Suicide Solution

At National Review, Wesley J. Smith analyzes the "good news" that assisted suicide has massively lost popular support—suggesting my own campaign for required suicide must really be doomed. Grain of salt: Smith, the author of Forced Exit: The Slippery Slope From Assisted Suicide to Legalized Murder uses a set of presumptions and strategically [bracketed words] to reach the improbable conclusion that the campaign for assisted suicide was basically just an anti-Catholic smear campaign. (I'd feel better if Smith's views on cloning, stem cell research and various other doors man was not meant to open didn't track the Roman dictator's so closely.) But the diagnosis—especially the part blaming the "ghoulish" Jack Kevorkian for turning off the public—is pretty persuasive. By the way, you can send Dr. K fan mail at his prison address.

Comments

[geophile]

Lefty's right on this, assisted-suicide is just another fact of life, like cowboys shooting wounded horses. (Does that analogy coarsen the argument? Probably, but what the hell.)

The difference to some people, apparently, is the level of proactivity involved. But what is the moral difference between a terminally ill person deciding for themselves their means of death and doctors telling a comatose patient's family that there's no hope and that they should pull the plug? In the first case we've at least got positive consent.

Kevorkian came off as being a little too creepy, even if only based on his appearance.. A good advocate of doctor-assisted suicide can't appear to be too zealous, lest people get the impression that they're enjoying their job a bit too much.

[Croesus]

geophile,

You do have the right to refuse medical care (per 1980s SCOTUS decisions). The right goes back to the common law notion of forced medical care being battery. So if you are on the way out via terminal cancer or something and don't want any heroic measures taken, then they won't take them. Of course, what you are up for is a slow, lingering death - though they will give you doses of oxycotin that will put you to sleep until you die. This is of course considered a "natural death" by anti-euthanasia folks. Though before you get into such a condition, there is always the option of taking a shotgun to your head. That's what the character in David Guterson's "East of the Mountains" tries to do in when he discoveres he has terminal colon cancer; he decides in the end that it is more dignified and moral (to teach his grandchildren a lesson about death apparently) to die the slow, lingering way, however. In my opinion, he torpedoed the book when he ended it that way.

[Steve]

I've had this argument with too many people and fully expect to get flamed for it....

There is a difference between taking a gun and blowing one's brains out, having someone assist you in blowing your brains out (i.e. providing the gun and setting up a mechanism such that when you blink your eyes just right, the gun shoots you dead) and someone blowing your brains out for you.

The first item is your right as a free human being. It may not be morally right to some and it is certainly tragic, but it's your life, have a ball.

The second is a little stickier. Does an individual have a natural right to assistance in killing himself? And bringing a doctor into it? That's stickier still..."Do no harm" and all that.

And outright ending a persons life gets stickier still. My mom died from ALS a few years ago. I would not have pulled the trigger to end her life, but I don't know that I could have condemned her husband if he had done so. My stepfather's dad had a stroke right before Christmas. In the end, the family decided it was best to pull the plug. Right or wrong? I don't know. Again, I couldn't condemn them for doing it.

So?

[twistedmerkin]

Steve, I'll agree with you that there are differences between what I'll call suicide, assisted suicide and euthanasia. But isn't even suicide by one's own hand illegal in some states? And you seem to feel that it is up to the person in question or their family to decide what's best. I can't agree more.

[Peter Sean Bradley]

I had to read this post a few times in an attempt at understanding why Mussolini was being invoked. Then I got it - the Roman Dictator is the Catholic Church. Sure, that makes sense. 25% of the US population is Catholic. Why should Catholic viewpoints have any input into politics or policy debates. After all, those "friggin mackeral snapping Papists" are just mindlessly marching in lock step with everything their priests tell them.

By the way, this is the second gratuitously offense slap at Catholics that I have read in Hit and Run. I hadn't realized that one couldn't be Catholic and a libertarian at the same time. Makes me think I my involvement in the libertarian law society at UCLA would have been black-balled if they had known my religion.

[Warren]

Libertarians resent civil policy being shaped from religious precepts. No anti-Catholic bias here, we oppose all sanctimonious infringement on liberty equally.

[tim]

"By the way, this is the second gratuitously offense slap at Catholics that I have read in Hit and Run."

Oh, don't get your scapular in a bunch. Freedom to make fun of the Pope is the greatest freedom of all.

[Lefty]

Assisted (and unassisted) death occurs every day in practically every hospital in the world. They even develop policies and procedures to address it. Jack was just a generation or two before his time.

[Peter Sean Bradley]

"Oh, don't get your scapular in a bunch. Freedom to make fun of the Pope is the greatest freedom of all.""

You are also free to sound like an ignorant Klan bigot. Congratulations, you have succeeded.

"Libertarians resent civil policy being shaped from religious precepts. No anti-Catholic bias here, we oppose all sanctimonious infringement on liberty equally."

