This Wednesday, Margaret Sommerville gave us another in a long series of morally purblind columns. Once again the subject was death and dying, and once again Sommerville moved unhesitatingly from her personal views on the value of living through the process of dying, coping with suffering and displaying nobility of character throughout, to an aggressively authoritarian view of what the law should be: Sommerville's personal rejection of euthanasia should be imposed by law on every Canadian, and, presumably, on everyone everywhere in the world.
This shift, from personal moral reflections on how she would prefer to die and what she thinks is valuable about going through death without any hastening of the end to the demand that everyone be forced to do the same, regardless of their personal opinions, their ideas about the value of life, and the actual suffering they may be going through, is almost invisible in her writing, but it utterly undermines the tone of open moral inquiry and concern she cultivates. On a merely factual level, of course, her quick and dismissive insistence that pain control (all too often a challenge beyond modern medicine) can be taken for granted by the dying and their families is also completely discrediting-- not to mention the only slightly subtler problem raised by the fact that pain is far from the only form of suffering that the dying sometimes endure.
In frustration with Sommerville's thick-headed arrogance, one is tempted to voice ungracious responses-- the wish that she should die (in all good time) in intractable pain, for instance--or, far crueler, that she should have to watch a loved one die badly and in pain, begging for release. But I will restrain myself-- having gone through something altogether too close to the latter, I would not wish it even on an arrogant and harmful fool like Dr. Sommerville.
The response I will make is more general, and I hope it will provoke some of those inclined to support Dr. Sommerville's opinions to further thought: Death is a very personal matter. No one can accompany you along that journey. At the end of it, as far as anything we know indicates, the traveler is gone, her life finished: she exists no more. There is nothing more immediately, exclusively personal. But the process of dying can be horribly cruel. Pain control, even in the best of circumstances, is limited; in the worst cases, with intractable nerve pain, 'breakthrough' pain, surges that overwhelm medications and complications that restrict pain control options, it can be utterly unmanageable. During our son's last days he said that his pain was under control-- but in his sleep he muttered 'ouch, ouch, ouch...' repeatedly. And suffering extends far beyond pain to loss of comfort, loss of enjoyment, loss of function and dignity, loss of the prospect of a future, and other losses as well. What makes Dr. Sommerville so sure that her preference (as a healthy adult) is not only right for others, but so clearly right that it must be imposed on them by law? For the law to intervene so directly in our most personal and final hours, days and moments should require a standard of justification, a standard of certainty far beyond what can be provided by the narrow opinions and anecdotal reflections of a religiously-minded, privileged and self-righteous believer.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Margaret Wente -- enemy of democracy
Margaret argues that media criticism of Harper's decision to prorogue Parliament to avoid questions about the Afghan detainee scandal is misplaced because the Liberals under Chretien prorogued Parliament to avoid political heat over their own scandals, "Pots should proceed with caution before they call the kettles black," and because Parliament itself isn't very important,"Very little of importance goes on there." But, and I'm surprised this needs saying, proroguing Parliament to avoid investigation of government malfeasance is wrong regardless of who does it. And what of importance goes on in Parliament is democracy, warts and all.
As an aside, Margaret also notes that"According to a new Angus Reid poll, only 6 per cent of Canadians say Iggy is the party leader they'd most like to share a beer with." Two things are worth saying in response. First, since when did being someone you'd want to have a beer with become a criterion for being Prime Minister? And second, the only current party leader I think would at all make an interesting drinking companion is Gilles Duceppe -- and I have neither the ability nor the inclination to vote for him.
As an aside, Margaret also notes that
Thursday, January 7, 2010
NGOs and the Conservatives
Margaret is at it again today-- it seems that anything our present government does is OK by her, so long as it only hurts people and groups she disagrees with. The question she poses is straightforward enough: why, she asks, do we support NGOs? Oddly, for someone who often seems attracted to the idea of privatization, Ms. Wente dismisses the possibility that such groups might actually do a good job of promoting and serving the valuable causes they are devoted to. Her concern is that some such groups adopt positions and policies that she objects to-- and her conclusion is that, if she objects to something an NGO group does or says, it's OK by her for the government to cut off their funding, regardless of what impact that decision might have on the people the NGO actually helps.
There are too many NGOs, she says-- and somehow, the fact that government funds are not used for political advocacy, but instead for actual aid as approved by CIDA, a government agency that oversees these funds and ensures they are properly spent, is passed over as insufficient or irrelevant-- the crucial fact, for Margaret, is that that the very same groups also engage in 'politically undesirable' activities (such as criticism of Israel), and this, she thinks, is perfectly good grounds for cutting off the funding that they use to help people in accord with the goals of established government programs.
