Mr. Douthat sums up what's wrong with the left, and i am of the left, but don't fall for this sort of sickness. And I think the best way for the left to be post liberal is get rid of hipster culture, the dominant one of 20-somethings. That culture says death, darkness, destruction, and disturbance are okay, and anything happy, healthy, and sane, is dull, boring, and conformist. I don't agree with the right on anything, and their outrage is predictable, but if the left didn't get into this sort of culture, the right wouldn't have a leg to stand on. Hipster culture started in the wonderful 90s, with grunge, one reason why i wish it had never happened. Smart punk rockers of the left, like those who wrote for The Baffler, knew better. Those who were right wing punk rockers probably did too.
1
In my opinion, this article contains a shockingly superficial, disrespectful, and alarmist characterization of a profound tragedy from which a family is almost certainly still in mourning. The teenage girl referenced in this article was a childhood rape survivor who had undergone years of attempted treatment for multiple mental illnesses. She had undergone multiple hospitalizations to attempt to treat these problems and had attempted suicide multiple times. None of this was addressed in your article where you claimed the parents "gave up" on their child. I do not believe you are capable of fairly commenting on what led to the decision of the parents or medical professionals to not pursue force feeding against the will of the patient after years of forced medical intervention. I don't think you can possibly imagine the pain these parents must be experiencing, and I am surprised that the NY Times would allow you to characterize parents who are grieving the loss of their child to mental illness as "giving up." The politics of euthanasia and the ability of liberal democracy to address 21st century problems are in my view wholly unrelated to this personal tragedy of a family which you have failed to characterize in any depth, but nonetheless use as a rhetorical device for your opinions on these subjects. You owe these people an apology.
104
Again, conservatives know, they just do, what's good for all the rest of us. It must be in the bible or it springs fully formed from the brain of some right-wing "thinker", that says thou shalt stick your nose into other people's business.
Conservatives are not content to tell us when life begins and that women are not capable of making decisions on anything, let alone their own bodies. Nope. If you have sex, you have child. The right knows abortion is terrible.
They haven't the same compassion for the born, that is, the pregnant mother, as they do the un-born. They haven't the same compassion for the child that is unwanted but born and whose parents cannot afford to clothe, educate, feed and house that child. It's their fault they're poor.
Conservatives don't seem to have a consistent view of the state killing people in the name of revenge. Death row is a purgative for those who want criminals, who cannot afford an expensive/good defense lawyer, to be put down like animals.
So, of course, they want to make decisions for people who no longer want to live. Once those who want to commit suicide see no point in going on, it's too painful, there's no hope, or they just want to be in control of their pain and put an end to it, why shouldn't a person be allowed to do so without some know-all having any say in it?
44
I believe through his thought gymnastics, Mr. Douthat has just jumped the shark - comparing the tragic death of a depressed teenager to the closing of a university by a would be dictator using anti-semitic memes. And this is not a liberal view, it’s a fact. One is a horrifically sad personal story and the other a deliberate attempt to stifle free thinking and stir populism with the aim to centralize power and undermine the E.U.
33
More paranoid right-wing hyperbole.
The Pacific Northwest states have allowed doctor-assisted suicide for years, restricted to terminal patients who request it and are competent to request it. Only about 30 people per year in Washington and in Oregon partake of the option, patients with painful terminal conditions. People who cannot stand their lives will often commit suicide --- how much better that they do it in a peaceful nontraumatic way instead of blowing their brains out with a gun and leaving some poor soul to find the body and clean up the mess.
28
Mr. Douthat reveals his lack of empathy by his inability to understand that it is a rational reaction to the present state of affairs in the world is to take the decision to end one's life.
Inevitable climate change, mass extinction, misery working in some cubicle to make somebody like Jeff Bezos, the Koch Brothers, or Mark Zuckerberg richer (if you're lucky), and dealing with all the discrimination and body image nonsense that goes with being a young woman - sounds like a great future to me. In fact, it sounds like the best of all possible worlds...oops, sorry, somebody used that one already.
