Kavorkian may want to use his own machine!!!

So for the past few weeks, I had been pretty excited to see Dr. Jack Kavorkian speak here at Nova. He is a well-known, controversial figure who has created some of the biggest medical ethics questions of our time........a patient's right to die.  I have never really taken a stance on the matter, instead relying on federal and state laws to guide my train of thought. I went to this lecture expecting to hear a mix of theological, judicial, and cultural points of view. Instead what I heard was a bitter 81 year old man whose sole argument was that America is the second coming of Nazi Germany.  It was like listening to someone with tangential dementia (thoughts all over the place).

It started off, for the first two minutes, as if we were going to get what we came to see. He started listing his three main projects, or causes. They are Patient's Right to Die, Prison Reform, and Education Reform.  Then he started giving examples of how America has made decisions and chosen to uphold laws via the supreme court in such a way that we are not a democracy, but a tyranny.  I will admit, while I don't agree with that, he made a few intelligent points to back his bold statement.......At This Point!!

Then it goes downhill. For the next 40 minutes, he basically kept trying to prove how America is like Nazi Germany. He found some list of 14 things that defines fascism, and then went through each point to try and correlate how America fits each one. They were such far stretches from anything realistic or logical that people started just leaving by the hordes.  It didn't help that this old man couldn't figure out how to use the microphone in front of him and nobody in the back could hear what he was saying for half of it.

One main point that really pissed me off though was when he said that we need to stop calling our American soldiers heroes.  I could understand if he meant that just because you are in the military, it does not innately make you a hero......but that was not the case. He thinks that the military is just our U.S. version of S.S. officers, which is amazingly insulting. Well Dr. Death, if they aren't heroes, they at least deserve our respect and praise for doing the tough jobs that my friends and I sure don't want to do.  

After a short question and answer section, Dr. Kavorkian ended his not so amazing lecture by raising the American flag. That would be a nice sentiment, except instead of the stars being there to represent the 50 united states........there was a swastika!!!  

So there it is folks. A bitter, unorganized, elderly man ranting (mostly incoherently) about how much he hates America.......the country of his residence.....because they  put him in prison. This is my favorite, ironic part. Kavorkian was present for over 130 assisted suicides. He set up the machine and let the patients themselves press the button to start the death process. However just once, that we know of, HE DECIDED to press the button to kill the patient. And it was this one time that he decided to videotape it and send it in to 60 minutes.  This is what convicted him. So basically, he screwed himself.  Way to go Jack, Way to go.