Opposing Conscience Rights: Driving Dissenting Health Care Professionals Out of Medicine
The voices that yell loudest about "choice" tend to be the very ones that most enthusiastically seek to stifle it when they involve decisions about hot button moral issues with which they disagree. The St. Louis Post Dispatch is one such voice. Its editorial page weighed in today against the new federal rule protecting health care workers against discrimination for refusing to perform medical procedures they deem immoral, such as abortion or assisted suicide, a matter we have already discussed here at SHS.
I have opined that the a primary goal of opposing conscience rights is to drive people of certain moral persuasions completely out of health care. And indeed, the Post Dispatch proves my point. From the editorial:
Michael O. Leavitt, the Bush administration secretary for Health and Human Services, lauded the rule last week. "Doctors and other health care professionals shouldn't be forced to choose between good professional standing and violating their conscience," he said.See what I mean?
No such conflict should exist. Doctors, nurses and pharmacists choose professions that put patients' rights first. If they foresee that priority becoming problematic for them, they should choose another profession.
"But Wesley," you might say, "What about Futile Care Theory? Surely the editorialists would argue just as hard for the right of patient and family to have their lives maintained?" Trust me, if it ever came up, the Post Dispatch editorialists would write that doctors and bioethicists are the ones who understand these issues best and that the religious beliefs of families or their "guilt" shouldn't get in the way of physician autonomy and their right to determine the best way to practice medicine. We have seen just such statement in the most pro choice medical journals. In fact, I could write the editorial for them it is so obvious what they would say.
Such "turn on a dimes" make no logical sense if we continue to think that all of this is really about "choice." But that isn't the ultimate issue. Always remember that these and other bioethical and cultural struggles are part of an the ongoing coup de culture that seeks to transform society from the roots. As I wrote in my recent Weekly Standard piece about the Montana assisted suicide court ruling:
Cases such as Baxter, Armstrong, and Casey--among many others--are really part of a slow motion coup de culture, a steady drive to topple the social order rooted in Judeo-Christian/humanistic moral philosophy and replace it with a dramatically different value system founded in utilitarianism, hedonism, and radical environmentalism. Once that process is complete, the courts will quickly make it clear that "choice" has limits.Remember that the next time you see one of the MSM's 180 degree sudden turns that make so little sense you feel as if your head is going to explode from the hypocrisy.
Labels: Conscience Clauses. Coup de Culture. Bush Regulations.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 8:21 AM
15 Comments
15 Comments:
Moral v. hedonistic and utilitarian, I get. What environmentalism, or radical environmentalism, has to do with the equation I don't. It's not as though the environment, or non-human animals, are doing anything voluntary to fight us or reduce our status, and I don't see where status properly even comes into it, or how respecting them denigrates us. I don't see where a contest between us and them exists, or where there is a conflict between respecting them and respecting ourselves; on the contrary, they, and we, are all part of nature, and therefore all good and to be respected, which is quintessentially moral. At least that's how I see it.
