John
Maynard Keynes famously quipped that, "In the long run we are all dead.”
Could death really be
the answer to the human dilemma?
Certainly the Nazi’s
thought so with their Final Solution.
The Jacobin’s felt that the beheading aristocrats would improve life in
France. Communist governments throughout
the twentieth century thought that killing 100 million or so dissenters would
make the world a better place.
Eugenicists and racial cleansers the world over agree that someone must go. They just can’t agree who.
Jihadists want
infidels to eat dirt. Uncle Sam thinks
that he can remake the world in his image if only he kills enough “bad
guys”. Progressive pie slicers always
opt for less pie eaters as opposed to bigger pies.
Why, you ask, am I
going down this rabbit hole? Here’s why.
This Saturday I will
be at a gathering of libertarian friends. I know that I will be asked to sign a
petition supporting New Jersey’s “Death With Dignity Act”. I will refuse.
Believe me, I am 100%
sincere when I say that the Violence Monopoly (a.k.a. The State) has no
business intervening between physician and patient. Nor can the VM regulate suicide. People will exit life if they really want to
go. Two of my favorite writers, Ernest
Hemmingway and Hunter Thompson, took their own lives as did Kurt Cobain, one of
my favorite musicians.
“So it goes” as Kurt
Vonnegut would say.
However, I am opposed
to having positive laws on the books which open the door for a death economy.
The death economy is
that protocol that treats death as the most cost effective treatment option. In Mark Levin’s book, Liberty and Tryanny, he recounts the story of Barbara
Wagner, an Oregonian suffering from recurring lung cancer. Her doctor recommended a drug that was not on
the formulary of Oregon’s state run health care system. The state insurance refused her drug request because
of high cost. Yet it generously offered
to kill her. They could afford that. Of course, killing people is what the VM does
best.
During the Obamacare
debates we heard plenty about “death panels”.
Well, here we have one. It is
quite reasonable to assume that if assisted suicide is offered to one, it must
be offered to all, whether they can afford or not. If they cannot, suicide will surely be paid
for with my tax dollars. I object to
paying for killing.
I also question the whole “voluntary” notion of assisted suicide. It sounds high minded and libertarian indeed. But, oftentimes, social coercion goes a long
way into pushing people into unwanted decisions.
Allow me to shift
gears for a moment to another area of life and death choice, abortion. Often it is not as “voluntary” as it may
seem. I offer two anecdotes to
illustrate how supposedly “free” choices are forced or at least unduly
influenced.
The first story is
that of a lady I know who was married with four children. She became pregnant with a fifth and her
husband would not stand for it. He told
her to have an abortion or the marriage was over. Stunned, she meekly submitted. He dropped her off for the procedure and
picked her up later in the day. The
trauma of that experience destroyed her marriage and propelled her into years
of emotional and behavioral problems before she finally found healing and
peace. The abortion was never her choice.
An old college
roommate works in an inner city pediatric clinic. Every day they see children, 14, 15, 16 years
old, pregnant with other children. The
protocol is to bum rush them to the abortionist because that is the low cost treatment
option. Is this really “choice”?
Getting back to
assisted suicide, how many people would rather see their elderly dependents
dead
In a libertarian
world, right to death legislation would be unnecessary because people would
have the right to buy and consume anything that they please. However, in a world of statist and corporatist
healthcare, death becomes the low cost option and people will surely be pushed
into it.
As they stand now, Death
with Dignity laws only apply to physical suffering. But isn’t mental and emotional suffering just
as real, just as bad if not worse? For
many, life is not worth living following the loss of a loved one, heartbreak,
career implosions or financial ruin. Do
you think that emotional sufferers will not insist on painless assisted
suicide? Is it not a right? And will we not pay for it and be happy
because it is the low cost treatment option?
Murray Rothbard held
that a human
being could not sell him or herself into slavery. To do so would be to alienate free will. If free will is what makes us human, then “voluntary”
slaves will have forfeited their humanity which, he maintains, is
impossible.
Life is a higher
order good than free will. Without life
there can be no free will, hence no humanity.
This bring is back to
Lord Keynes. “In the long run we are all
dead”. By opting for the death solution
we opt for the low cost solution to humankind’s issues by eliminating humankind.
You may retort that
my reasoning is wildly speculative and fantastic. But I will insist that all “humanitarian”
statist endeavors are cancers. They
start out small, even microscopic, and the metastasize into something deadly
and out of control.
Related
Posts:
The
Diminished Value of Human Beings in the Dependency State
Getting F***ed By
Statists (Literally)
Poking
Holes in the “Anti-War” Left
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- Paul Simon
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