Thanks for the quick precis on libertarianism. My understanding was that libertarianism was predicated on the idea that while coercion by the State was inherently illegitimate, voluntary association was the way in which a libertarian society would be structured. I hadn't heard that there was some official libertarian rule that voluntary associations based upon a religious tradition were per se illegitimate compared to policy based upon, what, "non-religious precepts." I don't know, but that kind of content based discrimination strikes my as statist. I must have missed that libertarian rule in my autographed copy of the Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman. Maybe you could point me to the libertarian texts that say that adherents of the intellectual tradition that brought Aristotle and Plato into the modern world have no right to apply their insights to public policy.

By the way, my understanding of libertarianism was also that it was devoted to a strong position on natural rights. Before you start snapping off snarky comments about "sanctimonious infringements" you might want to look into the intellectual tradition that midwifed the view that there were natural rights in the first place.
It might surprise you to find out that it was not the libertarians.

I'm disappointed. I expected more intelligence and less casual, and unnecessary, bigotry at Reason's blog.

[Croesus]

If the Catholic Church had its way (historically), all variety of great human achievements would have been squashed due to troubles with orthodoxy. Somehow making fun of the RCC for its poor track record doesn't sound to bad to me.

[omnibus bill]

"The Roman dictator"

You mean to tell me that Wesley J. Smith is another one of those friggin' papist mackeral snappers?

Well, that certainly invalidates anything he might say...

[ELC]

Bigots don't recognize their own bigotry. From this rule, not even the much-self-vaunted libertarians are excluded. As is quite obvious here.

As to sanctimony, my own observation is that the sanctimony of liberals is exceeded only by that of libertarians. Which is why I try now to avoid the latter as much as possible.

I think Bradley posed some interesting questions here, but I won't be checking back to see if they are ever answered. I have no fear I'll be missing anything, though: I rather think that nobody will "have the time" (or, [insert other excuse]) to answer him.

You all play nice now, boys and girls.

[twistedmerkin]

Assisted suicide, abortion, death penalty, guns, repeal of seatbelt laws... I'm pretty much in favor of everything that brings about more death.

[Jim Walsh]

I wonder if Torquemada ever used the old "they're just pickin' on us poor Christians" line to stifle his critics. He probably did...

[geophile]

Peter, maybe you should reread Bill's post before you use his statement "friggin' papist mackeral snappers" as an example of anti-Catholic bias. I'm 99% sure his post was meant to be sarcastic. The silliness of calling someone a "mackeral snapper" should've been the tip-off.

As to your comments about Aristotle and Plato, you're seriously trying to hold up the Catholic Church as a shining example of scientific and philosophical patronage? God help us.

[joe]

Hey, come on now. You can't create a culture of life without breaking a few eggs.

[Peter Sean Bradley]

One last appeal to libertarian readers.

I have standing to raise the questions I have raised in this thread. I was a co-founder of the Libertarian Law Society at UCLA back in 1980. I regularly vote for Libertarian candidates in order to keep them on the ballot.

Yet, I come to this site and find these snide hit and run shots. Then, when I call the author on it, I get evidence from a number of posts - by the author and others - of a deep, visceral and irrational attitude. Who else but a bigot thinks the reference to "funny hats" is still original, persuasive or even amusing?

I wouldn't have written anything if this was an atheist site, an evangelical site, or a "I Hate Catholics" site. I would expect that and cherish it as evidence of our glorious diversity. I would also laugh at the ignorance silently. But this isn't that kind of site.

Movements have to police their own. Buckley kicked out the Birchers and Pat Buchanan for anti-semitism. The Republicans demoted Lott. I have to ask, seriously, when did taking shots at the Catholic church become acceptable with Libertarians? Is that where you really want to go? Sure, it feels good, but what does it have to do with "free markets and free minds?"

[Peter Sean Bradley]

Geophile: Of course, I understood that Bill was a Catholic subtly exposing the "genetic fallacy" of the post. As I wrote Bill a few hours ago, the only people using the phrase "mackeral snappers" are "mackeral snappers." I think his observation was a nice bit of parody concerning the narrow minded bigotry that is disclosed by referring to the man who faced the two Statist tyrannies of the Twentieth Century, and defeated one of them, as the "Roman Dictator."

As for your "God help us" comment about the RC church's contribution to Western thought, God help us that the state of historical education has reached the point where you can question the undisputed role of the Church in preserving and disseminating Plato and Aristotle to Western culture. I understand that there is an easygoing, smug ignorance of history, where slogans substitute for learning, but, really, this is inexcusable. Of course, the Catholic church transmitted Aristotle to the West. Read a biography of Thomas Aquinas some day. When you have a spare moment spend some time reflecting on Augustine's role in promoting neo-platonism. But please don't let facts get in the way of axioms. It might also suprise you to find that the Church's ethical and moral teachings - which appear to be such a problem over here - are essentially Aristotelian. I know, "God spare us from such heresies." We all just know that the RC church kept Europe in ignorance and superstition for a thousand years, don't we?

