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Canada already proved euthanasia is a slippery slope, so I don't buy all the talk about how this isn't an important issue.
All the misery of modernity was brought upon us by people obsessed with material improvement, so I'm happy respecting Catholics now.
Canada has proved that conservatives will meme about euthanasia being a slippery slope given the slightest provocation.
It's not like every hospital ward is flooded with sarin gas once a week, I haven't heard any actual horror stories beyond 'someone mentioned to someone that this was one of their many options' or 'someone who was probably a high risk for suicide anyway got to do it painlessly'.
Let me know if you know of something more substantial than that, it's admittedly not something I follow closely but I don't ever remember being impressed by this narrative when I've seen it and gone to read the original source.
Offering euthanasia for anything other than a terminal illness is breaking of the original promise for what it would be used for, and thus a vindication of the slippery slope. If you want to shift the goalposts even more, go ahead.
I don't know what you mean by 'original promise', whether that's a single specific document or a general sense that most of the public got from reading hundreds of politicians and pundits talk about the matter, or what.
Not that I'm totally disagreeing, I'm sure there are some specific groups involved who were either lying or mistaken about what course things would take and didn't project it looking exactly like it does today. Which isn't teh same thing as the whole enterprise being deceptive from the start, I don't know enough of how it was proposed to judge that either way, would be interested to learn more if you are thinking about a specific document or speech.
I think there should be a principled difference between 'this is a slippery slope' and 'this was sold using deceptive rhetoric'.
If so far nothing crazy has happened, and nothing that the original proposers wouldn't have been happy with has happened, and it's only been a short time since it was implemented, then I'm not sure that's evidence that it will slide into crazy things that the original proposers would not want.
It just sounds like original proposers were downplaying how big the change would be, which is bad because it's dishonest, but not strong evidence of an ongoing trajectory.
Anyway, if the proposition is 'Canada has proven that the government can't be trusted with medical decisions involving life or death', then I think I'd have to see the Canadian government do something objectionable before it was strong evidence of that. Not just 'it's being used in sensible ways that weren't originally specified'.
(of course, maybe you believe the current way Canada is using it is objectionable in and of itself. That's something I'd be interested to hear more about, but it's a different argument than the slippery slope argument)
The latter, and I think it's disingenuous to imply only the former should be relevant in a democratic society.
"Slippery slope" does not mean an enterprise is deceptive from the start. It's possible for people to really honestly believe it will not go further than the point discussed when pushing through a policy. I actually was on the pro-euthanasia side until recently, and it is because I believed they will be limited to people suffering from a terminal illness.
However given the history of policies growing beyond the originally discussed scope, I think it's justified to assume most enterprises put forward today are deceptive from the start.
One is a subsection of the other. If you asked me for a definition of "slippery slope" it would boil down to "selling a social change through a type of deceptive rhetoric, where the scope of the planned change is much larger than originally discussed".
Yes, I do believe that. Crazy things have already happened. Even crazier things would have, were it not for public backlash. They're also scheduled to relax the rules even more next year, which will again, ensure even more crazy things happening.
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I don’t have any issue with Canada’s euthanasia system, and the only flaw people seem to note is that they get upset when someone they don’t think should choose to kill themselves does so. But again, depressives, people dealing with extreme loneliness etc have always killed themselves at disproportionate rates, I don’t consider it morally abhorrent to ease their pain more painlessly.
As someone who has suffered from bouts of depression and loneliness in my life, I’m glad that I had people around me who cared enough to check in and look after me. They didn’t simply refer me to a government euthanasia program. That would be morally abhorrent. I hope you would never suggest that to one of your own friends or family members.
I wouldn’t, but if after a long time it seemed intractable that they wanted to kill themselves, and they were in great pain, and I didn’t want them to suffer horrifically in e way in which people so often do in suicide [attempts], I would accept their decision to go to Dignitas or whatever. Would I raise it as a possibility? I don’t know, but it certainly isn’t inconceivable that I would.
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Slippery slope? Canada is doing absolutely the right thing when it comes to Euthanasia. It is not being forced upon anyone, merely given as an extra option in addition to the normal healthcare system for those who's diseases are really bad.
Offering to euthenize veterans when they have the temerity to complain that their wheelchair ramp is taking a long time to install is not what I'd call "who's diseases are really bad".
Ah, you mean that grand myth about an offer that was “made verbally” and for which the veteran in question was unable to provide any evidence for whatsoever, that one?
Someone claims they want to die but were refused: we must believe them, don't ask for proof!
Someone claims they want to live but were told to die: where's the proof? oral only? it's a myth!
This is reminding me of #MeToo and 'believe (all) women' - when the accusations were against the guy we hate, it was mandatory to believe them and no doubt could be cast on the claims; when it was against our guy, of course the bitch was a lying, politically motivated, fabulist.
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I don’t see why a verbal referral, possibly made sarcastically to a “squeaky wheel”, would have been recorded.
This is one of the reasons American conservatives don’t trust a large, central, bureaucratic government: “The part of the government which oversees the government states they couldn’t find anything in the files of the part of the government which works with citizens who served the government in fighting another government to indicate there was a referral to the part of the government which kills its own citizens to prevent them using excess government resources which could be used for more productive citizens.”
Well it’s relevant becuase in the Canadian bureaucracy (as in most bureaucracies) most things are recorded in writing, including offers of this kind of assistance apparently. Almost nothing in a Western bureaucracy when it comes to interaction between some government body and the citizen would ever happen ‘verbally’, even minor stuff requires 7 forms and a bushel of letters sent to the citizen about everything that relates to anything to do with an issue.
So while the government may have conveniently lost its copy, it’s much more suspicious that the veteran did, especially when she went directly to the press to complain about it.
Well hon, I've worked in a Western bureaucracy implementing government grants and policies, and we often communicated with the public over the phone or face-to-face at the enquiry window. And didn't write down every single word we and the client uttered.
So "interaction between some government body and the citizen" did "happen ‘verbally’". The 7 forms came later in the process.
Do you think the woman is telling the whole truth about the alleged offer of euthanasia she supposedly received?
i'm not sure, but this is a case where it's not easily "the claimant is lying/the clerk is lying". Canada does have a MAID programme. As we saw with the Liverpool Care Path review, what is intended as helping the terminally ill can easily get translated into 'this person would be better off dead'.
Unhappily, I don't think that it's impossible that someone suggested "have you considered euthanasia?" to a disabled or ill person.
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None of this is true, and bureaucrats know perfectly well that if they want to get something done, but it's not really up to code, they need to handle it over a phone call, or a face to face meeting, instead of via email for example.
Yes, with each other, between government employees. With the public, there is no need to get anything done at all. Clients of the bureaucracy are dealt with…bureaucratically
Again, that's not true. Lot's of interactions undocumented, and to a large extent the system running smoothly depends on it.
Actionable items get documented to a certain, but not full, extent, but no one's going to write down "I offered X but they turned it down", unless they're covering their ass.
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