A week or so ago the Dutch were outraged to learn that Rick Santorum had mistakenly inflated their euthanasia stats. It's not 10% of deaths; it's more like 2% of deaths!
Oh. Okay then. Only 2% of Dutch deaths annually are from euthanasia. This, of course, goes to show once again how backward and mendacious Rick Santorum is, and how fanatically obsessed with the "social issues". How embarrassing for America that someone like him could even be considered for President.
Hopefully, whoever gets the Republican nomination will not be gauche enough to have any concerns about the fact that thousands of people are killed by euthanasia every year by government subsidized medicine in Holland; (how many scores of thousands would 2% of annual American deaths be, I wonder?); that by law, children as young as 12 can request to be euthanized (they'd have to have their parents' consent until they're 15), or that, starting just this week, the Dutch have launched an innovative mobil euthanasia unit to visit "sick people" whose personal doctors decline to kill them.
The Dutch, who fought the Nazi's in World War II, are so ahead of the international curve in government-provided healthcare benefits, that they are offering this service free of charge.
The launch of the so-called Levenseinde, or "Life End", house-call units – whose services are being offered to Dutch citizens free of charge – coincides with the opening of a clinic of the same name in The Hague, which will take patients with incurable illnesses as well as others who do not want to die at home.
And meanwhile, Obama is having trouble getting even a contraception mandate through. Maybe he could take a page from the Dutch here. Instead of having insurance companies cover it, he could just set up government funded mobile morning after pill units in every town?
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May '10
Re: The Enlightened, Tolerant Dutch Out in Front with Government Medicine, While Rick Santorum Embarrasses America
Fred Cole
katievs
A truculent and obtuse anarchist.
One wonders what you edited out of that.
First I added "truculent and obtuse anarchist" (to tweak you, who have identified yourself more than once as an anarchist, and who apparently delights in being contrary). Then I added "to throw your contrariness right back at you" to show I meant it light-heartedly. I also changed the Godwin's law line to clarify my meaning.
To artificially exclude that recent evil from discussion is to exclude important truth from our moral deliberations. I'm not going along. The Nazi genocide was real and it didn't come from nothing.
Read that link of Billy's.
Apr '11
Re: The Enlightened, Tolerant Dutch Out in Front with Government Medicine, While Rick Santorum Embarrasses America
Godwin's law should have two exceptions:
-any discussion of extreme anti-semitism
-any discussion of the systematic murder of those who are undesirable or considered overly burdensome.
Those two areas of thought are particularly Nazi-ish.
Just sayin'
Nov '11
Re: The Enlightened, Tolerant Dutch Out in Front with Government Medicine, While Rick Santorum Embarrasses America
The Nazi genocide has nothing to do with voluntary assisted suicide for patients with terminal conditions.
By including it the conversation you're intentionally poisoning the conversation in a way that is, frankly, intellectually dishonest.
Sep '11
Re: The Enlightened, Tolerant Dutch Out in Front with Government Medicine, While Rick Santorum Embarrasses America
The fear is that voluntary assisted suicide will lead to involuntary assisted suicide, as already seems to be happening with the Dutch. The fear, I think, is that assisted suicide is a Trojan horse, and it is a legitimate fear.
Apr '11
Re: The Enlightened, Tolerant Dutch Out in Front with Government Medicine, While Rick Santorum Embarrasses America
Fred Cole
The Nazi genocide has nothing to do with voluntary assisted suicide for patients with terminal conditions.
By including it the conversation you're intentionally poisoning the conversation in a way that is, frankly, intellectually dishonest. · 2 minutes ago
The point is, that in The Netherlands, "voluntary assisted suicide" is increasingly becoming "compulsorily initiated murder."
The ethical issues surrounding end of life care and patient choice are difficult and complex.
However, once the State becomes the sole arbiter of whose life is worth preserving and whose isn't, cold political calculations come to the forefront.
And that invites comparisons to Germany 1933-45.
May '10
Re: The Enlightened, Tolerant Dutch Out in Front with Government Medicine, While Rick Santorum Embarrasses America
Fred Cole
The Nazi genocide has nothing to do with voluntary assisted suicide for patients with terminal conditions.
By including it the conversation you're intentionally poisoning the conversation in a way that is, frankly, intellectually dishonest.
Frankly, Fred, an anarchist has no grounds for complaint against intellectual dishonesty—NOT that I concede guilt on that score.
