Sullivan is right about this. A significant faction on the right wants to deny people the right to die — to decide their own fate should they become incapacitated.
Dissecting a recent piece in The Weekly Standard about the Schiavo case, he concludes:
They want an end to the “autonomy regime.” They have gone from saying that a pregnant mother has no autonomy over her own body because another human being is involved to saying that a person has no ultimate autonomy over her own body at all. These are the stakes. The very foundation of modern freedom - autonomy over one’s own physical body - is now under attack. And if a theocon government won’t allow you control over your own body, what else do you have left?
Now, not everyone who was against the Schiavo decision is in this camp. But a lot of people in the Republican Party would deny you the right to control your own destiny because of their personal belief in God. A lot of scorn is heaped on Sullivan for using the word “theocon” — and I try to avoid the word myself, because I don’t want to throw it around loosely — but what other word is there for this wedding of church and state?
I am left wondering who denied Terri Schiavo “autonomy” over her body? Her husband decided on her behalf that she would want to die. Her parents wanted to make the opposite decision, again, on her behalf. I think this case was unique enough that drawing general conclusions about what one side or the other feels about “autonomy over one’s own physical body” is unwarrented.
It’s more of the typical broad sweeping generalizations by the left of their “evil” opponents. When the right says that post birth abortion is going too far they complain “evil religous zelots” want to totally ban abortion. When a former husband gets tired of caring for his invalid wife he can decide to starve her to death with full court support.
And the right is evil for objecting.
What “church” would that be?
I keep seeing hacks like Sullivan trot out the old line about separation between church and state, but it seems obvious that what he really means MORALITY and state.
The “theocons” would first have to agree on a common religion, wouldn’t they?
Baptists don’t have a lot of nice things to say about Catholicism. Catholics tend to think Evangelicals are a little crazy.
And of course the Joos - what about them? Which branch of the burgeoning “theocracy” gets to forcibly baptize the Ultimate Neocon Conspiracy?
There is zero danger of a religous government because the “religious right” isn’t interested in establishing one. What they want is an end to the anti-religious zealotry masquerading as “thoughtful moderation.”
Believing life is a sacred gift from God does NOT mean you plan on bulldozing the neighborhood mosque and forcibly converting the congregation.
But that won’t stop people like Sullivan from trotting out “theocon” scarecrows to discredit and otherwise ignore their opponents.
Ironically, these arguments only discredit the people that make them. Sullivan is a laughingstock. I used to read him daily, now I don’t bother. He hasn’t made much sense for years.
It’s easy to over complicate this. Sager is saying that religion doesn’t have a monopoly on morality. If I’m slowly dying of cancer and you want to deny me the right to die with dignity because your God thinks it’s a sin then your freedom to think is intruding on my right to live my life as I see fit. That’s what scares the hell out of me.
The only people that I’ve seen making serious efforts–as in proposing legislation–to deny people the right to determine their own fate are those who would kill Grandpa “for his own good.” (Link: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/S/SCHIAVO_LEGAL_LEGACY?SITE=APWEB&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
“There’s also a slew of legislation around living wills and other end-of-life issues that wouldn’t further the aims of this emerging group - like a Nevada measure that would let a guardian end life-sustaining measures even if it’s against a patient’s known wishes, as long as it’s in their best interests.”
Instead of crying wolf about the “religious right’s” alleged attempts to “trample on rights” maybe we should be paying attention to *real* threats.
You wrote:
“A significant faction on the right wants to deny people the right to die — to decide their own fate should they become incapacitated.”
Sorry, that is just silly. There are some proportion of people on the right who want this, unquestionably. But there is no evidence that this number has increased to scary proportions. And as I recall, Sullivan was recently opining that it was unseemly for the Pope to keep going to the hospital to receive artificial life saving measures. Maybe his view is the extreme one.
In fact the Schiavo case proves nothing like what you assert. The arresting point about the Schiavo case is that Terri’s will was unknown. You only had her husband’s word for it that she would want to be put to death in a horrible way, with her body in agony, and there were all kinds of reasons that made this seem, legitimately, less than wholly truthful.
Had Terri’s will been known clearly and irrefutably, there would have been no such media attention on the case at all.
Gotta back Eduardo on this one — there are crazies on the right, I’m the first to admit, but I haven’t seen a lick of evidence that there’s a *preponderance* of crazies. I personally wish they would all form their own Crazies party, so we can distance ourselves from them.
The point that keeps getting ignored, over and over and over, is that this isn’t about “right to die” in any way, shape, or form for most conservatives. It’s about who is an appropriate guardian and/or credible witness, and most conservatives contend that things like calling another woman your “fiancee” while still married is an example of a disqualifying trait.
It’s not about taking away the right to refuse unwanted medical treatment, and any effort from the “kill-her-ass” crowd to play that card amounts to exactly one thing: building strawmen. If I tried to say that people can’t choose their own treatment, my wife would either walk out on me or kill me. She’s extremely doctor-phobic, and would probably have to stop and think about a trip to the hospital if she had a gushing head wound. Of course people should be able to elect to decline medical treatment. The point of *rational* protest is that we have no believable witnesses to Terri’s *wish* to die (discounting two-timing husband and his family), but the court disagrees.
The legal system’s failing is that there is no mechanism in place for *anybody* in the whole world to say “Actually, we’re not so sure we believe those guys…” That’s the point of the act of Congress — they wanted to open up a channel for somebody to make a different decision based on possibly new evidence, like admitting the testimony of the nurses that say they found empty bottles of insulin in Terri’s trash can (because, one surmises, the husband was trying to kill her). Our Black-Robed Rulers turned up their noses at the idea, and she died. *That* is where the rational indignation comes from.