The deliberate amorality that has developed in hospitals and their new "friend," bioethics, is utilitarian, terrifying, and indeed terrorizing. But it works against the crucial necessity to respect nature, other animals, and ourselves; I don't see how it is connected to radical environmentalism, which seems to me to be opposite to utilitarianism. Again, the people who have created this lack of ethics and humanity in a field in which ethics and humanity must be paramount come out of a tradition in which "scientific detachment" and utilitarianism with respect to experimentation on non-human animals was given paramount status, and we see now the effect of the callousness it nurtured on human beings. It is a lack of integration, in fact a deliberate dis-integration, of the essential human qualities of reason and emotion that has brought us the fascism of the death culture. It is abandonment of the principles of balance and fairness which are essential to humanity. If our primary consideration must be ourselves, the reason for opposition to animal experimentation is not simply cruelty, or that animals have rights, etc.; it is that ultimately it is bad for us; what's right is right and leads to the right conclusion by whatever path it takes. I've seen what you are talking about in a hospital setting. What amazes me, though it shouldn't, considering what I've just said, of which it's the outcome, is the rank stupidity of those who apparently are unable to imagine that one day they are apt to be in the same position as the patient in question, their families, etc. They have become so detached from reason, and thus so arrogant, that they are blind to the logical conclusion, even the possibility. The cowardice, selfishness, self-centeredness, arrogance, bullying, cruelty, and lack of logic are astounding. More than one "Because I'm board-certified and you're not" (yes, they say this)-type doctor, including one who referred to himself as an "ethicist" and "philosoper," actually has said to me that their mother told them she would not want to be on life support, as if that meant that mine would have the same preference. They can't even think. In their heads, they really are the center of the universe. Not surprising considering the animal-experimentation-based, "science is everything" system in which they were trained, which grew out of an incomplete, inadequate, and cowardly, response to Nazi experimentation on humans ("don't do it to us; do it to them instead"), which now has yielded the death culture that is alarming to SHS. Tyranny being what it is, it has moved from tyranny exercised with impunity over helpless laboratory animals without regard for their rights and sensibilities to tyranny exercised with impunity without regard for their rights and sensibilities over helpless patients and those patients' family members, chosen representatives, etc. to tyranny exercised with impunity without regard for their rights and sensibilities over everyone else in the health care profession who disagrees with them. Because bullies are cowards, they want their way at all costs, they pick on those weaker than themselves and don't fight fair, and the one thing they cannot tolerate is being stood up to, someone being right and prevailing over them, etc.; when that happens they hide behind skirts, as in this context of "science," "court," etc. They are incompetents, and incompetents can't survive in the midst of competents, whom they thus drive from their midst, and are quick to term those who defy them incompetent. Doing their job right is too much for them. This is the same tyranny as the Nazi tyranny which Nuremberg failed to address sufficiently, and which continues, now in our own hospitals, on our own shores. It's more than just to be pointed out; it has to be stopped, and it's no different than playground behavior and philosophy. The way to deal with those Nuremberg sought to address was to round them all up, every last one, sequester them as they sequestered others, and say ok, go to town, experiment on each other, not to say ok everybody let's use animals now. But that would have taken more guts than anyone was willing to use when it was necessary, and it wouldn't have been "nice," and after all, they were human. They might have sat there as the cowards they were doing nothing, until they died, or they, or some of them, if they were truly dedicated to,and that mad with, "science," might have in that manner yielded some fascinating and useful scientific advances that at least in some way repaid their offense against humanity, and science in the rest of the world might have slowed temporarily, or more likely found better ways to go about things, perhaps even based in part on the fruits of their research upon each other, but it would have been a signal to the world that prevented what we've got on our hands now, and the end result would have been a lot better than what we've got now, which is just another version of them all over again, and they're winning now. Have "eugenics" and the culture of death ended? No. Instead, the killing field has moved from the Nazi strategy dens, battlefields, gas chambers, and laboratories to our own universities, "bioethics conferences," hospitals, "intelligentsia," religious institutions, and "health care industry" and all that that entails. Much nicer, isn't it, now, for all of us. At least then, where war that everyone knew and recognized as war and fought outright was not going on, people could die in their own beds, in their own homes, on their own terms (not on terms that they have been duped into thinking are their own by "estate planning" that includes the now-obligatory-to-foist-upon-the client "living wills," "end-of-life" and "palliative care" "specialists" and "counselors," social workers, nurses, doctors, and hospital administrators,etc.), without being "kindly" harassed and abused, their families being victimized, etc. At least we knew what we were dealing with then, and things were honest. But now, thanks to the evasive tactic of the "Nuremberg solution," they are not. Because what I just suggested wouldn't have been "nice," wouldn't have been "humane," because after all, we're "human," and "civilized." That's not human exceptionalism; it's human stupidity, and humans, along with laboratory animals, are paying the price for it. Sometimes what we think is "nice" and "decent" and "ethical" yield the opposite results, as they have for all of us, now. A cat, dog, or horse which scratches, bites, or kicks in self-defense has more sense than that, and limits the injury to the offender, with more effective result, and in the end, that's much nicer, more productive, and better for everybody, and that's part of why they deserve respect. Us, we've let a situation develop in which those who are willing to take care of us properly no longer can. Of paramount importance now that we see what we've allowed to happen is: What are we going to do about it?