If you would read the article linked by Billy, you would see that in The Netherlands, assisted suicide is not limited to patients with terminal conditions.
The common thread between voluntary euthanasia and Nazi ideology is a view of the human person as objectively dispensable.
I'm sorry you can't see it.
(I accidentally called you Frank, not Fred. That's the edit.)
Edited on March 3, 2012 at 6:53pmJun '10
Re: The Enlightened, Tolerant Dutch Out in Front with Government Medicine, While Rick Santorum Embarrasses America
Once again Futurama proves prophetic.
Sep '11
Re: The Enlightened, Tolerant Dutch Out in Front with Government Medicine, While Rick Santorum Embarrasses America
The problem with Godwin's Law is that it's incompatible with the idea of "never again." How do you prevent it from happening again if any mention of it immediately terminates the argument?
Nov '11
Re: The Enlightened, Tolerant Dutch Out in Front with Government Medicine, While Rick Santorum Embarrasses America
katievs
Frankly, Fred, an anarchist has no grounds for complaint against intellectual dishonesty—NOT that I concede guilt on that score.
Katie, I'm the good kind of anarchist, an anarcho-capitalist. It's a good try, but you can't smear me with a label I use to self identify. It's a null. And I don't know why a political label means I have no grounds to complain about intellectual dishonesty. That's like me saying that you can't complain about intellectual dishonesty because you're a conservative.
Sometime you should ask me about anarcho-capitalism so you can understand what you're trying to smear.
May '10
Re: The Enlightened, Tolerant Dutch Out in Front with Government Medicine, While Rick Santorum Embarrasses America
Fred, I don't mean to smear, I mean to challenge your presuppositions.
Conservatives value honesty. We believe in the objectivity of truth and moral norms. We see order and meaning in the universe. We grasp that human persons and polities thrive when the live in harmony with that objective order.
As I understand it, anarchists deny all this. But perhaps you will correct me.
In any case, there is nothing intellectually dishonest in seeing a connection between a utilitarian philosophy that sees no value in human life as such, and the genocidal, atheistic regimes that blackened and bloodied the 20th century.
Edited on March 3, 2012 at 11:59pmSep '11
Re: The Enlightened, Tolerant Dutch Out in Front with Government Medicine, While Rick Santorum Embarrasses America
This aspect of Dutch culture distresses me a great deal. Most of my family is still "conservative," and Christian but they tend not to see what the big deal is. If someone is too sick or wants to die, that's their decision, especially if they are not "productive" members of society.
Edited on March 4, 2012 at 12:04amNov '11
Re: The Enlightened, Tolerant Dutch Out in Front with Government Medicine, While Rick Santorum Embarrasses America
katievs:
As I understand it, anarchists deny all this. But perhaps you will correct me.
There are different kinds of anarchists, Katie. Theodore Kaczynski and Murray N. Rothbard have very different worldviews. One is an anarcho-primitivist, another is an anarcho-capitalist.
Conservatives do not have a monopoly on any of those things.
May '10
Re: The Enlightened, Tolerant Dutch Out in Front with Government Medicine, While Rick Santorum Embarrasses America
Fred Cole
katievs:
As I understand it, anarchists deny all this. But perhaps you will correct me.
There are different kinds of anarchists, Katie. Theodore Kaczynski and Murray N. Rothbard have very different worldviews. One is an anarcho-primitivist, another is an anarcho-capitalist.
Conservatives do not have a monopoly on any of those things. · 11 minutes ago
Who said anything about a monopoly?
Do you believe in the objectivity of truth and objective moral norms to which persons are responsible to conform?
Mar '11
Re: The Enlightened, Tolerant Dutch Out in Front with Government Medicine, While Rick Santorum Embarrasses America
billy
I love the British acronym- the NICE board ( National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence)
Those nice people at NICE developed, or refined, something called the Liverpool protocol, which basically dehydrates people to death. And that is in the UK, where euthanasia is supposedly illegal (there is currently a lot of discussion about making it legal).
Similarly, in Holland the number of people officially, um, assisted to die is probably closer to Mr Santorum's 10% - from the article linked to above:
"But reports from the Netherlands show that the use of continuous deep sedation until death was becoming more widespread in that country where direct euthanasia is legal. In 2001, researchers found that in six European countries deep sedation was used in 8.5 percent of all deaths in patients with cancer and other diseases. In most cases patients under deep sedation were also denied fluids."
