Zeitgeist

This article reminds us how far we’ve fallen as a country: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/douglas-murray-canadas-descent-into-ignorance-shocks-the-world/wcm/28c37931-ea2f-4f07-bad3-e7760b0b7d63/amp/

I’m against capital punishment, so I don’t know where that comment is coming from. Maybe you’re trying to paint me as part of a political movement. I’m going to give you a piece of advice for which you aren’t ready and that you will no doubt mock. Maybe it will plant a seed. Whatever happened with your wife must’ve been very difficult and I can tell that you’re wrestling with what happened. People aren’t perfect and they generally do the best they can with the resources that they have and what they know, I think. I think you did what you felt was necessary to manage. I think it’s forgivable but I also think it was wrong. I think you should pray for forgiveness, pray for your wife and yourself, and ask God to give you peace and strength. I think if you do all of this sincerely, you will find peace. Canada has lapsed into weak, unethical practices that put people at risk of unnecessary or unwanted death. The world has taken note.

You’re using an extreme example as a vehicle for supporting unethical and reckless policies that are so ripe for abuse that, as soon as these policies were implemented, the scope of who can be killed and the reasons quickly widened and the pressure of health professionals and family members to consider assisted suicide grew. This is very much about the sanctity of life and you can’t be a little bit pregnant on this issue. Killing is the increasingly used cheap “healthcare” option in Canada. It has nothing to do with healthcare. The medical ethicists knew and said this and the MP’s ignored. Now the policies are overriding the constitutionally protected decisions of doctors and institutions not to assist killing. It’s wrong but you don’t see it because you’re inured to it, another inevitable consequence of normalization. Canada clearly has a bad healthcare system because we have these dubious policies at the same time that we fail to diagnose, treat, and save people from dying. Weak.

Do you understand the difference between using drugs for their proper and intended use (healthcare for people in extreme pain) and dangerous recreational use up to overdosing or poisoning to kill someone? Yes I see a significant difference between using drugs to help someone manage real pain versus killing someone. This used to be obvious.

Read the book, Why do bad things happen to good people? Let’s put religion aside, since you’re an atheist. Do you think life has inherent value and is better than death? I’m not saying it’s always worth putting someone through procedures and treatments to keep them alive. It’s an entirely different move to kill someone using a lethal procedure from helping someone to stay alive or to keep them from feeling pain. I see now that this is personal for you because of the loss of your wife. I don’t judge you. I think most people have weaknesses or simply can only handle so much before they break. Those who don’t break are written about as martyrs or saints or heroes because of their tremendous strength. Our state no longer elevates such people. Instead it caves into weakness. It’s a theme in Canada in recent years, but it has support, just like legal hard drug use and unlimited abortion on demand. It’s becoming a country of throwing in the towel.

What planet are you on?

You don’t know the theology on euthanasia. The Church doesn’t support active euthanasia, killing somebody. It accepts passive euthanasia, letting someone die naturally without life support where this is the wish of the dying.

You’re a relativist that doesn’t believe that any act is wrong unless someone thinks it is for them. If the mass murderer doesn’t think murder is wrong, then it isn’t according to your philosophy. Not anything goes. If you want to destroy yourself, don’t get others involved.

Not true at all. “Judge not lest you be judged.” “He who hasn’t sinned cast the first stone.” Sins are sins. You can judge behaviour, but people can’t judge people, as we can’t ascertain the totality of a person. That’s beyond the scope of people and left to God. We do make judgments about what people deserve for practical purposes only: getting a job, going to prison, etc. Are you so morally lost that you think all actions are of equal value? Mass murder and nurturing a baby have equal status in your eyes? That is the nihilistic perspective in a sense. When there’s no inherent meaning or purpose in the universe, no moral code, no commandments to follow, then essentially there is no discernment of actions apart from what you happen to like or feel. I’ve seen this in your comments from the beginning.

One can cal a sin a sin without judging the sinner.

As a Christian one believes there is always hope and that it’s wrong to despair. Nevertheless, I don’t pretend to understand what brings someone to the point of ending it all. I don’t judge them.

I’ve known them and I don’t judge them. No one knows what it’s like to walk in someone else’s shoes. I don’t think poorly of people who make that choice. I just think it’s sad. Life is for the living, and we need to take care of the living and cherish life. That means providing the best care, including palliative care and treatment for depression and pain. MAID just looks a lot to me like letting someone jump off the bridge instead of showing them that life is worth living. It sometimes looks like we’re encouraging them to jump.

Doing yourself in is your problem, no one else’s, not morally or financially.