An example of what many have blindly and stupidly accepted as "nice," "decent," and "ethical" is, of course, the death culture itself, in its various manifestations.
The best doctors do not think or behave this way, but the end result of the validation by society of "the doctor" as the highest exemplification of human talent and virtues, the one entitled to do as s/he pleases with members of species for the sake of scientific and medical advancement in the noble cause of improving the condition of the exalted human species, the most deserving of respect and reward, who has endured the indignity of having had to work very hard to achieve that status, is the nurse, the patient, and all others having to bow to the doctor's command, the sense of entitlement to alter records in order to protect one's career and reputation, regardless of ethics and the patient's rights, or, in similar vein, allow a patient who has already been harmed grievously to be abused in the course of a malpractice case losing which would damage one's career, the doctor ordering the nurse to alter records or otherwise suppress information which the patient and the patient's family have a right to know, or s/he never will work in that or any other hospital again and she must go along or cannot continue the work to which s/he is dedicated (and at which s/he is better than the doctor, and cares more about the patient), the doctor having to follow orders from a utilitarian hospital administration or not be able to work there at all, etc., and thus becoming corrupted and losing his or her soul and ability to heal, and as this happens, and those "in charge" succeed via intimidation, there are more and more injuries to patients, more and more to cover up, things snowball, and the arrogance reaches the level of fascism pointed out in the SHS blog at hand. The patient and the patient's family are absolutely vulnerable; they are in a stressful situation with which they do not have everyday experience and not on their own turf; they need and are at the mercy of the service of the doctors, to whom society has taught them to defer and by whom it has taught them to be intimidated, and of the hospital; the doctors and the hospital take advantage of this dynamic; they are easy pickings and in the least possibly likely position to be able to be effective consumer advocates for themselves. Day after day, all this hierarchy exists, and the dynamic gains more strength, and it becomes even more easy for those who don't belong in health care in the first place to intimidate, corrupt, and, if all else fails, drive out those who have more right to be there; they can't afford to have their betters around or else they'll be driven out themselves. The institutions know that they can't be put out of business, because people need them, and the business interests (insurance companies, hospital corporations, beancounters, etc.) behind them know how to make things difficult for those who do belong in health care to establish themselves successfully elsewhere. In fact, now that medicine has become business rather than profession and corporate group rather than free-standing hospital or physician, the same atmosphere of competition that exists between those entities has extended to the sense of threat from and competition against peers that those who have absorbed this mindset from the business of health care now direct against their betters. Meanwhile, the "bioethicists" can't keep their jobs and salaries if things are conducted as they should be and in the way patients and their families have a right to expect; they would then have to find actual, useful work to do in the world, and thus it's to their advantage to do whatever they can to make things worse, so that they are "needed" in "such difficult situations" when "such agonizing decisions" must be made that involve "just too complexity" for those whose concern they are to make. The next step after that is that the patient's wishes and those of his/her family, chosen representatives, are disregarded, and even presented by these "experts" as against the patient's interest, and even irrelevant. A cab driver from Brooklyn could read the whole thing with his/her eyes closed in two seconds. Whereas those responsible for the situation noted in this blog section couldn't survive for two seconds if they had to do the honest work of a cab driver, and on top of everything else would consider it beneath them, which is why they made sure to get the "credentials" that "entitle" them to tell everyone else what to do,
Thank you for the welcome. I can tell this will be interesting. In our previous exchange (in the post linked in this one) you said:
"I think the right balance is for conscience rights to apply for elective procedures, and not non elective procedures. Thus, no doctor should be able to refuse to save a patient's life, but should be allowed not to participate in ending a life."
