Lady Warnock is the Future of Our Culture If We Are Not Careful
The UK's Independent has published an excellent feature story on the beliefs and theories of Lady Warnock, one of Britain's most influential moral philosophers. (We've discussed her views previously here at SHS.) Warnock is an enthusiastic purveyor of the culture of death, supporting not only euthanasia but a duty to die. From the story, byline Paul Vallely:
Surprisingly, perhaps, she is quite happy with the notion of the "duty to die", which most people find a good deal more controversial. A couple of months ago, in an interview with the Church of Scotland's magazine Life and Work, she said: "If you're demented, you're wasting people's lives--your family's lives--and you're wasting the resources of the National Health Service. I'm fully in agreement with the argument that if pain is insufferable, then someone should be given help to die, but I feel there's a wider argument that if somebody absolutely, desperately wants to die because they're a burden to their family, or the state, then I think they too should be allowed to die."Warnock at least has the virtue of being honest. For example, I have argued frequently that once society accepts the philosophical premises behind assisted suicide--radical individualism and the propriety of killing as an answer to human suffering--there is no way to limit mercy killing to the terminally ill. Warnock so acknowledges:
The journey from the right to die to the duty to die is a significant one, especially since there are many people in society who are uncomfortable even with the notion that individuals who want to end their lives have the right to ask others to help them kill themselves, or even do it on their behalf.
Her philosopher's logic takes her further out along the limb where she perches perilously distant from public common sense. "Once that principle is accepted it is irrational to confine it to those who are terminally ill." Anyone who wants to die should be helped to do so--the old, the miserable, the mentally ill.
Regular readers of SHS know that this isn't just talk. The Netherlands is there already and the Swiss Supreme Court has issued a decree creating a constitutional right to assisted suicide for the mentally ill.
And of course, she opposes human exceptionalism, the concept of "rights," and thinks the "slippery slope" is nonsense--despite it being clearly evident in her own statements.
The article is too long and detailed to go into further, so I urge you all to read it for yourselves. And, unlike many such profiles published today, the reporter generously includes many rebuttals from fine spokespersons.
And that is what gets me: Those who support the sanctity/equality of human life have now been reduced to mere reactors to people with Warnock's views, when any attention is paid to them at all. At the same time she and others of her general ilk have become voices of influence, respected by government leaders, media members hanging on their every word, their photographs appear in the world's most respected news magazines, published in venerable journals, honors bestowed, huge speaking fees given, the subject of sometimes fawning documentaries, and tenured chairs provided by the world's most prestigious universities.
And of course, she opposes human exceptionalism, the concept of "rights," and thinks the "slippery slope" is nonsense--despite it being clearly evident in her own statements.
The article is too long and detailed to go into further, so I urge you all to read it for yourselves. And, unlike many such profiles published today, the reporter generously includes many rebuttals from fine spokespersons.
And that is what gets me: Those who support the sanctity/equality of human life have now been reduced to mere reactors to people with Warnock's views, when any attention is paid to them at all. At the same time she and others of her general ilk have become voices of influence, respected by government leaders, media members hanging on their every word, their photographs appear in the world's most respected news magazines, published in venerable journals, honors bestowed, huge speaking fees given, the subject of sometimes fawning documentaries, and tenured chairs provided by the world's most prestigious universities.
But people who believe in the intrinsic value of all human life, who accept Jefferson's declaration of the inalienable right to life, who believe that one of our most important human duties is to care lovingly for those who can't care for themselves, are rarely accorded the same respectful treatment--no matter their credentials or eloquence--and indeed, are more often disparaged as basing their views in religion instead of reason (as Warnock does), besides being castigated as intolerant, moralistic, and judgmental. (As if there is anything wrong with a world view founded in religious values and only religious people believe in universal human equality and oppose euthanasia and the duty to die.)
The problem with all of this is that we are creating a society less able to love.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 9:39 AM
23 Comments
23 Comments:
We have created a society less able to THINK.
Arrogance is an element of narcissism, as is the inability to empathize. These deathmongers claim that if they were in such a state as those who they say should be entitled to "die at will" and that others should be able to "help" them accomplish that objective, and who they say have a "duty to die," they would want to die themselves. But really, they feel separate from those in that state and regard them as "other" than themselves. They say, oh, yes, if it were I that is what I would want, but they not only have no idea what they are talking about, but also are not honest, and emanate evil when they say it. This is why it is necessary to oppose such things as scientific and medical experimentation on animals based on one's own ability to feel empathy for the animal who suffers therein. The same "detachment" of the experimenters which we admire becomes the detachment of the mongers of human death. When we lose proper respect and regard for all forms of life, we lose the ability to extend them to all of our own kind.
