The Ultimate Property Right

Let's put on our hip boots and wade into The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Here's an excerpt from their article on Libertarianism:

Libertarianism holds that agents are, at least initially, full self-owners. Agents are (moral) full self-owners in that they morally own themselves in just the same way that they can morally fully own inanimate objects.

Wrap your head around that sentence, and you'll understand why hard core Libertarians are fanatical about abolishing the draft, drug law reform, gay rights, and so forth. If I belong to myself, then what happens to me is no one's business but my own.

Andrew Ian Dodge has reminded me of another self-ownership issue that doesn't get as much publicity as it did back in the days of Dr. Kevorkian.....

(I corresponded with Andrew back when he merely ran a site called Dodgeblogium. That's the site for "bloggers who combine a taste for heavy metal music with a taste for heavy metal politics". Now he has his own Pajamas Media page, where he posts alongside bow-tie wearing conservatives. You've GOT to click both of those links. I love the internet.)

Ok, back to the topic..... Andrew raises the issue of Physician-Assisted Suicide. And whether there is any possible reason to broadcast it on television.

....This time around, controversy has been raging for weeks after Sky Television decided to air the actual death of a man from Harrowgate, North Yorkshire, as he prepared to die at a suicide clinic called Dignitas in Switzerland. Dignitas has seen several British citizens use its services to end painful and debilitating lives, but this was the first time one of their procedures was actually broadcast on British television.
Sky (Rupert Murdoch’s news outlet in Britain) produced a rather moving piece where tehe sufferer himself, Craig Ewert, makes the case for his ability to take his own life to save himself suffering. He even, between gasps of oxygen, manages to pose some interesting questions to the Christian opponents of the procedure.

Suicide has been decriminalized in Britain, simply because

.....Prosecuting a dead person seems to be seen as rather unreasonable, not to mention rather difficult, although such trials have occurred in the country’s past. The problem boils down to the law which threatens those who help facilitate the act with punishment of up to 14 years in prison.

Imagine intolerable pain, going on for hours, days, and months. But no, you must suffer. Mustn't set a bad example for everyone else. Check out the comments on Andrew's Pajama's Media post. This one in particular:

This is horrible!!!! Suicide is murder of one’s self. Common sense and at least minimal background in Christianity’s 10 Commandments gives us the answer: THOU SHALT NOT KILL! Suicide is killing of one’s self. Furthermore, to be televised while committing such a crime, is to be an exhabitionalist, while one cruel enough to watch is mentally sick! If someone is stupid enough to kill him/herself, don’t drag others into your selfishness and self-pity.
Dec 14, 2008 - 11:22 am

The point of the broadcast was for Craig Ewert to raise questions about his own right to die, and for others to see what a Physician-Assisted Suicide is like.

Are there are other things we do as a society that should be broadcast for the same reasons? Would some of us be so gung-ho about executions if we had to watch it happen, just once?

How about a late-term abortion? Does anyone think that watching one of those might change polling data?

Click here for a video of Craig Ewert.