I'll say that, as far as that goes, I tentatively agree. The question becomes: what constitutes "participat[ing] in ending a life"?
Abortion is a relatively straightforward one, though if the pregnancy threatens the mother's life, it gets immediately sticky. Which life are you participating in ending? It seems like you have to choose between a life and another life somehow.
I'm not yet clear on your stand on end-of-life issues. Is palliative care, which in some cases might hasten an inevitable death by erring on the side of comfort and dignity, participating in ending a life because every treatment option is not exploited to the bitter end?
Is withholding expensive resources that are required to sustain a life that cannot be sustained on its own, participating in ending a life?
There is also the deep mire we're in by virtue of the fact that we have limited resources. If keeping someone alive costs $1000 a month, that's one thing, but what about $10,000, or a million dollars a month? It is indeed a utilitarian question to pose, but with limited resources, we also can't pretend that we can do every conceivable thing to sustain every conceivable life.
I disagree with you and would say that the vast majority of families and health care workers agree on two basic values: life should be meaningful, and life should be sustained. The disagreement, in my perception, is which side you err upon when pushed to an inevitable choice. Would you rather die sooner but live your last bit more meaningfully, or would you rather have everything done to sustain your biological life, even if you are insensate with pain and medications? Its a nasty choice either way, but I keep seeing people and their families and hospital staff go through it, and I don't perceive a difference in ends, only in prioritization.
That's right -- and the same ones who clamor about the "right to die" are the ones who do their best (which is the best they have in them) to make sure that one DOES die. "Choice," my foot! It seems to me to be related to the syndrome of "nanny government." Mayor Bloomberg won't let anyone smoke in New York City if he can help it, and has banned trans-fats in restaurants. I've heard that somewhere in California (San Francisco?) city employees have lost their jobs because they were discovered to smoke cigarettes in their homes. I was just reminded of this when New York State's Governor Paterson (who is legally blind, and thus disabled himself, and may not realize (though not because he is blind), like others, where he is going with this) was just on tv and there was discussion of the "obesity tax" he just imposed on non-diet soft drinks. "We know what's best for you..." This is going on at the same time as a judge is legislating from the bench from Montana that "mystery of life" (whatever that means) means that in Big Sky Country, one is free to choose to die. Who would want to die in a state with such extraordinary freedom, freedom as vast and expansive as the big sky there itself? The sky's the limit on freedom there; who wouldn't want to stay alive to enjoy it? Well, we can't have that, can we.
As for newspapers' editorial policy, I saw what that was like when the local paper said it wanted to "help" and helped get the person whose life I was trying to save dead, even, among other things, opening with coverage that was like an extravagant obituary in advance and cast the person trying to save the person's life in a negative and inaccurate light, refusing to give coverage in the edition when it could have been helpful, giving coverage when mention was apt to move things in a fatal direction, etc. Newspapers aren't doing too well these days (in fact, the one I just referred to just fired much of its staff, including its opinion page editor), and I wonder to what extent this syndrome is utilitarianism at work and has to do with advertising dollars from the "health care industry." A commentator on a radio station that is absolutely entrenched and has no such desperate concerns was supportive, as was the tv station affiliated with it; no other station in town would touch the story or dare to try to help, and we've only got the one daily newspaper, which routinely "qvells" over a pioneer of the assisted-suicide movement who is a "star" at the hospital in question and has been quoted saying that he just loves living here, no wonder why. The death culture issue seems to be accelerating and becoming more prominent at the same time as the economy is failing, too. In fact I suspect that it is a factor in the failure of the economy, which is linked to people just wanting what they wanted and felt entitled to, which was "offered" to them, the same way the "right to die" and to "physician-assisted suicide" is now claimed and promoted. What it seems to come down to is people not wanting to stand on their own two feet and be responsible, logical, and sensible, make sacrifices, endure possible discomfort, or consider the consequences -- the same way people sign "living wills" and end up jumping into the fire as a result of thinking they are going to be able to get out of the frying pan scot-free, without considering that they don't really even know what they are doing. It's really not much of a jump from taking pills for everything, draft-dodging, credit cards, living together rather than marrying, purchasing one's own offspring via fertility medicine because one "wants" to "have" them and feels entitled to when nature dictates otherwise, rampant plastic surgery, parental irresponsibility, broken families, the appalling state of the educational system and rampant ignorance, etc. to the death culture. People just want what they want now, like children, and have ended up with "parents" who are hardly benign and have taken advantage of the opportunity to butt in on everyone's life, literally, dictating to them what to do, and telling them that they have "the right to choose" and in to have what they want, and then give them no choice but to do what THEY want them to do.