With the help and money of taxpayers under the false label of healthcare.

I support healthcare, not putting people to death.

As our federal government gets more interventionist, expensive, and illustrates its incompetence on basic federal responsibilities like providing passports, I can see more provinces using the notwithstanding clause more often and the value of the federal government diminishing further and further in the public eye.

People can make the choice to do themselves in, but if it’s on the public dime and called healthcare, we have a problem.

Well the Americans handled it more that way. They defeated them, said, “We won” and “accept these terms.” Most American natives are proud Americans. It seems that many Canadian natives aren’t proud of Canada, even though the Hurons fought alongside the French and the Iroquois alongside the English, and even though the Brits supported Tecumseh in the plan to create a native territory in the Ohio valley against the Manifest Destiny Americans. Also remember that the Northwest tribes held more slaves than any colonial group held in Canada, where slavery was quickly banned. There was no bounty killing of natives as there was in America. Obviously Canada treated natives with greater kindness, thankfully, than the Americans, but we also tried the progressive (at that time) education approach, and we know how that worked out. The leftist activist courts are handling land claims and the federal government is throwing billions of dollars in reparations at Indigenous, yet the Canadian government is called genocidal and colonial by native and liberal lobbyists constantly. Once you lay down and act as the soft touch as Trudeau has been on native affairs, expect to be trampled and hated. Clearly throwing more money and government provisions at groups that don’t pay into these supports isn’t working.

Destroy yourself as much as you like. This is another reason why Canadian healthcare is a big fail. The taxpayers are expected to be co-conspirators in the deaths of citizens by paying for their assisted suicide. We are to pay for the bad choices of drug addicts by giving them free drugs. Yet people who want to live are dying because they can’t get cancer diagnosed soon enough and life saving surgery can’t come soon enough. Screwed up priorities from a morally confused government. Canada isn’t admirable on this front. It’s scary.

Yeah those countries are all worries. Even Australia has proven itself to be fragile in recent years. These countries’ governments, along with Canada’s, don’t always work for their citizens, in my opinion. Anyway Canada has one of the most permissive euthanasia policies in the world. Congratulations.

Rationalize it any way you want, Canada is an outlier as a provider of active euthanasia. It’s not a good look, but either is free hard drugs, unlimited abortion up to the expected day of birth, and gender affirmation for kids without parental involvement. It illustrates a country unmoored from a healthy moral framework. Anyway, it probably won’t change, so you got what you wanted. I hope you don’t regret your views when you’re elderly.

What you do to yourself is your problem, including suicide. When the state gets involved it’s no longer suicide; it’s killing. MAID is the state killing of citizens. When you say, yeah but only the person choosing it is involved, that’s a lie. State-provided killing is now on the menu of options for physicians to consider and apply to those who want it. What makes someone want to die? What factors could make someone consider “wanting” death? Could it be poverty, family pressure, the decisions of a power of attorney, someone suffering depression related to a specific event, someone for whom there are treatments that are expensive or have big wait times, someone who has been offered MAID as a “medical” option? There is so much potential for coercion, pressure, professional laziness, expediency, etc. The stats speak for themselves, as now tens of thousands of Canadians a year are “choosing” suicide. It’s on the menu of choices along with hard recreational drugs. Poor people without adequate housing have gotten MAID as a solution to their predicament. Military vets have been guided to MAID as a solution to PTSD. The feds are considering providing it to kids and the mentally ill. It’s morally dubious at best.

Pain can be relieved medically. MAID is not a treatment. It’s the corollary of an unprincipled country that doesn’t place a high value on human life and doesn’t respect the Judeo-Christian (and multi-faith) belief that despair is a sin and killing is a sin. Once those principles are abandoned, much reprehensible behaviour becomes acceptable. Whose life is worthy of protection if not all human life? If you choose to take your own life, there are drugs available that make that possible. A state-provided suicide program is so ethically dubious and susceptible to abuse that a prudent state wouldn’t allow it. It’s in keeping with giving free hard drugs to addicts and other reckless policies.

You don’t understand the purpose of healthcare and the Hyppocratic Oath. The slope on euthanasia is simply far too slippery, which is why no great powers allow it. Only experimental countries like Canada are rolling the dice. Mercy killing. It’s what we do to sick pets. I don’t support capital punishment or genocide. I also don’t support lies, so if you’re trying to say Canada committed genocide against Indigenous, that’s a problem. Canada’s “affordable” healthcare system is substandard. Pretending that killing is healthcare is proof.

Bottom line is it cheapens life and desensitizes us to the value, many would say sacredness, of life.