Albert Mohler: Rights Talk Right to Death -- Euthanasia and "Religious Primitivism"

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Several years ago, Harvard law professor Mary Ann Glendon offered the persuasive argument that America has embraced what she calls "rights talk." The assertion of rights is now the standard way to effect social change or, in the case of individuals, to have your own way. "Rights talk" is what remains when a cultural consensus about right and wrong evaporates.

Fast-forward to 2008 and rights talk is, if anything, even more ingrained in the American character. Battles over competing and conflicting assertions of rights now emerge over some of the hottest and most contentious issues of the day. When we have run out of other arguments, all we have left is to assert that what we demand is, after all, only our right. the rest

Charles Colson: A Demented Idea
Human Dignity on the Sceptred Isle
10/23/2008

The Brits may be losing their marbles. The distinguished Baroness Warnock, labeled by the Daily Telegraph as Britain’s leading moral philosopher, ought to be ashamed of herself.

You see, Lady Warnock once chaired a government committee that helped legalize embryonic research. She’s known for supporting assisted suicide for people don’t want to burden their caregivers.

But now Lady Warnock has gone a step further. She says elderly people who suffer from dementia are “wasting people’s lives”—that is, the lives of those who care for them—and ought to choose to die even if they’re not suffering.

And even if they aren’t a burden on their families, they ought to “off” themselves anyway, as she puts it, because they’re a burden on the public, which, under British national health care, pays for their treatment. According to the Daily Telegraph, Warnock hopes people will soon be “licensed to put others down.” the rest