I keep trying to leave this blog site, which is more absorbing than I can afford for anything other than I have to do, rather than just want to do, right now to be, but I just have to respond to what Doug posted, to which I know SHS's response can't fail to be very interesting, as I was posting my last comment.
It's not that complicated; it's very simple. What does the patient want, at the time? Does the patient want to give up and let go, in which case, if it's a situation where death really is inevitable and close at hand, death will come without help, or does the patient want to keep living, fighting, and if necessary go down fighting? I've been through such a situation, in which the person wanted the latter, and was put to death by the hospital, which used every means at its disposal to force the outcome it wanted, and I know of a number of other such situations. No one knows, whether they have signed a "living will" or not, exactly what the circumstances will be if a situation arises in which it is called into play, and exactly what they will want at the time if it does arise; no one can know. Similarly, no one but the patient knows, when the situation does arise, exactly what the circumstances were, and what was in their mind, when they signed such a document, unless someone is present who knows and/or whom they told, honestly and completely, assuming they ever told anyone. The hospital doesn't even know the patient; the person the patient chose as their health care proxy, their family, etc., does, in some instances more fully than in others. If there is someone present who knows the patient that well, and the patient can't talk, that is the person whose decision it has to be. Moreover, doctors and medicine are not omniscient, and patient and proxy/loved one/s should not have to accept their opinion as absolute dictum. Obviously if the person is racked with pain and discomfort, the physician's job includes doing what can be done to alleviate the suffering, and I think that's part of what you are talking about in situations where things get sticky. In the situation I experienced, the person did not want the hospital to beat her and wanted to get out of there alive, was perfectly comfortable, both obviously and according to all the medical staff, the head of the i.c.u. had even told me he'd seen patients in her condition go home before, which would have been her preference, even moreso if death was imminent, and her chosen proxy was perfectly willing to do whatever was necessary, and go to whatever lengths necessary, to make sure that she had what she wanted and everything she needed. But the hospital was dead set on its own agenda. People go to a hospital as customers, for service, not to be victims of negligence, prisoners, forced to die there against their will, their lives butted in on, etc. The decisions in question are none of the hospital staff's business; their job is to provide what those who have given the hospital their business wants. Yet doctors, nurses, social workers, administrators, "ethicists," "end of life experts" intrude on what is none of their business, regarding someone they don't even know, and spend time on this endeavor as if they were entitled to, when in fact the patient needs them to be doing what the patient came to hospital for. Cost is a reality, and resources are not infinite, I agree. But those considerations cannot override the value of a single breath or millisecond of the life of someone who wants to continue to live. Further, re cost and resources, the same syndrome I've just referred to with hospital staff spending time and energy butting into what is none of their business when their job is to do nothing but provide care leads to the inefficiency that drives costs up and taxes resources unnecessarily. I remember weeks of having to attend "meetings" with a dozen hospital staff members present who should have been spending the time providing care to patients; the agenda was to try to get me to agree to override the patient's wish not to be DNR; I kept telling them spend the time treating her and she won't code, but they insisted on persisting; when she did code, which happened only as the result of the same modus operandi on the hospital's part as I've just described, and was revived, she turned out to be not at all as "frail" as doctors who did not know her as I did had said she was, and eight months later, after I'd been told (deliberately