Posted on 01/31/2012 2:00:42 PM PST by ProgressingAmerica
A few days ago, an article titled "Is it morally wrong to take a life? Not really, say bioethicists" appeared in a journal for bio ethics. More than anything, note the context. This is being discussed by those who are "the experts" of ethics, by researchers from Duke University and the National Institute of Health. So we're supposed to take this seriously, that this is an enlightened and reasoned discourse on the matter. All of that gets shattered if you look at the verbage they use at the bottom:
This radical conclusion may shock some readers, but the authors are not murderers. They want to bring greater precision to what we mean by killing. Rendering someone totally and permanently incapacitated is just as bad as taking a life, or so they contend. Killing totally disabled patients does them no harm."Then killing her cannot disrespect her autonomy, because she has no autonomy left. It also cannot be unfair to kill her if it does her no harm."Nor, they say, is life "sacred". The only relevant difference between life and death is the existence of abilities – and a brain-damaged person no longer has these."[I]f killing were wrong just because it is causing death or the loss of life, then the same principle would apply with the same strength to pulling weeds out of a garden. If it is not immoral to weed a garden, then life as such cannot really be sacred, and killing as such cannot be morally wrong."
So they know full well their proposal is radical, yet they've proposed it anyways. I can't get past the words they're using, they have made a 'good' attempt to soften the ground. Where have I heard such vile nastyness before? Oh yeah! Margaret Sanger. In her 1922 book "The Pivot of Civilization", Sanger incredibly wrote the following:(Page 265)
At the present time, civilized nations are penalizing talent and genius, the bearers of the torch of civilization, to coddle and perpetuate the choking human undergrowth, which, as all authorities tell us, is escaping control and threatens to overrun the whole garden of humanity.
Margaret Sanger also justified her radicalism by cloaking it in science. In 1925, "Birth Control: Facts and Responsibilities" was published. Now, being as this is still under copyright, I can't do anything with it. But Margaret Sanger did, repeatedly, imply or outright say and write things in reference to "human weeds".(as you can see)
This is always how it begins. Go after the "lowest hanging fruit" as they see it. The feebleminded, the neuronic, the idiots and imbeciles, the illiterate, the undesirables, the defectives. Those are all terms that were used by early eugenicists and progressives to denote their superiority above others. As we have seen from history, doctors should not have the power to make these decisions. Even when individuals make this sort of choice is bad enough, as noted by The Blaze, this: is the result of the devaluation of human life. But this kind of thing is nothing new. Let's get back to Margaret Sanger. In 1932, she penned an article titled "MY WAY TO PEACE" (From the Sanger public documents archive)
have Congress set up a special department for the study of population problems, and appoint a Parliament of Population Directors representing the various branches of science.
How nice. A politburo which will decide if you are worthy of life or not. And aptly named! The Parliament of Population.
(f) the whole dysgenic population would have its choice of segregation or sterilization.(g) there would be farm lands and homesteads where these segregated persons would be taught to work under competent instructors for the period of their entire lives.
Yes, you read that right. This is where it always ends up. And note, as I go through all of this, how every bit of this relates back to what those bioethicists wrote just a week ago. They did everything but use the word 'feebleminded'. What Sanger wrote here sounds very similar to this:
"I think it would be a good thing to make everybody come before a properly appointed board, just as they might come before the income tax commissioners, and say every 5 years or every 7 years, just put them there, and say, sir or madam, now will you be kind enough to justify your existence? If you're not producing as much you consume, or perhaps a little more, then, clearly, we cannot use the big organization of our society, for the purpose of keeping you alive, because your life does not benefit us and it can't be of any use to yourself
Would you say Shaw's proposal sounds like a proposal for a Parliament of Population? I think it does. Now, you don't have to go digging very far before you start to learn that Sanger was well acquainted with Fabian Socialism, having relationships with both Havelock Ellis(who was a contributor The Birth Control Review) and H G Wells. All one big happy circle.
Know history, and you know the future. While I don't expect that modern bio ethicists will go around talking about the feebleminded any time soon, I cannot say it won't happen. They're already going around talking about "human weeds". They have already placed themselves on this path. So what's next?
Placemark.
You, and the government, can take a hike. This doesn't concern you.
This is not to say they learned their whole program from Americans.
After all, it is we who adopted the Prussian grade school model. You must add to this toxic brew the failed individual seeking escape from the awesome responsibilities that accompany being born with the Knowledge of Good and Evil, our family curse.
Just such a mass movement, offering precisely this same illusion of an escape from freedom, emerged in the Nazis.
In the words of Captain Kirk, "they had to be destroyed at a terrible cost."
And today that same ideology has emerged yet again, to meet the same historic need. Islam.
Interesting Post.
“That is a matter for me and my private insurance company.”
Informative to the extent that your apparent plans do not require the rest of us to finance them.
“You, and the government, can take a hike. This doesn’t concern you.”
1. Your response implies you don’t think your posts should be questioned or that you should be asked to expand on or clarify anything in them. You’re not that special.
2. Whether or not it concerns me is still an open question to which you don’t get to give the final answer.
Awfully presumptive of you to say the least.
“Why do you feel you get to have a say in the final disposition of my life?”
I didn’t write that I “get to have a say.”
I wrote that “Whether or not it concerns me is still an open question...”. It might concern me or it might not.
It might concern me and my neighbors if the facility in which you are to be stored till you can be cured is proposed to be built in our community and we don’t want it there for some reason.
It might concern me if I was a stockholder or employee in the private insurance company you wrote of.
It might concern me for other reasons.
Or it might not concern me at all.
Like I wrote, it’s still an open question. I have insufficient information to know if it concerns me or not.
“Awfully presumptive of you to say the least.”
Was it not presumptive of you to write “This doesn’t concern you”? How do you know that? You wrote that it was “a matter for me and my private insurance company”, but do you know for a fact that what you two do will not affect anyone else, anywhere, ever?
And you don’t have to answer those questions, I’m really not that interested.
The financial/economic aspects of “keeping you alive as long as possible, no matter how incapacitated, in the hopes that some day they may find a way to fix you” are more interesting.
As one example, what if they find a way to fix you, but it’s cheaper to maintain you in the incapacitated state than to fix you? What are the decision criteria? What if there are a hundred like you, and they fix you all regardless of the expense and then can’t afford to keep me and those like me alive as long as it would have been possible if they didn’t fix all of you? Would that concern me?
In conclusion: Good night.
Because it's my life. Not yours. cogito ergo sum.
Look, if you want to make money off my insurance premiums, fine. Invest in the company, or don't. Your decision to do so has a little to do with me as my decision does for you.
It's called the free market and it provides certain services to those willing and able to pay. As a free market, you can either roll the dice and participate, or you can go play elsewhere.
As for "fixing me", that would be stipulated in the original contract would it not? Again, no need for you and government to step in here as I can negotiate that with my insurance company myself through my lawyer.
I'm assuming you have even more red herrings and tangential arguments to make...
My original point stands, the government should have no role in these decisions. Period.
That may have been something that would have come up in discussion if your original response to me had been in good faith.
I'm assuming you have even more red herrings and tangential arguments to make...
I'm confident the judgement of posterity and lurkers will deem I wasn't the one who drove the discussion off track.
You haven't turned out to be worthwhile, so I'm done. Take your last shot. Try the point about the government again. That should be safe for you since I didn't dispute it.
You posted to me with your silly red herrings. My first post on this was on topic and not addressed to you...
Don't go away mad, just stop clicking "post"...
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