As recently as the 1960s, outside hospitals you were likely to find signs like this. At the University of California Medical Center, where I interned, the signs were so effective that passing fire trucks allowed their siren to run down near the hospital, and used only the bell. It was called respect. Perhaps some of the firefighters had been patients there themselves.
But no more. A raucous demonstration was just held outside New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Children’s Hospital. Leaders, or should I say instigators, encouraged demonstrators to make as much noise as possible, so patients would hear them. What effect this would have on the Gaza situation was unclear.
What effect a noisy crowd would have on children confined to bed was all too clear: fear. But the demonstrators couldn’t care less. They felt good about themselves by harassing cancer patients. How proud that would make Hamas! Their kind of folks!
In a few years we have gone from “Quiet, Hospital Zone” to “Yell louder so the patients can hear you.” These people may call themselves progressive, but in fact they are dangerous, uncivilized savages. Of course, police did nothing. This disgraceful episode encapsulates much of what is wrong with us. We had best fix it while there is anything left worth fixing.