Dead Frogs and Poetic Princes

So here we were discussing suicide at this forum and the dead frog kept asserting that the founding fathers had no inkling of the 17th century debate about suicide. Since he's dead, I thought it might not be particurarly enlightening to explain to him why his position was without foundation. But, like Lazarus, he keeps returning from the dead with dead ideas, I thought it pertinent to set him straight.

So, here goes.

The claim is that the founding fathers were not aware of or exposed to ideas about suicide -- and that the modern idea about assisted suicide having any kind of moral justification had not been discussed in 17th or 18th century America.

We start with John Donne. Biantanatos [1644] a qualified apology for suicide, which is available (huhummm) from the Matrix Book Store.

Next, we move on to Thomas Morus.

The first recommendation of euthanasia came in the 16th century by Thomas Morus; he said "when there is no cure and a patient suffers too much, the patient should be convinced to die. The patient should realize that his illness is incurable, he is a burden to others and his suffering causes pity for people around him."

"Moreover, the famous French surgeon Ambroise Pare was one of the pioneers of the Renaissance in the 16th century. According to him "Every individual has the right to live; only God creates human beings and death is the wish of God." (Source)

Later, the English philosopher Francis Bacon (1561-1621) had some ideas about this theme and he defended euthanasia in the 17th century. The first legal source that reduced the punishment of a person who killed the patient with an incurable disease, was seen in Prussia in the XVIIIth century. This law was passed on 1st June 1794, and a person who killed a patient with an incurable terminal illness with a good intention, was punished as a guilty man. The physician, Paradys, emphasized the characteristics of euthanasia in the same century. Afterwards, academics such as, Reil, Marx and Ruhlfs described euthanasia as the birth of soul and explained that this subject must be investigated as an independent scientific branch, contrary to the ideas of some authors.

Then there is this observation:

"The concentration on "sense" during the 17th century, following from the work of Newton and others, led to the balanced, rational, decorous forms we have just been reading. The poetics of "sensibility" involve a move inward - writers are more introspective, thinking of their own thoughts and feelings as possible subject matter for their work. Contrast this with, say, Pope, who writes about others, and adds the further detachment of satire. The middle of the century saw writers become fascinated by the morbid, the macabre, and the Gothic: death, suicide, melancholia, and graves become popular motifs."

Not sufficient? Okay, we will then proceed to a link concerning early 17th century writers:

As early as the 17th century, writers identified a link between depression or melancholy and suicide. The Anatomy of Melancholy, written in 1621 by Richard Burton, identified melancholy as a medical and psychological phenomenon. The author argued that suicide "is the result of melancholy that desires self-destruction: 'In other diseases there is some hope likely, but these unhappy men are born to misery, past all hope of recovery, invariably sick, the longer they live the worse they are, and death alone must ease them."' T. L. Beauchamp, "Suicide in the Age of Reason," in Suicide and Euthanasia: Historical and Contemporary Themes, ed. B. A. Brody (Dordrecht: Kulwer Academic Publishers, 1999)

Proof conclusive? No doubt the dead frog will disagree. His roots, you see, are in the Dark Ages and his propensity is to look for dark reasons to dispel anything modern, anything reeking of scientific validation. Nevertheless, dead frog, the facts are simply overwhelming.

Benjamin Rush: Considerations on the Injustice and Impolicy of Punishing Murder by Death. An argument against capital punishment, which contends that the death penalty increases criminal behavior and amounts to state-assisted suicide. Rush also asserts that crime stems from a mental disease. First outlined in an essay in the July 1788 American Museum, Rush's beliefs had received harsh criticism and prompted him to add material and publish it in book form in 1792 and then again in a book of his essays in 1798, under the title "An Enquiry Into the Consistency of the Punishment of Murder by Death." Rush's writings had won support from Benjamin Franklin and Philadelphia attorney general William Bradford.

And the writings of Shakespeare, of course.

