Luxembourg: Culture of Death Will Not be Denied
Luxembourg is hell bent on enacting euthanasia legislation, but the sovereign Grand Duke Henri refuses to sign the bill, which would prevent it from taking effect. What to do? Change the constitution! From the story:
Luxembourg was plunged into a constitutional crisis on Tuesday after the sovereign, Grand Duke Henri, threatened to block a law legalising euthanasia if it is passed by parliament. Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker responded by saying the country would change its constitution to reduce the powers of the sovereign, who traditionally stays above the political fray. "Because we wish to avoid a constitutional crisis, but at the same time respect the opinion of the Grand Duke, we are going to take out the term 'approve' from article 34 of the constitution and replace it with the word 'promulgate,'" said Juncker, a move which would scrap the sovereign's formal power to block laws.Two quick points, well actually, three:
Juncker's announcement came after Grand Duke Henri, the constitutional sovereign, warned that he would not sign off on a law to legalise euthanasia if it is passed by parliament.
It also came after two hours of talks with political party leaders, leaving little doubt that Juncker had the backing for the move. Such a constitutional change would require a two-thirds majority in parliament. "I understand the Grand Duke's problems of conscience. But I believe that if the parliament votes in a law, it must be brought into force," Juncker said earlier, despite his own personal opposition to the bill.
-- First, good for the Grand Duke. In this way he won't be complicit in the killing.
-- Second, the acquiescence of the political leader to euthanasia forces, to the point that he is willing to change the constitution, makes him morally complicit in every such death that occurs under the law.
-- And finally, this illustrates a big difference between those who oppose and support the COD. Supporters of euthanasia, etc., if faced with the refusal by the Grand Duke to sign a law outlawing euthanasia, would never accommodate their opponents by changing the constitution to ensure the law was enacted. They would instead happily take advantage of his reluctance to block the law from going into effect.
And that is a big difference between the supporters and opponents of the culture of death, in my view: Proponents believe in winning by any legal way possible! And they don't much care whether it is by court fiat, legislative victory, jury nullification, executive order, or legal technicality. Opponents are not nearly that insistent on stopping the agenda. They want to appear fair.
Labels: Luxembourg. Euthanasia.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 4:39 PM
10 Comments
10 Comments:
If they wanted to respect the opinion of the Grand Duke, and if they wanted to avoid a constitutional crisis, they wouldn't be doing this.
Lanthe -
Nobody cares. This isn't about respecting his wishes, it's about bullying people into accepting euthanasia because it's cheaper than letting a person live until natural death. The Almighty Dollar (or rather, the monitary denomination they use in Luxembourg) is more important than the average human's life.
I agree with TE. Like I said, I guess we'll all have to buckle down. If we have to sacrifice public acceptance to stand up for human rights, than we should be honored. It's very hard, though, and I lot easier to talk about than to do, especially when politics is all about compromising and sticking little nuances into agreements that lead to later erosion. I think that Wesley's term, "illiberal leftism," is the perfect description of what is going on here.
How strange, for this to be the issue generating a constitutional crisis. Nothing else has ever caused conflict between the Grand Duke and the parliament? Sometimes I tell myself that I'm overdramatizing the culture of death, and then I see things like this and have to wonder.
It's real Laura. And it is voracious.
I agree with everything everyone has said here. That was a good point, Laura; over THIS, they are willing to change the constitution rather than not get their way, so intent are they on the death agenda. Voracious is right, Wesley. When I was honoring my mother's actual wish (as opposed to what the "living will" she'd unwittingly signed courtesy of agents of the death culture with their own agenda) to live on a ventilator (trach), the intensity of those who didn't even know her, let alone as well as I did, their personal emotion, in castigating me for not "letting her go, be free, have peace," etc., as if death (which is the last thing she wanted; she fervently wanted to live and was fighting with incredible determination and bravery) were some wonderful gift I were denying her, reflects how deeply the pervasive sickness of the death culture has penetrated. Well, what are we going to DO about it?
What I find frightening is the tendency of the media to totally ignore the euthanasia issue-for instance, Bill O'Reilly has done several segments now on a sign that was posted next to a nativity scene in Washington state that denigrates religion, but has totally ignored WA's legalization of assisted suicide. It seems that he cares more about that, and, about gay marriage, which doesn't hurt anyone, than about people with disabilities being allowed to kill themselves/being subjected to futile care. I'm very disapointed in people like him, who I regard as at least not embracing euthanasia as a leftist cause. I don't know why such people ignore it, but if I boycott one more news service, I will have to cut myself off from society.
Safepres: Now you are hitting a sore spot. Not O'Reilly per se. But the relative lack of attention this issue receives--from opponents. MSM is utterly biased on "alternative" media generally don't cover the issue. I can only assume they believe their audiences don't much care either.
Is there no way we could make it known to the Grand Duke that we support him? I really see him in a very positive light now. He stood up for his believes. This Juncker and co are a bunch of no moral people. They are the type who demand that people have to vote over and over again until their side wins.
I agree: It should be made known to the Grand Duke that people support him.
It would be good if that being made known to him received media coverage, too.
I can think of several reasons why the media doesn't cover this issue: The influence of the "scientific establishment," including pharmaceutical companies etc. which advertise. The human fear of that which is just to terrifying to contemplate, and of that it might happen to them, and wish to hide in denial. The decline in education standards, and thus in critical reasoning ability, that has yielded journalists who, like most of the rest of the population, lack that ability. In O'Reilly's case, and that of many others, the influence of the Catholic Church, which focuses self-righteously on certain issues at the same time as it bifurcates hypocritically on the issue of life support, "living wills," etc. for the same reason that it is the institution that gave us the philosophy of "science" as we know it today and the "corporate mentality"; as a result, society's thinking and values have gotten all messed up. The influence of Christianity and other religions which have given us the concept of "another life" and death not necessarily being a bad thing. We've got the insane death culture courtesy of insane "science" at the same time as we've got insane radical Muslims doing suicide terrorism in return for the imagined reward of 72 virgins on the other side. In fact there is so much to report on that is manifesting as other aspects of the death culture that there seems nothing extraordinary about this one. Plus, the victims of this aspect of the death culture either can't speak or have spoken and said that they want to be its victims. Plus, there is the tendency to abhor, fear, and ignore, and find distasteful, the weak and helpless who are in circumstances we are too terrified to imagine might one day be our own circumstances. Plus, there are the same natural instincts toward dominance and toward segregation of the weak and helpless from ourselves that "human exceptionalism" protests and that are part of "utilitarian theory" which we do, however, exercise when we use the other animals for our own purposes (and which "human exceptionalism" says we have a right to exercise; that is part of what I find inconsistent about the human-exceptionalism doctrine).
How did it happen that disability rights, and in fact right to life, and rights issues in general, started out as what we would consider "liberal" issues and ended up being shunted aside by "the left" and "liberals"?
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