Ambassador Alan Keyes: "Euthanasia and Democracy"

Part 1

Thank you very much.

I'd say I'm glad to be here this afternoon, but (inaudible). This is one of those topic[s] that I'd just as soon we didn't have to talk about, and that we were not a nation . . . I don't think the country is actually going mad; I think that our elite has pretty much gone mad though.

We live in a country where people who ought to have the intelligence to know better have, through the corruption of their education, managed to achieve a state of what actually seems to me to be kind of like adolescence. Really. What is the definition of an adolescent? Someone who is smart and capable, but hasn't the common sense to apply either the intelligence or the capability, so you have to supply some [discipline] periodically to make sure that they don't do away with themselves.

But our problem is that we have to apply it, in our case, in order to make sure that our elites do not do away with us. And at some level I've begun to suspect that this incompetence on their part -- since it is leading us down a road that will, at the end of the day, return us to a way of life in which the elite have unchallenged sway over everyone else -- I have to begin to wonder whether it is stupidity or whether it isn't a calculated form of intelligence that takes the rest of us for fools, in order to turn the clock back to the days when the people counted for nothing, and what we call elites today were the kings, the oligarchs, the rulers of us all.

We are returning to that day -- we are in the midst of the destruction of government of the people, by the people, for the people -- and in the midst of returning to that form of government -- call it what you will -- which pretty much prevailed throughout the history of mankind, when the many did what the few told them to do, and when they did not, they were killed. For the good of the few? For their own good? It really doesn't matter, once you reach that stage, you're dead anyway.

And that, I think, is a necessary introduction to the topic we are dealing with today, because I think it is very important that we not be fooled by the way in which this debate is presented. They present it as if this [is] about somehow or another respecting individual freedom, or relieving individual pain. This is a lie. That's not [what] we are discussing here. We are discussing the circumstances under which it is okay, for people who have the power to kill, to use it.

And, you see, throughout most of human history it was considered the case that if you had the power to kill, you could use it any time you could get away with it. Because once the dust cleared, you were the one who was going to determine what the standards were. When Thrasymachus, in Plato's Republic, is asked what justice is, he replies that justice is the good of the stronger. And actually, if justice means obeying the law and you are strong enough to make the law, then that's a pretty good definition. And though it may seem a little bit repugnant to us, you've got to understand: it is the definition that prevailed throughout most of human history.

We live in a society extraordinary in that, for a while now, we have actually lived with the impression that this is not the way things should be; that people who do not have the power, do not have the strength, do not have the wherewithal to dominate, nonetheless must be respected in their persons.

If we keep going down the road that our, seemingly, incompetent elites are leading us down, we are going to lose this wonderful moment. And we're going to return to the status in which most human beings have lived, most of the time -- the status of serfs, and slaves, whose lives were worth no more than the will of the strongest among them. Because that principle -- might makes right; whoever has the power, has the right to make the rules and to determine the difference between what is will-able and what is not, what is qualified for respect and what is not -- that has been a fundamental premise of human life.

And I say this at the outset because we have at some point, as a people, got to return, for a moment or two, before we are utterly lost, to a situation where we stop taking for granted the things we are about to lose. So that we will not be distracted by the arguments . . . do you know, the Supreme Court doesn't matter a bit. What goes on in courts of law is of no importance, whatsoever, unless it is in the context of an already established society.

So when you posit the extreme situations -- and we don't usually, because we've taken it for granted; this is going to go on forever, this wonderful life we have. It's not, you know. In many, many ways, we are preparing the executioners of our freedom every day. Undermining the constraints on our military -- doing away with that education which leads them to respect our principles. And as we move down that road, then we'll reach a point some day where somebody's going wake up with all this power in his or her hand, thinking to themselves, "why shouldn't I use it? I have the power. Tomorrow, I could enslave this whole country. And nobody else would have the power to stop me. Why shouldn't I go ahead?"

You don't think that's important, maybe, but it's terribly important. And the greatest minds that have considered the problem of government broke their teeth on this particular one. In Plato's Republic, the 'ideal regime.' That whole big book takes place when they finally realize that if you educate or train people well enough that they can defend you against the dangers that threaten you, they become the greatest danger that threatens you. And then they have to figure out: How do we educate these people so that they won't use the power they have to destroy us? That's the key question involved.

Working in the human heart, working in the breast of everybody out there who has the power to do harm, physically and otherwise, to human beings, there is the temptation to believe that it's okay. To glory in it, as a matter of fact; to believe that it's not only okay; it's kind of wonderful. There are civilizations that were built on this belief, you know. You find it even with the ancient Greeks. Achilles: what was he good at? Killing people. "Nothing afeard of what he himself did make, strange images of death": this was the definition of the warrior. That's from Macbeth. And you see what happens when somebody goes out and saves the kingdom by the sword; when he comes home, he may just kill you in your bed and take your throne.

I go through this because if we think about these particular issues in a form of mind that forgets the worst possibilities of human nature, then we are making a great mistake. This is not an issue of peace. The questions of euthanasia, and abortion: these are not peace issues; these are war issues. These are the issues of who we kill, and when, and how. And that, at its heart, is the issue of when we may justly go to war, when we may justly allow that consequence of war, which is death, to overtake this one or that one or the other one, and say that it's okay. And who will then have in their hand the sword that can execute this decision, and who shall be able to do it in good conscience. This is what we are talking about.

We come at these issues at the end of a century when we should be forewarned, in any case, against being complacent about these things. This is what amazes me, every day. Mike was mentioning the writing that was done by German equivalent of our present day elite mad-people: coming forward to argue that some people were in great pain, and they were living lives that were basically existence without life: dasein ohne leben. Then you could do away with that one. And you were actually doing him a favor.

