KEVORKIAN SAYS HE WANTS TO EDUCATE PUBLIC
By Kathleen Gray
Detroit Free Press
Aug 1 20008
MI
"OK, so what do you want to know?" Jack Kevorkian asked an audience
of about three dozen people tonight in Birmingham.
As he started a town hall meeting, he had no explanation for running
for a congressional seat that covers a wide swath of Oakland County.
Someone asked about the loss of freedoms. Another asked about a
scientist who believes that four countries control the equipment
that controls weather and climate. Another asked about the government
bailout of mortgage industry giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.
"What bailout," he barked. "You’re kind of sheep-like. You’ve all
been conditioned to think and act like sheep."
Kevorkian, 80, who served more than eight years in prison after being
found guilty of second-degree murder for one of the 130 assisted
suicides he participated in during the 1990s, is waging a low-budget
campaign for Congress, running as an Independent and hoping to beat
U.S. Rep. Joe Knollenberg, R-Bloomfield Township, and Democrat Gary
Peters, a former state senator and lottery commissioner.
He has almost no money for his race and won’t take any
contributions. His organization is almost nonexistent. His quest is
philosophical and he liberally quotes Alexis de Tocqueville, Thomas
Jefferson and Friedrich Nietzsche.
It’s not that he wants to move to Washington, he told the people
attending his town hall meeting at the Birmingham Community House.
"I don’t want to be a congressman," he said. "I only want to serve
two years. I’m here to educate and inform the public."
His primary issue is pushing the Ninth Amendment to the Constitution,
the little known amendment that protects rights not explicitly
specified elsewhere in the Constitution.
Kevorkian said that means that people have the right to do anything
that doesn’t harm others, such as killing themselves with the help
of someone else.
"You are enslaved, but you don’t know it. You don’t want to admit it
because you’re walking around free, eating good dinners," Kevorkian
said. "As long as you’re comfortable, you’re controllable."