I am not a big fan of Thomas Sowell, but I think his most recent column is right on. It is about the purported “duty to die” that some are attempting to foist on society (rationing, futile care theory, etc.). He notes that the agenda isn’t embraced by the people on Main Street, but among the big brained in the intelligentsia. From his column:
One of the many fashionable notions that have caught on among some of the intelligentsia is that old people have “a duty to die,” rather than become a burden to others. This is more than just an idea discussed around a seminar table. Already the government-run medical system in Britain is restricting what medications or treatments it will authorize for the elderly. Moreover, it seems almost certain that similar attempts to contain runaway costs will lead to similar policies when American medical care is taken over by the government.
Make no mistake about it, letting old people die is a lot cheaper than spending the kind of money required to keep them alive and well. If a government-run medical system is going to save any serious amount of money, it is almost certain to do so by sacrificing the elderly.
That’s already happening in the UK under NICE, and in Canada and the UK, terminal cancer patients are sometimes denied life-extending cancer treatment because the several months of added life is deemed not worth the societal cost. I have noted repeatedly here that private health insurance companies would never be allowed to get away with such duty-to-die-sooner-rather-than-later thinking–but that could well change under Obamacare once government bureaucrats take over what will and will not be provided and to whom.
Sowell notes that other than the days in which indigenous people might have had no choice but to abandon the very sick and elderly, even those in severe poverty never believed their loved ones had a duty to die. But the elites have different values:
I only began to hear that kind of talk decades later, from highly educated people in an affluent age, when even most families living below the official poverty level owned a car or truck and had air-conditioning. It is today, in an age when homes have flat-panelled TVs, and most families eat in restaurants regularly or have pizzas and other meals delivered to their homes, that the elites– rather than the masses– have begun talking about “a duty to die.”
That’s an interesting point–and it also applies to euthanasia. We may be in danger of viewing ourselves and each other like products in a consumer culture in which we don’t fix our toys but throw them away. Sowell concludes:
Much of what is taught in our schools and colleges today seeks to break down traditional values, and replace them with more fancy and fashionable notions, of which “a duty to die” is just one. These efforts at changing values used to be called “values clarification,” though the name has had to be changed repeatedly over the years, as more and more parents caught on to what was going on and objected. The values that supposedly needed “clarification” had been clear enough to last for generations and nobody asked the schools and colleges for this “clarification.” Nor are we better people because of it.
Indeed. The duty to die and the euthanasia movements justify abandonment and sap true compassion, the root meaning of which is to “suffer with.”
May 11th, 2010 | 11:04 am
Wesley, what is it about Thomas Sowell that you do not like?
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
May 11th, 2010 at 12:47 pm
He’s too dour. I like writers with a twinkle, like Mark Steyn.
May 11th, 2010 | 11:24 am
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May 11th, 2010 | 11:49 am
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May 11th, 2010 | 12:23 pm
Wesley,
I often think that the fight against legal euthanasa is a losing one, because of the diversity of philosophies aboutlife (and whose it is) in our world, in our nation. Additionally, the (it seems to me very clear) implications of a consumer culture being also amenable to assisted suicide are not so obvious to everyone.
It may be a losing battle to stop AS/euthanasia becoming legal, but the battl to speak out firmly and with every action, every breath, against the consumer mindset, which, really, is the antithesis of love –that which devours, rather than gives–: this battle will always be here, and will always need soldiers.
Is “:duty to die” an extension of consumer culture? Definitely. Consumer culture is just the human desire to have one’s own desires fulfilled over all else, writ large.
May 11th, 2010 | 2:36 pm
Even in relatively tough times economically, the American spirit is one of optimism. Killing off the sick or the ‘bound-to-be-sick-sooner-or-later’ elderly, is utterly inconsistent with that spirit of optimism. Ditto re: the very similar assisted suicide brought to us by the Hemlock Society and their lethal offshoots like ‘Compassion [sic] & Choices [sic--whose choice?]‘ and Exit International, members of the latter currently on trial in Georgia and elsewhere.
People are fundamentally opposed to legalized killing of people and legalized suicide assistancy–and they sure don’t want to participate in it, like doctors who are supposed to be the suicide assistants in the 2 states where $$$$ and deceptive campaigning misled voters into sanctioning the ghoulish practice.
The hari-kari proponents would love to have us all wringing our hands, wailing, “Boo hoo, we’re helpless against the majority who wants euthanasia and assisted suicide!” NOT TRUE! WE’re the majority, not these fool death ‘options’ promoters! They are in the distinct minority and they know it. There is no enthusiam out there to make it legal to help people to kill themselves and don’t forget it, hard as the deceptive Hemlock wavers try to con you otherwise!
May 11th, 2010 | 3:25 pm
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May 11th, 2010 | 6:31 pm
Thomas Sowell commits a cardinal sin of persuasive writing in that he fails to support his thesis with a shred of evidence. He even fails to identify the “intelligentsia” et al advocating the duty to die. He commits a logical fallacy by constructing a straw man argument. Who are these people who advocate the duty to die? He lumps them under “elites”, “schools and colleges”, “intelligentsia” and the “highly educated”. Dog whistle conservative writing at its worst.
May 12th, 2010 | 8:08 am
Jeffery,
In case you haven’t been paying attention, readers of this blog have seen the very real writing and musings of these people that believe in a duty to die.
I notice in your comment you yourself make a nice logical fallacy. You tell us the speaker is foolish/lying, but you ignore his ideas. In fact, most of your arguments are ad hominems denouncing the intelligence or motivations of Wesley and others. Every time you read an argument you don’t like, you just seem to denounce the speaker, not the idea.
So I fail to see, as one of this blog’s resident trolls, how the Sowell argument bothers you. Are you asserting that their aren’t any influential people advocating a duty to die or our culture isn’t slowly embracing that idea? Or do you just dislike Mr. Sowell?
May 12th, 2010 | 7:30 pm
JustChris: Thomas Sowell is one of the token African-Americans that southern evangelicals like Don Wildmon have dredged up in an effort to convince decent A-A people that they’re no longer bigots and segregationists. Having read and evaluated lots of Sowell’s stuff (I’m one of the folks who regularly monitors the American Family Association website) I’ve concluded that he’s not only a Republican hack but an intellectual lightweight … the kind of non-thinker who appeals to the white Bud Lite and NASCAR crowd while supposedly getting “the message” across to members of his own race. To Wesley’s credit he admits to not being one of Sowell’s fans.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
May 12th, 2010 at 7:51 pm
You know, History Writer, you are the bigot. Sowell is with the Hoover Institute at Stanford. He is an accomplished author, etc. I am really sick of your bile.
May 14th, 2010 | 10:52 am
I wonder if the same people feel that convicted murderers have a “duty to die”? I would bet not.
May 19th, 2010 | 10:35 am
[...] KILL KILL KILL! “Duty to Die” an Extension of Buy, Use, and Throw Away Consumer Culture?; Belgian Doctors [...]
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