The idea seems to be that anyone who accepts government funds, for a purpose that government policy supports, is not just responsible to the government for making proper use of those funds-- they are also required not to inconvenience the government by taking positions and expressing views, as private organizations, that the government doesn't want to hear. This attack on freedom of speech doesn't upset Margaret because she agrees with the government on these issues, and punishing and even shutting down organizations she disagrees with is a good thing. This fits all too well with the recent attack on a SSHRC funded conference at York University, which also featured some speakers who are critics of Israeli policies. The minister demanded that SSHRC break its own rules (under direct threat of budget cuts) regarding how and when the funded activities would be reported, and SSHRC complied. Government funding is no longer contingent just on operating within the rules and respecting the standards for use of funds--it's also contingent on not expressing views that the government doesn't like. Somehow Margaret doesn't see this as a threat to free speech and open debate-- so long as she has her own paid soap box at the Globe, it's fine if other people and organizations are bullied into silence. What a disgrace. And there's a broader pattern here that should worry all Canadians, whatever their politics.
The pattern this government is following is all too clear-- their aim (modeled on the Bush administration's public relations policies) is to shut down any independent voices that might criticize the government's policies. The Bush administration eagerly attacked anyone critical of the disastrous war in Iraq for 'not supporting the troops', and Republican administrators at NASA systematically limited James Hansen and other NASA scientists' access to the press and public to ensure the administrations' policies on global warming would not be undermined by reports and analysis showing how irresponsible they were. Similarly, this fall the Conservatives in Ottawa conducted a smear campaign against a diplomat who testified to inconvenient facts from Afghanistan (after ignoring and suppressing his original reports), and now they have shut down Parliament to delay any further examination of the facts and avoid a Parliamentary order to release documents that have been crudely censored to protect the government.
This pattern is not entirely new to Canada, though-- it has long been a part of Alberta politics, where our one-party government has cut access for press outlets that reported inconvenient stories, shut down institutions such as the health care boards that were in a position to speak out about government policies (they were, at first, supposed to be elected-- a promise Mr. Klein never kept, since elected boards would have been far too free to speak as an independent, voter-supported authority on health policy questions), and derided as 'irrelevant' and as 'special interests' any group that wasn't one of the special interests (the oil and gas industry prominent among them) the government sees itself as allied with. Inconvenient and dissenting voices are silenced whenever possible, and branded as 'extreme', 'unAlbertan' and (worst of all) 'liberal' when they can't be silenced. Coming soon to a country near you...
There are too many NGOs, she says-- and somehow, the fact that government funds are not used for political advocacy, but instead for actual aid as approved by CIDA, a government agency that oversees these funds and ensures they are properly spent, is passed over as insufficient or irrelevant-- the crucial fact, for Margaret, is that that the very same groups also engage in 'politically undesirable' activities (such as criticism of Israel), and this, she thinks, is perfectly good grounds for cutting off the funding that they use to help people in accord with the goals of established government programs.
The idea seems to be that anyone who accepts government funds, for a purpose that government policy supports, is not just responsible to the government for making proper use of those funds-- they are also required not to inconvenience the government by taking positions and expressing views, as private organizations, that the government doesn't want to hear. This attack on freedom of speech doesn't upset Margaret because she agrees with the government on these issues, and punishing and even shutting down organizations she disagrees with is a good thing. This fits all too well with the recent attack on a SSHRC funded conference at York University, which also featured some speakers who are critics of Israeli policies. The minister demanded that SSHRC break its own rules (under direct threat of budget cuts) regarding how and when the funded activities would be reported, and SSHRC complied. Government funding is no longer contingent just on operating within the rules and respecting the standards for use of funds--it's also contingent on not expressing views that the government doesn't like. Somehow Margaret doesn't see this as a threat to free speech and open debate-- so long as she has her own paid soap box at the Globe, it's fine if other people and organizations are bullied into silence. What a disgrace. And there's a broader pattern here that should worry all Canadians, whatever their politics.
The pattern this government is following is all too clear-- their aim (modeled on the Bush administration's public relations policies) is to shut down any independent voices that might criticize the government's policies. The Bush administration eagerly attacked anyone critical of the disastrous war in Iraq for 'not supporting the troops', and Republican administrators at NASA systematically limited James Hansen and other NASA scientists' access to the press and public to ensure the administrations' policies on global warming would not be undermined by reports and analysis showing how irresponsible they were. Similarly, this fall the Conservatives in Ottawa conducted a smear campaign against a diplomat who testified to inconvenient facts from Afghanistan (after ignoring and suppressing his original reports), and now they have shut down Parliament to delay any further examination of the facts and avoid a Parliamentary order to release documents that have been crudely censored to protect the government.