What's really going to blow your mind is the necessary role that the church played in developing the institutions and traditions of empiricism. Here's a hint: why was it that a scientific-empirical tradition develops only in the West, and why does it develop after the fourteenth century? Its all there for you to learn if you have an interest and an open mind.

Last point. Read the Gospel of Life someday and ask yourself why the author, who actually lived with the horrors of Statism - a system that thought nothing of treating individuals as plastic, manipulable things - might think it a good thing to say that humans are ontologically unique and uniquely valuable.

Or aren't libertarians interested in liberty and human value anymore?

[tim]

"Of course, the Catholic church transmitted Aristotle to the West. Read a biography of Thomas Aquinas some day."

My initial (and future) digs against the Pope were based on the fact that he wears a funny hat and is, like all absolute authorities, hilarious. And long experience has taught me that there is nothing more boring or depressing than a serious discussion of Catholicism. At the risk of giving a straight answer, however, five centuries before St. Thomas, Plato and Aristotle had been translated into Arabic by the Pope's original enemies: Syrian Christians. In the period after that they were widely circulated, commented on and improved upon by Al Kindi, Ibn Sina, Al Rushd (Averroes) and various other heretics. I have no illusions about the glory of the Muslims. But it was no accident that for centuries classical ideas penetrated everywhere around the Mediterrenean except Christian Europe. I'm sure the church is blameless in that, because you know how irreligious people were in those days.

I realize that from the Code of Constantine right up through Pius XII's concordat with Hitler, the Catholic Church has been hitting home runs for human dignity, knowledge and freedom. But rather than explain how the war on vernacular bibles, Pope Clement V's stellar reign in Avignon, burning Giordano Bruno at the stake, the destruction and looting of Constantinople, the Spanish Inquisition, Cardinal Law's kid-happy employment policy, and countless other achievements helped secure the freedoms we all enjoy today, I'll leave that to somebody with more patience for pointless conversations.

[Peter Sean Bradley]

Great. I was waiting for the "funny hat" comment. Likewise, the ideological laundry list of half-fact/half myths regularly trotted out by anti-catholic bigots, including the Klan and the Know Nothings, was overdue. You're right, though, I have no patiences with someone so locked into a hateful worldview that he goes through history collecting his "show stopping" list of irrelevant citations. You cite the Concordat but not Mit Brennender Sorge, which was read in German Catholic churches after the Concordat and declared Nazism as non-Christian. Why? Could that omission be bigotry or ignorance? Try to broaden your knowledge base.

As for your view of the mechanism of the transmission of classical knowledge to the West. Jeepers, you're right. Aristotle became a key element in the development of a scientific method because of Syrian monks, not Thomas Aquinas. You should write a book. It would be revolutionary. Those Syrian monks probably occupied all of the top teaching spots at the University of Paris. Likewise, no one disputes the contribution of Averroe, but science died in the Islamic world and not in the west. Why? I didn't know that Roger Bacon, Copernicus or Gregor Mendel were Syrian but anythings possible. Maybe, Otto, Plato was Belgian.

Likewise, and more germane, what does any of this have to do with your initial charge that John Paul II - who has done more for the cause of human liberty than all the Libertarians stacked together - is a "Roman Dictator." Your approach to reasoning seems to be a continuous appeal to the genetic fallacy. You should read Aristotle, Aquinas, or any random Syrian monk someday to see how reasoning is actually done.

By the way, what is it about Catholicism's view that humans are individually ontologically unique and valuable that so offends you? I would think that a person devoted to a natural rights worldview would at least recognize where that worldview was formalized. Or, is it that you never learned that from your Jack Chick comic books?

By the way what does your demonstration of your deep reading of the collected works of Jack Chick have to do with the question of "are libertarians bigots" except to answer the question in the affirmative?

[The Barrister]

Tim: It would appear that Catholic bashing is the last socially permissible form for a public display of religious hatred. Not politically correct, you know, to bash Jews or Ba'haiists. But the holy leader of the 1 Billion member Catholic Church - a man who has never harmed a single hair on your head - is fair game.

I've found that most hatred is borne of ignorance, or frustration. I see a little of both in you, Tim. I think you're looking for something more.

I think we have what you're looking for. I assure you that Peter or I would be more than pleased to help you should you wish to learn more about our faith. In the meantime, let go of the hatred. It's unbecoming.

[Eliott]

Everyone should do his/herself a favor and go to the local pawnshop. At the pawnshop buy a fucking 12 gauge and a box of 00 buckshot. Then, put the shotgun to your heart and pull the trigger. You are going to die at one point or another. Its a fact. Fuck it. End your life.

[Paul Cella]

Mr. Bradley's demolishing of the petulant bigotry on display here is invigorating. But for the sake of the remaining Libertarians who haven't taken leave of their sanity, we might also point them to the roots of nothing less than the cherished free enterprise system in medieval Scholastics, under the auspices of the very Church of Rome which some of the more febrile commenters have subjected to a variety of cartoonish abuse.