What’s Wrong with the World

Lord have mercy. "The love of many will grow cold," indeed.

"As a secular fundamentalist religion, [Modernism’s] guiding principle is that each intellect is autonomous and therefore sovereign, an independent nation unto itself, out of which faith devolves a destructive pragmatism whose end is the satisfaction of appetitive desire—whether the appetite for abstract power or for material indulgence. The sacrificial victim to this end, the victim of this termite destruction: whatever is. But the anarchic necessity to this sovereign intellect is that the object to be overwhelmed is whatever is not its own autonomous consciousness. Thus creation becomes the unexamined provender to the appetitive sovereignty of the alienated person….That object under destruction…is the body of creation, which body includes nature and nations, things and persons." ~~~ Marion Montgomery, "Consequences in the Provinces: Ideas Have Consequences 50 Years After"

What this post describes is exactly the sort of thing that happens when autonomous human will is viewed as the be-all and end-all of existence, and Creation seen simply as raw material upon which man exerts that will. Anything without "its own autonomous consciousness," including a little old lady with Alzheimer's, apparently, becomes a victim to that end.

The deification of will in any human sphere of activity results in a self-subverting, tyrannical religion; alas, the adherents of it are almost always blind to this. Choice is a monster that tends to eat its caretakers.

There is a reason that wills use the phrase "of sound mind." The choices that people make only have meaning if they understand the nature of those choices. That is the reason that we do not allow children to consent to sexual activity and require that individuals who want to get sexual reassignment surgery get counseling before going through with the surgery. That's why I find the idea that this woman's wishes should not be honored offensive. When she was of sound mind and not lost to dementia she said that she wanted to be allowed to die rather than be kept alive as a mockery of her former self, which is a choice that I have a great deal of sympathy for. If you believe in freedom at all you cannot argue that she should be kept alive.

Oh, uh, yeah, Dunsany, because eating from a spoon is just like having sex. Gee, come to think of it, I guess we shouldn't feed babies for the same reason we can't have sex with them. Being fed requires consent, and babies are incapable of consenting. What a drag. I guess all the babies have to die, now.

Now, no doubt you will say that, no, this is just about people who, while they were "free and equal autonomous agents" said that _later_ they should be deliberately dehydrated to death. Then, magically, their _later_ acceptance of food and water (just as a baby would accept it) turns into "force" and into giving food "without consent."

But that doesn't follow either. If receiving food from a spoon isn't *in general* the sort of thing that requires rational, mature consent (as obviously it doesn't, since we feed all sorts of people, including infants and the disabled, who can't give consent), it doesn't *become* the sort of thing that requires consent because one's earlier self said that it should be withheld from one's later self.

In short: It doesn't matter whether she is giving "informed consent" to being spoon fed, because being spoon fed doesn't require informed consent.

I believe in this woman's freedom to keep on eating, which isn't causing her the slightest harm or discomfort. It would no more be an expression of freedom to take away her food and water and drug the heck out of her and stand back and watch her die over a period of 10-14 days than it would be an expression of freedom to throw her in front of a truck.

"Now, no doubt you will say that, no, this is just about people who, while they were "free and equal autonomous agents" said that _later_ they should be deliberately dehydrated to death. Then, magically, their _later_ acceptance of food and water (just as a baby would accept it) turns into "force" and into giving food "without consent." "

Well at least you were able to see the obvious problem with your argument.

"But that doesn't follow either. If receiving food from a spoon isn't *in general* the sort of thing that requires rational, mature consent (as obviously it doesn't, since we feed all sorts of people, including infants and the disabled, who can't give consent), it doesn't *become* the sort of thing that requires consent because one's earlier self said that it should be withheld from one's later self."

It's not the spoon feeding itself that is the issue so much as it is taking any action that keeps her alive. An ordinary adult has the ability to decide if they want to be kept alive after they become very sick or senile, and making that decision is something that requires informed consent. If you keep such a person alive after they have lost the ability to make such decisions for themselves you are disrespecting their wishes in immoral way. Trying to make this about the spoon feeding is disingenuous at best, and it would be better to just admit that you don't think people have the right to decide to die.

An ordinary adult has the ability to decide if they want to be kept alive after they become very sick or senile...

Since when?

and it would be better to just admit that you don't think people have the right to decide to die.

Some rephrasing for accuracy is in order. What you meant to say was that "you don't think people have the right to decide to be killed." It would be better to just admit that.

It's not the spoon feeding itself that is the issue so much as it is taking any action that keeps her alive.

Meaning, in this case, it's the spoon feeding. Hence, see my argument. If spoon feeding doesn't require consent, we are done. End of argument. It doesn't matter whether she is now compos mentis, because she doesn't have to give mentally competent consent to be spoon fed, any more than a baby does.

An ordinary adult has the ability to decide if they want to be kept alive after they become very sick or senile, and making that decision is something that requires informed consent.

Actually, no, not as a general rule. And even in our far-gone society, not _legally_ when the ridiculously over-stretched phrase "kept alive" refers only to something as entirely low-tech, non-invasive, and non-medical as spoon feeding.

As a matter of fact, I _don't_ think people have the right _in general_ to decide to die. But usually when one says that someone will start blathering about extreme measures and medical decision-making and and treatment and heroic interventions and what-not, and in this case we don't even need to have that discussion, because none of that applies. This is not any of those things. Therefore, it's an open and shut case, even in fairly pro-death Canada. The declaration has usually legally been made that a person has a right to refuse medical _treatment_ in advance, but as the nursing home points out, medical treatment doesn't include mere, non-medical spoon feeding.

It's only by declaring a unilateral right to be killed by starvation and dehydration or even by lethal injection (which is no doubt what you would prefer and what the grown children and Margot herself, before she fell back on eating her soup like any normal human being, advocated), a _total_ commitment to *a right to be killed when you want to be*, that you can get some sort of requirement that Margot be starved to death now.

This isn't about "being kept alive." The phrase "being kept alive" is just misleading, because it recalls all that stuff about having machines breathe for you and what-not. You're really talking about a right to be killed. Which, yes, of course, I absolutely deny.

By the way, if it were winter in Canada, keeping her in a bed in a warm hospital would count as "any action that keeps her alive." Maybe every nursing home should just have a snowy field next door where they can put the old 'uns (cough cough who have _asked_ for it ahead of time, of course) out to freeze to death overnight, suitably drugged to avoid "discomfort." Then they wouldn't have to keep taking "any" of those "actions" that "keep them alive," like turning them at regular intervals to avoid bed sores, changing their adult diapers, putting antibiotic cream on any sores that do develop, and, oh, incidentally, feeding them.

"Meaning, in this case, it's the spoon feeding. Hence, see my argument. If spoon feeding doesn't require consent, we are done. End of argument. It doesn't matter whether she is now compos mentis, because she doesn't have to give mentally competent consent to be spoon fed, any more than a baby does."

She expressed the desire not to be kept alive, so if spoon feeding helps to keep her alive then violates her wishes and is wrong.

"The declaration has usually legally been made that a person has a right to refuse medical _treatment_ in advance, but as the nursing home points out, medical treatment doesn't include mere, non-medical spoon feeding."

Speaking from a moral perspective (I'm not familiar with Canadian law), I don't see much a distinction given that both violate her wish not to be kept alive. That's what concerns me. Do you think a Christian Scientist has the right to refuse medical care? Suppose that we had a fully funded national healthcare system here in the United States. Would it be moral to force a dying Christian scientist to receive life saving treatment? I know that your contention is that these two situations are different, but I am curious what you would say about a case like that.

"This isn't about "being kept alive." The phrase "being kept alive" is just misleading, because it recalls all that stuff about having machines breathe for you and what-not. You're really talking about a right to be killed. Which, yes, of course, I absolutely deny."

I think that it would be better to let her starve to death, but in this case we know she wanted to die so she gave her children the right to end her life. She and her children have the right to make those sorts of decisions in private.

Would it be moral to force a dying Christian scientist to receive life saving treatment?

Depending on the treatment, yes, actually, I think it would.

But in fact, as I said before, we don't need to have that conversation *at all*, because food is not medical treatment. It would be possible to say that the Christian Scientist should not be given medical treatment but at the same time to say that anyone should be given food. Nor would there be anything strictly logically inconsistent about such a position. If you want to argue the stronger position that she should just be bumped off by lethal injection, why start by arguing about treating Christian Scientists against their wishes? You know that there are lots of people, and not only pro-lifers, either, who would see a difference between not giving antibiotics to a Christian Scientist and giving a lethal injection to him or to anyone else! If you want to defend the lethal injection,just stick to that. Don't play around with talk about refusing treatment and "keeping people alive" and such. Usually you're better than this at taking the "forward" position on your own side and not wasting time.

Oh, by the way: Tossing her out on a cold night (suitably drugged) would be a lot more efficient and even humane than starving her to death. The latter takes about fourteen days and quite a bit of medication to dull the suffering.

When she was of sound mind and not lost to dementia she said that she wanted to be allowed to die rather than be kept alive as a mockery of her former self, which is a choice that I have a great deal of sympathy for. If you believe in freedom at all you cannot argue that she should be kept alive

And as many people find when they get into a new phase of life, it is not what they expected. That she is not now insisting that her will be taken seriously should itself be proof to you that maybe she doesn't actually have a desire to die now that she's in this position. There are a lot of men who speak boldly about they'd rather die than experience X and then when X happens suddenly they drop the facade and cling desperately to life. Should we condemn people who speak or codify bravado into a will when they have to live up to that bravado? There is no respect for freedom in forcing someone to put their money where their mouth is on something like this.

The fact that Dunsany is completely defeated in this argument is evidenced by the quiet abandonment of any pretense to be continuing the hashing out of the particulars of this case.

That a man (or woman, back to the particulars) has, in normal circumstances, the power to take his or her own life, in no way implies that he or she has the right.

Liberals try to avoid entering into a true dispute about the nature of right by means of an assertion of emotional sympathy. But of course strong emotion does not overwhelm reason except by fraud or violence. Power does not make right. More concretely: it does not follow from "it violates her wishes" that "it is wrong."

Meanwhile, this conflation of "medical treatment" with routine care of human beings, things requiring no expertise whatsoever, is an evasion of rational argument extraordinary for its brazenness. As Lydia points out, a thousand other "treatments" amounting to mere routine care, could be imagined and brought into question according to the passion of someone's Very Strong Feeling about it. (What about air conditioning in Florida -- or Boston, for that matter: check today's high temperature? Imagine if nursing homes could just play dumb about whether they are obliged to keep a building from becoming a dangerous sauna in the summer: A Christian Scientist, having officially refused medical aid, may be lawfully left to die of heat stroke in her bed?)

