There, But for the Grace of God, Go We … Aye, There’s the Rub

Yesterday I saw this article on The Drudge Report that caught my attention.  Evidently the forward-thinking Dutch are in the process of establishing an officially sanctioned mobile euthanasia service.  The mind reels with tragic humor as the Grim Reaper extends his brand to home delivery and one fights-off the urge to draw comparisons to pizza vendors (“End your life in 30-minutes or less–or it’s free!” – “Ask for the Socretes Special!  A free order of rooster wings with every dose of Hemlock for a limited time!”).

Gallows humor … literally in this case … we laugh or we cry I guess.

Beethoven’s famous 5th symphony contains the famous “DA DA DA DAAAAA!” movement eponymously titled “Death Knocking at The Door.”  In the Netherlands this is no longer a metaphor.

To My Friends in the Netherlands
I have many friends and business associates in the Netherlands–Amsterdam in particular–and I ask them all for their indulgence.  It is a wonderful country and nothing I write here takes one ounce of greatness–past or present–from their culture or tradition.  But in this important instance the traditional Dutch permissiveness and tolerance might be seen as playing against their other admiral qualities and a little thrid-party analysis might be appropriate.

Where I am and Where America Is
Now to those who know me well, my opinions on palliative care, suicide, and euthanasia are no secret.  Neither are my personal life experiences and those of my family, which, it may be noted, are in many important respects specifically relevant.  But I want to talk about the bigger picture here.

In America we may appear a bit duplicitous on the matter (it is hard to get 300 million people to agree on anything at all).  We have laws against attempting suicide, but no law that I am aware of against accomplishing it.  This seeming contradiction allows society to intervene to prevent someone from ending his or her life rashly or in a particular moment of emotional anguish or pain.  But ultimately we believe in Freedom (with a capital “F”), so if one is successful in the attempt, one does not necessarily die as a criminal.  Likewise, if one succeeds in suicide for medical reasons or suffering, not only is the fruition of the act not a crime, but I have yet to come across one of my fellow citizens who would not think it a shame, perhaps worry about their spiritual outcome, but still understand it and allow for a person’s behavior to be modified when pushed to their extremes.  I am not saying that no one here would harshly criticize, I am only saying that they are likely more rare.

But we also have laws that prevent third-party participation.  Notably, we had Jack Kavorkian–a medical doctor–who went about offing his patients, or at least helping them to do so, when he thought it prudent.  Whether you agree or not with that practice, many of us personally could not help but detect a bit of glee in his work.  He was more of a Perky Reaper than “grim” and his apparent delight in the tasks was unsettling.  We sent him off to prison–good riddance if you ask me–whether his patients were temporally grateful or not.

But Americans also have a soft spot for those truly suffering.  Our sense of the value of the individual person and the “root for the underdog/never give up/it’s not over until the fat lady sings” aspects of our culture are balanced against our compassion and notion of personal and individual liberty.  Our juries and judges have acted mercifully and either acquitted or dealt lightly with close friends and family members who–under the most extreme of cases–have felt compelled to speed the departure of one that they truly loved.  But we take a REALLY good look at it because we have found more than a few dastardly murders and the truly insane hiding in medical coats and behind false, sorrowful eyes.

But we are talking about deeper things than personal choice and individual acts of benevolence.

Morning Chill in the Air
Reading this article from Holland gave me a chill.  While it is very tempting to imagine a band of benevolent and caring medical professionals making a last, merciful house call upon a needy patient in the context of established relationship and trust, the truth of the matter, our remembrance of history, and our collective human nature should give us pause.  Rather than benevolence, we might more reasonably expect a dystopian decent–more Orwell and Soylent Green than mercy.  Such is the way of man and the governmental bodies he creates.

“Actual People?”

Just a few days ago I saw another article on Drudge that I cannot help but tie together with this one.  This earlier article made ethical arguments for the justified killing of newborn children–the limits to which were, perhaps intentionally, not fully defined.  If you read both articles your first reactions might be like mine; namely, wishing fervently over a stiff drink that, rather than scientific discussion, you were reading the plot to a coming Wes Craven horror flick.  Or perhaps a Tim Burton or Quiton Tarrantino blood-spattered satire.

Once you have finished that stiff drink and re-read the articles you might either consider the wisdom of acquiring a prescription for antidepressants or focus your mind to stare upon the dark oblivion of the subtext.  Doing so, you will note powerful similarities in the two article threads; the same cold calculation, the same Euro-liberal pragmatism, the same ad hominem plea toward preventing economic harm and suffering, the same … lack of humanity.  Both are dryly written in London newspapers via print and placed online next to well targeted Google ads and above photo links to salacious stories about sexy celebrities, lending, as it does, an air of mendacity to the seriousness of the topics at hand.

By Any Other Name
Another similarity between the two articles and topics is the sophistry of the presentation.  In the first case notice the attempt to change the language from euthanasia to the less-threatening, almost banal term ”Life-End services” (Levenseinde).  In the second, according to the authors, we are no longer talking about infanticide. Rather, we are asked to slide the now culturally acceptable term and practice of “abortion” a few months later in the cycle of human development to the “morally irrelevant,” freshly minted and palatable phraseology ”after-birth abortion.”

One practice slides the end of life a bit earlier, the other slides the start of life later and we therefore redefine “actual persons” [emphasis added].  In my limited but dedicated study of our five thousand years of recorded human history, each time any group, society, culture, or empire has redefined the concept of “person” or “human” into something more expedient to their purposes it has ended very poorly.

I once wrote, and still believe, “The noblest intents of grace, charity, and Christian brotherhood are transformed by government programs into jealousy, theft, and tyranny.”  As we consider the sanctioning of Netherlands’ growing euthanasia industry, made more efficient though the use of mobile technology and home delivery, I suggest that it might be foolish to assume that this time it is any different.

Be well,