Joffe Assisted Suicide Bill Blocked
Great news from the UK: The House of Lords has decided by a 48 vote margin to delay considering the Joffe assisted suicide legalization bill for at least 6 months. In essence, this kills the bill, at least for now.
Now, if we can stop the California legalization bill (AB 651), it will be a clean sweep for the year. Of course, the euthanasia advocates will be back next year and the political dance will begin again.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 11:22 AM
9 Comments
9 Comments:
In other words, "To hell with democracy, just give ME what I want!"
Brilliant. Run for fuhrer next time. It would be more honest.
Let's see: Joffe proposed a bill. Both sides of the debate engaged in vigorous debate. The Lords took a VOTE. The bill was defeated. And you think it is Hitler. You are becoming a joke, man.
The Lords are not an elected body. They do not represent the people. Therefore, their decision does not represent the general public. The Lords ignored opinion polls showing great support for euthanasia, showing that your side has failed to significantly influence public opinion, and so they have to hijack the democratic process.
I hope that as you deliver your edicts about how assisted suicide is 'bad' to a hospice patient, they get tired of you and kill you, violating your autonomy in the same way that you have violated theirs. It would be a fitting irony - you would be killed by the people you THINK you are protecting, while they do NOT think you are protecting ANYONE.
Doctors and vets have easy access to Nembutal and fatal drugs, and do you see them bumping themselves off on a whim? I doubt it.
Winston, your side of this debate concerning the Lords is not novel. In fact, this debate was played out more than 200 years ago, shortly after the French Revolution. Edmund Burke's 'Reflections on the Revolution in France' vs. Thomas Paine's 'Rights of Man.' The question was whether or not the French Revolution was more accurately portrayed by Burke or by Paine.
How legitimate is/was the British government compared to the French government following the respective revolutions in those countries? Burke's view that there was little meaningful comparison, mainly only contrast, between the two governments seems to have been supported by the facts of history and by 200+ years of scholarship. The post-revolution British actually reaffirmed the crown and the structure of government that established the Lords. It didn't matter to the British people that the Lords were not elected because the Lords and Commons were dedicated to loyalty to the crown, to the proposition that the wise and just ruler could and should regulate the people in some sense.
Paine's view? He believed that government was fluid in that it could and should be subject to the continuously changing opinions of the masses. He represented the 'autonomy' viewpoint, and if I'm not mistaken he died in prison at the hands of the revolutionaries he had supported so adamantly in France.
You may also know that the French revolutionaries, who asserted many of the same trite expressions praising the autonomy of man as you seem to, allowed their country to descend into chaos and lawlessness. After what has become known as the Reign of Terror, a dictator named Napoleon Bonaparte arose, who attempted to subdue all of Europe under his paternal control.
You do not seem to understand the nature of things in this debate or the many others in the area of bioethics, and this is probably because you do not seem able or willing to consider and articulate your underlying presuppositions. As you continue to comment here, you illustrate the very reason that your viewpoint is so underrepresented on blogs like this one.
Had the Lords passed Joffe, it would have been sent to the Commons where it might also have been voted upon. So, it wasn't inconsequential. Moreover, the Lords are part of the UK's democratic system
As for poll numbers somehow directly reflecting the popular will in your mind. But real polls are elections In 1991, an initiative in WA to legalize euthanasia was winning in the polls by 70% plus when the campaign began. It lost 54-46. Ditto in CA in 1992. Assisted suicide won in Oregon 51-49, and is now law in that state. But note its polling was in the high 60s when the campaign began. In 1998, in MI, a legalization initiative began in the 70s and lost 71-29 percent. In Maine in 2000, legalization began with low 70s approval and lost 51-49. The moral of the story? Polls are, at best, inconclusive as to how people will think once they are forced by an election to look closely at an issue. We find that the more people learn about assisted suicide, the less they like it.
Also note that very few politicians run for office on a plank of legalizing euthanasia. If they thought the people were wild for the policy, they would.
"Had the Lords passed Joffe, it would have been sent to the Commons where it might also have been voted upon. So, it wasn't inconsequential. Moreover, the Lords are part of the UK's democratic system."