Dunsany and other liberals are going to have to actually develop a moral theory according to which the desire to die implies a right to die. (This moral theory will have to be detailed enough, by the way, to explain why, say, a similarly strong desire on the part of Christians not to subsidize abortifacients can be overruled for mere bureaucratic reasons.)

Dusany, you also seem to be missing the whole thrust of Lydia's post which is that by her actions the woman declares she does not wish to die. Your position that, in the present case, a person can wish to have his wishes violated because his wishes should never be violated is facially incoherent. It shows a serious lack of any real, identifiable moral principle, and leads me to suspect that the bottom line is that, as Lydia says, death itself is what is being honored.

The truth of the matter is that what she said prior to her dementia is practically irrelevant because people of a certain stripe will always argue that the patient's family--or the patient's doctors, or the patient's friends, or the patient's homosexual lover, or the patient's favorite house plant--has an iron-clad right to kill him if he cannot care for himself. The fact that she is resisting starvation simply by accepting food matters not at all. What matters is that she die, period, and her wishes at some point six months or a year ago matter no more than do her current desire to lessen the agony of starvation by eating what she is given.

Thank you, Sage, you put that very well.

What is so excessively creepy both about the grown children's position and about Dunsany's is the idea that _rescinding_ her previous statement that she would want to starve to death supposedly requires that she now be of entirely sound mind. Otherwise it "doesn't count." On the most basic level, one can say that now she doesn't want to die and is taking her food, plausibly even enjoying it. We know she would suffer if it were withdrawn, as witness the reference to medication. But to them, none of that counts. It's too late. Now that she's no longer "all there," she has to (as Mike puts it) put her money where her mouth is. She's no longer allowed to change her mind. So in other words, being fed by a spoon is now being treated as some sort of special, invasive procedure that requires a special form of fully intellectual assent. Why? simply because of what the person said previously. Which is really nuts. It really does give the impression that the important thing is death itself.

By the way, I predict that this attitude that someone doesn't "really know what they are doing" when taking spoon feeding, as if receiving food is like signing a legal document or even (see Dunsany's above comment) like having sex, will eventually extend to people who have never explicitly taken Margot Bentley's earlier position. It's so easy to say, "Well, she isn't really accepting that freely, because she has dementia and doesn't understand what she's doing, and I'm sure she _wouldn't_ want it if she could discuss the matter, so let's starve her." Why shouldn't one also say that conjecturally about people who have never made any such statement? Especially if they are now considered to be living lives unworthy of life which they _should_ want to end?

Why shouldn't one also say that conjecturally about people who have never made any such statement?

Yes, and in fact this is just what we do hear said about many people. "He wouldn't want to die this way," or even that no rational person could want to be incapacitated, rather than just dying already. So the appeal to her earlier statements is, practically speaking, superfluous. We come with suspicious regularity to the same conclusion no matter what the particulars, and any argument to hand will be employed to reach that conclusion, in the evident absence of any clearly-articulated moral framework.

It occurs to me that two can play at that game, though. It is just as easy--in fact easier--to make the case that the wish to be starved to death is itself evidence of a serious defect of a person's rational faculties, or of serious ignorance concerning what that kind of death really entails, or of a dementia apparently more serious than the one from which Margot Bentley currently is suffering.

I was just about to make that same point Sage. Margot is behaving more naturally and rationally at this moment than she ever has in her life.

Wesley Smith has previously made a point of saying that a lot of people who say they would want not to be given food and fluids in such-and-such a situation have really not received full information about what that would entail. He's absolutely right about that. Sure, if someone makes a decision on the basis of finding out what a protracted and harrowing death, for onlookers even if the dying person is heavily drugged, that would be, that person is not making a principled "pro-life" decision. Nonetheless, those who are allegedly so concerned with choice and full information should have no objection to telling people what it is they are really wishing for when they say they would want to be starved and dehydrated to death--and what this would make their loved ones witness as well. Presumably a lot of these people are at least _considerate_ enough that they would not kill themselves by blowing their brains out, because that would be so disturbing or what-not to those who have to clean up the mess or who discover the body. Similar considerations apply here, and it's also not at all clear that the dying person does not suffer, as they come in and out of consciousness and more and more medication has to be administered to ease the suffering of dying of sheer thirst. It's a protracted and unpleasant process. Some conscious patients (such as stroke patients) have repeatedly asked for water and been denied it.

As long as outright lethal injections are out of court, there is always the possibility that _real_ informed consent would stop people from agreeing to the kind of grisly death involved here. Enforcing such a death upon someone *who is placidly accepting nutrition and hydration right now*, whatever that person may have said in the past, is barbaric beyond belief.

I would classify spoon feeding as outside intervention, given that it implies the person cannot feed themselves. Perhaps not strictly "medical", but that's too precise of a hair to be splitting. Most of the time outside intervention is what people who express wishes in living wills are referring to. They don't want to be helpless.

This case seems pretty open and shut though. While I can see honoring the right to die of a person who is totally struck down, and rendered wholly dependent on outside care with no way of expressing any wishes thereon or resisting in any way, this case doesn't fit that profile at all. If she does not resist the spoon feedings, then that is tantamount to implied consent and overrules previous hypothetical statements on the subject. If the children do not wish to provide the spoon feedings then they should be arrested for negligence.

The children's argument is pointless even if true. I see no reason to even bother to try to figure out the "essential" mental state of a person before making this kind of judgment, such that we could determine whether or not there has been deviation therefrom.

She's being provided the feeding in a nursing home. The children want to force the nursing home either to stop feeding her or for the nursing home to release her to them, when they will take her home and stop feeding her.

As for "outside intervention," yes, she also requires "outside intervention" to be turned in her bed to avoid bed sores. That really doesn't matter, does it? Babies also require "outside intervention" to be fed and kept clean. There is nothing per se wrong with "outside intervention." In fact, that's just part of taking care of people who need us.

As to whether people want to be helpless, we can't control entirely whether we ever become helpless. Sometimes it's temporary and sometimes long-term. But people should still take care of us when we're helpless.

I don't think there's anything "wrong" with outside intervention, and without express wishes otherwise the assumption should be to provide it. But neither do I think there is anything "wrong" with refusing it. The state shouldn't be micromanaging it, at any rate. People can work these things out on their own.

The nursing home does provide one interesting angle, which is that presumably the care is paid for by the state and not directly by the children. This makes their complaint less comprehensible since they lack even a financial interest. But it also involves the state more heavily in something that it really doesn't have much business in. Instead of simply enforcing an obligation, it is now a surrogate holder of the obligation, which should cause conservatives and liberals some consternation. In general, more state involvement means more micromanagement thereby, which renders the liberal position somewhat incoherent.

Actually, I don't know who is paying for the nursing home. Since it's in Canada, you may be right. But in this case, the nursing home is doing the right thing. I'm not going to succumb to some kind of "Gee, if the state can insist on spoon feeding an old lady in their care, who knows what they might insist on next?" For once they're actually taking care of somebody instead of killing her! I'm no fan of state-run medical care in the first instance, but I don't think that's the issue here at all. Spoon feeding is part of basic care. It should be no more controversial than simply not throwing her out on the street. _Whoever_ is responsible for her care should be feeding her. That's got nothing to do with state vs. non-state. Perhaps in this case, it happens to be the state paying, but so what? The entity who has her in their care, whoever that may be, feeds her. Wow, big news. They also give her clean sheets, change her clothes, turn on the heat in the winter, etc., etc. In other words, they take care of her rather than doing the equivalent of throwing her out in the street.

The thing is, Matt, you started out in the previous comment seeming to agree that they should continue feeding her, but I sensed something a bit odd about it, and now you're going off on some quasi-libertarian tangent, which seems to say that *if* a given nursing home is state-run or paid for by the government (which we don't actually know in this case) it is some kind of untoward government intervention to feed people in the nursing home! I'm sorry, but that's just dumb. Why even pretend that you're running a nursing home at all if you aren't going to feed the residents? Either you're caring for people in the home or you're not. There's no "micromanaging" about feeding them!

If you're going to call basic care "intervention," then it's "intervention" to do _anything_ for these patients rather than just tossing them out to die. As long as you have them in care, you care for them. That includes feeding them. There's no way _not_ to "intervene" with people who are disabled and need to be cared for.

In this case, if we left "people," which happens to be the grown children, to "work things out on their own," they would have swept a woman with dementia out of the nursing home, engaged someone to come and drug the heck out of her so she hopefully wouldn't suffer too much, and sat and watched her dry up and die of dehydration over a two week period in a private home. I don't call that an acceptable instance of "working things out on their own," and I heartily applaud the nursing home for saying they would physically stop the family if they tried to remove her.

The point I was making was not that the nursing home was doing anything wrong, but rather that the incentive structure of socialized medicine makes government and legal intrusion into these decisions inevitable, contrary to what I see as the typical liberal position where the government pays for it but leaves the decision making to us. For instance, Dunsany said above:

She and her children have the right to make those sorts of decisions in private.

Which can be said all day, but if the money is coming from the public then the public is involved.

I don't know that that follows. It would be _less_ expensive for the public purse (if her care is in fact being paid for by the government) for them to send her home and let the children make away with her. Just send the whole matter back into the private realm altogether. But that would be wrong here. If, on the other hand, the nursing home were dehydrating her and the children wanted to take her home and feed her, of course I would say the opposite. This just isn't a case where one can get away from the specifics.

Or look at it this way: It doesn't have to do with whether medical care is socialized, because a nursing home should never release a resident to the care of someone who is openly planning to commit elder abuse, regardless of who is paying for the nursing home. Suppose it were an entirely privatized system, and Loving Daughter, who originally placed Mama in the home, says, "I want to take Mama home to my house now so that I can beat her up." Of course the nursing home should prevent Loving Daughter from doing this, even if Loving Daughter has Mama's power of attorney, etc., and would normally be allowed to check Mama out of the nursing home at any time.

And most countries and/or states, rightly, do have elder abuse as a criminal category.

So I really don't think this has anything to do with socialized medicine. In fact, for cost control reasons, I would generally expect socialized medicine to have made the opposite decision from the nursing home's decision here.

Lydia, you've killed this site. You've just, simply, killed it.

So sad.

Steve, what an asinine thing to say. Even if you think it is true, just to assert it baldly without any kind of reference, support, documentation, or anything is just being nasty for the sake of being nasty. Normally, I ask people who assert things without support to back them up, but I won't invite you to do so. Instead, I will invite you to completely revise the tenor of your comments, or go away.

