By Timothy Birdnow

The “right to die” championed by the Left ultimately means the duty to die, and “death with dignity” is a codeword for the ultimate power being invested in the false god of the State.

When Terri Schiavo was murdered through dehydration by her husband and a pro-death judge, a fierce battle erupted between liberals and conservatives over the issue of euthanasia; liberal Democrats fought furiously for the death of poor Terri, and conservatives-particularly Republicans-fought to save her with equal vigour. What struck many as odd on the pro-life side of the issue was the fanaticism with which those who sought to “end life with dignity” prosecuted their war; why were they so determined to win that particular battle? What was it about this “right to die” that brought out such passion on the left?

The situation was exacerbate by the actions of “Dr. Death” aka Jack “the dripper” Kervorkian, whose fascination with ending lives lead to his arrest for physician assisted suicide-and ultimately lead to changes in the laws of several states to allow doctors to act as accessories to murder. Currently Washington State and Oregon allow this violation of the Hippocratic Oath, while Virginia has no clear laws against, Ohio has had it’s laws against struck down by the state Supreme Court, and North Carolina, Utah, and Wyoming have decriminalized the practice.

There is clearly a movement in the United States to grant the power to end life to individuals chosen by the State.

Now, this is being sold to the public as a mercy, as merely a means to end the suffering of the sick and elderly as gently and painlessly as possible. But is that the intention, or is there some ulterior motive involved?

There was a terrific op-ed by Colleen Carroll Campbell that appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and at her website about what physician assisted suicide has wrought. According to Ms. Campbell:

“Assisted-suicide advocates hail such laws as progressive and liberating. Yet even in Washington, where 58 percent of voters approved the assisted-suicide measure last fall, many critics remain unconvinced.

They worry that such laws will change a doctor’s role from healer to executioner. They fret that the assisted-suicide push will siphon resources from palliative care and confirm severely ill patients’ suspicions that their
lives are burdensome and worthless. And they fear that, as our society struggles to care for an aging population in a worsening economy, the right to die could morph into a duty to die.

Their fears are well-founded. Consider the case of Barbara Wagner, an Oregon woman who was diagnosed with a recurrence of lung cancer last year at age 64. Her survival prospects were grim, but her oncologist offered her one final hope: a $4,000-a-month drug that could slow the cancer’s growth and give her another four to six months to live. Wagner, a great-grandmother and retired bus driver living in a low-income apartment, could not afford the drug herself. So she asked her state-run health insurance plan for help.The response she received shocked her. Oregon state officials sent a letter saying that they would not pay for medication to extend her life, but they would foot the drug bill for an assisted suicide - an expenditure of roughly $50.Assisted-suicide laws like the one in Wagner’s state are a potential boon to tight-fisted insurers and bureaucrats looking to cut health care costs. And the growing acceptance of assisted suicide and euthanasia, even in states that do not explicitly permit them, makes it easier for frustrated physicians and
caregivers to convince themselves and others that severely ill and disabled patients would be better off dead.”

She`s absolutely right, of course; the purpose of assisted suicide has never been for the welfare of the victim. Anyone who has read Aldous Huxley`s “Brave New World” should understand that the goal of such legislation is to advance the particular materialistic worldview of of the post-modernist liberals. Man, in the view of many on the Left, is but a very complicated biological machine, a mass of conditioned responses, instincts, and genetic pre-programming that gives the illusion of free will but is in reality nothing more than a vehicle to pass DNA from generation to generation. As such, Man is ultimately a tool to be utilized for the pleasure of the majority (who, of course, is incapable of knowing what that pleasure should be and so must be lead by the few Alpha class intellectuals). There is nothing special about being human; a dog is a boy is a cow is a fish, as the animal rights crowd would claim. Human beings are ultimately objects, physical entities that should be at the service of their betters.

I wrote about this very thing when the Schiavo case was raging (see the references); the ultimate purpose is to assert the dominion of Man over life and death, to assert the power reserved unto God over other men so as to gain an illusion of parity with the Almighty. Man cannot create life but He CAN choose the time and manner of death. If God is the author of life, Man can be the plagiarist author of death.

This may not be the conscious purpose of those who advocate assisted suicide; many doubtlessly believe they are doing something good by ending suffering. It is, I would assert, at the core of many on the Left who advocate so vociferously for the right to kill.

The fact is, while suicide is generally illegal in most states, nobody is going to jail for killing themselves (the British used to consider it a capital offense, and the would-be suicide would be hanged if he survived his attempt). Furthermore, killing oneself is not difficult at all if the suicide really wants to pull it off-just swallow a bottle of pain-killers, or slice your carotid artery and you should be gone with little trouble. Jumping off bridges or other such public stunts are precisely that-stunts, the intention of which is to get attention and hopefully be stopped. Someone who is suffering and does not believe they have any hope does not need a doctor`s appointment to off himself.

The last thing I would want would be to be put through the aggravation of a doctor`s visit; you would be willing to slice your own throat just filling out the insurance forms. I can`t quite grasp how these doctors expect to be paid for killing someone anyway; it`s rather like your mechanic expecting you to pay him for junking your car. He generally pays you for it…

Of course, the more assisted suicides we see the more we come to accept that as normal, so the states that have such laws are going to be infested with the atheistic materialists pushing every elderly grandmother and cancer patient to do the honorable thing and die. This was as predictable as the rising of the sun.

I would make a modest proposal; liberals are unhappy people anyway, so perhaps a program should be established to assist these unhappy lefties to put themselves out of their misery. It could be part of the stimulus plan, since they are generally a drag on the economy, living off some sort of government assistance. Think of the money we would save by offing liberals! They are hardly reproducing anyway, depending on recruitment of others and thus spoiling the peace-of-mind of the untoward who are sucked into their belief system, so it would matter little to the gene pool were we to help them find rest. Now THAT`S a concept!

The reality is that this is precisely where assisted suicide will lead-those who oppose the “best and brightest” will be declared mentally unfit and thus will be “better off” being relieved of the burden that is their lives. Genocides always begin with such “good intentions”; these particular people are inconvenient and should be gotten out of the way. First we pressure them, then when everyone agrees that getting them gone will serve the greater good we begin to systematically remove them. Before long we have ovens baking bodies 24/7 with animal pens to hold the troublesome who refuse to go away and die.

That is the ultimate goal, unconsciously held perhaps, of assisted suicide. We are taking a dangerous path.

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