Ianthe: Having regard for all life is an aspect of human exceptionalism. Perceiving all life as equal to our own, is destructive of human thriving and the very concept of human rights. At least, that's how I see it.
Am I wrong in thinking that if most people genuinely believed the woman is demented, and as such, she need to demonstrate what she firmly believes, she must go through with killing herself?
The devil plays on the fact that those who cherish life do not compromise on life, even for those who've lost their pathetic souls.
I agree - we are far too reactionary. That her views are even given voice (such as on SHS) means she has something of value to say- why not dispose of her arguments as "self"-refuting pompous nonsense?
Chris: Because if we ignore her and her ilk, they will have a total monopoly on the discourse.
I used to think that if we didn't treat Singer and Warnock has having respectable ideas--and they are not respectable--that was the best course. But the society has decided that they are respectable, evidenced by the number of stories, follwers among the intelligentsia, and general populartiy.
So, we can pretend they don't exist and aren't worth bothering about. But the people who are becoming increasingly irrelevant are people with beliefs and ideas like mine. That is the reality that must be faced. And we must engage, warn "Main Street" about the evil that this way comes, and beat back the figurative barbarians that are at the ramparts. Or we might just see the total transformation of our society. Frankly, I am not ready to see the first Euthanasia R Us store opening at my neighborhood mall.
Thanks for stopping by.
To books that come to mind are C.S. Lewis's The Four Loves and Iris Murdoch's The Sovereignty of Good. Both discuss our society's shift away from love as a universally applicable concept and as something that takes many forms, although one is a Christian and the other is an atheist. Both seem relevant to our soceity's lack of love for our elderly and disabled citizens. Love is another foundation for human rights...it goes hand and hand with dignity and respect.
My point is that when we see that a being is capable of suffering, vulnerable, etc., we cannot ethically and morally cause it to suffer, and that if we ignore that ethical truth, we end up in harm's way ourselves.
I agree that we cannot be silent about Warnock and her ilk; unless people stand up and say, loudly enough to be heard by all, hey, this isn't right, their criminality will run rampant. Because what they are doing is in fact criminal and destructive to good social order. One doesn't witness, for example, a mugging, purse-snatching, or any other kind of theft (and what Warnock and her ilk want to do is theft -- of lives -- depriving others of the most essential property they own and to which they are entitled -- their lives) or someone being assaulted, and not at the very least yell "Hey! Stop! Thief! Police! Call 911!" and, if one is able to, give chase as well. The death culture people go on as they do because they know they can get away with it; they won't stop without knowing that they can't. They are cowards and crooks and have to be treated as such. That's why it's distressing that they wear the cloak of credentialed respectability; they are in fact bullies whose message, methods, and costume are actually ones of intimidation. Bullies have to be stood up to, and to be treated by the authorities as the outlaws they are. These ones have assumed "authority," but what they fear is being held accountable by the law; that's why they are trying to make laws that put them and their "message" in control. Boy do the rest of us have a lot of work to do, and if we don't do it, we'll have to live under the tyranny they already have begun to establish. Really it isn't any different than having to deal with a bully, unseat a tyrant, etc.
I said the death culture people; it should have been the death culture creeps. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe that even the doctrine of human exceptionalism would accord criminals the same status as decent citizens any more than the law does. What would be really utilitarian in the most productive way would be to banish them and make them all have to go live in quarantine somewhere and have to put up with each other, without innocent, vulnerable members of society available to use as fodder for their posing, to pick on, victimize, exploit, etc. They know perfectly well that they don't measure up among us; that's why they deflect attention away from themselves onto the helpless re whom they claim to be concerned, and whom they say should be removed from society when in fact they themselves are the ones who should be, which is something of which they themselves are not unaware.