in her hearing, no less) daily that she was going to die any minute, she still wanted to keep going. But treatment that she wanted and needed and that I kept asking for kept getting denied, and every prognosis the hospital gave consistently turned out the opposite, whether it said she was going to get better or whether it said she wasn't going to make it. Further, only repeated gross negligence, along with the focus on harassing and exhausting her proxy with "meetings" and unsolicited wrong prognoses, rather than doing what she needed as requested, had prevented her from getting out of the hospital much sooner and caused her to need "costly resources," and she was hardly the only patient who had been the victim of the same syndrome. The hospital caused the costs and need for "use of limited resources"; she didn't. It takes a lot of nerve for an institution to go on about "costs" and "resources" when that's the way it behaves, and yet this scenario is repeated over and over. These discussions and all thus unsolicited and unwanted butting in by hospital staff shouldn't even be going on; it isn't even decent. It's the patient's choice, and if the patient can't speak but someone is present who knows the patient, which the hospital doesn't, and whom the patient chose as their represented, it's their choice, and if they can't make up their mind, then they'll ask the hospital staff for advice, which the hospital staff should give honorably and honestly, not with its own agenda in mind. Anything else is out of line. In the situation I experienced, the hospital was so set on its own agenda that the same doctors whose sloppiness had harmed the patient had the indecency and nerve to assert that I expected the patient to "sit up and talk to us tomorrow" without even knowing me, let alone what was in my mind. But this kind of arrogance, intrusiveness, and sheer gall goes along with hospitals and doctors not doing their job properly, putting their own concerns ahead of the patients' welfare, not respecting patients' and their proxies' and representatives' rights, butting in on what is none of their concern as if it were their job to do that and they were entitled to, and operating under the rubric of "costs" they themselves have caused and "resources" they themselves have caused to be used when that should not have been necessary, as the result of they themselves having been unethical, irresponsible, inefficient, and incompetent, with inevitable harm resulting to the patient. Then they pretend to be "concerned" and to be entitled to butt in, which they have even less right to do after they've been negligent, but of course the butting in and the negligence go hand in hand. It's absolutely disgusting and unacceptable, and that's just for starters, and the problem arises from attitude and character. Again, much of what gets discussed under the rubric of "ethics" isn't even necessary to discuss, and much of it wouldn't have arisen in the first place if the hospital had done its job right, which would also help solve the "cost" and "resource" problem. But that doesn't get mentioned, let alone to the outside world, when the patient ends up the subject of discussion about "end of life." Baloney!
SHS: I have a question: Who is trying to accomplish the coup de culture, overturning society from its roots? I agree that it's going on. But who is behind the attempt? It's impossible to fight an unknown enemy, and this isn't the kind of thing that can just be observed and noted without trying to stop it.
SHS: I mean, who beyond animal and environmental rights extremists? And if it's just them, or if it's others, who is behind them, and why are they doing it?
Woah. Merry Christmas and a happy new year to you, Scrooge. (editorial writer)
Ianthe: An important question which I don't have all the answers for as this is a relatively new insight for me.
I think it is the Cultural Left generally, as distinct from political liberalism, e.g., the George Soros's of the world, academics and assorted Peter Singer types, Richard Dawkins-style materialists, radical elements who see the ancien regime as being overly moralistic and judgmental. Environmentalists who believe that if we would but see ourselves as just another animal in the forest we will treat the environment better. I think it is a result of nihilism. I think there are some who wish to destroy religion included. But, I think the nutshell answer is the Cultural Left.