So what we have here is a good indication that suicide and euthenasia were indeed topics of discussion and had been widely discussed by the late 18th century.

Okay, dead frog, are you prepared to admit defeat? Hey, we're prepared to award you the "nice try, deadbeat, trophy" for wasted effort. Just stop trying that resurection thing. It doesn't become you.



File under: Suicide, Founding_Fathers, Dark_Ages, Euthenasia

Business as Usual

It should come as no surprise that Google has opted for self-censorship with its new site Google.cn, which accommodates the Chinese dictatorship in order to gain access to the huge potential market the country presents.

The precedents are many. American companies did business with the Nazis. American oil companies, in particular, were quick to make deals with the Soviet Union. The Clinton administration encouraged American businesses to enter the Chinese market. Not so long ago, Microsoft blocked a Chinese blogger, who was ultimately arrested and sentenced to prison in China.

While there may be abstract parallels, Google’s unprincipled approach to doing business in China in no way diminishes the danger of government censorship in the USA, which the company has rightly chosen to challenge. The only choice Google has in China is do as the communist regime says or take their marbles and go home.

So, Goggle is following a familiar pattern, seeking to open new markets, complying with the laws of the country they want to operate in, putting their principles on the back shelf and rationalizing their action with the usual cliché: business as usual.



Tags:
Google, Microsoft, China, censorship

Let's Hear It for Molly!

Every once in awhile someone stands up at the back of the room and says something startling. It’s not the ideas they espouse – these are usually self-evident. It’s the words they use, the fortitude they embody, the attitude they express and the fighting spirit they represent.

The person in this case is Molly Ives and the statement was Not. Backing. Hillary.

In a remarkable film some years ago, Michael Douglas as The American President was persuaded by the woman he loved to stand up for his political principles, even if it should cost him his job. The film’s climax comes with the president’s speech, in which he faces his critics and accusers, turning their criticism and accusations into political virtues, avowing and defending them as principles in which he believes.

With this article, Molly Ives has done something similar. She has pushed aside once and for all the equivocating, imitative stances taken by some Democratic leaders, including Hillary, and launched an offensive in the name of integrity. Stand up for what you believe, Democrats. Listen to what people are saying, Democrats. Don’t be afraid to say the things that need to be said. Face your political enemies in the marketplace of ideas. Hold up your opponents’ fraudulent ideas and corrupt policies for what they are: prevarication and pretence, fantasy and skullduggery.

Bush, Cheney and Co. will continue to play the patriotic bully card just as long as you let them. I've said it before: War brings out the patriotic bullies. In World War I, they went around kicking dachshunds on the grounds that dachshunds were "German dogs." They did not, however, go around kicking German shepherds. The MINUTE someone impugns your patriotism for opposing this war, turn on them like a snarling dog and explain what loving your country really means. That, or you could just piss on them elegantly, as Rep. John Murtha did. Or eviscerate them with wit (look up Mark Twain on the war in the Philippines). Or point out the latest in the endless "string of bad news."
Do not sit there cowering and pretending the only way to win is as Republican-lite. If the Washington-based party can't get up and fight, we'll find someone who can.

Here is Molly Ives at her best. Don’t second guess the American people, Democrats. Fight the insidious tactics of your opponents. Throw their deceptions in the rubbish bin of history where they belong. Stand up for your beliefs.

The ultimate measure of a person is not where s/he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where s/he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
-- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

File under: Molly Ives, politics, Democrats, integrity

The Evolutionary Eye

In a surprising announcement at the Vatican, the Catholic Church has backed the theory of evolution against the pseudo science of Intelligent Design.

Not quite worth a Darwinian smile, this development at least merits a glint in the evolutionary eye.



Tags:
Intelligent_Design, Darwin, Vatican, Theory_of_Evolution

Whose Life Is It?