Hmm, it can't be anything special to do with this particular post. But, steve, whichever Steve you may be, bag it. We do have a comments policy, and even without re-reading it, I seem to recall something about sheer personal attack without content being out of bounds. To say nothing of the fact that a sheer personal attack is definitely OT for this particular post. So, y'know, I don't feel any particular requirement to tolerate that.

"Depending on the treatment, yes, actually, I think it would.

But in fact, as I said before, we don't need to have that conversation *at all*, because food is not medical treatment."

Like I said before, I don't really care if you consider what they are doing medical care. My problem is that it violates her wish not to be kept alive in her current circumstances. I don't see a reason to treat medical treatments differently from other forms of care, I just don't make that sort of moral distinction.

" It would be possible to say that the Christian Scientist should not be given medical treatment but at the same time to say that anyone should be given food. Nor would there be anything strictly logically inconsistent about such a position. If you want to argue the stronger position that she should just be bumped off by lethal injection, why start by arguing about treating Christian Scientists against their wishes? You know that there are lots of people, and not only pro-lifers, either, who would see a difference between not giving antibiotics to a Christian Scientist and giving a lethal injection to him or to anyone else!"

Yes, that's true, but that doesn't mean I care. I'm not claiming that all of the people who disagree with me are contradicting themselves, only that they do not believe in freedom.

"If you want to defend the lethal injection,just stick to that. Don't play around with talk about refusing treatment and "keeping people alive" and such. Usually you're better than this at taking the "forward" position on your own side and not wasting time.

Oh, by the way: Tossing her out on a cold night (suitably drugged) would be a lot more efficient and even humane than starving her to death. The latter takes about fourteen days and quite a bit of medication to dull the suffering.""

Both are preferable to feeding her to keep her alive.

Why do WE care if a woman who has wholeheartedly embraced the culture of death, dies as a consequence of her own wishes?

She put it in writing - let her have it!

Wow, okay, if I'm not mistaken, Dunsany just endorsed throwing Margot Bentley outdoors on a cold night to freeze to death as being "preferable" to feeding her. Thanks, Dunsany! You've justified my faith in you as "the person who can always be counted on to embrace the reductio." It really is very useful. I should start keeping an index of Dunsany links for showing people where their positions lead.

Daniel Smith, no way, Jose. Murder doesn't stop being murder just because somebody said, "I want to be murdered." Right now, Margot Bentley is a helpless resident of a nursing home who is quietly eating her pudding and Jell-O. It would be heinously evil to starve her to death just to "sock it to her" for having previously embraced the culture of death.

It would be heinously evil to starve her to death just to "sock it to her" for having previously embraced the culture of death.

Exactly. Good gravy people. What's with all the desire to deliberately kill people?

First, there are a lot of unanswered questions such as - who is paying for the nursing home? why can't the family remove her? what does the family actually want?

Let me clarify my position so we don't waste time arguing over things I don't believe. I believe both A and B below:

A) The nursing home has a right, and an obligation, to provide care for anyone under their roof.

B) The family has the right to take their mother home.

Given A and B, there is no controversy unless:

1) The family wants the nursing home to carry out their wishes.

2) The family wants the state to force the nursing home to carry out their wishes.

3) The nursing home wants the state to prevent the family from taking their mother home.

1-3 are wrong in my book.

My solution therefore would be that the nursing home continue to provide care, as they see fit, so long as the woman remains in their charge, and, if the family wants to remove her from the nursing home, no entity step in to stop that.

Really, Daniel?

Let's try it this way: Woman has a baby in the hospital. Woman says to all the nurses, "Golly, I just hate this baby. I never wanted to have this baby in the first place. I can't wait until I check out of this hospital. The minute I get this baby home, I'm going to stop feeding it and never feed it until it dies. Then I'll finally be rid of the baby."

Is it the case that under those circumstances she "has a right" to take the baby home and "no entity should step in" to stop her from taking the baby home?

Think carefully before you answer.

Then please tell me how this situation is relevantly different.

Why do the grown children have a "right" to take the mother home with the stated intention of dehydrating her to death? Because they are her relatives? Do relatives always have the right to murder old ladies? Because she said she wanted to be murdered? Do you really want to say that anyone who embraces the culture of death and asks to be murdered should be unstoppably murdered after becoming helpless?

"Wow, okay, if I'm not mistaken, Dunsany just endorsed throwing Margot Bentley outdoors on a cold night to freeze to death as being "preferable" to feeding her. Thanks, Dunsany! You've justified my faith in you as "the person who can always be counted on to embrace the reductio." It really is very useful. I should start keeping an index of Dunsany links for showing people where their positions lead."

It depends on what you mean by preferable. I don't think it is good to let anyone freeze to death because suffering is bad, but I believe that we are morally obligated to do so if the alternative is keeping someone alive against their wishes. In reality such a situation would not arise because it is possible to use lethal injection to prevent such patients from suffering. On another note, I find it amusing that you are mocking me for embracing "reductios" when you believe it would be wrong to lie to Nazis about Jews hiding in your home. People that live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

Daniel, generally (even in libertarian terms) the state has a duty to prevent people from harming others. Included in that duty is a duty to act on a previously planned specific operation that will culminate in harming others - that's called conspiracy to commit a felony or something similar. If the state has the right to act after the fact to punish someone because they DID harm another, then clearly it has the right to prevent a conspiracy to harm someone from unfolding successfully.

Whether the family has rights over deciding Mom's care (generally true) doesn't preclude the state having a role when the family expresses a specific intent to VIOLATE the purpose of those rights in order to harm her.

The case might be different if the family had never expressed any desire to see Mom dead. In that case, without "probable cause" or anything of the sort, mayhap neither the nursing home nor the state would have a legitimate interest in denying the family the right to take care of Mom. Of course, after Mom was starved to death, and the state's coroner establishes the cause of death being starvation rather than any medical condition, the state would end up charging the family with the crime anyway.

I find it amusing that you are mocking me for embracing "reductios" when you believe it would be wrong to lie to Nazis about Jews hiding in your home.

Dunsany, your amusement would make more sense if our position were "it would be wrong to do anything at all that would hinder the Nazis from taking the Jews" rather than doing an immoral thing to prevent them. But since that's not the position, your humor is ill-founded. I suppose, in your lexicon, it would be morally legitimate to kidnap the Nazi soldier's child and threaten the Nazi that you would do some (unspeakably tortuous murder which I won't describe in specifics) to the child, if they won't leave the Jews alone.

"Dunsany, your amusement would make more sense if our position were "it would be wrong to do anything at all that would hinder the Nazis from taking the Jews" rather than doing an immoral thing to prevent them. But since that's not the position, your humor is ill-founded. I suppose, in your lexicon, it would be morally legitimate to kidnap the Nazi soldier's child and threaten the Nazi that you would do some (unspeakably tortuous murder which I won't describe in specifics) to the child, if they won't leave the Jews alone. "

This is just "fighting the hypo" and you know it. Let's say that the SS is outside your house, and the only possible way to save the Jews in your house is to lie. Trying to fight the SS won't save them, they are armed and you are not and you are outnumbered by 30 to 1. Is it still wrong to lie to protect them? The overwhelming majority of people in America would find the idea that lying in a such a situation is wrong absurd. Most of us do not believe that lying is always wrong and the Nazi example is the reductio that proves how silly that view is.

Most of us do not believe that lying is always wrong

So, you are lying to us now, right? Once you allow lying into your system, it collapses.

Most of us do not believe that lying is always wrong

Then we have at least some hope that the bulk of your murderous comments in this thread has been composed of lies.

but I believe that we are morally obligated to do so if the alternative is keeping someone alive against their wishes.

Even with her disease, she is capable of expressing her desires as they currently exist. She obviously has no desire now to die, as at many points in the disease's progression she could have made it obvious she wanted to die right now while there is still "dignity." However, she did not. What you arguing for is not that they system should honor her request made in writing, but that she be bound to prior decision put in a living will when she shows no sign of wanting the will executed.

My problem is that it violates her wish not to be kept alive in her current circumstances.

But how can you say it violates her wish when she is perfectly capable of refusing the feedings? Surely her willing acceptance of the feedings indicates that she wishes to be fed? I agree that if she were refusing the feedings it would be wrong to force them on her, but she's not.

I guess I'm just missing the big problem here, aside from the argument of altered mental state, which being entirely unverifiable holds no weight.

"I guess I'm just missing the big problem here, aside from the argument of altered mental state, which being entirely unverifiable holds no weight."

> unverifiable

uh huh. try again.

We currently have DNR agreements in this country where hospitals WILL NOT RESUSCITATE a dying individual if that individual, when of sound ADULT (Lydia) mind puts it in writing that they don't want to be resuscitated.

This woman - while an adult of sound mind - made her wishes known. This is not Terri Schiavo, whose actual wishes were not known. This is not an adult starving a child - who cannot make its wishes known - to death. This is an ADULT woman who made an informed end-of-life decision. Why do WE feel the need to intervene? Do WE know this woman? Do WE know her family? No. We're just a bunch of strangers, far-removed from the situation, arguing about it on the internet.

I've been in this situation. I had a relative whose health kept deteriorating to the point where her quality of life was abysmal. There came a point in time where she decided she didn't want any more treatment (the next step for her was a surgery she had a 50% chance of not even living through). She decided, with her husband's consent, to go home and die with her family around her. I was there. I would feel absolutely enraged if someone - at that point, knowing NOTHING of her, her past life, her family - had stepped in to stop it due to their own moral beliefs! You think WE don't have moral beliefs? You think YOU are the arbiter of morals on earth? Did God give YOU power over life and death? Let it go. Let her die in peace. Is your agenda really THAT important?

Daniel, I hope your relative was not dehydrated to death.

But it's interesting: To start with, you were in favor of sticking it to her because she "embraced the culture of death." In other words, you implied that she was _wrong_ to want to be dehydrated to death and that that deathly wish should be honored only as a sort of punishment.

Now, _you_ are talking like an advocate of the culture of death. You are treating mere spoon feeding as some kind of hyper-intervention which everyone should have the "choice" to have withheld if they want at some earlier point in their lives, even if (as in this case) they are now willingly receiving the food. In other words, you are now _endorsing_ the choice devours itself reductio. You are embracing "freedom to choose" in the sense that the woman's earlier choice must now be enforced upon her at the cost of her prolonged death by dehydration, even though she is now taking food without any trouble. That's a very bad ideological place for you to be.