Does Mr. Douthat then propose that people who do not find his conservative world a fantastic place be forced to live through their misery? Should they be forced to have children they don't want? Should they be forced to live by conservative Christian based laws? Should they work in jobs they hate? Should they make people who they despise rich? Must they accept lying, ignorant politicians such as Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump as leaders? Must they destroy the earth in the process?
According to Mr. Douthat's past columns, he clearly does, and if cooperation is not granted, it will be forced through court rulings and legislation made by a ruling conservative minority.
19
Liberalism, or what I would rather call Enlightenment principles, no more leads inevitably to euthanasia than conservatism leads leads inevitably to fascism or white supremacy. But conservatives, bereft of good ideas at the moment, would rather debate that possibility than do the hard work of coming up with an intellectual foundation for their political preferences.
34
The word and concept "liberal" means different, sometimes opposite things to different people. For Americans, liberal implies active interventionist government policies, especially in domestic affairs (eg, euthanasia policy). However in France and most of Latin America, "liberal" is understood to mean the opposite - a laissez-faire approach. In an article like this one, it would be clearer to define which "liberal" Ross is referring to.
7
“Suppose you believe that the legal ... system colluding in the suicide of depressed is
as grave an evil as any populist policy to date”.
But why look to Benelux? Do we not have a legal system that does just that, since 20,000 people commit suicide by handgun each year, suicide made possible by the easy availability of handguns? So Mr Douthat, I can only assume you are for strict gun control, right?
26
Mr. Douthat is always frustrated. That's because he hates what he calls liberalism, but knows that history has no alternative but absolutism. I believe Mr. Douthat would have been fine with absolutism under Pope Benedict, but not under Pope Francis. Hence his frustration.
Liberalism is simply empirical reasoning. We make a hypothesis, we test it with experiments. Liberalism allows for all kinds of government, all kinds of religions, all kinds of economies, all kinds of politics, but only if they stand the test of empiricism.
I don't understand what Mr. Douthat hates about that process, except that it doesn't allow authority figures to tell other people what to do.
29
My confusion comes from how Mr Douthat and others use the terms of liberal and conservative. Does he mean that our republic was founded as a liberal democracy functioning as a republic? That the rights rose out of liberal thought of individual liberty, but implemented in institutions that will
safeguard and provide a sense of order (conservative)? That these ideas rose out of the enlightenment which idealized human potential and knowledge? Or is he using liberal and conservative as they are presently understood and used with America, with the current politics of Trump and responses of each political party?
I can also look at things through my lens a therapist in which many of us struggle with wanting to hold onto the past while realizing our potential. Perhaps the answer lies in remembering, learning from and understanding the past, and keeping what is useful, accepting reality, while being open to knew ideas and experiences. If you have a life changing experience then gosh darn it letting the experience be truly life changing.
I tell my clients that confusion can sometimes be better than certainty, because being certain is not necessarily being right. So I hope in these confused times we will eventually come to know what is right or at least true.
I am hoping that Mr. Douthat will consider writing again and clarify liberal, conservative, neo and post, etc because while I thought knew these terms I am more confused now after reading his article.
10
I gave this column a bit of time including looking up "dystopia" a
couple of times. Still don't have a grip on it. If pressed, I suppose I'd define it as a "fouled up situation."
The thought that kept going through my mind as I read the column is that Mr. Douthat may actually have something to say and, then again, he may not.
Two things I know for sure, rereading the column would be of no help and way too painful.
13
I remember back when conservatives like the author advocated personal responsibility as a basic Republican value. If you are mentally ill or severely disabled and treatment has failed, what business is it of mine if you decide to end your life? If you work with your doctors and therapists and they agree with you that you will not improve, why should the state force you to live what you consider a diminished life?
16
I can't believe I just read this in the New York Times. There is no real argument in this piece. The author is just exploiting the tragedy of a sick young woman and the pain of her friends and family to pontificate about the evils of liberalism and the moral superiority of the Christian right. As a liberal, I am completely disturbed by what happened to this young women. This is not an article about the tragic death of a young woman. It's just another in a long line of moralizing conservative writings that demonize anyone who doesn't share their arcane, outdated, and black-and-white word view.