Oh wait in what I said at the beginning of my post before last I trust no one thinks I might have been endorsing euthanasia. I was talking about my by no well-known hobbyhorse, "scientific" experimentation on non-human animals... The "saving them suffering" argument gets used by proponents of euthanasia of humans, whose human right to life is not inconsistent with the right of non-human animals not to be made to suffer by us in laboratories. In fact the latter point even transcends "rights"; it's simply not right, and just because we are able to do something does not make it right to do it, and that applies to many things we humans are capable of doing, such as, as exampled by herself, being Warnock, and while that might be called humans being exceptional, it's really just humans being capable of being nuts, and having that capability, we really do need to think twice about things like animal experimentation, and come down on the side of not doing it, because when we're being harmful and unethical in that way, we're only becoming more apt to be harmful to and unethical toward our own species. It has nothing to do with whether one species is equal to another. It has more to do with the concepts of noblesse oblige, the measure of a person being how s/he treats those of lesser power, and in fact just plain manners, which is another word for humanity.
Ianthe: Prisoners can be punished for their crimes, but they can't be dehumanized, for example, used as an instrumentality or killed in experiments. We used to use prisoners in medical experiments. That was and should have been stopped.
Most religions - foremost Christianit, Judaism, Buddhism, and Islam - believe that everyone, including the evil and the mentally derranged (such as Warnock) have as much right ot life and human dignity as anyone else. Good example of that was the recent Dark Knight movie, where the "good" people struggled to avoid killing off a boat full of convicts.
Moralists of every stripe have to fight in a way that doesn't mock our position. After all, we have to grant her the right to life and productivity, and not demand her death as a sign of her commitment to a duty to die. But because she's backing the other horse, she has to mock us and make us look bad, and since she's playing no-holds-barred, and we have limits, she has the upper hand. Can make us look bad, can egg us on, and can turn the tables on us by saying, "See, even *you* think that some people have the duty to die if they don't follow your ethics."
It's playing hardball. I never like her kind, but at least she doesn't hide what she thinks behind long-winded speeches. An enemy you know can be monitored. The people who we really have to fear are doctors and ethicists who proclaim a lot of good things and then happen to sneak in their utilitarian ethics when we least expect it.
T.E.: I like what you said in your last sentence. She's not harmless, though.
SHS: I didn't say or mean dehumanize her, I was talking about the distinction that the law, and society, make between criminals and decent citizens, a distinction necessary to protect society. E.g. criminals are fined, sent to prison and sequestered from the rest of society in order to try to protect the rest of society, are given numbers, get "records," lose the right to vote if they are convicted felons, etc. It's part of society trying to protect itself and making it clear that they are dangerous to society, and that's the concept I had in mind. I wasn't thinking of using prisoners or anyone else in medical experiments, and of course using prisoners that way shouldn't have been done and rightfully was stopped, re human prisoners. But it continues re non-human animals, who are prisoners in laboratories, and that never should have been, and should be stopped. Animal experimentation has been used as the fuel of the same "science" that has dehumanized us, and just as sociopaths start out by harming non-human animals and then harm humans, the "death culture" started out in the laboratories which have given us "wonderful cures" that humans feel they "deserve," and that sense of entitlement has now extended to the concept of the "right to die" because, after all, one is entitled not to "suffer..." The whole thing has messed up doctors in the head enough that they blather on about "death with dignity" and feel entitled to do as they please with humans, as they were trained to feel entitled to do with other living, feeling animals, who do indeed have rights, and the "detachment" and lack of humanity thus ingrained in the medical profession has morally eviscerated it, and we've ended up with a materialistic, utilitarian, arrogant medical profession that doesn't know which end is up and is not only incapable of ethics, but is more than willing to turn the whole subject of ethics, which was, before animal experimentation became the custom of "science" and medicine, the essential keystone of the healing profession, over to "bioethicists" who have managed to get the man in the street, who is snowed by credentials, e.g. of "doctors," as well as of those with "bio" (sounds "scientific") and "ethics" (sounds moral) in their catchword titles, not to know which end is up, either. After all, the "doctors and scientists" whose "saintly mission" is to "help humanity" are too busy tormenting animals, human and non-human, in laboratories and hospitals to be burdened with having to consider ethics, on top of everything else, the man in the street has been brainwashed into believing. They're too busy thinking about money while unethically and amorally devaluing both non-human and human life. "Do no harm" applies across he board, but it's a phrase we've entitled them to forget by entitling them to experiment on helpless, innocent non-human animals. It's not right to experiment on human convicted criminals, who are helpless prisoners, because they are helpless prisoners, and they aren't even innocent; animals used in laboratories, who are helpless prisoners, are innocent. Human victims of "euthanasia" are all three, and what started in the laboratory ends up affecting them, as it does all patients, and all of society. It's too obvious and too dangerous a progression to ignore and to fail to rectify.