Please re-read my comments above to Dunsany. I don't have time to repeat them all here. The gist was that if you take this route, then _any_ care becomes some kind of "imposition," and the person might just as well be set out in the snow or the blazing heat to die. We shouldn't pretend we are caring for her. Nor should her children. At least Dunsany is honest enough to endorse a lethal injection outright. Do take your murderous "pro-choice" position (which is here a pro-death position, even when it means withholding food from someone who is willingly eating) that far?

Oh, and by the way: Dying by dehydration isn't dying in peace. Get a little educated. It's a 10-day to 14-day slow process of just drying up and dying of thirst. That's why they have to give "medication." To try to drug the person to the point of being unaware of the pain of the excruciating means of death being enforced upon them.

I admit, I don't keep abreast of the latest in medical science, but I was under the impression that we yet lack a method of delving into a person's mind and determining whether it has been sufficiently altered following some kind of traumatic event that we could reasonably call them a different person altogether, rendering all current actions taken by them void for the purposes of determining intention and thereby falling back on previously agreed-upon instructions.

It's impossible for us to read someone's mind, but I think it's actually fairly easy to see that someone has mentally degraded and no longer understands what is happening to them. Let's say someone is in a vegetative state. Do you really want to claim that we are unable to say that they have mentally degenerated from their normal state? You can argue that we don't know that she has been "sufficiently altered", but I don't think that's the case given that she is senile and is no longer in possession of her mental faculties.

If someone were in a vegetative state then you could tell immediately, because they wouldn't react to anything. But she is reacting in a completely normal manner, and we have no way of knowing whether it is a purely reflexive action or if she retains enough of her mind to even dimly make the choice. In other words, my position is simply that if we don't or can't know, we should err on the side of caution.

"If someone were in a vegetative state then you could tell immediately, because they wouldn't react to anything. But she is reacting in a completely normal manner, and we have no way of knowing whether it is a purely reflexive action or if she retains enough of her mind to even dimly make the choice. In other words, my position is simply that if we don't or can't know, we should err on the side of caution.
"

So you agree that we can judge someone's mental states by gauging their reactions. Good. This woman is clearly senile and is not in full possession of her mental faculties, and the fact that she continues to take food in an instinctual way doesn't prove that she is still able to understand the nature of her decision. There may be some part of her mind left, but unless that part of her understands the choice she made previously it is wrong to keep her alive. Given that we know she is senile she doesn't understand that choice, and that's all there is to it. I also don't agree that we should err on the side of caution because I think that violating someone's right to make this sort of decision requires you to prove that you have the right to do so, not the other way around. I do not believe in always erring on the side of life.

We currently have DNR agreements in this country where hospitals WILL NOT RESUSCITATE a dying individual if that individual, when of sound ADULT (Lydia) mind puts it in writing that they don't want to be resuscitated.

Daniel, resuscitation is a medical intervention applied to a person whose body has shut down: heart stopped, etc. They have gone into a state which would be called, "death", if it weren't for the fact that in some cases they can be resuscitated back to clearly being alive, having a pumping heart and so on. Resuscitation is, by definition, subject to the concepts of "medically extraordinary means" of keeping someone alive, because it is medical treatment. Feeding someone food with a spoon is not a medical intervention, and just does not fall under "extraordinary means" in any sense at all.

She decided, with her husband's consent, to go home and die with her family around her. I was there. I would feel absolutely enraged if someone - at that point, knowing NOTHING of her, her past life, her family - had stepped in to stop it due to their own moral beliefs! You think WE don't have moral beliefs? You think YOU are the arbiter of morals on earth? Did God give YOU power over life and death? Let it go. Let her die in peace. Is your agenda really THAT important?

When your relative decided that, she wasn't dead and she didn't need resuscitation. Her heart was going, etc. Later, when her heart stopped, it was reasonable to NOT intervene medically, because (a) it would have been extraordinary, and (b) it would not have resulted in meaningful health or even meaningful life extension, it would merely have restored her to an almost dead condition, again, to go through the same process over.

You are incorrectly trying to transfer perfectly moral, normal sentiments about extraordinary medical means of preserving life into simple daily care. Food is not medical treatment.

My mother died from cancer at home with me 4 years ago. We saw the difference between caring for someone in the normal sense - feeding, changing bed pans, changing sheets, moving them around physically, and then medically treating someone. You can continue to care for them up to the moment of death without medically imposing unnecessary treatment on them. There is, admittedly, a certain amount of gray area in the last few days before death, where their body is FINALLY shutting down functions that are secondary or tertiary to the underlying medical failure, where you can be unsure whether they can use or even process more food, but there is a BIG difference between saying "your body is going to kill you in a couple of months so we won't feed you", and saying "your body has just about killed you and we can only barely manage to feed you, just a tiny amount, though we are trying." Generally, if they can take in food and their body can process it, then not feeding them is failing to care for them, and is tantamount to killing them. If you stop feeding them 2 or 3 months from when the disease would kill them, then starvation and not the disease is what kills them.

This woman - while an adult of sound mind - made her wishes known...This is an ADULT woman who made an informed end-of-life decision.

Of sound mind...

She wrote up an explicitly pro-death living will directing that she be euthanized if she could no longer recognize her children

Her request to be euthanized is both illegal, and immoral as it demands of someone else that they be complicit in murder. No state is required to honor a contract or request that expects someone to do something illegal. The state is perfectly right to set such request aside. (Even under a libertarian standard, there is a rational difference between permitting a woman to kill herself and permitting another to do it. It is not clear that a woman "of sound mind" can give permission to another to kill her, just as it is not permissible that a person sell themselves into slavery.)

and also that she not be kept alive by "heroic measures" or "artificial means" as well as that "no nourishment or liquids" be given to her if she were "beyond recovery." ... And as it turns out, Margot Bentley doesn't require any "heroic measures" or "artificial means" to receive nutrition or liquids.

The only possible "prior decision" (other than the request for direct euthanasia that is rightly set aside) that one could rest a refusal of feeding and hydrating her is her statement "no nourishment or liquids" be given to her if she were "beyond recovery."

But what is the meaning of "beyond recovery". It cannot mean simply "you have a chronic illness that we don't know how to cure." I have had a chronic incurable illness for some 30 years, and expect to continue with it for another 10 or 20 before it finally gets me. Even people with AIDS are pulling out multi-decade survival without "recovering" from it. Sure, Alzheimers will get Bentley if something else doesn't first, but it isn't KILLING her yet.

Obviously, interpreting "beyond recovery" requires some insight into how the body dies, and how people reasonably intend matters about that dying. In any case, it is clearly not sufficient to say that she "cannot feed herself" means she is "beyond recovery." Nor is it sufficient to point out that Alzheimers is incurable (so far).

Daniel Smith wrote,

"This is an ADULT woman who made an informed end-of-life decision."

This is an adult woman who decided to commit suicide by doctor.

A. This is not the end of her life, yet, since, with food and drink, she will continue to live and food and drink are ordinary means of care which no one who is sane, except for a reason of extraordinary charity (trapped with child and only enough food for one), has the RIGHT to refuse.

A1. Therefore, it necessarily follows, that her decision smacks of insanity or at the least, unreasonableness, which flies in the face of it being a rational decision.

B. Just because you know pulling the trigger on the gun will end your life does not give you the right to pull the trigger, no matter how, "informed," you are about the consequences.

C. This is nothing more than radical autonomy dressed up as a philosophical stance. It denies God, it denies man, and it denies self. The only real radical autonomists are rocks. She is not a rock.

In reductio, she made a stupid and immoral decision to commit suicide and no one is, in a moral sense, required to listen to her - in fact, they would be guilty of murder by participation, if the did.

She, when she was lucid, was nothing more than a coward. Don't give me quality-of-life arguments. Those arguments died with Jesus on the Cross, 2000 years, ago.

Now, people who are actually going through the Final Agony are in a different moral climate, but even then, it is only extraordinary means which are allowed to be suspended, never ordinary means.

The Chicken

Those arguments died with Jesus on the Cross, 2000 years, ago.

Those arguments resurrected themselves.

Well I don't know how far gone the lady is now - whether she is accepting food because she's had a change of heart - or because she's too out of it to know the difference. Can she talk? Has she said one way or another? I sincerely doubt that her family could take her home and watch her starve to death - which is probably why they want to have someone else do it for them. There's a lot going on here. My main concern is when people feel the need to intervene in personal decisions that only harm the person involved. I still believe that the woman should be allowed to die if that's what she wanted and if there's a legal, humane way to do that. IOW, I think people should mostly butt out of these things.

This whole idea of not giving her food seems like such a perverse, backward concept to me. We're offering this woman food. She's eating it. Why are we still discussing this?

Thank you, MarcAnthony. As usual, your instinct is the right one.

Daniel, your response is in stark contrast to MarcAnthony's excellent instinct. As he says, why are we still discussing this? Since when does one need to give some kind of special, knowing consent to EATING FOOD?? Think for a minute what you are saying. You are saying that if she is "out of it" and "doesn't know the difference" then somehow she hasn't truly effectively rescinded her previous desire to be killed by starvation, so therefore her acceptance of food now doesn't count. You are literally treating this as if you have to be mentally competent to accept food. Have you entirely lost your mind? Do you not understand that you are playing *directly* into the pro-death mindset I am skewering in my entire "choice devours itself" series? What you are in essence saying is that, because she once said she would want to die by being starved to death, _that_ was the real choice, _that_ really counted. Now she can rescind it only if she "knows enough" to do so. If not, she has to be starved to death. That's utter insanity. That's an outright endorsement of killing her, period. You might just as well endorse a lethal injection, which would have the minimal "merit" of being more merciful. Do not pretend to yourself that this is simply about "not giving her treatment" or "letting her die naturally." Indeed, dying by dehydration would be a highly medicalized process, involving doping her deliberately to dull the pain of dehydration, in contrast to her current state, which is simply naturally living and receiving food. One isn't "letting" or "allowing" a patient "die naturally" by withholding food and water. One is killing the person, and you might as well admit it. You are endorsing killing a helpless woman because that was her _earlier_ choice, though she is (your word) too "out of it" now to be choosing death now! Your attitude isn't even merely to endorse a choice of death now by person who is competent now. You're beyond that. You're demanding that she must be sufficiently competent to take back her earlier death wish. Otherwise, the mentally incompetent person has to be killed, despite being incapable of _now_ choosing death and despite now accepting food. That is choice devouring choice. Her earlier decision, her earlier choice, is simply taking over the entire situation so that now she has to have food withheld and be forced to die.