I'm guessing that euthanasia will become the new right-wing talking point upon which Republicans will run in 2020. Let's hope it doesn't lead to violence. Calling liberals evil has led to violent consequences in the United States, from abortion clinic bombings, to pipe bombs being sent to Democrats and journalists and Pizza gate. Calling someone evil puts a target on their back and is unacceptable from either side.
Can't we stop calling the other side evil? If we don't, the social fabric of this country will be forever torn. Let's all stop reading this kind of nonsense and have rational discussions about difficult issues.
32
I'm starting to bore myself, unfortunately. The times are out of sync -why? I'm afraid again the overpopulation of this world makes things, where we can talk about things as we've done before, no longer true. With the addition of climate change, it just makes the norm - non-existent. It almost seems as if these discussions are useless.
5
To be sure, Mr. Douthat must earn his daily bread, and only knows one way how, so keeps pulling the same rabbit out of the same hat. And he indicts this girl for having failed to find reasons for living, her parents for being emotionless and unloving, her doctors for being indifferent, her country for not intervening and liberal proceduralism (ah yes, of course) for not being enough.
All the while ignoring that the greater weight of the evidence suggests nothing he has declared as unambiguously factual is that, or the hallmarks of right-wing proceduralism (wow, even I can use this in a sentence), opioids, guns, climate change, etc. are benign.
Mr. Douthat, it doesn't matter that you look left and right when crossing the street if you're blind in your right eye and have acute, deep-seated, intellectually-caused macular degeneration in your left
20
A person of 17 might not realize that tables turn, life can get better, even after years of bleakness. 17 is too young to give up. Depression can dissipate with age. Time can heal. Miserable at 17 can be cheerful and calm at 27.
6
But that’s not your decision to make, it was hers.
9
It seems you have plucked one "sensational" case from a society whose universal healthcare policies and practices you don't fully comprehend. And this plucking ignores the dystopia right before your eyes - our corporate "healthcare" "system", which permits people to die for lack of treatment because they can't afford it. I'm going to be visiting the Netherlands this Fall, and sometimes ponder how I could figure out how to stay. It's a humane society that looks out for all, unlike our "every man for himself" country.
33
The young woman committed suicide. She starved herself. Unless her parents were ready to force feed her against her will, it was her method of dying. The method of choice in this country is, more often than not, a gun. Where is the outcry about that? When do you decide that access to guns is just as crazy as allowing a teenager to starve herself.
22
@kaneable: Fentanyl is the rage here. It comes from China.
3
My parents each committed suicide because of increasing, inoperable pain. One was 90; the other, 97. They weren't the least depressed; they were simply rational.
Why their decisions should be the concern of Mr. Douthat or anyone else is beyond my comprehension.
40
"It's the principle of the thing". No. It isn't. It's the practical application of the thing. It can't be the "principle" since yours and mine might be completely different. As such, you presume too much, casting aspersions on mine, thinking that yours are better.
There were some 24000 gun suicides in the US last year. There were a bit over 200 assisted suicides in the Netherlands. If you're truly concerned about the plight of depressed people - continue your fight for gun control. "But the normalizing of euthanasia, yada yada yada." 24000 vs 200.
As a side note; "it's the progressives, it's the liberals, it's the conservatives, it's the socialists..." Nope. It's the humans. The recent fad of trying to type cast people into these convenient little boxes and then claiming that such and such a law/act/decision comes solely from one box, or benefits solely another is at best simplistic and at worse anti-illuminating.
If you're going to pursue a philosophical, intellectual approach - do so intelligently and philosophically.
31
I now remember why I read your columns so rarely and thank my lucky stars that I live in a country where children are allowed to go without proper healthcare and women are forced to bear the child of their rapist. Dystopia? Just choose your flavor.
32
I have read this three times, and it still doesn't make any sense. The only consistencies I could find is that Ross Douthat (1) doesn't understand much of anything and (2) really hates liberals even though he has no notion of who they are or what they stand for. Which makes this yet another same old, same old. This isn't fake news, but it is old opinion, and therefore of no marginal value.
22
After reading this I have no idea why that poor girl would want to kill herself?
@John Doe She had been sexually assaulted twice, once as a child, and developed mental health issues as a result. She sought treatment time and again and just couldn't seem to recover.