The Supreme Court’s ruling on Oregon’s assisted-suicide law is a welcome step in recognition of an important principle. The ruling also demonstrates the post-ideological nature of the Court. Appointees for life are clearly less subject to party and political pressures than elected judges. Kennedy, a Reagan appointee, who wrote the majority opinion, is a good example.

The principle that triumphed in this decision was the individual’s right to life – including the right to end it when the time seems right.


Keywords:
Commentary,
Death_Penalty,
DNA,
Suicide

Shadows and Doubts

I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return. -- W.H. Auden, "September 1, 1939"

"Are you in favor of the death penalty for a person convicted of murder?"

Since the 1980s respondents have answered this question in America with a resounding “yes”.

But what if the question were phrased differently?

Would you be in favor of the death penalty if one innocent person were executed for every 10 guilty ones? How about 1 in 100? 1 in 1,000?

That question is posed in a recent Scientific American article entitled Science versus the Death Penalty.

Last December was a special month for U.S. executions. North Carolina gave a lethal injection to Kenneth Boyd, making him the 1,000th person to be executed since the 1976 Supreme Court decision to allow the reinstatement of the death penalty. Soon thereafter, on December 13, California put to death Crip gang founder Stanley "Tookie" Williams. The U.S. remains the only developed Western nation to permit executions despite serious flaws in the system. No need for any pacificist proclivity or liberal leaning to see that--just look at the science.

Based on a recent University of Michigan study, the article goes on to demonstrate that statistics show that perhaps as many as 1 in 12 innocent people have been executed in America since the Supreme Court decided to allow the reinstatement of the death penalty.

The potential fallibility of deciding capital cases has led some states to review their death-penalty codes and even call for a moratorium while they study the implications of mistakes made in the past.

When Illinois Governor George Ryan halted all executions in his state in 2003, calling the death penalty “arbitrary and capricious”, he not only commuted the sentences of all 157 inmates on the state’s death row, he set in motion a trend that seems to be spreading from coast to coast – a moratorium on the death penalty. His action stemmed from a series of Pulizer Prize newspaper reports by the Chicago Tribune, Restoring Justice.

Today, states such as New Jersey, New York, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan and Minnesota have some kind of moratorium on the death penalty. Many states have already passed legislation to ban juvenile executions and others have introduced reforms concerning DNA testing and other protections to delimit the number of innocent people being caught up in the system.

Besides DNA exonerations in recent years, psychology studies also show that humans can create false memories. And there are other psychological factors that could falsify conclusions reached by prosecutors:

We know that witness testimony can be unreliable, even when it comes from upstanding citizens and not just from co-defendants or jailhouse snitches who have been promised sweet deals. We know that some personality types are more likely to yield to the pressures to confess--and that these people do so just to please their interrogators or to avoid harsh treatment.

Hollywood films have often dealt with death-penalty themes, as in the well-know television series and film, The Fugitive, where an innocent man is condemned to death for a crime he never committed. Other films that explore the fallibility of capital punishment include The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case and Crime of the Century. The pro-death-penalty film, Vigilante, suggests that not having the death penalty in society could lead to actions of revenge on the part of private citizens.

This site presents an array of films dealing with capital punishment. Arguments in favor of the DP can be found at the Pro Death Penalty Site. Other useful resources include DP Statistics, DP statistics & inter-national links, Alternatives to DP and a surprising opponent of the DP, Why this FBI agent is against DP.

Sometimes the emotional side of the issue overwhelms the empirical evidence on both sides of the equation. Rabid officials who believe religiously in an eye for an eye may even go out of their way to keep an ageing, apparently dying prisoner alive in order to go through the killing ritual. Revenge rears its ugly head.

Although America is the only democratic nation in the world that still maintains the death penalty, within the country it remains a controversial social issue, with dedicated opponents and proponents. The moral arguments for and against capital punishment may seem equally compelling, but the scientific facts point to one overriding reason for doing away with the death penalty: the likelihood of innocent people being executed.



Technorati tags:
Commentary, Death_Penalty, DNA , Revenge