Oh, by the way: The family has _openly said_ that they would take her home and starve/dehydrate her to death. That is their _intention_ if they take her home. The only thing they want is someone to come along and medicate her. Don't argue with me, argue with the National Post article, which is on the side of the family. They're saying this outright. No shame about it whatsoever.

When choice is made a god, it becomes a devil.

To put it less succinctly, Lydia, when free choice is the highest good, against which all other goods are measured, then the objects of our choice are trivialized. Most any socially important discussion will then necessarily devolve into a debate over which was the "real" choice, which was the choice "most freely" chosen. In fact freedom of choice is a highly contingent good. If we lose sight of that, it becomes possible for us to become monstrously insouciant to the horror that is deliberately starving another human being to death. The is essentially death by torture, and the notion that a person can sign a contract binding other human beings to torture him to death is a flagrant absurdity--but one entirely possible in the demented moral framework that is the libertarian's monomaniacal elevation of "choice" as the measure of all goods.

When we worship a thing as a god, we lose not only God but the thing we are worshiping. We lose not only the highest good, but we lose the lesser good we have put in its place. Margot Bentley is a terrible case in point.

The is essentially death by torture, and the notion that a person can sign a contract binding other human beings to torture him to death is a flagrant absurdity.

Well said, Sage. Let's all remember this when Dunsany or any other liberal ascends a soapbox in opposition to torture.

Well said, Sage.

Typo notwithstanding? :)

Let's all remember this when Dunsany or any other liberal ascends a soapbox in opposition to torture.

Right. Because the real problem with torture is that it violates someone's freedom. All that hyper-emoting over torture was really about choice, or something. Not, you know, the torture part.

It finally hit me what this whole discussion reminds me of: All those plot lines in comedies and sitcoms in which someone says, "No matter how much I beg, you can't give me X later." When the inevitable scene arrives and the person is now begging to let his friends off the hook for their earlier promise to deny him something, the audience is supposed to understand that the situation is funny because everyone in it is acting in a ridiculous way.

Oh, by the way: The family has _openly said_ that they would take her home and starve/dehydrate her to death. That is their _intention_ if they take her home.

In other cases like these, it was the hospital that did the family's dirty work. The hospital staff have the "I was only acting under orders." excuse. It's a monstrous and unacceptable excuse, but more understandable than what's in the works if she gets home. There it's just pure chosen evil act. I have to believe someone in that family will balk in the face of such horrific depravity.

Well said Sage. Or, in C.S. Lewis's words "Aim at heaven, and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth, and you will lose both."

Even more simply: How else do you measure choice then by offering somebody food and seeing if they'll eat it? With all of this talk about "sound mind", she's apparently in sound enough mind to decide that she's going to accept food offered to her. ISn't that what this is supposedly all about anyway?

How else do you measure choice then by offering somebody food and seeing if they'll eat it?

Thank you for your calm and succinct rationality, MarcAnthony. Would that these cultists of death heeded it.

Tony:

Feeding someone food with a spoon is not a medical intervention,

It's an intervention. She is not capable of feeding herself. I assume the staff at the nursing home qualifies as "medical personnel", but I don't know if that means "medical intervention" or not.

When your relative decided that, she wasn't dead and she didn't need resuscitation.

She decided to quit dialysis treatments - knowing that she would die as a result. It was either that or die from the gangrene that was spreading through her body, or amputation surgery - which doctors feared she wouldn't survive because her heart was so poor.

Her request to be euthanized is both illegal, and immoral as it demands of someone else that they be complicit in murder. No state is required to honor a contract or request that expects someone to do something illegal.

That's the issue. If indeed it is illegal to comply with her wishes, then the state must act. I question whether it is illegal to release someone from medical care to their family though. I've always assumed that any patient had the right to refuse medical care and if they were unable to give consent, their next of kin, or designated guardian, had the right to see that the patients wishes were carried out.

I've always assumed that any patient had the right to refuse medical care and if they were unable to give consent, their next of kin, or designated guardian, had the right to see that the patients wishes were carried out.

That makes it pretty important to decide on the difference between medical care and truly basic care, doesn't it?

Nobody has a "right" to say, "Take me out into the back yard when it is zero degrees outside and just leave me there for a few days until I freeze stiff" and have a designated guardian be responsible to "see that the wish is carried out." Nor is the state required to allow that.

No one has a "right" to say, "When I get old and helpless, just leave me in my bed untended, close the door, and come back when the smell gets so bad that you can tell that my body is rotting and dispose of it" and have the guardian carry out that wish.

It is precisely because everyone has always said that we aren't advocating leaving the elderly out to die on hillsides uncared for that the distinction has been made between medical treatment and basic care. Because basic care was always to be given.

That much is correct.

So maybe you, Daniel, need to start thinking more clearly about the importance and nature of giving basic care to the helpless.

...Also, how is offering somebody food and seeing if they'll eat it anything more than basic courtesy? She had a choice. She decided to eat. I'm sorry, I still don't get the debate. The debate is supposedly about choice. Are we trying to say it's better if we DON'T give this woman the choice of whether or not to eat her food?

Are we trying to say it's better if we DON'T give this woman the choice of whether or not to eat her food?

Definitely, some people here are. Why? Because, given her former claims, and given her present mental disability, the idea is that doing so is somehow imposing upon her--almost playing a trick on her, because she now isn't mentally competent to think consciously about what she is doing.

You will notice that way back above Dunsany made an analogy to sex. That's pretty darned perverse, but it illustrates the thought process: When people are mentally incompetent, they aren't supposed to be capable of giving meaningful consent to sex. Hence, in this case, we should also believe that she isn't capable of giving meaningful consent to receiving food.

How, you will no doubt wonder, did receiving food become the sort of thing to which one must give mentally competent consent?

Well, that's what I ask, as well.

Apparently the answer is supposed to be this: Once you've declared while mentally competent that you would want to be starved to death later, then, when you later become mentally incompetent, the acceptance of food by free choice has magically turned into something heavy and complex which you can no longer meaningfully do--akin to signing a contract or agreeing to have sex. Even if you appear to be accepting the food willingly at that point, your apparent consent is regarded as not _meaningful_ consent, because you are no longer competent, with full mental knowledge, to rescind your earlier wish to be starved to death.

Yeah, I think such reasoning is evil and crazy, too.

In the past, deciding that you wanted to starve yourself to death (not go on a hunger strike, actually starve to death just so you could die) would be seen as evidence that you weren't mentally competent. Sounds logical. And frighteningly close to common sense.

How eating (which is needed to survive) and sex (which isn't) became comparable seems to me to be a severe problem.

It's funny, but this is one of those conversations where the longer it goes on and the more I think about it the LESS complex it seems to be.

That makes it pretty important to decide on the difference between medical care and truly basic care, doesn't it?

Yes it does. Is there a law in Canada that states that once a person gets to a certain state of helplessness you have to put them in a nursing home? Or is home care allowed? I would think that home care is allowed. So if the nursing home released the woman to her family, (not knowing they planned to starve her to death) and the family actually let her starve to death, then they (the family) would be 100% culpable for her death. I agree that the family does not have the right to expect the nursing home to starve their mother, nor do they have the right to expect the state to do so. The thing is, the family has said that they will starve her if she is released to their care - so NOW the state can't let that happen. If the family hadn't made their intentions known, I'm sure they could have taken their mother home without issue. So it seems that the family's motives are more about grandstanding and pushing the issue than about carrying out their mother's wishes.

So, in this case, I'll concede that the state NOW has an interest in protecting the woman from her family. It just makes me wonder why she was put into a nursing home in the first place?

I STILL think, however, that the state should not have any say in whether a person refuses medical care when they are ready to die. I always think of how it was common in Native American culture for the elderly to just "go some place to die" when it was "their time". I don't think there's anything wrong or evil in that.

Daniel, you're all over the map. If it's okay for Indians to go off and starve to death without care when they can't take care of themselves, why would the state have an interest in protecting Margot Bentley from her family? You were more consistent when you were more pro-death, a few comments ago. I think the real problem is that you have trouble thinking logically and clearly about these issues. You're so tied up with cliches that even when your common sense _starts_ to kick in, as here (when you acknowledge that there is an interest in protecting her from the family, because the family has said they will starve her), you then have to backtrack and say it's fine for people to be left out in the middle of nowhere to starve to death when they think it's "their time." You can't stick to the common sense.

And the problem isn't that the family is grandstanding. For all I know they really _do_ have some twisted but sincere idea of "carrying out her wishes." The problem isn't some kind of meta-level problem at all about _how_ they are doing it or _why_ they are doing it. The problem is that they want the woman starved and dehydrated to death!

As Marc Anthony says, this is actually very simple. You are making it more complex because you don't want to let go of your pseudo-libertarian cliches and also because you don't _actually_ want to acknowledge the importance and irreducibility of basic care like food and water.

I really hate even trying to have a conversation with you Lydia because you go straight for name-calling and insults if someone doesn't agree with you. That gets old.

All I did was think about this some more and decide that A) since the family has made it known that they plan to starve their mother to death and B) since she is not currently in their care, C) the state has a reason to protect the woman from her family. If the family was consistent they would have never put their mother in a nursing home. They could have euthanized her privately and no one would have known. Of course, how would that draw attention to their pro-death stance? That's why I think they are grandstanding. I actually have a logical consistency to my beliefs, you are just blind to it.

Daniel, you either can't make it clear or aren't consistent on whether it would be *wrong* for them to dehydrate her to death. Up above you said that dehydrating her to death would be "letting her die in peace." In fact, you quite clearly implied, repeatedly, that it would be right because it would be following her wishes. Now, you maybe sorta kinda are saying it would be wrong. Did you change your mind on _that_? You don't make it clear at all.

It can hardly be wrong to dehydrate someone to death *just* because you announce it ahead of time. It's either wrong or it isn't. It doesn't become wrong because you announce it.

After all, Daniel, if as your above comments very clearly indicate you don't think it wrong for the family to dehydrate her to death and think in fact that it would be the right way to carry out her wishes, then if there is a law against that, shouldn't it be changed? The consistent position there wouldn't be to endorse stopping them but to endorse a change in the law so that it's perfectly legal for them openly to take her home and dehydrate her to death. And in that case the nursing home could do it for them anyway, sparing them the trouble!

What I AM saying is that people should be left alone.

Is it "right" to let someone starve to death if they specifically spell that out as their final wish? It's really none of my business. And I have no reason to worry about it. I'll only worry if they make a law REQUIRING the old or infirm to be euthanized - THEN I'll worry. In this case, if a pro-death person can legally have their dying wish carried out, then whatever - more power to them. IF, however (and this seems to be the case here) the family wants to FORCE someone else to kill their mother - well they CAN'T do that.

