1. Opposition to assisted suicide is diverse: Proponents usually push the false idea that opponents are primarily religiously oriented–particularly Catholic. And indeed, the Catholic Church is one important element of the coalition that is (still) preventing assisted suicide from spreading outside the Pacific Northwest. But that coalition also consists of:

• Disability rights activists who see themselves and the elderly–rightly–as the targets of the movement;
• Medical professional organizations are overwhelmingly opposed to legalizing assisted suicide.
• Egalitarian liberals, such as Robert P. Jones, believe that assisted suicide threatens equality.
• Pro-lifers offer a solid foundation of opposition from which to build a winning coalition.
• Advocates for the poor who understand that assisted suicide could easily become a form of medical cost containment;

Put it all together, and opponents to assisted suicide look like America, whereas leading proponents look more like the 1%.

2. People are not marching in the streets demanding legalized assisted suicide: Legalizing assisted suicide is not high on the people’s “to do list.”  Indeed, I believe that if you asked 1000 people at large to list the top twenty issues about which they wanted government action, none would list legalizing assisted suicide. In truth, the agenda is the obsession of a very small, but well financed, group–most notably Compassion and Choices, that seeks to become the Planned Parenthood of death.  To be fair, most people are not emotionally opposed either. Primarily, they don’t want to think about it.

3. Polls showing strong support are misleading: I have noticed a continuing pattern: The default setting for large majorities is to support assisted suicide as a general concept, particularly as most poll questions are usually worded something along the line of a false premise, e.g., “only for the terminally ill for whom nothing else can be done to alleviate suffering, with strong protective guidelines.” But when people are actually forced to ponder a real proposal, support for legalization falls like a crowbar thrown from a bridge. Sometimes, not sufficiently to be defeated, but last night support collapsed just enough in MA to allow victory for Hippocratic values.

4. Massachusetts is a Catholic State: MA is a very liberal state, but it also retains a strong Catholic identity. The vigorous opposition to Question 2 by Cardinal Seán Patrick O’Malley made enough of a difference to hold the line.

5. The Kennedy Name: Victoria Kennedy, Ted’s widow, wrote a powerful op/ed against Question 2, lending the late senator’s aura to the no effort and providing ”liberal” cover to opposing assisted suicide.  In other words, left leaning types, who support the abortion license and abhor conservative moralism–but who still harbored doubts about assisted suicide–were given cover to vote no and not be considered theocrats by their friends.

Bottom line: Assisted suicide finds tough slogging because there remains sufficient traditional morality in the country–and the usual liberal coalition is fractured on this question–allowing those who bat from the left side of the plate to oppose a specific proposal, while still supporting the concept.  So long as that status quo remains, assisted suicide’s march will be long and slow.

Look for the movement to push harder in courts now that they have lost an important election. But that’s a post for another day.

Cross-posted at Human Exceptionalism

Of all the freedoms we cherish as Americans, of all the rights that we hold sacred, foremost among them is freedom of religion, the right to worship as we choose.

No, Mr. President.  It is much more than that.

This is another blatant attempt by the Obama Administration to reduce freedom of religion to a stunted “freedom of worship,”an effort against which I warned in a recent On the Square.  I write about the case in the current Weekly Standard, and point out that the arguments made by the Obama Justice Department make this “A Religions Freedom Election.”

In this sense, Mother Teresa was compassionate and Buddha was not. More thoughts on this over at Secondhand Smoke.

But the incompatibility is most vividly seen in the two theologies’ contrasting beliefs about suffering: The overarching purpose of transhumanism, its very point, is to avoid suffering–all suffering–whatever the cost and effort that project requires. In contrast, Christians see suffering altogether differently, although there is much confusion in the secular world over this. In Christian theology, suffering can be redemptive. That is not to say that Christians revel in suffering or want others to suffer.  To the contrary, it is a Christian obligation to alleviate and palliate the suffering of humanity whenever possible, that is, to take others’ suffering upon their own shoulders. But suffering can also be a trial to accept with humility and for which to give thanks because it can lead the sufferer and his/her caregivers directly into the unconditionally and eternally loving arms of God.

If you want to read more,  here’s a link.

Our founders understood it was relatively easy to establish freedom in our Constitution, the harder task was to create a system that would maintain it against the corrosive force of time. The author Os Guinness describes how they accomplished this as the Golden Triangle of Freedom: “Freedom requires virtue, virtue requires faith and faith requires freedom and around again.”

Faith requires freedom. Why has America remained a deeply religious country averting the road to secularism traveled by many of our European brothers and sisters? Again Madison’s “true remedy,” the combination of “free exercise” and no religious state supported monopoly, has created a vibrant marketplace of religions.  Our founders’ inspired brilliance created a paradigm that has given America the best chance of any civilization in the history of man to endure the test of time.

I certainly agree that about our founders’ “inspired brilliance and agree that the USA is a nurturing home for faith.  But, faith certainly does not require freedom.

In fact, freedom can lead to a weak faith because it remains untested.  Indeed, the strongest and most enduring faith is often forged in the hottest fires of oppression. Consider, for example, how the Church was persecuted by Rome.  Those martyrs eaten alive in the arena were hardly free.  But they sure had faith!  And because of their sacrifices, the Church grew.

Faith has historically thrived in the face of tyranny and deadly persecution wielded against it.  Look at how the Russian Orthodox Church survived what may have been the worst religious oppression in history during the Soviet era–only to emerge and rebound strongly from its grievous wounds.  Look at the Buddhists in Tibet who today maintain their faith in the face of Chinese occupation and oppression.  Good grief, look at the history of the Jews!

Consider the experience of the Romanian priest Fr. George Calciu, of blessed memory, whose biography I reviewed here at First Things.  He was imprisoned and tortured for his faith almost to the point of death, worse, forced to torture other Christians–and yet his faith grew to the point that he exclaimed to one of his torturers on Pascha, “Christ is risen!” to have the cruel man stumble back with the almost involuntary reply, “Indeed, His is risen!” Fr, George’s great fear once he was released to freedom in the USA was that decedance also thrives in freedom, to the detriment and undermining of faith.

It is good to be free.  It is right to be free.  It is best to be free.  But faith does not require it.

I express my views in some detail over at Secondhand Smoke.  Here’s a sample:

It would be condescending to not praise or criticize Hitchens’ work just because he is seriously ill (and Judge does some of that, which is fine). But to claim that he may be close to becoming Christian not only shines a light on one’s own faith when discussing another, but moreover–and here I am sure Judge did not mean for it to be–I think it disrespects and even dehumanizes the ill person by talking about him as if he were not there–something that drove my hospice friend Bob to utter despair–and believe me, public people know what is written about them.

Am I saying that Christians should not care about Hitchens’ lack of faith?  Of course not.  But there are correct and incorrect ways of addressing the matter.

According to the officer’s account Abdul Hamid agreed to carry out the curse in exchange for 6,000 Saudi Arabian riyals (approximately £1,000). He was beaten after his arrest and thought to have been forced to admit to acts of sorcery. In a secret trial, where he was not allowed legal representation, he was sentenced to death by the General Court in Medina in March 2007.

Well, at least he got a fair chance of defending himself.  Did these killers think that if he could really cast spells, they would not have been turned into turnips?  There should be a human rights outcry.