also has a duty to
uphold life. The problem is caused when these two
collide. Perhaps the solution lies in thinking mere
about the quality of life we want for our society and
not so much in terms of preserving life.
In any case, it's something that people should
think about more. Thinking about it forces the reali
zation that there are no simple solutions. That in
itself is the beginning of a solution.
, Qaiiy Nebraskan
d where nothing
- is worth dying for
for liberation and the use for force for conquest.
They were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so
they did not doubt their cause."
Even now, as the goose bumps subside and the
beach at Normandy empties, I remember another
line he dedicated to the men who threw their grap
pling hooks over the top of cliffs, They knew some
things are worth dying for "
This was, oddly enough, a phrase that I read else
where last week, written by a veteran of another
war, another generation. John Wheeler, a graduate
of West Point, veteran of Vietnam, coordinator of
the Vietnam Memorial, an earnest man with a sense
of mission, had used it as a central theme in his book
about the Vietnam generation, "Touched with Fire."
In an attempt to be peacemaker between internal
enemies veterans and demonstrators, green berets
and white armbands Wheeler struggled for an
ethical posture that left room for war. "When war
protesters say, 'No more Vietnams!' they mean, "I
wish we lived in a world. where nothing is worth
dying for!' " he wrote. "But the witness of a billion
souls, from the South China Sea to Cape Cod to the
Gulag, is that there are things worth dying for "
I agreed with Reagan that the men who hit the
beaches of-Normandy knew that there was some
thing worth dying for. I know, as Wheeler does, the
convictions, and courage, of those billion souls.
But creature of my times, I also thought that it's a
rare war in which one side holds all the moral turf.
Creature of my times, I questioned the "something"
for which Iran and Iraq killed and died last week,
the "something"' that sent Sikhs and Indian army
regulars into combat, that made Zulus struggle in
clan warfare. There are more soldiers and more
civilians who have died for the kind of "causes" Dr.
Seuss creates battles between those who butter
their bread rightside up and upside down than
the causes our leaders fantasise.
In the midst of this World War II reminiscing, I
thought about what nuclear weapons have done to
the conceit of the ideal warriors. The D-Day we
memorialize was the last full-scale, no-holds-barred
assault launched before nuclear weapons. There are
no such celebrations for the victory over Japan. It is
no longer possible for nuclear nations to mk every
thing," send forth their whole armadas, without the
certainty of destroying whatthey want to protect.
We go into conflicts now Korea, Vietnam
holding back our commitment. The definition
"winning" has changed as much as the definition of
glory. A full-scale war in the '80s would be one of
computer-to-computer combat, push-button brav
ery, and mutual annihilation.
Our leaders are slow to understand how much
has been changed by nuclear weapons. This D-Day,
our own secretary of defense warns against those
"fainthearted and siren calls" to cut the war budget.
Our President is more comfortable walking the old
beaches than sitting at the negotiating tables. One of
the best of the Vietnam generation, John Wheeler,
concludes tortuously that "somewhere inside mas
culinity is the idea that death is not the worst thing."
But our Issue isn't whether there is something
worth dying for, but whether there is anything
worth extinction. Fueling our deep nostalgia on the
beaches of Normandy was the certainty that the
good wars are all behind us. .
ISM, TLa Elsstsa CI:ls Newspaper Ccsspeasy
Washington Pest Writers G
Friday, June 15. 1934