For me, it's all about who's forcing who to do what.

BTW, before I'm accused of not caring about the elderly and infirm let me say this: this is all about accountability and responsibility. I'm not advocating doing anything against anyone's wishes here. If a person makes it known (to people who are likely to carry it out) that they'd like to be euthanized, THEY are responsible AND accountable for that decision (and the likelihood that it WILL be carried out).

A) since the family has made it known that they plan to starve their mother to death and B) since she is not currently in their care, C) the state has a reason to protect the woman from her family. If the family was consistent they would have never put their mother in a nursing home. They could have euthanized her privately and no one would have known.

this is all about accountability and responsibility. I'm not advocating doing anything against anyone's wishes here.

I think I understand that as a theoretical position. If a person walks into his own house and quietly just downs a bottle of pills to kill himself, there is no formal basis for the STATE to enter his house and "so something" about it because they have no probable cause for any wrongdoing. His home is his castle, and so far as the state goes, they are under a blanket ignorance of what goes on inside, and as long as that ignorance or non-knowledge obtains they cannot just walk in and set things to rights. It is by reason of the family announcing an intention of doing something illegal that the state is no longer under a blanket of ignorance and has room to get involved, in this case.

Is it "right" to let someone starve to death if they specifically spell that out as their final wish?....What I AM saying is that people should be left alone.

Yeah, but there is that sticky little difference between letting someone do something to themselves, and letting someone else do it to them. If a Mahatma Ghandi goes on a hunger strike on his very own steam, you have no doubts that he is both of sound mind and that it is his own will and desire generating the action. If the family puts Mom on a hunger strike "on Mom's behalf," they are another active agent than Mom, and there is plenty of room for us all to say wait just a minute, we want to be completely confident that they really are acting on Mom's wishes and desires and not just hurrying her along for their own sakes. It would be, at a bare minimum, similar to a state's declaration of putting Mom legally and financially into their custody, something we DON'T do without a full investigation of the facts. We don't just let a family "take over" all of Mom's affairs whole and entire and apparently with to her own detriment without any by-your-leave from the government, that opens too, too ripe a situation for elder abuse. Even from a libertarian perspective, the family's decision to "let Mom be starved to death" has the outward appearance of X person harming another person Y, and the state is supposed to intervene in making sure X does not harm Y. Only by the state ascertaining that the family is carrying out Y's wishes is it possible to overcome the presumptive appearance that they are harming her.

I agree Tony, which is why I specifically stated above: "if a pro-death person can LEGALLY have their dying wish carried out..." If it is illegal, then whoever does the deed will be responsible and should be held accountable. The 'pro-deathers', 'assisted suiciders', or whatever you want to call them, all take that risk whenever they help someone die. I think, in this case, with the mother's wishes so explicit and well known, the family couldn't be accused of elder abuse or "hurrying her along for their own sakes", which makes their decision to put her in a nursing home and THEN seek to have her euthanized that much more bizarre. It seems like they wanted to press the issue and get the state involved. (Perhaps so they can file a lawsuit later?)

Daniel, to be fully consistent, you should want the state's laws to conform to your ideas of "more power to them" and "none of my business." Which means that, on the view you have now clearly articulated, it _shouldn't_ be illegal for the family to take her home and kill her. To be consistent, you should advocate that the law be changed. Then the family could announce it all they liked with no repercussions.

Indeed, let me make something clear: The nursing home is saying they can't withhold the spoon feeding because it would be illegal. Perhaps that's just an excuse, and perhaps the nursing home also has moral objections. But what they are _saying_ is that it is illegal and that that is why they cannot "help" the family.

If the laws were changed to be in accordance with your, Daniel's, moral views (namely that it isn't wrong to dehydrate her to death now, because that was her wish before), then it seems, based on what the nursing home is saying, that they would go ahead.

Is there some reason, Daniel, why you do not follow this line of reasoning and advocate for it to be fully legal to starve and dehydrate this woman to death?

Lydia, I have not read the woman's death wish document (or whatever you want to call it) but if those are really her wishes and if her family is only complying with them, then yes, the state should butt out. I do not think there should be any compulsion on the nursing home to do anything they wouldn't normally do however.

Of course this is taking place in Canada, so I won't be advocating far any changes to Canadian law!

Daniel, do you pretend that there is a difference (in a positive direction) between withholding calmly accepted spoon feeding from this woman and giving her a lethal injection? Or are you also an advocate of legal lethal injections?

Well, for one, I doubt that any family member is going to be able to actually sit there and watch their mother starve to death - which is probably why they wanted the nursing home to do it for them.

Second, I don't care what other people do - so long as it doesn't harm anyone else.

In this case, with the mother's wishes in writing, I wouldn't fault the family for trying to find a way to honor her wishes.

As for endless debates over the morality of all the various methods of death, I'm really not interested. I mean, what if they just let her drive a car conveniently pointed toward a cliff? Or what if they let her go swimming in the ocean? Or, or, or...

Right, we've got it. You just don't give a damn. So heck, presumably, no prob. with lethal injections, tho' for some reason you don't want to come _right_ out and say it in so many words.

I trust you do not claim to be a pro-life libertarian. I have always said that those were a rare breed.

but if those are really her wishes and if her family is only complying with them, then yes, the state should butt out.

Well, isn't that really naive?

"Well, just LOOOKKKYYY HEEEERE, we got ourselves a letter written by Mom that says to kill her when she turns 80 if she has more money than $100,000 and if she cannot score 99% on an IQ test. What's that, the ink seems kind of shiny? Not to worry, let it sit a few minutes more."

Daniel, when adult A does something to adult B that looks like harm, the state has an obligation to notice, doesn't it? That's what the state is for. How can you have the state "butt out" if it hasn't at least looked at the document (or other evidence) and agreed with the family that this is really what Mom intended and that she didn't change her mind later? Isn't the presumption in favor of a person wanting to stay alive, until it is proven they don't want that? Who is supposed to be responsible for accepting the proof to overcome the presumption?

Well, Tony, there are in the U.S. mechanisms in place for that. Unfortunately (and weirdly) they usually fall onto probate judges, of all people! I guess because they have to do with living wills and such-like. So far in the U.S. this does not include active euthanasia (lethal injection) nor withholding spoon feeding, but the mechanisms for determining the "wishes of the patient" are all set to investigate that question if and when we open that particular door. Right now it includes only withholding various treatments like antibiotics or a ventilator and (most unfortunately) also tube feeding because that is deemed "treatment."

So, while I agree with you that the state can't butt out even if this sort of killing is allowed, because the state would have to investigate the person's wishes, that would certainly not be sufficient to make it right to euthanize the person.

Lydia:

I trust you do not claim to be a pro-life libertarian.

What is it with you and labels? I am pro-life when it comes to abortion. I think end of life is a whole other ball game. At the end of life, we're dealing with adults making decisions for themselves - decisions that only affect the person making them. Now, when you have to have "assistance" that raises another issue - I'll concede that - but I don't think the state's job is to keep people alive against their will.

Tony:

"Well, just LOOOKKKYYY HEEEERE, we got ourselves a letter written by Mom that says to kill her when she turns 80 if she has more money than $100,000 and if she cannot score 99% on an IQ test. What's that, the ink seems kind of shiny? Not to worry, let it sit a few minutes more."

That's called fraud Tony. Is there evidence of fraud in THIS case?

Not that I have heard. Do you know if there is? If the family is the only one who ever sees the documents because the state has no business looking at it, then how would anyone ever know if there was or not?

The community at large has to approve taking the decision making power out of the hands of an old person and putting it in anyone else's hands, whether family or not. I don't care if you put that in the hands of the state, the town, or the parish, or the Lions Club, if it isn't done in the broad light of day in public, then there will always be problems when Mom has money at stake (or other motivating factors not in Mom's direct best interest) - even if the kids don't do things because they want to get their hands on the money, they can be accused of it (by siblings, by Mom, by Dad, etc.)

There is also the problem of documents Mom really did sign but only under manipulation, duress of various subtle varieties, or mis-information. Such as, that she said she wanted to be starved to death in X condition,only because she was unaware that there is adequate pain management for X condition - and Billy carefully didn't mention it although he knew that was her worry.

Well this is how I think it would work: IF there is an accusation of fraud or murder brought before the state, THEN the state would have to look into it and the family would have to produce the documents in their defense. If guilty, they would suffer the consequences.

If there is NO accusation, then there is NO reason for the state to get involved.

But, there are already laws on the books against fraud and murder so this is nothing new. There is also always an inquiry of some sort when ANYONE dies so there's that as well. It's not like honoring people's end of life wishes will suddenly open the floodgates of fraud, thievery and murder. And *even if it did* there are laws against all of those things - so that's really a side-issue.

Here's what I object to in a nutshell Tony: Someone being forced to LIVE against their will.

Really? I have friends who were borderline suicidal. Next time I shouldn't try to talk them down, I guess.

That's an absolutely horrific position to take. That means if I know a man who's about to jump off of a cliff it would be illegal for me to stop him!

It's insane. Insane.

Btw, if anyone is interested, the state also has to get involved in cases like that to prevent someone from "sneaking" Mom food. Example: Suppose it becomes legal for the nursing home to withhold the spoon feeding which she is now willingly taking. One of the nurses at the nursing home has conscientious scruples. When other nurses are not around, she sits down patiently and gives Margot Bentley her spoon food and hydration. Nobody can figure out why Margot isn't dying, darnit. Remember, on the view which Daniel is prepared to endorse here, which he astonishingly says is _not_ murder, Margot's merely taking the food isn't sufficient evidence of her wishes. She has to be able to speak out and rescind her earlier death order. (Btw, Daniel, if you are interested, google Marjorie Nighbert. She actually _did_ verbally ask for food but was denied it because the judge said she was not now mentally competent.)

So, okay, so Margot isn't speaking, but she's taking the food. So suppose the nursing home as a whole is willing to dehydrate her to death per her earlier wishes, but a nurse is sneaking it to her. Or suppose one of the family members disagrees with the other and is another "secret feeder." In the end, it could easily be necessary (as it was in Terri Schiavo's case) to have a court order for a police presence to watch over to make sure nobody gives Margot Bentley the food she would otherwise take--to make sure nobody feeds her.

That, of course, is called "the state butting out" and "just following her wishes" and "nobody getting harmed" in Daniel's upside-down world.