If dementia means you have a right to die, then the Baroness' own views make her more than qaulified. The fiesty old gal is a regular eugenic storm-trooper.
HHH
The Vatican condones those on life support "choosing" to be disconnected from life support "in order not to burden their family and/or the community with excessive expense." The Baroness has influential friends.
Where do people get the nerve to make judgements about people in situations in which they have never been themselves? How do they manage not to be able to realize that they will, if they are lucky, be old one day themselves, and that they cannot yet possibly know what that will be like, and that what they are advocating will happen to them if they become old and/or disabled? Where has this hatred of the elderly, this assumption that they are "supposed" to die when at a certain age, come from? I've seen it in doctors, nurses, hospitals, relatives, family "friends," close "friends" of the elderly person -- what's up with this?
Why is it that I feel like the atrocities committed during Second World War have come back, only ten times worse? Was the Second World War a warning to us that this kind of thing could one day be allowed throughout all of society and in every country? I wonder.
And lanthe, the Catholic Church's position is that no one "must" suffer needlessly. The Catholic Church certainly does NOT support disconnecting someone from life support for the reasons you state. This is quite well evidenced by their expressed opposition to the actions in the Schaivo case in the US.
How did we get there? We were all sleeping for 4 decades!Time to wake up.How to fixe this mess:
Prayers,Fasting,raise up your voice.And more prayers!
Lanthe: Good points. The eugenics movement never disappeared after the shocking events of the Holocaust. They merely sanitized their terms and proceeded with the same agenda they had before the war. Stem cell research of fetuses is one example of how they have worked their agenda.
Laitiza: A very perceptive observation. Long before the Nazi machine began firing up the carbon monoxide equipment, the German medical community was already on aboard with the culture of death. Nihilism had infiltrated the universities years before the Third Reich. Victor Frankl, who spent two terms in Auschwitz, said that the Holocaust did not begin in the war rooms of Nazis, but in the classrooms of universities. The same callous Nihilism has been embraced by modern medical ethics.
The NaziT4 program and others like it were kept shrouded in secrecy to prevent a unified hue and cry against it. Lest we learn from the past, we are destined to repeat it.
HHH
Helm
I have just gotten hold of Victor Frankl's book. It promises to be a very good read.
Latizia: My father, for years before he crossed over in 1982, often told me that the way things were going I would see in my lifetime the things that had happened in pre-WWII and WWII Germany happen right here in this country. As usual, it looks as if he was right. The horror of the concentration camps and what went along with them has not recurred -- at least, not yet -- and I pray that it does not, but the horror of the death culture, and what is already going on in the name of "medical care," is, if I understand what you are saying about what we've got now being worse, in its own way, worse in the sense that it is not even outright, but cloaked under the guise of "caring." We've already got murder that isn't even called "euthanasia," and it's only going to get worse unless all hell breaks loose in terms of awareness and opposition.
I know that the Catholic Church has said no one should be made to suffer, but that, too, has been a segue into the position it takes which I mentioned -- which one of the court-appointed (at the hospital's behest) "guardians" who (as stooges for the hospital) pulled the plug on my mother against her will showed, as justification, asterisked, in a brochure presenting the official position of the Catholic Church. When the creep who had shown the asterisked paragraph showed up for my mother's execution and I told him to stay away from her, he said, "Aren't you Catholic?" to which I replied no, then "Aren't you Christian?" to which I replied no I'm not, and my mother is of another religion than Catholic, and then he said, "My mother would be so happy if this were being done for her." All my protestations that this was not what she wanted fell on deaf ears, as did those of my mother's priest that it was against her own religion. Moreover, the bishop of the local Catholic diocese, under whose auspices the "guardianship" organization operates, refused to intercede on behalf of my mother's life, protests by devout Catholics cut no ice, and the "right to life" official of the local diocese told me that "the diocese is aware that many people in the community have been very unhappy with (the organization with "Catholic" in its name that gets court-appointed to do "guardianships" and pull plugs) for quite some time, and this is a systemic problem that we will be addressing over the coming months and years, but not in time to save your mother," and that "the bishop is out of town all month but even if he were here he would not help," and asked a couple of other questions reflecting not only her cluelessness that anyone else did not live in the Christ-oriented world she did, but also supported the likelihood that others' suppositions about what the real agenda of the hospital, the diocese, and the organization under its auspices were true; she's also been quoted extensively in the press as definitely endorsing "living wills," though she'd told me that the real reason behind them is to "save costs by getting rid of the elderly and the disabled." I'm sorry to have to tell you this, and know how distressing it must be to you, as it seems from your comment that you are a faithful Catholic, but this is what has happened, and it's not the only example of the Church's bifurcation, and the destructive effects of that bifurcation, of which I know.