This pattern is not entirely new to Canada, though-- it has long been a part of Alberta politics, where our one-party government has cut access for press outlets that reported inconvenient stories, shut down institutions such as the health care boards that were in a position to speak out about government policies (they were, at first, supposed to be elected-- a promise Mr. Klein never kept, since elected boards would have been far too free to speak as an independent, voter-supported authority on health policy questions), and derided as 'irrelevant' and as 'special interests' any group that wasn't one of the special interests (the oil and gas industry prominent among them) the government sees itself as allied with. Inconvenient and dissenting voices are silenced whenever possible, and branded as 'extreme', 'unAlbertan' and (worst of all) 'liberal' when they can't be silenced. Coming soon to a country near you...
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Racial/ Religious Profling and Differential Rights
Margaret's target today is airport security. She starts unusually well by rightly pointing out screening measures -- like shoe inspections -- brought into effect as a result of the latest attempt to bring down an airliner are often largely ineffective. But things quickly decay as she despairs that her favored alternative -- religious profiling -- is unlikely to be embraced: "[if] everyone is equal, then differential treatment must be racist."
Margaret's guiding assumption is that the percentage of airline passengers who intend to crash/ blow up/ etc. the planes on which they fly is higher among young Muslim males than among the flying public writ large (and given that white Christian terrorists have recently seemed more interested in blowing up government buildings and killing doctors who perform abortions than blowing up planes, this may even be so). The lesson Margaret draws is that white Christian (and atheist?) passengers ought to subjected to minimal security screening and Muslim males ought to be subjected to presumably much more stringent measures than all of us currently are -- can you say "body cavity search" anyone? And even though the vast majority of Muslim male passengers have neither done nor intend anything that warrants this kind of treatment, some such practice is nevertheless justified as "a certain collective punishment of the killers' neighbours."
The trouble with racial/ religious profiling is that it, in effect, produces a system of differential rights for members of different racial or religious groups. Differential treatment is, of course, compatible with equal rights, but only when based on behavioural evidence: if my behaviour, but not yours, gives reasonable grounds to believe that I mean to engage in malfeasance -- or have already done so -- then the authorities may reasonably detain me, but not you. But differential treatment based not on what one has done, but on who one is -- as occurs with racial/ religious profiling -- is not compatible with equal rights: to be a member of a profiled group is simply to have a weaker right to non-interference.
Margaret's guiding assumption is that the percentage of airline passengers who intend to crash/ blow up/ etc. the planes on which they fly is higher among young Muslim males than among the flying public writ large (and given that white Christian terrorists have recently seemed more interested in blowing up government buildings and killing doctors who perform abortions than blowing up planes, this may even be so). The lesson Margaret draws is that white Christian (and atheist?) passengers ought to subjected to minimal security screening and Muslim males ought to be subjected to presumably much more stringent measures than all of us currently are -- can you say "body cavity search" anyone? And even though the vast majority of Muslim male passengers have neither done nor intend anything that warrants this kind of treatment, some such practice is nevertheless justified as "a certain collective punishment of the killers' neighbours."
The trouble with racial/ religious profiling is that it, in effect, produces a system of differential rights for members of different racial or religious groups. Differential treatment is, of course, compatible with equal rights, but only when based on behavioural evidence: if my behaviour, but not yours, gives reasonable grounds to believe that I mean to engage in malfeasance -- or have already done so -- then the authorities may reasonably detain me, but not you. But differential treatment based not on what one has done, but on who one is -- as occurs with racial/ religious profiling -- is not compatible with equal rights: to be a member of a profiled group is simply to have a weaker right to non-interference.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Time: Rex Murphy's News Magazine of the Year
Funny, I always thought Time's "Person of the Year" was -- like Sports Illustrated's swimsuit edition -- a gimmick by a third-rate news magazine to sell more copies, rather than a harbinger of Presidential fortune. Oh, and could you pack more falsehoods and distortions into a single column, Rex?
Rex's Fragile Grip on Reality
Rex Murphy's first column of the new year is a near-perfect illustration of his increasingly fragile grip on reality. The subject is Barack Obama, and Rex's tone is inimitable as he smugly dismisses Mr. Obama as a failing figure, with declining popularity, no substantial accomplishments, a rhetorical style that has lost its charm and a hold on the American public that depended more on hostility to George W. Bush than any real substance in Mr. Obama.