Remember: If something is legal it is protected by the state. Anyone who "kidnapped" Margot from the family (if they took her home and were dehydrating her to death legally), treated her lovingly, and fed her, would be guilty of a crime.

And heaven forbid that anyone should call any of this murder.

You guys amaze me!

Really? I have friends who were borderline suicidal. Next time I shouldn't try to talk them down, I guess.

Who said anything about a prohibition on talking??

That's an absolutely horrific position to take. That means if I know a man who's about to jump off of a cliff it would be illegal for me to stop him!

How does having THE STATE butt out make it illegal for YOU to do something? It just means there is no law prohibiting the man from killing himself (so long as he doesn't harm others in the process). If you want to stop him, that's between you and him.

It's insane. Insane.

The way you twist it - yeah. But that's a strawman.

Suppose it becomes legal for the nursing home to withhold the spoon feeding which she is now willingly taking.

I never advocated that. I argued for releasing her to her family and you immediately turn it into 'institutionalized death machines'. That's just a scare tactic.

In the end, it could easily be necessary (as it was in Terri Schiavo's case) to have a court order for a police presence to watch over to make sure nobody gives Margot Bentley the food she would otherwise take--to make sure nobody feeds her.

Why do you insist on getting the state MORE involved in the scenario?

That, of course, is called "the state butting out" and "just following her wishes" and "nobody getting harmed" in Daniel's upside-down world.

It's actually the opposite.

Remember: If something is legal it is protected by the state.

The only thing that would be LEGAL here would be allowing someone to do what they want to do in an end of life situation. Do you think there is ANY scenario in which it would be OK to let a person die if they expressed a wish to do so?

And heaven forbid that anyone should call any of this murder.

So it's "murder" if someone WANTS TO DIE and you let them? That is the ONE thing you consistently ignore in this debate - Margot Bentley's wishes. She made her wishes known, you want the state to TRUMP them because those wishes go against your moral philosophy. There are other people in this world and other philosophies. How can you think that it's right to impose Christian morals on everyone? WHO, specifically will be harmed by Margot Bentley's death? Margot Bentley is the only person dying here and IT IS HER WISH - SPELLED OUT IN UNEQUIVOCAL TERMS - TO DO SO!!!

How does having THE STATE butt out make it illegal for YOU to do something?

Ah, but legally, yes, it does. Here's how it works: Let's say that it's legal for me to sell widgets. That means that if someone comes and chains himself to the door of my widget factory, I can have the police remove him. All makes sense so far, right? I can also have him arrested if he vandalizes my widget-making equipment. I can also (note this) have him arrested if he comes and grabs me and stops me from entering my widget-making factory. You see, if something is legal, then merely private actors can't just come up and stop me from doing that something. To let them do so would be a state of anarchy.

If it's legal, it's _protected_.

Now, apply this to suicide. If it's perfectly legal for me to shoot myself in the head, then I can announce it to all the world and do it on camera. If anyone comes and grabs me (compare the case of stopping me from entering my legal widget factory) and takes my gun, he's guilty of assault and theft. I can call the cops, have him arrested, and blow my brains out while the cops walk him away.

This same reasoning can be applied to any method of suicide: Friend holds back friend from jumping off a cliff--he's committing assault. He's committing a crime by laying hand on the suicidal guy who is doing something perfectly legal. Friend flushes hoarded suicide pills down the toilet. He's committed theft and destruction of private property if suicide is legal.

In this case, if it's legal for the family to withhold all food from Margot, somebody who gives it to her is interfering in a legal activity and committing a crime.

Actually, Daniel, the state _cannot_ be totally neutral in these areas. It's an important thing for you to realize.

It's utter baloney to say that opposition to dehydrating people to death is narrowly "Christian morals." I daresay there are millions of Muslims, animists, and Buddhists in this world who would be horrified at such a thing.

Daniel, it's obvious. It would be assault if I tackled a guy before he went off of a cliff, if we're saying suicide isn't legal. Ever see "The Incredibles"? There's a fictional court case at the beginning of the (Pixar) movie about precisely that!

You're trying to totally separate morals from the state, but the two don't exist in vacuums. Saying that the state should have no position on whether or not people can kill themselves and then assuming that society is going to just hum long merrily is not just optimistic in the extreme. It's foolhardy.

Anyway, you're saying that it shouldn't be criminalized if I want to talk my friend out of committing suicide while at the same time saying that people should be allowed to kill themselves if they want to. Maybe your laws aren't inconsistent, but your position is.

I don't even know why I bother when Lydia responds before me.

Because it's encouraging to me for you to say it as well. :-)

Actually, this issue of the impossibility of neutrality was the argument that marks my one conversion of a libertarian on the matter of suicide. I have a friend who had actually run as the libertarian candidate in some local election. We were discussing suicide, and I pointed out to him that if it is just simply legal, full stop, a father could be arrested for stopping his son from throwing himself off a cliff. Once he really understood the fact that if something is fully legal it is protected behavior, he changed his position on suicide.

I should add here that I have been using phrases like "fully legal" because in actuality suicide has been put into a strange legal category in the U.S. Technically it is not handled by criminal law, but it is not "fully legal" either, because attempted suicide is considered evidence of mental derangement. It is thus not protected behavior in the sense that we have been discussing. (So the cops or your family can stop you from doing it, but you don't get charged with a crime if you survive a suicide attempt.) The intent was to be merciful to attempted suicides rather than hitting them with a criminal charge rather than giving them psychiatric help, but I'm actually not entirely comfortable with this, because I think the legal oddity is going to come back to bite us. In fact one assisted suicide group _did_ make an argument in court to the effect that assisting people in killing themselves by helium couldn't be illegal since suicide was not illegal under the criminal code.

Lydia,

So now you're advocating for criminal charges against those who attempt suicide? You want to force people to stay alive against their will?

The thing that amazes me the most in this conversation is how it's always assumed that the state (and only the state) has to swoop in and right all wrongs (as if there were no other institutions in society capable of dealing effectively with issues involving morality and values).

Are you people so entrenched in statism that you cannot conceive of liberty without an overbearing state to enforce it?

So now you're advocating for criminal charges against those who attempt suicide? You want to force people to stay alive against their will?

Yes, though I think that the sentencing should almost always be counseling.

People aren't kept alive "against their will". That's like saying that they think "against their will".

You're avoiding a major point. Stopping a man from jumping off of a cliff by tackling him would be assault. Do you think that's right?

Pretty much everything you guys pretend would suddenly be "illegal" IS ALREADY ILLEGAL, so your lists are basically non-starters.

If you tackle someone you say is about to commit suicide and that person files charges - then guess what - you're charged with assault. If you flush someone's pills down the toilet because you think he's going to off himself, and he files charges, you're charged with destruction of property. If you kidnap someone you claim is being starved to death, you can be charged with kidnapping.

So all of those things are against the law already.

Your arguments don't hold water and they basically add up to "I don't like what these people might do if the state doesn't intervene".

Uh, no, these things can be verified. If the person is saying himself that he's going to jump off the cliff, for example, and you can verify that with witnesses, then no, it isn't assault. And medical records could show that the woman was being dehydrated. So don't be silly. Of course such defenses against charges could be checked up on.

Come on, Daniel. You know exactly what we were asking. Stop dodging the question. Saying, "Aha! But what if there's nobody there to corroborate your story!" isn't an objection. It doesn't resolve it, because it can't be resolved.

Once he really understood the fact that if something is fully legal it is protected behavior, he changed his position on suicide.

I see what you are saying but let's try to keep this in context: we are talking HERE about a woman who has a specific end-of-life wish, spelled out in writing and shared with her family. This is not some spur of the moment suicide, this is a thought out position based on a deeply held philosophy. I've already agreed that the family has no right to expect another party (the nursing home, the state) to carry out their mother's wishes. I've already said that the state has to act to protect the mother now that the family has made their intentions known. We then got sidetracked with the suicide debate. I'm not SET on the suicide issue like I am on the end-of-life decisions. I know for a fact that I'd try everything at my disposal, legal or not, to prevent one of my loved ones from committing suicide. So I'd much rather defend what I feel strongly about rather than something I'm not set on. So let's try to keep the debate on that topic if we can.

This is not some spur of the moment suicide, this is a thought out position based on a deeply held philosophy.

A "deeply held philosophy" which is not presently preventing her from accepting food and water. A fact that you persistently indicate that you care nothing about.

But in general, who cares? If your family member got all set up with the Hemlock Society and a helium canister (Hemlock tells people how-to instructions for killing themselves with helium), that too would be a "thought out position" which could, let us stipulate, be the result of a "deeply held philosophy." If you would sit there and watch them put the plastic bag over their head and fill it with helium and not take it off them before it was too late, then you would be wrongfully complicit in their death.

*If anything*, this situation is even worse. This is a peaceful old woman peacefully being fed. She isn't even _trying_ to commit suicide. And you are dead-set that it is a matter of "end-of-life treatment" that she have that spoon feeding, which she is now calmly taking, be withheld from her until she literally dies of thirst. And it's all supposed to be okay according to you because some time years ago she stated that she would want to have food and water withheld from her. Try for just a minute to use your imagination and understand why that is monstrous. If that is what you are "set" on, consider that you need to get unsettled.

How is the "end of life decision" to kill yourself by starvation different from, well, killing yourself?

Lydia:

A "deeply held philosophy" which is not presently preventing her from accepting food and water. A fact that you persistently indicate that you care nothing about... And you are dead-set that it is a matter of "end-of-life treatment" that she have that spoon feeding, which she is now calmly taking, be withheld from her until she literally dies of thirst. And it's all supposed to be okay according to you because some time years ago she stated that she would want to have food and water withheld from her.

Do you have a reading comprehension disorder? You have an annoying habit of putting words in my mouth. The most asinine thing you're implying is that I'm somehow for forced euthanasia. Nothing could be further from the truth. I don't expect you to get that though seeing how you can't conceive of life without an all-encompassing state enforcing your morality on the rest of us.

(How does THAT feel? Feel like you've been misrepresented? Good, you got my point then.)

But in general, who cares? If your family member got all set up with the Hemlock Society and a helium canister (Hemlock tells people how-to instructions for killing themselves with helium), that too would be a "thought out position" which could, let us stipulate, be the result of a "deeply held philosophy." If you would sit there and watch them put the plastic bag over their head and fill it with helium and not take it off them before it was too late, then you would be wrongfully complicit in their death.

Well I sat and watched a loved one die because she refused dialysis treatments. She was ready to go and tired of being a quasi-vegetable. I really don't give a crap how YOU view that, it was personal.

