Latest drug addict loons.

[GIThruster]

Evidence William, that you can read anything and ignore the practical aspect of it if it does not confirm your prejudices. It simply does not matter how much harm the drugs do, you are never going to admit they are harmful to all society.

[williatw]

Evidence William, that you can read anything and ignore the practical aspect of it if it does not confirm your prejudices. It simply does not matter how much harm the drugs do, you are never going to admit they are harmful to all society.

GIT old man when have I ever said drugs (as well as gambling, alcohol abuse, tobacco, etc.) aren't harmful to society? I am simply opposed to the WOD. Never have I said or implied that drug use/abuse was "harmless". Any more than being an alcoholic is harmless or being addicted to cigarette smoking is harmless; but we don’t arrest/convict/mass jail the latter two do we? How come it is socially acceptable to treat the latter two (alcohol/cigarettes) as medical/psychological problems warranting treatment but pot smokers are criminals who deserve jail?

[GIThruster]

How come it is socially acceptable to treat the latter two (alcohol/cigarettes) as medical/psychological problems warranting treatment but pot smokers are criminals who deserve jail?

Oh this is your issue! But its so easy to fix! Obviously, what you didn't appreciate is that pot is illegal and tobacco and alcohol are not.

See we try to incarcerate only those who break the law. Just so you know.

[Teahive]

For the same reasons that we don't approve of prostitution--in order to do so, we have to agree to devalue humanity. We would be essentially removing the high bar of social expectation and promoting everyone rush to the bottom. Like it or not, Western Civilization is what it is--the flowering of humanity--because it has at most times and places held this primarily Judeo concept, but Christian as well, that human life is sacred. When you abandon that concept for convenience sake, the outcome is a rush to the bottom.

Prostitution is legal in some countries. While that creates some tourism from countries where it isn't legal, which is to be expected (and might well reduce prostitution in those countries), the outcome isn't anything that could be described as "rush to the bottom".

There has always been a certain tolerance for suicide as there has been for prostitution. Even in Western culture suicide is sometimes seen as a last honorable option. Sacrificing oneself so that others may live is often considered heroic.

"For convenience sake" is a rather cynical view of the cases we're talking about.

[williatw]

How come it is socially acceptable to treat the latter two (alcohol/cigarettes) as medical/psychological problems warranting treatment but pot smokers are criminals who deserve jail?

Oh this is your issue! But its so easy to fix! Obviously, what you didn't appreciate is that pot is illegal and tobacco and alcohol are not.

See we try to incarcerate only those who break the law. Just so you know.

Uhh...the point is that maybe pot shouldn't be illegal GIT...just like harmful alcohol and tobacco aren't. And you say I am the one being willfully obtuse.

[GIThruster]

Prostitution is legal in some countries. While that creates some tourism from countries where it isn't legal, which is to be expected (and might well reduce prostitution in those countries), the outcome isn't anything that could be described as "rush to the bottom".

We disagree. I'd note prostitution is legal in Nevada, and many people have made the case over the years how it has in fact created a rush to the bottom. Certainly when the prostitutes themselves are interviewed it seems so.

There has always been a certain tolerance for suicide as there has been for prostitution. Even in Western culture suicide is sometimes seen as a last honorable option. Sacrificing oneself so that others may live is often considered heroic.

I'm not suggesting there should be no tolerance for it. I think we need to be extremely tolerant of it and I can certainly see situations where I'd off myself, but that is not the same as to say there should be an official sanctioning of it for that removes the notion that humanity is sacred and the prohibition against murder with it.

"For convenience sake" is a rather cynical view of the cases we're talking about.

Not cynical at all. Convenience is precisely why people want to change the law. a I said, why change the law when all someone needs to do is buy a bottle of sleeping pills or go to sleep in the car in the garage with the motor running? You don't need a doctor's help to kill yourself. What people want is society's sanction so survivors won't feel badly about it afterward. That's a convenience issue.

[williatw]

Convenience is precisely why people want to change the law. a I said, why change the law when all someone needs to do is buy a bottle of sleeping pills or go to sleep in the car in the garage with the motor running? You don't need a doctor's help to kill yourself. What people want is society's sanction so survivors won't feel badly about it afterward. That's a convenience issue.

A terminally ill person may not be in the position to exercise the options you suggest so cavalierly. They may need or desire the assistance of a physician to help them make the choice. To say nothing of a person in a permanently vegetative state. And if in fact the aforementioned terminally ill person wants society’s sanction why are you so determined not to give it to them? Why make the already painful decision to terminate one's own life even more unpleasant for them by calling their actions morally wrong no matter what the circumstances? So their love ones can suffer even more after their gone?

[GIThruster]

They may need or desire the assistance of a physician to help them make the choice. To say nothing of a person in a permanently vegetative state.

You see how tricky this subject is? You just made two arguments for killing other people! That is not covered by suicide laws and the laws for those things are already in place. Family members routinely make decisions about continuing life support. But you see how you already have this all twisted up and wrong!

And if in fact the aforementioned terminally ill person wants society’s sanction why are you so determined not to give it to them?

How many times do you need to ask the same question? Giving people permission to kill themselves violently opposes the notion of humanity's sacredness. It is not only not necessary to do this, it is backward, and morally wrong.

You don't sound like someone who believes human life is sacred. Maybe this is why you just don't get it.

[Teahive]

I'm not suggesting there should be no tolerance for it. I think we need to be extremely tolerant of it and I can certainly see situations where I'd off myself, but that is not the same as to say there should be an official sanctioning of it for that removes the notion that humanity is sacred and the prohibition against murder with it.