Apr '11
Re: The Enlightened, Tolerant Dutch Out in Front with Government Medicine, While Rick Santorum Embarrasses America
David Williamson
billy
I love the British acronym- the NICE board ( National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence)
Those nice people at NICE developed, or refined, something called the Liverpool protocol, which basically dehydrates people to death. And that is in the UK, where euthanasia is supposedly illegal (there is currently a lot of discussion about making it legal).
Similarly, in Holland the number of people officially, um, assisted to die is probably closer to Mr Santorum's 10% - from the article linked to above:
Slow death by dehydration brought to you by the friendly folks at NICE!
Have nice life and have a NICE death!
"O Brave New World which hath such wondrous NICE people in it"
Aug '10
Re: The Enlightened, Tolerant Dutch Out in Front with Government Medicine, While Rick Santorum Embarrasses America
Godwin's Law merely recognizes that conversations will eventually include Nazi's
A rule adopted as an application of the Law by the denizens of the usenet held that the mention of Nazis ended the conversation (and caused the one mentioning them to lose) - the lone exception being when the evil being discussed is actually equal to the National Socialists.
Since the Nazis employed euthanasia vans to kill off the infirmed and mentally disabled and seeing that is what the Dutch are doing now, (thus meeting the equivalently evil aspect) there is no violation of the rule.
Dec '10
Re: The Enlightened, Tolerant Dutch Out in Front with Government Medicine, While Rick Santorum Embarrasses America
Fred Cole
...
By including Nazis in the post,anyone who might disagree with you is already on the side of History's Greatest Monsters. It poisons honest discussion.
...
Why is it that the Nazi Germany always get pegged as "History's Greatest Monsters"? In no way is this question to be interpreted as a defense /excuse for the terrible acts of that regime.
But there were two other regimes during the twentieth century which left the Nazis in their bloody dust, one of which still rules. Why didn't Godwin proclaim a law declaring that given a long enough online conversation a comparison to Soviets or Red Chinese approaches certainty? Because those were or are officially leftist regimes, and Stalin declared the Nazis and Fascists as right wing for the crime of being socialists but not bowing to Mother Russia. And the left controls the language.
Anyway, katievs did not invoke Godwin as no comparison was made.
So apparently now, any mention of Nazis poisons honest discussion. We don't have to make a comparison. Too bad the Dutch didn't fight one of those other two. Then maybe we could have an honest conversation about vile acts of government.
Aug '10
Re: The Enlightened, Tolerant Dutch Out in Front with Government Medicine, While Rick Santorum Embarrasses America
David Williamson
billy
I love the British acronym- the NICE board ( National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence)
Those nice people at NICE developed, or refined, something called the Liverpool protocol, which basically dehydrates people to death. And that is in the UK, where euthanasia is supposedly illegal (there is currently a lot of discussion about making it legal).
Similarly, in Holland the number of people officially, um, assisted to die is probably closer to Mr Santorum's 10% - from the article linked to above:
"But reports from the Netherlands show that the use of continuous deep sedation until death was becoming more widespread in that country where direct euthanasia is legal. In 2001, researchers found that in six European countries deep sedation was used in 8.5 percent of all deaths in patients with cancer and other diseases. In most cases patients under deep sedation were also denied fluids." · 1 hour ago
Funny how they don't have capital punishment, yet are perfectly willing to kill those who have the misfortune of being sick.
Mar '11
Re: The Enlightened, Tolerant Dutch Out in Front with Government Medicine, While Rick Santorum Embarrasses America
billy
David Williamson
billy
I love the British acronym- the NICE board ( National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence)
Those nice people at NICE developed, or refined, something called the Liverpool protocol, which basically dehydrates people to death. And that is in the UK, where euthanasia is supposedly illegal (there is currently a lot of discussion about making it legal).
Similarly, in Holland the number of people officially, um, assisted to die is probably closer to Mr Santorum's 10% - from the article linked to above:
Slow death by dehydration brought to you by the friendly folks at NICE!
Have nice life and have a NICE death!
"O Brave New World which hath such wondrous NICE people in it" · 50 minutes ago
Not Brave New World but 1984. What is NICE but Newspeak? And the problem with the Liverpool Protocol is that we are all dying and close is a very imprecise subjective word.
Mar '11
Re: The Enlightened, Tolerant Dutch Out in Front with Government Medicine, While Rick Santorum Embarrasses America
To put the Liverpool Protocol in context: patients have died in British National Health Hospitals from dehydration through neglect rather than policy.