MarcAnthony:

How is the "end of life decision" to kill yourself by starvation different from, well, killing yourself?

Do you really not know?

I know what you'll probably say. I don't think it makes any sort of sense. Something about a deeply held philosophy, or having weighed it carefully in advance?

Giving this a separate category from "spur of the moment" suicide is really pretty arbitrary given your libertarian world view, though. It's also rather disturbing.

Misinterpreting Lydia as "revenge" or something isn't helping you make your point.

Well I sat and watched a loved one die because she refused dialysis treatments. She was ready to go and tired of being a quasi-vegetable.

Yeah, and refusing dialysis is _just exactly_ like killing oneself with helium. No, Daniel, you can say until you are blue in the face that refusing invasive treatment is the same thing as suicide, but that won't make it true. I've challenged you again and again in this thread to try to think more deeply about those statements, and Tony has given you explanations too, but you literally refuse. Your stance seems to be that you are determined to do shallow lumping together and not think clearly, and that's that. It's only (for the moment) yourself you are hurting, though in the end it could be others as well.

And, by the way, we do not use the "v" word around here. Human beings are not carrots, and you should not, I repeat, not, ever refer to them in that demeaning way. Nor will I tolerate it. This is something I have learned from Wesley J. Smith and am grateful to him for teaching me. Calling people by that word that begins with a v should be as taboo as any other nasty slur on disabled people or on people for their color or anything. If you won't stop thinking in that way you will, at least, not speak that way here. And if you don't realize that it's demeaning and dehumanizing, then this is a good opportunity for you to give that some thought as well.

Here's a thought experiment: You can save the life of one healthy adult or you can the lives of 100 "people" in a "vegetative" state (I use that term in a scientific way). What would you do in that situation Lydia?

Dunsany, believe it or not, that isn't a scientific term. It has most unfortunately become a legal term in some states, but that's about as prescriptively helpful as if the term "idiot monster" occurred in some state law for a person with Down Syndrome. And, no, I don't play those games. Human beings do not have that sort of variable worth. Go jump in the lake.

So you would save the group of 100 "people", right? If you think they are just as valuable as a normal adult it seems like you would have to. I hope that you realize how absurd that position is to most people.

Buddy, I'm going to delete the next comment of yours on this threadjack, but let me just tell you right now, since you push me, that you should be glad that people like me _don't_ believe in that sort of utilitarian thought experiment trash, because if we did, our first question would be, "Is the one healthy adult Dunsany or someone who thinks just like him? Heck, yeah, it would be _much_ better for the world to have 100 innocents with severe brain damage than to have one poisonous snake like that around! Let him die and we'll cheer."

But fortunately, we believe we should try to resist that temptation.

Lydia declined to play your asinine hypothetical game, Dunsany. Your response is to just assume she did play, and supply for yourself an answer expedient to your mischievous purposes. No. That won't do. Any further comments relating to the hypothetical will be summarily deleted.

Daniel Smith, meanwhile, has managed to compose in a few comments one of the more devastating demonstrations of the folly of a certain strain of libertarianism that I've ever seen.

Lydi:

And, by the way, we do not use the "v" word around here. Human beings are not carrots, and you should not, I repeat, not, ever refer to them in that demeaning way. Nor will I tolerate it.

I was referring to MY loved one and I will refer to her any way I like. If you want to censor speech you disagree with go right ahead - ban me from posting here - it'll make it look like everyone agrees with you.

This thread has been another eye opener for me. My position is simple: IN THIS CASE (where the woman made her desires clear, put them in writing, informed her family, and ALL were in agreement), BEFORE the family put the mother into the nursing home (not after), there should have been no compelling reason for the state to rush in and "rescue" the woman from her family. That's my position. You guys them blew that up and made it about EVERY elderly person and EVERY suicide. Then you insisted that there was NO WAY to hold my position without advocating for the state to actively PROTECT elder abuse, fraud and suicide.

You want ME to think deeply? Perhaps all of you should think about what YOU are saying.

I'll repeat my unanswered question from above: Are you people so entrenched in statism that you cannot conceive of liberty without an overbearing state to enforce it?

My position is simple: IN THIS CASE (where the woman made her desires clear, put them in writing, informed her family, and ALL were in agreement), BEFORE the family put the mother into the nursing home (not after), there should have been no compelling reason for the state to rush in and "rescue" the woman from her family.

There's nothing simple about this position. It requires a counterfactual recapitulation of the details of the case. You're not dealing with the case at hand; you're dealing with one that's been subtly altered to fit your ideological paradigm. The facts are operating to service the abstraction.

Daniel, if Lydia considers vegetable a swear word and doesn't allow it, I'm not sure how that means you think you can use it to talk about your own relative. I can't refer to my own relative, on her blog, as an a$$hole just because he's my relative.

Anyway, I get your position, and I don't think it makes sense.

Then you insisted that there was NO WAY to hold my position without advocating for the state to actively PROTECT elder abuse, fraud and suicide.

Yes! In the Netherlands (if I remember the country correctly)people can go to the hospital and get a lethal injection if they so wish. They can inform their family, who come to an agreement, and put their desires into writing. And then they can go and get an injection for any reason whatsoever. How is this different from what you're advocating? Hey, maybe you'll say it isn't different. We'll see.

Teenagers (let's make them 18, so we don't have to deal with minors)write suicide notes and kill themselves all the time after months of depression. They're 18, so what their parents' opinion is is no issue. They have a thoughtful, well-written note explaining things. So what happens if I see this teenager about to jump off of a cliff? In your world it's both legal for him to jump and legal for me to tackle him! Basically, assault is legal if somebody is doing something I don't like. It's nonsensical, and your position with this woman can be applied to more than one situation.

You seem to disagree, but I think we all get your position, and THIS is what you're advocating.

Paul J Cella:

You're not dealing with the case at hand; you're dealing with one that's been subtly altered to fit your ideological paradigm. The facts are operating to service the abstraction.

And I've said that. If you bothered to read what I've written, you'll find that I said that the family undermined their own position by placing her in the nursing home and THEN revealing their intentions, and that NOW the state has a compelling interest in protecting the woman. So yes, my position is theoretical - as is every objection to it. The problem here is that NOBODY is dealing with the case at hand. EVERYBODY'S abstracting from the case to pad THEIR OWN ideological paradigm.

MarcAnthony:

How is this different from what you're advocating?

What I'm advocating doesn't involve a third party. It is just the family, left alone, in private. It doesn't involve changing the law, or making something legal or illegal. It doesn't involve health care providers. It doesn't require the state to take any action. It only requires inaction. I really don't know how many different ways I can say the same thing.

Starving and dehydrating any helpless person to death can be done alone, in private. That doesn't make it right. Ever. Period. Many wicked things have been done in the privacy of homes. That's why we have legitimate laws against abusing and severely neglecting the helpless who are in the care of another, even if those doing it are relatives. And no, saying, even truly, that at some point the person wanted to be killed by thirst does not make it okay, even if you add, "And we did it in private."

How does allowing somebody to dehydrate someone to death in their house not require changing the law? I'm pretty sure that's illegal.

You are correct, MarcAnthony. Even in Canada, there isn't one law for the nursing home and a different law for a private home, and the nursing home says it's illegal. Now, the police and/or prosecutor and/or coroner might decide to turn a blind eye when the person dies or if some friend or neighbor should happen to find out what is going on and report to an elder abuse department or what-not. That sort of thing happens, I fear, all too often. But that's a matter of selective non-enforcement.

By the way, Wesley J. Smith reports that the family is suing the nursing home on the grounds that feeding Margot Bentley constitutes battery, given her previous statements.

This all fits together logically with the overall position that such "I want to be made dead" statements are to be followed later on. That position is at the root of the problem. One must take that position or leave it. There is no middle ground.

Starving and dehydrating any helpless person to death can be done alone, in private. That doesn't make it right. Ever. Period.

Who is the injured party and who will press charges?

The "injured party", in this case, would be the person who initiated and organized the act. The family would not press charges, so it would have to be the state, acting on behalf of whom? Not the family! Not the injured party! No, the state would be acting on behalf of outsiders like yourself who don't feel that it is right - ever - (even when ALL the interested parties agree) to let someone die rather than keep them alive.

This thread has taught me an important lesson about a certain brand of "conservatism": one that cannot envision a world in which the state does not micro-manage the minutia of people's lives, one in which the state must have a position on every conceivable scenario - a place to "take a stand" (i.e. bring all of its coercive powers to bear).

The libertarian position is about repealing laws (not adding new ones). It's about the state taking no stand (not endlessly redefining its stand). It's about leaving consenting adults alone in the privacy of their homes (not finding ways to be more involved). The fact that that concept is so alien to so many "conservatives" raises the question: if conservatives are for "smaller, less intrusive government", exactly how and where would that take place? The liberals want state-run "death panels" and, apparently, conservatives want state-run "life panels". Either way, the STATE is making the final decisions, not the people directly involved. "Less intrusive" my posterior!

Who is the injured party and who will press charges?

The injured person is the old lady who dehydrates to death because food and water are withheld when she could take them and was taking them. Look, Daniel, "asking for it" doesn't make it all right. What if someone says, "I want to be chained up and tortured to death"? Does that mean there is no injured party if someone takes that person into a _private_ basement and chains him up and tortures him to death? What about the "contract" that two men had in Germany a few years ago for one to kill the other and eat him? Was there no injured party there? What if someone signs a contract agreeing to be burned alive for entertainment at a party so that his family can get a large sum of money after his death? Does that mean there would be no one injured in that case? No harm no foul?

Try to realize where your so-called principles are going and what they would mean if consistently applied.

Previous consent to be horribly, heinously treated does not mean that one is not injured by being horribly, heinously treated.

All I see here is an insistence that the state knows best, that consenting adults are not to be left alone, that people can't be trusted with their own lives. Try to realize where your so-called principles are going and what they would mean if consistently applied.

That said, I think I'm done arguing this. The family has revealed their motive: to create an artificial group with artificial rights. I cannot defend that, nor anything they've done up to this point. My position is very narrow and doesn't even apply to the facts of the case. I was defending a hypothetical.

All I see here is an insistence that the state knows best, that consenting adults are not to be left alone, that people can't be trusted with their own lives.

If that's all you're seeing, then you're willfully blocking out everything we've ACTUALLY been saying, which is that if your principles are consistently applied it would be assault if we tried to stop somebody from trying to commit suicide. You've tried to doge the issue several times unsuccessfully.

My principles, when consistently applied would lead to NOT having it be assault if I stop a man from killing himself.