So? They still weren't elected, and so no argument can be made that they represent the general public.
"As for poll numbers somehow directly reflecting the popular will in your mind. But real polls are elections In 1991, an initiative in WA to legalize euthanasia was winning in the polls by 70% plus when the campaign began. It lost 54-46. Ditto in CA in 1992. Assisted suicide won in Oregon 51-49, and is now law in that state. But note its polling was in the high 60s when the campaign began. In 1998, in MI, a legalization initiative began in the 70s and lost 71-29 percent. In Maine in 2000, legalization began with low 70s approval and lost 51-49. The moral of the story? Polls are, at best, inconclusive as to how people will think once they are forced by an election to look closely at an issue. We find that the more people learn about assisted suicide, the less they like it."
If you're so confident, why don't you ask your groups to limit their budget to what the pro-euthanasia movement is able to spend? Oregon's anti-assisted suicide campaign included wild assertions like "Your foot doctor will be able to kill you!"
Also, the US has optional voting, so when voting is compulsory, as it is in Australia, it is quite likely that different results will occur. People don't tend to care much for things that they won't benefit from, or that won't affect them.
"Also note that very few politicians run for office on a plank of legalizing euthanasia. If they thought the people were wild for the policy, they would."
Well, fortunately, there is one in Australia. And interestingly, he's from the slavemaster Kevin Andrew's party. Ted Baillieu is a strong supporter of euthanasia - http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/baillieu-marks-out-green-battlefield/2006/05/11/1146940676819.html
Winston, again, you're presenting yourself as a poster child for shallow political antiphilosophy. Please cut out the rhetoric and explain, actually explain, what you mean. Do you wish to proclaim that an unelected body is not a legitimate part of the structure of human government, or is this a convenient point to hurl in defense of other ideas you have apparently chosen not to defend by explanation?
Is anyone claiming that the Lords represent the opinions of the general public? Does election in itself indicate the identity of a body's opinions with those of the general public? Don't forget that part of the background of the debate you are trying to engage in is dependent upon a disagreement over the nature and validity of government.
Confidence has no necessary relation to budgets. That's a flimsy criticism based on your previously stated, but not defended, idea that all circumstances for all people should be equal.
Please explain the fallacy you see in the campaign slogan you referred to. Do you not suspect that the validity of the slogan has more to do with the formal, legal ability of any physician to assist in suicide than it has to do with the likelihood that a podiatrist will kill someone? It is ironic that you would attempt to use as rhetoric an example of rhetoric that you fail to understand.
As you probably know, there is voter apathy all around. If you embrace government by radical democracy in the name of the "general public," then I suggest you spend your effort campaigning for compulsory voting in the US.
It is sad what this blog has come to; a bunch of socially underdeveloped interllectuals who would spout sharp wit at each other while they lie back in their recliners. All you people do is us complicated vocabulary to explain and debate issues which you neither understand or particually care about. If you really cared you would stop gibbering like the morons you are and would get out there and make a difference. Do not spout your useless and jaded comments unless you are willing to get out there and put your beliefs in action. If everyone behaved as disgustingly as you all have and left the work to be done by others the revolution would have not come to pass and the war of independance would have never been won.
Gazer, I hope the posting name you're using doesn't indicate the general mode of your activity. It is sad that this blog has been burdened with a certain amount of intellectual dishonesty. On the other hand, verbal arguments in themselves are a powerful means of communicating ideas. I suspect you think this too. Otherwise, you wouldn't have explored this blog and left your comment.
Precise and intelligent communication was one of the hallmarks of the educated men who participated in the revolution you've praised. You simply can't know all that is being done by the participants on this blog.
As for the 'uselessness' of the ideas reflected here, they happen to be the ideas around which these debates have always revolved, and they happen to be the ideas that have motivated or resisted the major public policy decisions that have been taken. When people fail to discuss these issues, there is no resistance to the evil inherent in some rationales. When people do not become convinced of their errors, they tend not to change their views and tend not to vote differently. Continue to act, but continue to discuss as well.
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