What I read from that is, "it's kind of ok but let's pretend that it isn't". And I don't understand, certainly don't agree with, that attitude. Maybe you meant it differently.

The prohibition against murder isn't even up for debate.

Not cynical at all. Convenience is precisely why people want to change the law. a I said, why change the law when all someone needs to do is buy a bottle of sleeping pills or go to sleep in the car in the garage with the motor running? You don't need a doctor's help to kill yourself. What people want is society's sanction so survivors won't feel badly about it afterward. That's a convenience issue.

I don't think preventing harm and suffering or preventing injustice is a convenience issue.

[GIThruster]

I don't think preventing harm and suffering or preventing injustice is a convenience issue.

Neither do I, but I think you think policy has to always be direct when very often it is not, and it is the indirect consequences we're here talking about. The greater suffering is surely what lies in consequences to failing to hold humanity as sacred. And promoting suicide as if the notion were fully sanctioned, surely will cause the greater suffering than that had by those who will be bereaved regardless. Either way, we all die. If we're fortunate enough, we die of old age, some natural malady, etc. The consequences of a slow and even painful death, are certainly less than the untold millions who will surely die at the hands of others, and always have, when we first adopt this notion that human life is not sacred.

I'm not proposing hypocrisy and I can see why you'd object to a casual reading of what I'm saying. I think the key here is to focus not on the immediate consequences of public policy, but on the mediate or unintended consequences when one authorizes suicide. The moral thing, is always to support the greater value, and protecting life by safeguarding our view of life, is of greater value than if someone's loved ones have further focus for their grief when a loved one passes, because they think a doctor's help would have made that easier. Sleeping pills are easy enough.

if what you need is evidence that this greater evil will certainly come should we abandon this notion of the sacredness of humanity, look carefully at the arguments above and ask yourself how did that conversation so immediately turn to killing others? Doctors deciding for others who dies, etc. THAT is the mediate or hidden issue that is at the real core of the problem.

[paperburn1]

It is a slippery slope, how long after we legalize it do we start the cry "Soylent Green is people"

[williatw]

The consequences of a slow and even painful death, are certainly less than the untold millions who will surely die at the hands of others, and always have, when we first adopt this notion that human life is not sacred.

Those who lusts to kill millions & have the power to will do so regardless of laws allowing euthanasia or not. Prolonging the suffering against the will of the terminally ill because you just can't abide what you see as the philosophical implications down the line of legalizing euthanasia will not deter the hands of the next psychotic nut-job who seizes power somewhere. Neither Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Sadam Hussein, or our current crop of wanna-be mass murderers like ISIS and probably Putin care one bit one way or another about whether there are or not euthanasia laws. They will murder, kill, destroy to the degree they have the power to do so because that is their nature. Those kind respect no law but power; that's why I emphatically support the 2nd Amendment and limiting gov power by any practical means available. The government that governs least governs best.

[GIThruster]

You are posing a false dichotomy. No one is prolonging anyone's suffering. You are making this stuff up. Anyone who wants to die can kill himself and no law can stop them. So stay on issue. The issue is not how the law affects those who are suicidal. The issue is how the law promotes or wars against the proper attitudes and perspectives to guard life.

You can have no basis for the assertion you've made above, that society's sanctions have no effect on how people act. Poppycock. Society's sanctions regularly define right and wrong in the minds of most individuals. Ask yourself what it was that happened in Nazi Germany, that so many sided with the death camp mentality. What can cause that kind of spiritual sickness to so spread? It is PRECISELY what you're recommending. It is when people tell themselves, they have an excuse--any excuse will do: he's suffering, she's chronically ill, whatever--to act in a subhuman fashion, that people will indeed then act in subhuman fashion.

If you don't believe this, do your own survey of society's sanctions during specific times of troubles. What did the Romans tell themselves to justify gladiatorial bloodsport? What did the people who murdered tens and hundreds of millions in Russia and China tell themselves? It was not the dictators who did this. It was common men and women who swung the blades and fired the weapons. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, never could have done what they did, were they not supported by the common man, who had so run off the rails believing stuff like what you are here arguing for, that he was ready to do atrocity. You are arguing in support of the next generation tyrant/mass murderer's minions. They will think, indeed must think, exactly as you're here proposing, for good men will never follow a mass murderer.

[TDPerk]

" The issue is how the law promotes or wars against the proper attitudes and perspectives to guard life."

And the only proper perspective is that the person whose life it is owns that life. Every other attitude adopts slavery in some measure, and only that attitude guards what makes life uniquely of worth to anyone--including the others in society.

[GIThruster]

Every other attitude adopts slavery in some measure. . .

Well that's certainly the libertarian view. It is this equating any restriction to personal liberty as slavery that in fact relegates libertarianism to such an impractical, extreme and idealistic role. If we take the value expressed here, that the sovereignty of the individual is important, and then balance that against responsibility to society, we emerge with a balanced view which should be essentially a traditionalist, American view. Especially those in the Pacific Northwest where the pioneering spirit is still common to culture, you have this view. But note, it is only once you've balanced individual liberty with social responsibility you get a useable position. Obviously this above is wrong. When society tells your little girl she can't grow up to be a prostitute, this is in no way a form of slavery. Pretending any and all restrictions on personal liberty are forms of slavery is just this silly, unreasonable, unbalanced position that makes libertarianism what it has always been, this marginal position no one takes seriously. And note it is not the libertarian value at the core of libertarianism that is the problem. It is taking that value at its extreme position and pretending it does not need to be balanced with other values. THAT is the fatal flaw of libertarianism--it is the product of adolescent reductionism and unqualified absolutism that can only result in failure when values come in conflict.