9
Because John Doe it wasn’t about the girl in the first place. It was another pathetic attempt on Ross’s part to link something bad to liberalism by inference and equivalency. It’s intellectual trolling instead of the usual trash talk trolling you find on YouTube, Trumps twitter propaganda feed et:al. That’s why background & context are absent, they might undermine the religious conservatives simplistic “overt outrage” trope. Can’t have that now, eh Ross.
20
Euthanasia may be legal in an evolved society. The question is how difficult it should be for the young and mentally ill to access it?
If you have had the misfortune of knowing or loving someone who has felt suicidal or attempted suicide, you are aware of how unreachable people can be in that state. There is a brutal kind of logic the suicidal person can summon that many who lionize rationalism are not capable of responding to. In a real sense, the joy and fulfillment many come to find in life is in spite of the rational roadblocks that exist. As such, skepticism is an essential component of treating the suicidal.
This is why it is scary to imagine how the politics of medical professionals who specialize in helping the mentally ill may affect their care. Anyone tracking the ascendant view of mental health professionals treating minors with gender dysmorphia can see writ large how political ideology can fuel questionable practices. We understand minors brains are undeveloped, that they are irrational, rash, etc, and this informs policy around things like the drinking age, driving age, and age of consent. Yet mental health professionals are eager to embrace policy that allows children to change their bodies in a way they cannot take back.
The gender dysmorphic, however, can live to tell their tales. They can live to sue negligent professionals. Those who have passed on forgo regret. Our duty of care compels us to protect them.
4
That the liberal order contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction is a key insight of Marxism, and is verified by the 2008 meltdown and the behavior of fossil fuel industries in the face of global warming. Libertarianism makes this problem most evident; if competitors are free to win, they are free to abolish or rig or fake competition by getting effective control of the bureaucracy that is supposed to make them keep them competing.
The liberal order, through its own principles, already leads to truly evil things; one example is the Sackler family, which remains free, in business, and in possession of most of its money. We have shown ourselves incapable of reacting quickly to the evil they helped bring about, and barely capable of reacting at all. But the moral situation is not a blatantly obvious challenge to a clear commandment of God, so our would-be moral police do not see it. Seeing it would involve challenging the rights of entrepreneurship, and our current right populism glorifies the chief exemplar of these rights.
To stop the evils of liberalism, large businesses themselves must be seen as being as dangerous as they are necessary, and their self-promotions as more morally disgusting than ads promoting telephone sex. Until we can develop and test ways to operate without them, we must endure them but demand the right to know what they are really up to. This will make some sorts of competition impossible, which would be a good thing.
6
No one is saying that this tragedy, as described in your column, is something that should be accepted. If the facts are as you described, those responsible for this girl's care made a grave mistake. If it is indeed commonplace, then it is concerning.
However, having worked as a journalist, facts as reported are not always reflective of reality, even now that we have the "corrected" version.
Whatever the facts of this case, the connection to some ill-defined "liberal" ethic is weak. Is is free speech, as you allude to? Is it an emphasis on personal autonomy? Is it the institution of democracy itself?
Generalities only obscure what is going on. Please be specific, and then we can have a conversation.
7
Whereas, in the U.S., the "conservative order" makes it very, very hard to get mental health treatment but very very easy to get guns.
Look in the mirror, Mr. Douthat.
23
Nothing human beings do lacks in extreme behavior. The cheapest argument you can make is simply to look for them.
2
Yes, it is horrible. However, what occurred seems more to do with the values of the Benelux countries than the values of liberalism. Many of the religious right would naturally find this horrible, and many of the irreligious left or right would find it equally horrible. Conflating this as an example of the dangers of liberalism is over the top.
8
The more I read Douthat I feel he is sort of hankering for a Francoist state to replace our current democracy. Complete with close alliance with the Catholic Church, assuming that Francis is succeeded by someone like Benedict.
17
The only "ism" that liberalism needs as an alloy is pragmatism; but its secularistic premise is difficult for those such as Douthat who demand a religious basis to morality.
10
A young girl commits suicide in the Netherlands...and this leads Douthat to ask whether constitutional democracy in this country doesn't deserve to fail "because of the evils generated from within". Huh?
