Posted on 09/21/2006 1:51:58 PM PDT by wagglebee
To me, these are the defining issues of our times:
-Useless Eaters vs The Death Cult--
-Men(ace) in Black? SCOTUS goes Rogue...--
-Thunder on the Border-- (Minuteman Project)--
1- whose life is it, anyway? Yours, or someone else's?
2- an unaccountable Judiciary.
3- whose Country is it?
There are other vital issues, of course- but these three will determine just who we really are as a nation.
And Hitler was a dog owner!
I think the reporter might be the only person who'd like to have that right denied.
You're saying that my father had no right to make the decision to not eat or drink anything until he died?
Screw you, it was his decision and his right.
Oh my! Heaven forbid we don't extinguish those outdated ideas of individualism and self-determination! Don't they all know that they are to serve the hive and their life isn't their own?!?
</sarc>
According to the Founding Fathers, Rights were also sacred. If you make society the judge of what a Right is worth to an individual, what an individual should do or not do with his life, then you might as well start posting with the other Right-Grabbers on DU.
I'm curious what other compulsory behaviors you favor, besides living in agony. Perhaps you'd like to force people to join a church?
Love is also respecting a person's wishes, IMHO, and not reversing their life-end preferences based on one's own preferences just because they have become delusional and unable to stop you. In fact, I think such behavior is selfish and immoral.
Agreed.
BINGO! Many of these people who claim to know better how to run peoples' lives than the individuals themselves are not just arrogant, but they are very disrespectful of people being individuals and not just faceless "lives"... The Culture of DisrespectTM is loving to break down our personal rights and tell us we all must live (or keep our bodies going even after we're dead) for as long as medical technology can do so, because we are enslaved to "the good of society."
The claim that "euthanasia leads to disrespect for life" is a strawman created by lumping involuntary euthanasia with voluntary euthanasia/self-determination. Since when does self-determination and personal rights lead to a disrespect for life?
" Terman is the author of a book, The Best Way to Say Good-bye that explains how patients can ensure they will be dehydrated to death if experiencing dementia."
This is so convoluted it's like mental torture just reading it.
To ENSURE that you will have the great good fortune to be dehydrated to death....???? These people are crazy and evil.
There is an agenda to push euthanasia in the courts and through the legislature just as with other issues the left pushes ie.divorce, homosexual marriage and abortion. Anyone who doesn't understand this reality is in complete denial.
There is and never has been "a right to die." This is completely a modern day phenomenon. People believing in furthering Euthanasia, have exploited the reality of technological advancements to promote their cause. Of those opposing the euthanasia movement, few if any would argue that people should be kept alive indefinitely by extraordinary means like heart and lung machines.
However, those pushing the death agenda, would prematurely and actively end the lives of certain people, who are not using extraordinary means, thus interfering with the natural death process. At NO time in the history of our country was this ever perceived as a "right." Such people place themselves above God. It doesn't get more ARROGANT than that.
So you are saying that the early Christians who hurled themselves off cliffs to join their Lord were time-travelers who got that idea from modern-day times? Oh-Kay...
Silly me....I had just thought they were doing that centuries before the Church changed positions and banned suicide! I suppose the saints who committed suicide (e.g., Saint Pelagia of Antioch) were also time-travelers? If so, then why did Augustine of Hippo go to such tortuous lengths to justify the saints' suicides?
However, those pushing the death agenda[...]
You bring up the "death agenda" as a strawman but don't address those who follow the "Rights Agenda."
"According to the Founding Fathers, Rights were also sacred."
Check out what the rights are, as stated by the Founding Fathers. The rights come from God, not man. The so called "right to die" is not one of them.
Unfortunately, the current fad these days is to label any licentious desire as a "right." We've got people playing god these days, demanding all kinds of counterfeit rights.
Yes, the right to die is one of the implied rights from the delineated right to life. Similarly, the right to NOT vote is implied from the right to vote. The right to NOT practice a religion is implied from the right to practice religion. The right to stay single is implied from the right to marry. The right to stay home from rallies is implied from the right to assemble. Or do you believe that people should be compelled to gather for rallies? to marry, to attend religious services, to vote? That's not my America.
That is, the right of self-determination is given by our Creator ("divine" in Thomas Jefferson's first draft of the DoI) and is not to be taken from us, no matter how much you want the government to rule our lives.
However, what is the "right" to die? Was Terri Schiavo allowed to exercise her rights? Why have anti-suicide laws never been ruled unconstitutional?
Love is not "respecting a person's wishes" when those wishes are harmful to them. It would be like telling a drug addict "Don't try to get off of heroin, I love you and respect your wishes".
If your spouse was trying to kill themselves, slowly or quickly, would you just sit by and watch them do it?
It is the implied right, given to us by our Creator, to choose not to exercise our delineated right (given to us by our Creator) of the right to live.
Was Terri Schiavo allowed to exercise her rights?
She was allowed to marry her husband, and by doing so, she transferred much of her parents' role to Mr. Schiavo, her spouse. I don't think that was done involuntarily.
I am not a lawyer, so I cannot comment on the legal aspects of what was done (though I have heard that some decisions were done on an ex post facto basis and that upsets me if true). But from a moral standpoint, "her husband, guardian, and the courts" seem to be the best way society could decide what she would have wanted.
There was an assault on the sanctity of marriage conducted during her life, and that's sad. That doesn't mean I believe a husband has a right to kill his wife, as some might twist my words...but it means that we really have no better way to tell what she would have wanted than the way it was done, in the absence of written documentation.
Why have anti-suicide laws never been ruled unconstitutional?
Are you serious?
What test case would there be? I think that many of those who feel most passionately about this subject are no longer with us. Many find the topic important only after they are in need of relief, and the courts are so slow, many are gone before it does any good. MLK's words are especially relevant, in an odd twist: "A right delayed is a right denied." :-(
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