What we mustn't forget -- and yet we do, don't we? -- is that those fellows in their intellectual and academic garb, putting out their nice little pamphlets all in . . . you know how the Germans wrote in those days: thick, turgid sentences that require a great deal of effort in order to get through, so that you can really feel at the end of it that your intellectual muscles have been worked out; a real intellectual arrogance in all of it. And we may think that it was just a playground for them, but have we forgotten who took up the cudgel from it? That particular pamphlet, when they made it into a movie -- which they did, by the way -- who made the movie, do you know? Who produced and directed the film? In a sense, Adolph Hitler did. It was a film, as I recall, about a pianist -- I can't remember the name right now, written about a beautiful young pianist, and she comes down with a terminal illness, and they follow her as she decides that she is going to kill herself. And having watched this sensitive, intelligent person reach the logical conclusion that life without achievement, the quality of this-and-that, was without purpose, without meaning, they then applied this logic to the infirm and the mentally incompetent and all of them -- "Look, if a sensitive, intelligent person in this situation -- her life had no quality, no savor -- decides to kill themselves, then surely if these individuals here, whose brains are impaired, whose capacities are dulled, if they had the capacity, they would make this decision for themselves. And therefore, when we kill them, we do them a favor.

That's how the Nazis justified, and proselytized for, their euthanasia program. If you ever wonder how it was that supposedly civilized, wonderful people like the Germans -- who have produced some very civilized and wonderful things, you know; it's hard to believe that the same sort of people who produced the great music, symphonies, and so forth and so on, that can delight the high, also produced that terrible and demonic thing which was the Holocaust. But they did.

And it wasn't, either, that suddenly some terrible madness just came over them. No. They talked themselves into this. That's right. They reasoned their way into this madness. And they were led by people sitting on the benches in their courts and wearing nice clothes in their intellectual and medical elites, who convinced them that this was quite logical, and reasonable, and that any sane person would do it. And when people (Inaudible), they often have this delusion that they are acting rationally; within the false premises they lay down, they are.

And so I think we need to remember the context in which this discussion really takes place. It's not a context of compassion and concern for the individual. It takes place in the context of the age-old struggle between what our Founders called the "the princes and the people." "The princes" being those who -- by virtue of capacity, ability, warlike abilities, intelligence, whatever it may be -- select themselves to be on top, and "the people" being all the other ordinary folks.

And if you think that this argument is about whether someone cares about you or not, that's not it. This argument is simply about one thing: somewhere along the way -- and I'm about to describe it -- folks actually articulated a principle that allowed the serfs and the slaves to lift their eyes up from the ground and challenge the right of the superior beings to decide what to do with their lives. And this actually unlocked the floodgates of confidence, self-respect and courage in the mass of the people, and made that rule of the few over the many impossible, in the form that it had taken through the centuries. [emphasis Quackenbush]

We live in a society that is the fruit and beneficiary of that insight. And what we are discussing, whether the Supreme Court Justices acknowledge it or not, is whether we shall throw away that premise, that insight, which makes this way of life possible for ordinary folks. [emphasis Quackenbush]

Now, by way of a side-light before I get into that, though, I want to explain my own personal motivation. Because there are some people in this society who are tempted to think of themselves as part of that oligarchy because they happen to be a little smarter, a little better, perform a little better, than others. Having a black skin, I cannot be subject to this delusion. No matter how well I do, I shall always identify with the people on the bottom, because I'll always be put there, eventually -- you bet. And a lot of us need to remember this.

What they used to talk about, and what our Founders referred to in the Federalist Papers and other places, is that our nation came about as a moment when people were going to decide whether government could be well founded by conscious choice, or whether it was always going to depend on what they called "force and fortune" -- you know, luck; the luck of the draw.

And this is what we are deciding, as well. Because no matter how good you think you are -- as used to be the rule of the old West: no matter how fast you were, there was always somebody faster -- no matter how wonderful you think you are, no matter what the odds are that you will end up riding the others, instead of being saddled to be ridden . . . you can't be sure; it's a throw of the dice. The likelihood is that most of us will end up on the wrong side of the power, because that's the way it has always been. Only a few people can have this kind of power, and they must (inaudible) a lot of folks to maintain it.

I don't understand why we don't take this seriously. I'm bringing forward some of this horrible stuff because it is the only context in which to have this discussion. Do not think of this as a discussion that we should have, thinking of hospitals and suffering people -- "do we administer things that will relieve their pain?"

Think of the death camps! Think of purges! Think of all of the millions who have died by the hand of power in this century! And then ask yourself, what is it that separates us from their fate? What is it that keeps us from such abuses of power?

So, what is it? If you had to deal with that person who had awakened one day and found that they had power to enslave America -- they had the missiles; they had the guns; they had the troops who were loyal to their person and would do their bidding, like Caesar. And don't fool yourselves; we're going to get there. If we keep telling our military people that there is not truth; there is no honor; there is not decency; there is no integrity; there is no discipline -- and what they will soon discover is that there is power; they have it; and since there is no constraint on that power, why shouldn't they use it? And they will. They will use it against us.

It's inevitable; always happens that way; without exception; throughout human history -- and we will not be the exception.

So think to yourself: what do you say to that person? And remember that when I posited that you've got to persuade one individual not to abuse their power . . . don't think of it as an abstraction, because it's really not. What I'm really talking about is how you educate young men and women so that when they are put into that uniform, when they are given that kind of power -- be it military or technological -- they have within their hearts the kind of character that will keep them from abusing it. What do they have to learn to respect, in order to be guardians instead of tyrants?
[emphasis Quackenbush]

(To be continued)

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Part 2
Alan Keyes Showroom