assisted dying redux

Continuing with my rant about assisted dying.

The fools in Parliament have rejected it again.

The news says 'Oh forget it, it'll never pass.'

Pro-life boobs say 'It's a victory for the sanctity of life!'

I say 'Fuck all of you.'

Just as a democracy does not mean that anyone is allowed to say/do anything they want, sanctity of life is not about keeping someone alive without regard for anything else.

A lot of tits in America think that their 'great democracy' is a freedom to do whatever they want, whenever they want. Want a supersized Big Mac? Deserve a supersized Big Mac. If you get fat, don't worry you can always sue McDonalds for making you a fat bastard. Want a gun? Deserve a gun. If you kill someone don't worry, bearing arms is constitutional right. After all, 'It's what my great-great-great-great granpa fought the British and Injuns for! The freedom to bear arms and do whatever the hell I please. Every inch of America was won for true Americans with our ancestors blood it was. So all you foreigners stop whining about poverty cause you're all IMMIGRANTS and don't deserve land of your own. Compensate INJUNS you gotta be joking, they lost their land to our great-great-great-great granpa and it ain't none of mah business.' See the irony? Want a war? Deserve a war. Unilateral war is the only currency terrorists understand... says Bush while losing ground on domestic policy polls.

Okay, if rights are so important, how about basic human rights like the right to be free from torture? FUCK that says Uncle Sam. The rules of war on terror are different! No Geneva Convention, no UN Declaration of Human Rights. We'll hold whoever we damn well please without trial and without accountability. Oh and if we attach live wires to their balls while we're at it it is NONE OF YOUR GODDAMN BUSINESS. Oh but wait, that doesn't apply to you China. We'll cockblock you every step we can because you violate human rights all the time and that's just baaaaad.

Democracy in international law is a joke with America throwing its weight around like an overweight, unfit wrestler. Sooner or later someone big enough *cough*China*cough* is gonna come along and shove right back. Oh... is THAT why they're being blocked all the time. Right. So democracy, what's that?

Democracy was never about being able to chuck your weight around and do whatever you want as long as you have the muscle to back it up. Whether that's on the national or international level that remains true. Pushing others around and achieving the best for number one has a name... it's ANARCHY. Democracy is about the regulation of freedoms, regulation of what rights people have in order to achieve a balance.

After that big arc, back to assisted dying. Just as democracy isn't about the complete freedom to do whatever you want, protection of huamn life should not be about forcing the terminally ill to struggle through their last few months. It should NOT be about religious pressure groups blocking forcing their views on the dying. It should not be about who has the loudest voice or deepest pockets to hire the best publicist. It should not, basically, be about forcing people to suffer through a life they DO NOT WANT TO LIVE.

The sanctity that needs to be protected is the sanctity of choice. Just because someone doesn't want to do it doesn't mean that his/her view should be forced on all the other people suffering from terminal cancer or final stage motor neurone disease. That person still has the choice to live on... his/her actions prevent the others from being able to release themselves from suffering.

The assisted dying bill is about allowing someone in the last stages of terminal illness to say 'Please, I've had enough.' Being forced to live on ventilators and artificial life support is the closest I can imagine to undeath in our present world and I view it with as much horror as I would walking corpse.

It is not Lord Joffe, Ludwig Dinelli or Dignitas who are committing crimes against humanity. And neither was Kavorkian, although he operated in the grey areas of the law. They gave or would give sufferers a choice, a light at the end of the tunnel if you wish. It is those who deny the truly suffering that very choice who are the true criminals against humanity, it is they who violate the sanctity of life.

Steam

Running out of steam seems to be the predominant problem with me. Start off all gung ho and just losing the goal after the first couple of weeks.

Sometimes when you're on a roll the little bastards on the sidelines throw roses to trip you up... all the while claiming it was all for the best. 'But they is ROSES mate!'

...

yeah...