And will their be no evil in the post liberal order brought to bear in Douthat's imagined right wing post democratic state? Of course there won't be and skeptics like Douthat allowed to ask questions in that brave new world.
8
Wow – talk about the lengths a conservative has to go to in order to cobble together a column.
And of course to illustrate a “grave evil” that might be a harbinger of the post-liberal landscape, Douthat chooses a cheap shot, a tortured liberal example, rather than select from an endless list of conservative offenses that have brought us to our current crisis.
Since 1970, every U.S president, with the exception of three centrist Democrats (Carter, Clinton, and Obama), have been Republican. That’s six of nine – and look where it has gotten us.
If Douthat wants to seriously discuss post-liberalism, I suggest that he first admit that it was conservative policies (fifty years of neoliberalism, misguided wars, and disregard for the collective welfare) that brought us to the brink. Any vision of post-liberalism then will not have conservatism as a significant element because it has failed miserably as a foundation on which to operate a democracy.
As we hurtle at digital speed into the future, and our stratosphere chokes on carbon, it makes no sense to cling to conservatism’s mythical past rather than to embrace a forward looking future.
13
Definition: Dystopia - "an imagined state or society in which there is great suffering or injustice, typically one that is totalitarian or post-apocalyptic."
Someone may have already pointed this out. Trump and his conservative GOP have created their very own dystopia, the very opposite of Utopia.
The idea that liberalism, itself, can lead to dystopia as Ross sees in, say, the Netherlands is conservative doublespeak. Anti liberal is pro conservative. Conservative: Limited government, every man for himself leads to dystopia here as we see today.
The concept Post liberalism doesn't make sense to this reader. Loose label definition fills a column but doesn't enlighten. Bottom line: Liberals believe in reason and critical thinking.
8
@Harold One other thought. The fact that people in the US are dying due to the fact that they cannot afford their insulin seems to say that dystopia here has arrived.
12
Euthanasia is not a new trend in the Netherlands. I read reports several years ago that people admitted to the hospital wear medical ID bracelets that say "Do not euthanize!". It's been legal there for quite a while.
What you really should be concerned is the euthanasia of people here in the USA, especially the elderly. It's not open and acknowledged here. They do it on the sly with over medication and exhausting unnecessary procedures and surgeries with little time to recover in hospitals that serve poor food and don't allow their inmates the rest and proper nutrition needed.
1
@Aristotle Gluteus Maximus: My great uncle died by suicide in Nijmegen, at home, the middle of the 5 row houses that had survived the battle of the Bridge Too Far in his district, when he ran out of will to live.
@Aristotle Gluteus Maximus: It all depends on the family. Some have the means and the commitment to preserve the life of a revered elder 100 years old who is conscious about an hour per day, and is fed by tube. Burt when she is awake, she is happy to be alive and enjoys company.
1
Once again, Russ prefers the Devil in demagoguery to the demon in democracy. To quote my favorite reactionary imperialist:
"Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." — Winston Churchill, Nov. 1947
It is worth considering that the immense stresses that Churchill and his generation withstood during WWII only strengthened their resolve to defend democracy as epitomized by "the ordinary man who keeps a wife and family, who goes off to fight for his country when it is in trouble, goes to the poll at the appropriate time, and puts his cross on the ballot paper, showing the candidate he wishes to be elected to Parliament." — Winston Churchill, Dec. 1944.
It is beyond disturbing to observe how Mr. Douthat continually chips away at our attachment to the liberties that are guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution. When did we swap the steely resolve of Churchill for a supine embrace of concentrated power and despotism? Some of us have not and will not, not withstanding opinion pieces that directly attack our attachment to freedom as unserious.
9
@CharlesR: Democracy is a bet that reason is conducive to survival. That has yet to be established. So said Stephen Hawking.
4
@Steve Bolger
Religion is the reason our reasoning is not quite rational. Before our reasoning is fully unleashed and become productive we need to wean ourself from irrational beliefs.
Believing in Rupture and Second Coming may be the reason we will fail in our quest to survive.
4
The right is so against liberalism, that first they redefined "liberal"'to mean bleeding hearts that don't exhibit enough greed or hate, and then turned it into a vile insult.
