Ambassador Alan Keyes: "Euthanasia and Democracy"

Part 2

Well, I think that the answer is actually fairly simple, and it is put to us in a fairly simple way by our Founding Fathers. And even though in our legal profession it's part of the reason for their madness, they don't acknowledge this anymore. It can be fairly simply stated: the reason that you don't get to abuse power, even when you have it, is because that power is no ground for just claims to superiority, in terms of that kind of decision -- it has no foundation.

And why not? This gets us to the question of equality. It doesn't give you any special claim because we are all equal. Now, of course, that's an absurd statement, isn't it? It would be a particularly absurd statement to make if somebody happened to have a gun on you at the time. At that moment, you're not their equal. If you are disarmed, they are superior to you, because they could take your life.

So in what sense are you equal? Well, only in a moral sense. Only in the sense that there is something basic about you that has as much claim to respect, under any circumstances whatsoever, as there is in that person with the power, with the skill, with technology, with the weapon to destroy you. What sustains that premise of equality, which is the basis of our understanding of justice? That wonderful statement in the Declaration of Independence: All men are created equal. Everything else flows from that: the elections; the due process; the sense of constraint; the need to respect individual persons. As a matter of law and politics, EVERYTHING flows from that premise.

Discard that premise, and we've had it. Oh, sure, the forms will last a while, because people get into good habits. But, little by little, they'll fall out of these habits; they already are. And give it a generation or so, and they won't have good habits at all. Then it will just be a matter of who reaches first, for the palm of tyranny in this country. I mean, I hope I’m dead by that time, myself. But if we keep going the way we're going, I won't be, and neither will some of you.

"All men are created equal": that's the premise that safeguards us then, in some sense, from this presumption that mere power constitutes a right to do with others as we please. "And they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights." I have tried very hard, over the years -- and I'm not the only one, of course -- I have tried for other reasons, but some people try it because they would dearly love to be able to get away from any dependence on the deity, and so they have written great books, tomes, they have studied all kinds of things in the hope that they will find ground for the claim to rights and equality other than the simple statement I just presented to you: "All men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights."

I must report to you, though, that they have not succeeded, any of them, at all, in any way. There is no way to justify our claim to rights, except that simple premise. Throw it away, and (inaudible) finished. It's just a matter of time.

What does this have to do with the subject at hand? Well, a lot. Because if you think through that simple phrase -- all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights -- then all you have to do is think it through, and you know that there can be no right to take our own life. It's that simple. If we claim the right to take our own lives, we are flushing down the toilet the notion that we have unalienable rights that must be respected by power.

Now, why do I say that? Well, on the face of it I say it because the word "unalienable" means what I just said. It literally means -- I ask people about this: what does the word "unalienable" mean in that wonderful phrase from the Declaration. And most people think that it means that these are rights that can't be taken away. But that's not true; that's not what the phrase implied.

In England, for instance, under the laws whereby dukes and other aristocrats came into their estates, a certain part of that estate, certain parts of the lands and other things that attached to the title, were "unalienable," because they attached to the title, and were therefore not under the control, ultimately, of the person who had the title. So that person couldn't contract to "alienate" them, to sell them away from the estate.

So you see, the word "unalienable" doesn't mean that somebody can't take it from you; it means that you cannot give it away. "Unalienable" is not a constraint upon power; it is a constraint upon us. It implies that we claim freedom, but in the very act of claiming these rights, we acknowledge that there are limits to our claim.

That makes perfect sense, as a matter of fact, when you consider the basic premise that we are talking about. "All men are created" -- by whom? By God. Therefore, the need to respect rights doesn't depend on anything we do; it depends on an authority that is beyond our will, beyond our choice, beyond our power, beyond our control and that of any other human being. That's what makes it possible for us to assert this claim AGAINST all human power.

So, simply put, discard the premise that there is an authority higher than our own, that in the end is the controlling authority for rights, and we lose the claim to those rights. In the ultimate sense, we have thrown it away.

And that is what is at stake in this debate. We are being lured by these -- I think some of them well-intentioned, others maybe not, mostly thoroughly incompetent -- people in our legal system and in our politics; we are being lured into a situation where we are going to do what Rousseau ridiculed at one point, I think, in, I think it was the Emile or somewhere -- he talked about a savage who sells his bed in the morning, forgetting that he is going to have to sleep on it at night. This is the very definition of a very stupid and short-sighted thing to do.

But what if somebody comes along and offers you the right . . . says, "I'm going to let you have the right to kill yourself." And we take that right, forgetting that if we take the right to kill ourselves, then we have asserted that it is (inaudible) power and authority which determine whether we should (inaudible). Not over a higher authority; not over a higher power; but our own.

We have, therefore, reclaimed authority. We have put it back into human hands -- in this case, our own. But if we claim that power for ourselves, the power to take our own lives, then we have by definition also surrendered it to others, under certain circumstances, automatically.