I think we ARE just another animal in the forest and that we SHOULD treat the environment better. But I don't think that's nihilistic or incompatible with acknowledging our uniquely human qualities. I think it's nihilistic not to treat other life forms with respect, just as it's nihilistic not to treat humans with respect; how we treat others is how we treat ourselves, and vice-versa, or at least that's how I thought it was supposed to be. We're capable of humanity towards other life forms, and we're at our best when we exercise humanity, and the end result of that is also better for us. I don't equate humanity with the laziness (and nihilism) at the foundation of the cultural left, either.
Re nihilism this death culture stuff is going on at the same time that every time one turns around someone else has gotten a tattoo, a piercing, etc. They don't seem to realize that they're going to have to live with that tattoo for the rest of their lives, or have any conception that it's not going to look very nice on old skin, or that they're ever going to be old, just as the death culturists seem to have no idea of old people still wanting to live, or of the permanence of the "end-of-life" decisions they want to be "free" to make.
SHS, I honestly think you miss the point entirely with the charge of nihilism. What you don't seem to see is that the Cultural Left simply has different values than the Cultural Right - not a lack of values, just different values. Nihilism is the viewpoint that there is no meaning behind existence. The Left just sees some different meanings and works from those.
I also can't agree that the Cultural Left is somehow trying to destroy/remake society. Our society has much it owes to the "Cultural Left". With no Left, we'd still have Jim Crow laws, laws against racial intermarriage, no worker safety on the job, no social security, no food safety laws, no environmental protections at all, mandatory underemployment for women and even greater wage discrepancy, no unions, no minimum wage...you can't just pretend the Right is the only valuable source of our society's values and toss out the Left. You can't just pretend that where we are now has nothing to do with a balance between the two. And you can't pretend that people who disagree with you do so because they see no meaning in existence, or have no values of their own.
Or, rather, you can pretend those things, but I doubt anyone who doesn't already agree with you will listen to what you have to say.
Doug: I think humans never believe in nothing, but always believe in something. It is part of our nature. I think that nihilism leads to beliefs that are very destructive, which was my point. And now, I think it is part of the reason the Cultural Left has developed an anti-human outlook that sees us as the "enemy of the planet," and embraces utilitarian ideas and has ressurected eugenics. It is part of the hedonism and materialism I see (that certainly are not limited to the Left), and the radical environmentalism.
I have my roots in the Left. I wrote 4 books with Ralph Nader. But the Left, again as opposed to political liberalism, no longer believes in universal human equality in my view. The Left can't keep riding on the shoulders of the Martin Luther Kings and the fight against Jim Crow. I am a Martin Luther King liberal. The Left is no longer in that place.
There will always be a dynamic tension between conservatism and liberalism, we need both gas pedals and brakes. But I will oppose anti humanism and anti human equality whether it is from the Left or the Right. In the areas in which SHS deals, right now most of the threat is from the Left.
Doug and SHS: I thought that a few posts ago, at the outset, SHS made made the distinction between the political liberalism, without which as I understand what Doug noted still would exits, and the cultural left represented by Soros, Singer, academics of a certain stripe, Dawkins, etc. Am I correct in understanding that in the last post, what is meant is that the Left used to be synonymous with political liberalism, but now has taken a different path which no longer believes in universal human equality? That would mean that political liberalism, which in that post is associated with belief in universal human equality, no longer has a home or a voice, which would explain the loss of liberty, and the coming of fascism, that is heading toward us via the cultural left which is no longer political liberalism, but the kind of liberalism we encounter today. Have I got that right?
I just still don't see how humanism and human equality have to do with the status of humans v. other living things, and how refraining from acting unjustly toward other living things would constitute sacrificing human equality. I don't see how utilitarianism and eugenics correlate with the "enemy of the planet" concept.