(Oddly, Rex himself continued to defend Mr. Bush to the bitter end, labeling Bush-critics as deranged by 'Bush-hatred', while Mr. Bush declined from approval ratings in the 90's following the 9/11 attacks to record lows that persisted to his departure. Mr. Bush used lies and propaganda to trigger a ruinous and failed war on a country that had no tie to those attacks, and left the American economy in ruins while failing to implement the signature 'reform' he sought for his second term: the conversion of Social Security to private investment funds. Of course, had Mr. Bush succeeded in that project, the market losses of the recent recession would have destroyed the Social Security system. So perhaps that failure should be counted as a left-handed kind of success.)
Along the way Rex comes completely unglued: first, he declares that the press gave Mr. Obama a free ride during the presidential campaign of 2008 while saving its 'ferocity' for attacks on Sarah Palin. Really? Is Rex talking about the press that repeatedly interviewed Mr. Obama's (now former) minister, whose 'God damn America' rhetoric was played over and over again (and not just on Fox News)? The press that, before and after the election, continued to cover the 'Birther' movement's paranoid claims that Mr. Obama was not even a citizen of the United States? The press that proclaimed Mr. Obama's campaign dead in the water after Sarah Palin's introductory speech at the Republican convention? The press that hung on every word Joe the (not) Plumber had to say despite the fact that the Obama 'tax increase' Joe claimed to fear would never have applied to Joe's (modest) income? The press that played and re-played, without context or question, charges from the McCain/Palin campaign that Mr. Obama had 'palled around with terrorists'?
Of course it is true that Ms. Palin encountered some trouble with the press during the campaign. When asked, in an interview that the McCain campaign had tried to defer, what magazines she read, Ms. Palin happily declared she read many, but couldn't name a single one. When asked to explain how her political career in Alaska had prepared her to deal with foreign policy issues, her response was to repeatedly insist on Alaska's geographical proximity to Russia. When she declared her opposition to wasteful government spending, and then used the famous 'bridge to nowhere' as an example of her principled stance, it turned out that she had been a big supporter of that bridge project, and the press noted this (though only briefly, and Ms. Palin continued to use it as an illustration of her principled stand on government waste). But it's hard to see the press's treatment of these incidents as in any way unfair to Ms. Palin, when so many of her statements were plainly self-serving distortions of the truth.
The more important question is, how has Mr. Obama done, after a year of tea-parties, death-panels, Glenn Beck's repeated on-air sobbing, unprecedented and grossly distorted attacks by the ex-vice-President (widely disseminated by the media Rex imagines are so strongly in Mr. Obama's corner)? Well, on the positive side, there is a health-care bill finally on the verge of passing that will raise the number of Americans with good coverage from around 60% to somewhere around 90% and guarantee access even to those with 'pre-existing conditions'-- despite the 'death panel' panic (endorsed by Sarah Palin, among others). On the other hand, the bill does little to actually cut the exorbitant overheads that make the American health care patchwork system the most expensive in the world, and Mr. Obama has continued all the wars Mr. Murphy loved so dearly to defend when they were Mr. Bush's wars, not to mention the detention of hundreds without charges or trial in Afghanistan and Guantanamo--all insufficiently hard-line for today's Republicans, who seem to be demanding the public torture of suspected terrorists while accusing Mr. Obama and the Democratic party of being both "Communists" and "Fascists".
And the final issue: what are we to make of Mr. Obama's declining popularity, from which Rex draws so much comfort? Mr. Obama's moderation, his continued coolness in the face of provocation, may be a weakness. It may make it easier for his opponents to blame him for the economic conditions that have made the 2000's a lost decade for the American economy. A more combative style, a few more words of blame for Mr. Bush and a stronger attack on Republican obstructionism (unprecedented in the current Senate, which now seems to require a 60% majority to do anything at all) might help Mr. Obama weather the storm. But hyperpartisanism and blaming the other side for everything that goes wrong is a disease of current politics, not the way forward. The Republican party may have succeeded in tarnishing Mr. Obama's brand (and high unemployment is certainly not helping), but Republican popularity continues far below Mr. Obama's, and the Republican's turn to paranoia and fear-mongering has solidified their base at the cost of undermining any broader appeal they might have. If Stephen Harper were now enjoying polls as strong as Mr. Obama's, Rex would be the first to trumpet them as a triumph for the Conservative Party. So let's wait and see: my bet is that Rex will be eating his words come 2012 (not that I expect him to ever look back, as Jeffrey Simpson explicitly does every year, to recognize his mistakes).
