Neil Visalvanich’s column, “Twisted Right-Wing Morality Values” (Daily Nexus, March 28) is a textbook example of the hypocrisy and intellectual slothfulness that epitomizes the worst of the contemporary Left.

For example, Visalvanich apparently believes that providing food and water to Terri Schiavo is “unnatural.” If that is the case, I would like to see him try to survive with no food or water. He tries to demonstrate his respect for life by giving himself the almighty power to decide whose life has enough “quality” to be worth living. In his world, Schiavo must die because he feels she isn’t worthy of life. He refers to Congress’ intervention in her case as “judicial activism,” thus not only confusing the legislative and judicial branches of government, but also forgetting that this was a court case to begin with. Admittedly there is a great deal of controversy surrounding both the severity of Schiavo’s condition and how to best honor her wishes – but Visalvanich mentions none of this.

In Visalvanich’s world, the best way to improve the lives of poor children is to kill them while they are very young – i.e. prior to birth. He completely dodges the humanity of the unborn child. He seems to think the number of abortions should be reduced, but cannot offer any sensible reason as to why this is any more important than reducing the number of colonoscopies or wart removal procedures.

He calls death by dehydration and starvation “honorable and natural,” yet I doubt he would ever want to die in such a horrific way. Then again, given the content of his column, perhaps his quality of life is actually rather low. He suffers from extreme paranoia about “theocracy” and “an almost Stalin-esque form of moral censorship on the media,” appears numb to an astounding level of ignorance regarding the issues he chooses to address, and seems to be infected with a general belief that people with deeply held moral convictions should be banned from the political process.

Given these symptoms, perhaps Visalvanich ought to be grateful that his Christian conservative opponents have an innate respect for the sanctity of life and thus will always believe that his life is, in fact, worth living.

Scott Roney is a graduate student in chemical engineering.

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