Is there are way to edit/make corrections on what one already has posted? I've got a comma after "liberalism" that doesn't belong there, and an "it" missing after "understand," and "exist" misspelled, in the first sentence of my last post; I always seem to be making these typos here and I apologize. Also, sometimes I see "comment deleted by author;" does that mean that one can remove one's own post? I've tried to edit/correct or remove my own posts here and if there is a way, I'm just not computer-adept enough to do it.
If SHS really is only willing to listen to what agrees with it, that's because it has liberal roots. Touche! I've noticed that conservatives do seem to be more open-minded, more willing to hear and analyze logically what liberals have to say rather than rejecting it out of hand. (No wonder it's called the Right; touche again!) Of course there have to be both liberalism and conservatism. That aspect of liberalism which is less open to the other side may be where the current cultural left that is not productive, but nihilistic e.g. re the death culture, got its start. When it comes to individual rights, aren't conservatism and liberalism on the same page? What I still don't like is the notion that in order for all of us to be equal, we have to have a "superior" status to every other species. No one ever said that other animals can do what we can; where does the "status" issue even come in? It's like saying no one can experiment on any human now; it all has to be done on animals. Just because the first part of that is right doesn't mean the second part is. It's like saying that we can't all be equal within our species unless everyone in every other species can't be equal to one another. Who are we to start talking about the rights of other species in the first place? We're so insecure in our sense of having a right to have rights that we have to invent a denial of the possibility of theirs? It just doesn't make sense. We had a women's right's movement (and if you ask me, some of it wasn't a good idea; ever since women have been voting things have gone wacko, and there are women drivers who do fit the stereotype; maybe it's just too new, but Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi are not a good idea, and there's too many Democrats for there to be proper balance and things running right now), we had the civil rights movement, which is good, we have the disability rights movement, which is good, but when it comes to right to life, the "choice" people put up opposition, and vice versa, and when it comes to animal rights, now SHS with its liberal roots opposes them and talks of "radical environmentalism" as a threat. Rights are rights, and I don't think a line can be drawn on that without becoming inconsistent and starting to go in circles, which only makes it easier for the nihilism of the death culture and everything that has given rise to it to gain steam. Can't there just be common sense?
And since when did we invent, or get the right to invent or grant or decide on, rights? Nature, God, or whatever one wants to call the Creator has given life to everything that is alive, human or otherwise. To say that humans or any other species have the right to say who has rights is off course in the first place. Any entity that is living has a right to life, and that life gets cut off according to the Creator's design, or at least is supposed to. But the right remains fundamental. We can describe, and recognize, rights, but we can't create them; to say otherwise would be to say that we are the Creator, which we most certainly are not. What we have recognized and ensured via legislation as rights must always have existed, or else to recognize them would be wrong. We've done an awful lot of wrong things, to each other, just because we were able to, which didn't make them right if our recognition of the rights doing those things violated is correct, and we still have a long way to go in order to straighten out our own domain. Who are we to start deciding that other species, or the environment, don't have rights? It's utilitarian to do that; we want to use them, just as we wanted to use human slaves (and that was right then but wrong now?) But if we disrespect their rights, we destroy them in such a way that they are no longer even available to us, and we damage ourselves at the same time. They can survive without us; it's we who can't survive without them. And we have the nerve to disrespect them? That's how we got into the mess we've got now. It's much better for us to assume that they do have rights, and in fact they do, and God gave them to them as to us. Otherwise we start impinging on our own. If we can't figure that out, we don't have the human and humane qualities we claim to have, which if we had them in sufficient quantity to be what we claim to be, the issue that is the subject of this blog session wouldn't even exist. One can't deny the right of another person, or any other living entity, to be what they are, and do what they can do, when they are not hurting anybody. That applies to keeping an animal in a laboratory, not to mention violating it there, and not allowing it the freedom to be itself and not follow its own soul and remain intact just as it does to telling a healer no you can't heal if you're not willing to harm even though you don't want to.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home