Helm: I apologize for not having seen your comment to me before I answered Latizia's, which was above it; my response to Latizia in my previous post is for you, as well, and in turn this is a further response to Latizia as well. I have seen a doctor from there carrying out the same agenda here, under the flag of "helping people" and in eugenic terms as well. I also knew, back in 1980, immediately when the subject of WWII came up by chance around a dinner table one evening, from the silent expression and look in the eyes of a friend from Germany whom I like very much, and who was born during WWII (in which his father, if what he said of him is true, died while fighting for Germany, or, if that is not the real story, I suspect that he might have been one of the offspring produced by a single mother at Hitler's behest) and is now of the age of those who control a nation's affairs and carry out its agenda, that Germany has by no means forgotten the war and abandoned its agenda, and that a whole generation has grown up in Germany being quiet and biding its time. I've long thought that we are headed for WWIII and that this time Germany will win, too, and if that does not happen, nonetheless, the eugenics agenda and the death culture are in full swing and will prevail unless we do something about it. I hope I'm wrong, but the U.S. doesn't seem to be in any condition to do that as things now stand, and the way things are going, nor does England, nor do some other European countries, and we've seen where "Swiss neutrality" has led. It is a terrifying situation, one even more terrifying because of its insidiousness, which has already touched my own family, in terms of euthanasia of a parent against their will, and come to think of it the way the other parent was treated in a hospital years ago reflects the callous, destructive manner and attitude of the medical profession that has extended to its arrogant assumption of the right to commit deliberate euthanasia, despite my fighting it as hard as I could, as it has touched and destroyed many other families, right in my own city, as it has, over and over, elsewhere on U.S. soil. You are right: It is done deliberately in secrecy, with the victims isolated in hospitals and other institutions, lest there be a hue and cry against it, the media, when it reaches the media, present the situations as if whatever "doctors," hospitals, and "researchers" is the automatic truth, courts and judges, like the general public, hardly ever (if ever) question their honesty, or their authority, either, and if we don't learn from the past, the past will continue to repeat itself, as it is doing in the juggernaut that is already in motion.
Latizia: The Schiavo case was high-profile in the media, the President of the United States had taken Terry's side and Congress was involved, and the Church could hardly do otherwise publicly than it did, and in that case, a Catholic organization had not been willing to make itself available to pull the plug. In the case I'm talking about, people emailed the Vatican, I begged for the Church's help, and though the case became very public locally and via the internet, and the Vatican may well be concerned (as I would not be surprised if it is, if only because the current Pope, when he was a Cardinal, I understand, was aware of what led to the current problems with this diocese and its bishop), but has given no indication publicly that it is addressing the situation. Many people, both Catholics and non-Catholics, told me after the "guardians" were appointed, "Well, at least you don't have to worry that they'll pull the plug; they're Catholic; people in the local diocese were shocked and termed it "mind-blowing" that they were trying to; devout Catholics all over town were extremely upset about the situation; a local priest tried to organize demonstrations but reported that people were afraid for their jobs; no one in the Church who was able to stop it stopped it, even though my mother was not suffering, as even the doctors confirmed, and even though she did not want to die, and the utilitarian aspect of the Church's position, as shown to me in official literature, prevailed in the face of the Church's theological position.
This article sent a chill down my spine. I have a mentally handicapped son. He is a very happy fellow and I love him dearly. But I know I have the power to make him miserable and then convince him that he'd be better of dead. How many take care of people that could be convinced they'd be better off dead? If it becomes legally possible for the handicapped and infirm to commit suicide, how many caretakers will be tempted? It is an ugly world that throws away the Christian values that built our civilization.
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