(I believe that there is a break in the tape here: DQ)

Mustn't that power automatically pass on to someone else, who can use it, supposedly in my interest? And under what circumstances is this transfer legitimately made? If I have the power over my own life, and therefore, ultimately, over all of my own rights and freedoms, and you happen to get me into your power, if you threaten to kill me unless I surrender all those rights, is that a legitimate bargain?

And if you say "yes, that's a legitimate bargain," then you know where we're back to, don't you? We are back to the notion that the conquerors, the dominators, the stronger, can legitimately enslave us, by basically getting us to surrender what belongs to us -- our claims to rights and to life.

The beautiful thing about our founding principle is that in order to make us safe from the deprivations of others, we had to surrender authority over our ultimate goods to a power higher than ourselves. In order that we should not be abused by others, we had to surrender any claim even to abuse ourselves. It's beautiful, actually. It's sort of the understanding that, if you want to hold on to your money, it's safer to put it in a bank. The bank in this case is the bank of divine authority, and the money in this case is the ultimate rights that we claim as a people.

But you and I both know that if you decide to go to that bank and withdraw the money, and you are carrying it on your person, then you are easily robbed.

And that's what is going on HERE!

Either through malice or STUPIDITY, we have leaders who want us to withdraw our deposit of rights, and dignity, from the bank of God, and keep it on our person: claim authority over it, so we can use it any time we please. Are we so stupid that we do not understand that by that same act we shall put ourselves in a position where they can STEAL it any time they please?

And, surely, surely, it will occur to somebody -- because it always has. And if we look around the world, it has occurred to people many times in this century. I'm not talking about ancient history. The despotisms; the tyrannies; the totalitarian usurpation of all power and dignity; has been the most common occurrence of the twentieth century. Anything else has been an exception.

But there has been one people immune to these phony arguments and claims; one people vigilant in defense of its own rights; and, because of that vigilance, capable of coming to the rescue of the world from these worse tendencies two and three times in this century.

That's us.

And now we are being confronted by arguments aimed at corrupting our judgment and understanding. And they are very, very seductive arguments too -- arguments that set us up to have all our rights taken away, by offering us the right to do things that will make our indulgence of our passions so much easier.

This first took the guise of abortion: the notion that, in order to have sexual freedom, you can claim the right to kill your babies in the womb. Then you can do whatever you like, because the consequences can easily be disposed of; don't worry about it. So, in order to have sexual indulgence, and promiscuity, and liberation, we claim the right to kill our offspring in the womb -- which right, of course, can only be claimed if we have dethroned the higher authority and put ourselves in its place; in this case, mothers.

Now an extension of that same mentality, which would apply to us all, in the form of euthanasia and the right to suicide.

But you surely realize, by now, that if somebody comes and offers you the right to kill yourself you ought to pause for a minute and consider -- are they offering you the right or making a suggestion? And it won't be very long before the offer of the right becomes a suggestion. It will first, of course, be a suggestion for all of you gray-haired elderly people. I am, day by day, developing greater sympathy for gray-haired elderly people; it's remarkable how a few gray hairs can do that to you.

But in case you haven't realized it, the first candidates for this wonderful ride are, in the end, the folks who obviously have outlived their usefulness. And though we start with this argument that we're going to offer as a right to people in pain -- but what could be more painful than the loss of all the wonderful pleasures of life? The vigor of youth, the prospect of all those wonderful things that come with strength, and so forth. I mean, old age is kind of, by comparison -- in the hedonistic, materialistic equations of our time -- it doesn’t have much quality to it at all. That's why they make so many commercials telling us how we can escape it. You know: do your hair this way; put the cosmetics on that way -- you won't look this old or that old. You see, old age is, by definition, a disease for which we have not found a cure. It is, as one realizes at some point in life, a terminal disease. It is. Doctors may be wrong about their diagnosis of how long it's going to take, but it is going to happen.

And the rest of us could be excused, if the world is filling up, other things are needed -- you know: "you're occupying places other people need." So not only will we have the argument that what we do is good for you; we're going to have the argument that what we do is great for the society! Ecologically sound! Environmentally correct.

And one would be backed up, in all of this, by the notion that if your aim is to do right, you do not have to respect any basic claims that human beings may have to dignity or anything else, because that's a choice that we get to make. OUR standards prevail and apply; it is OUR judgment that will determine whether the child in the womb lives or dies, that gray hair lives or dies, that the mentally incompetent live or die. We are taking out of the hands of God the basic judgments about human rights and human dignity, and putting them back in human hands: first, the hands of mothers for their children, so that they can be sexually liberated; second, the hands of people in pain and suffering, so that they can do away with themselves; and finally, the hands of anyone shrewd enough to come up with an idea to justify it. And believe me, it won't take long.

(To be continued)

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Alan Keyes Showroom