(Oddly, Rex himself continued to defend Mr. Bush to the bitter end, labeling Bush-critics as deranged by 'Bush-hatred', while Mr. Bush declined from approval ratings in the 90's following the 9/11 attacks to record lows that persisted to his departure. Mr. Bush used lies and propaganda to trigger a ruinous and failed war on a country that had no tie to those attacks, and left the American economy in ruins while failing to implement the signature 'reform' he sought for his second term: the conversion of Social Security to private investment funds. Of course, had Mr. Bush succeeded in that project, the market losses of the recent recession would have destroyed the Social Security system. So perhaps that failure should be counted as a left-handed kind of success.)
Along the way Rex comes completely unglued: first, he declares that the press gave Mr. Obama a free ride during the presidential campaign of 2008 while saving its 'ferocity' for attacks on Sarah Palin. Really? Is Rex talking about the press that repeatedly interviewed Mr. Obama's (now former) minister, whose 'God damn America' rhetoric was played over and over again (and not just on Fox News)? The press that, before and after the election, continued to cover the 'Birther' movement's paranoid claims that Mr. Obama was not even a citizen of the United States? The press that proclaimed Mr. Obama's campaign dead in the water after Sarah Palin's introductory speech at the Republican convention? The press that hung on every word Joe the (not) Plumber had to say despite the fact that the Obama 'tax increase' Joe claimed to fear would never have applied to Joe's (modest) income? The press that played and re-played, without context or question, charges from the McCain/Palin campaign that Mr. Obama had 'palled around with terrorists'?
Of course it is true that Ms. Palin encountered some trouble with the press during the campaign. When asked, in an interview that the McCain campaign had tried to defer, what magazines she read, Ms. Palin happily declared she read many, but couldn't name a single one. When asked to explain how her political career in Alaska had prepared her to deal with foreign policy issues, her response was to repeatedly insist on Alaska's geographical proximity to Russia. When she declared her opposition to wasteful government spending, and then used the famous 'bridge to nowhere' as an example of her principled stance, it turned out that she had been a big supporter of that bridge project, and the press noted this (though only briefly, and Ms. Palin continued to use it as an illustration of her principled stand on government waste). But it's hard to see the press's treatment of these incidents as in any way unfair to Ms. Palin, when so many of her statements were plainly self-serving distortions of the truth.
The more important question is, how has Mr. Obama done, after a year of tea-parties, death-panels, Glenn Beck's repeated on-air sobbing, unprecedented and grossly distorted attacks by the ex-vice-President (widely disseminated by the media Rex imagines are so strongly in Mr. Obama's corner)? Well, on the positive side, there is a health-care bill finally on the verge of passing that will raise the number of Americans with good coverage from around 60% to somewhere around 90% and guarantee access even to those with 'pre-existing conditions'-- despite the 'death panel' panic (endorsed by Sarah Palin, among others). On the other hand, the bill does little to actually cut the exorbitant overheads that make the American health care patchwork system the most expensive in the world, and Mr. Obama has continued all the wars Mr. Murphy loved so dearly to defend when they were Mr. Bush's wars, not to mention the detention of hundreds without charges or trial in Afghanistan and Guantanamo--all insufficiently hard-line for today's Republicans, who seem to be demanding the public torture of suspected terrorists while accusing Mr. Obama and the Democratic party of being both "Communists" and "Fascists".
And the final issue: what are we to make of Mr. Obama's declining popularity, from which Rex draws so much comfort? Mr. Obama's moderation, his continued coolness in the face of provocation, may be a weakness. It may make it easier for his opponents to blame him for the economic conditions that have made the 2000's a lost decade for the American economy. A more combative style, a few more words of blame for Mr. Bush and a stronger attack on Republican obstructionism (unprecedented in the current Senate, which now seems to require a 60% majority to do anything at all) might help Mr. Obama weather the storm. But hyperpartisanism and blaming the other side for everything that goes wrong is a disease of current politics, not the way forward. The Republican party may have succeeded in tarnishing Mr. Obama's brand (and high unemployment is certainly not helping), but Republican popularity continues far below Mr. Obama's, and the Republican's turn to paranoia and fear-mongering has solidified their base at the cost of undermining any broader appeal they might have. If Stephen Harper were now enjoying polls as strong as Mr. Obama's, Rex would be the first to trumpet them as a triumph for the Conservative Party. So let's wait and see: my bet is that Rex will be eating his words come 2012 (not that I expect him to ever look back, as Jeffrey Simpson explicitly does every year, to recognize his mistakes).
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