Trump attacks everything that Enlightenment liberalism stands for and he is the most popular president among Republicans in polling history.
The first noun in the Constitution is Union. Trump, like the Confederates who left and attacked our Union, divides in every way his petty mind can find to divide. His Neo-Confederate base would trade the Constitution for the Articles of Confederacy in a heartbeat.
The second noun in the Constitution is Justice. Justice requires a recognition that the views of others are equally valid to yours. The Right is against Justice, assuming their beliefs come from God so all other beliefs should be subordinated to theirs. They only claim to care about justice when they want the respect they deny to everyone else. They demand tolerance for their intolerance. Otherwise they promote unjust laws and order enforced by militarized police.
Doithat thinks that the protections of the First Amendment are inadequate because they wouldn't let his religion overrule a religion that is not opposed to assisted suicide. It's a complicated issue and I'm not sure where I stand on it, but I would not presime to overrule the woman, her family, and her doctors, as Douthat would do.
The right is not post-liberalism, it is pre-liberalism, and has always been against open minds.
9
I absolutely agree that euthanization for otherwise healthy, cure-able adults (there's always hope with regard to mental health treatment) is disturbing, it is especially so for a healthy teen. With parental consent(!)
That said, an outlier case like this isn't a reason to denounce euthanasia as a humane medical practice for the dying and aged.
8
@Eric John: one can simply decide one has used up more than one's share of resources.
2
@Eric John -- The teen in question was NOT euthanized. She applied for euthanasia and was told she was too young. She then committed suicide by voluntarily ceasing to eat and drink. Her parents considered force-feeding her, a process which is intrusive and very painful, and decided against it. She had received treatment for depression and anorexia for years and the treatments had been unsuccessful. She had never been able to recover from two separate sexual assaults when she was a child. Her story is terrible and tragic, but it has nothing to do with euthanasia -- or rather, it shows that the legal euthanasia system in the Netherlands does NOT allow children to make that decision.
8
Russ, your argument that this sort of thing could get out of hand is warranted, but there are forms of mental illness in some people that do not respond to treatment of any kind, and the result of that is chronic psychological pain that is imaginably every bit as severe as physical. I like to think that a girl this young could eventually have found relief, but I'd have to know a lot more details about her to come to that conclusion.
2
But what if the girl is right? What if her suffering is so acute that it is unendurable?
I don’t know where to turn first to account for Douthat’s disconnection from his subject. Is it her age that convinces him that she could not know her own life as well as he does? Or the fact that her suffering is mental and not physical? Or is it just an article of faith on his part that suicide could never be warranted.
Perhaps a radical respect for individual truth would help. The willingness to starve oneself to death may be an illness or it may be a measure of extraordinary anguish.
16
So dystopia according to right wingers is a society where people exercise bodily autonomy, people get mental health care, people are less religious, and families are less traditional?
Sounds like a society I would enjoy!
16
@Erik Jensen
Redefining the opposition in ypur own assumed, unfavorable terms is an old, transparent step. Hint: it goes the other way, too.
5
@Wine Country Dude: I just watch what people do because it speaks more honestly than their words.
3
Huh. People, including young people, kill themselves with alarming frequency. Some even kill others--sometimes many others--"before turning the weapon on themselves." Yet our liberal world order here in the US encourages and supports the easy and mass distribution of guns. I guess that is shocking too.
Otherwise I find this author's difficult to understand. I have a feeling that certain premises are unsound, such as the definitions of the terms used and whether those terms are grounded in meaningful principles which are followed in practice. For example, I should think conservatism would be grounded in the principle of self-determination and free will. But in practice, conservatives are as likely to want to control other's lives (and procreation and deaths) as anyone else. There are a lot of moving parts and maybe it's best not to use such emotional examples as the author and I have as the jumping off point for the debate.
13
@Art
As you alluded, all humans seek to control others what differs is matter and means.
Beyond that is the fact liberalism is not one thing. Through the 300+ years since Locke's Two Treatises liberalism's been debated, evolved and expounded into a range of similar but sometimes competing visions. Is liberalism comprehensive or political? Universal or state-centered? Compatible with non-liberal cultures & religious communities? Are liberty and property the same thing? Classic vs. 'New'?
