The position we hold-the abolitionist position-is often said to be 'extreme,' and those of us who hold it are said to be 'extremists.' The unspoken suggestions are that extreme positions cannot be right and that extremists must be wrong.
But I am an extremist when it comes to rape-I am against it all the time. I am an extremist when it comes to child abuse- I am against it all the time. I am an extremist when it comes to sexual discrimination, racial discrimination-I am against it all the time. I am an extremist when it comes to abuse of the elderly- I am against it all the time. The plain fact is, moral truth often is extreme, and must be, for when the injustice is absolute, then one must oppose it-absolutely.
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There's an old joke - um... two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, 'Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.' The other one says, 'Yeah, I know; and such small portions.' Well, that's essentially how I feel about life - full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly.
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It was once said that the moral test of Government is how that Government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.
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An elderly woman died last month. Having never married, she requested no male pallbearers. In her handwritten instructions for her memorial service, she wrote, 'They wouldn't take me out while I was alive, I don't want them to take me out when I'm dead.
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When I was young I had an elderly friend who used often to ask me to stay with him in the country. He was a religious man and he read prayers to the assembled household every morning. But he had crossed out in pencil all the passages that praised God. He said that there was nothing so vulgar as to praise people to their faces and, himself a gentleman, he could not believe that God was so ungentlemanly as to like it.
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Every European visitor to the United States is struck by the comparative rarity of what he would call a face, by the frequency of men and women who look like elderly babies. If he stays in the States for any length of time, he will learn that this cannot be put down to a lack of sensibility -- the American feels the joys and sufferings of human life as keenly as anybody else. The only plausible explanation I can find lies in his different attitude to the past. To have a face, in the European sense of the word, it would seem that one must not only enjoy and suffer but also desire to preserve the memory of even the most humiliating and unpleasant experiences of the past.
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Any attempt at a rational discussion of the economic realities of government-controlled medical care is almost certain to run up against the trump card of the political left: The Poor. The image that is often invoked is that of the elderly poor, forced to choose between food and medical treatment. Who could be so heartless as to abandon them to the vagaries of the free market? This has proved to be a very effective political strategy for extending government power, not only over medical care but also over housing and other sectors of the economy.The phoniness of this argument becomes apparent the moment you suggest that money be set aside specifically for dealing with the special problems of the poor, rather than bringing whole sectors of the economy under the dominance of politicians, bureaucrats and judges. The amount of money needed to take care of the poor is often some minute fraction of what sweeping new government programs cost. But, while big government liberals are willing to use the poor as human shields in their political battles, their more basic strategy is to proclaim that everyone has a right to some basic need that they want the government to provide. As a matter of practical politics, programs for the poor alone do not have as large a constituency as programs to give everybody some benefit, so that we can all have the illusion of getting something for nothing
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Up to this point in time, there were far fewer decisions and actions required. This really is a fundamental change in the program and the expectations for elderly and disabled people.
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When an elderly woman was asked why she was standing in line to buy stamps from a teller when she could have used a stamp machine she replied: The machine won't ask me about my arthritis!
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Humor keeps the elderly rolling along, singing a song. When you laugh, its an involuntary explosion of the lungs. The lungs need to replenish themselves with oxygen. So you laugh, you breathe, the blood runs, and everything is circulating. If you dont laugh, youll die.
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It was once said that the moral test of Government is how that Government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.
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The moral test of any society is how is treats its weakest: children, elderly, sick, needy and handicapped.
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Sure i'm for helping the elderly. I'm going to be old myself some day.
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If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
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Let's bring MORE & MORE to the attention of the public the truth about the existing link between animal crimes and other contemporary injustices: spousal abuse/child abuse/elderly abuse/ other human abuses.'
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'Many times I'm told I should stop protecting animals and start protecting people. I'm deeply concerned about the poor/the children/the elderly/the sick and those persecuted because of race, color and creed. Their suffering is my suffering, but at least they can talk for their own defense; animals cannot!'
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When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
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Now I am just an elderly lady who is full of spleen, who humps around greater Boston in a God-awful hat,...
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Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.
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The house of Lords is a model on how to care for the elderly.
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Elderly men who are popular with young women usually lack wisdom
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A lot of kids do look up to us. But there are just as many elderly people to put us down.
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Obscenity is what happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.
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