This from Jim as submitted to Mid Mo Kerry Yahoo group (When they gonna change that name?)....
I think this article is great and am glad it was printed as an opinion piece in the Springfield paper. It was written by Roger Ray, pastor of National Avenue Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). I hope you will share it with as many people as you can via e-mail and also print it out and share it with people that may not have e-mail. Jim

Let me set up a hypothetical: There has been a terrible ship wreck. A dozen survivors are in a lifeboat. Six are healthy adults who can take shifts pulling on the oars. Two are small children, two are elderly and frail, one is mentally challenged and the other is seriously ill. Food and water are scarce and land is not in sight. The weight of the passengers is making the small boat unstable in heavy wind. What do you do?

In such a horrible circumstance some bold action may be necessary. So one of the healthy adults demands that the elderly be thrown overboard.

As the rowers become exhausted, another demands that the mentally ill passenger be thrown overboard. As the long day begins to turn to night, another insists that they also throw out the sick person. When the children begin to cry and become demanding, an angry rower throws them overboard as well.

In the middle of the night, the small boat runs aground in a safe location. When the dawn comes the six survivors reflect on their day
at sea and the six other survivors whom they sacrificed. They are
left to try to justify their actions to the media, the families of
the drowned passengers and finally to themselves.

Which of them was morally fit to go on living themselves? Which was
qualified to go on to become governor of a state?

Yes, a budget is a moral document. A state budget is reflective of
how we will make decisions about who gets to stay in the boat and
who gets thrown overboard.

Yes, there is waste and abuse and even fraud in our government as
well as the present system of medical and home health delivery,
largely because too many in government and the health care industry
have found ways of milking the state and federal government as if
she were a cow tied up in the barn.

But making the decision to solve that problem by throwing the
elderly, the mentally ill and the disabled out of the boat of our
civilization because we are so enamored of our own comfort that we
will not be troubled by the burden of these disposable human beings
is about the meanest, most dishonorable thing I have heard of in
this democracy.

I don't like paying taxes and would love to keep more of my own
income to support my own standard of living. But if we have to
sacrifice my neighbor's mother, the poor schizophrenic kid who mows
lawns up and down the street and the polio victim on the next block
so that I can feel like a real man for having the courage to cut
taxes then, my friends, we are not a civilization at all. We are
social Darwinists gone mad.

Gov. Matt Blunt's proposed budget tells us that we need to throw
120,000 Missourians overboard. We are not talking about fixing the
abuse. We are not talking about clamping down on the outrageous
profits made by the health care industry. We are talking about
asking the elderly, the ill, the insane and the disabled to figure
out how to make it on their own.

We are not animals, and we do not have to do this to one another. We
can be better people, a more noble nation, a more decent society.