Douthat could have done a far better job defining the parameters of the "liberal order" from a conservative pov. I don't think his premises are unsound so much as unexplained. Both sides seek to control liberty because both sides define it differently - and because we're all human and subject to all the same human flaws :)
While I don't disagree with many of your insights in this column Mr. Douthat, there is clearly a greater crisis in conservatism, as it is taken over by demagogues and incoherent authoritarians such as Trump. Authentic conservatives are either politically sidelined or become craven toadies, as is the case with virtually all our present Republican congressmen and senators.
10
@David Goldin: Trump is like a Pied Piper for them all.
2
I'm not sure in what context this language makes sense. It looks like word-salad to me.
12
Staying with basics here (Mr. Douthat often goes off on intellectual tangents which often confuse me), I don't accept his attribution of euthanasia as particularly liberal in concept. I am a big-C conservative and usually read most of the Times through clenched teeth. But I believe totally in one's right to terminate his or her own existence if of legal age and not mentally challenged. Most conservatives I know also believe this, but won't say so out loud, much as no Democrat will ever speak out against pro-choice laws no matter how much they despise the whole idea.
I remember the famous British conductor Sir Edward Downes. At 85 he was almost totally blind and his hearing was going quickly. When his wife was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and given only weeks to live, they decided, with their children's support, to go to Switzerland and die together through voluntary euthanasia, an amazingly mature and intelligent course of action. Lady Downes would shortly be dead anyway, and 85 is a very late age to try and retrain yourself to become a male Helen Keller, especially when you have lost not only your life partner, but all possibility of ever again participating in the thing you love most in life and worked in for 60 years - music - or of ever enjoying anything in life again. Except for religious zealots, who could possibly object to such an action?
7
@Joe Pearce: I learned long ago that something is not necessarily brilliant if I don't understand it.
1
Princeton University’s and presidential advisor economist Alan Kruger committed suicide last March Depression was said to have been the catalyst. As did for designer Kate Spade and chef Anthony Bourdain. There’s nothing political about mental illness The fact is that it remains stigmatized and health insurance mostly doesn’t cover it as it does for other illnesses.
There’s nothing conservative about ignoring illnesses, not even libertarian. In short, this analysis is pure nonsense by using the case of a young teenager whose suffering neither Ross Douthat, nor most readers have any clue how it gelt for this young woman. Her parents understood. But, the point is we that can prevent suicide from mental illness by extending healthcare insurance and treatment. This should be the argument, not moralizing.
6
if it true that we're oscillating wildly, and civilization, especially Western Civilization - for better AND for worse - has fallen victim to the false anchor to our mortality, both false anchoring of and to colonialism, slavery, war, convenient morality,... Here, I think Mr. Douthat searchingly illustrates that these reference points no longer sustain, yet both conservativism and liberalism try to resist the flailing. Doesn't progressivism optimistically try to revamp that void?
1
The typical moralizing Mr. Douthat asked "If I'm shocked or merely troubled?". I'm neither. Why should I or anyone else stand in the way of someone who wants to take their own life? Seems that euthanasia and palliative care are a wonderful solution to our "suicide" epidemic.
4
"But suppose you believe a legal and medical system that colludes in the suicides of the depressed is as grave an evil as any populist policy to date."
Don't partake in the suicide of human beings then. Ross, you routinely argue that you want to force your morals on us because you are morally upset - even when people are making their own choices.
You are right to highlight that the Right's outrage is seated in illiberalism, and frankly the Trumpian right is clearly post-liberal. You yourself are actively post-liberal when you make calls to reverse our 17th Amendment or condone the blatant planned partisanship of our SCOTUS and Judiciary realized in the last four years. (our Judiciary has been irreversibly polarized the moment the Right actively held up all judge appointments after 2010)
However, the left is holding on to liberalism and is fearing the post-liberal future we are hurtling towards with the rise of the Trumpian elected officials globally. Elevating personal choices, elevating more direct democracies unadulterated by markets and money, elevating the acknowledgement of harms done by businesses who would rather see themselves as angels than amoral profiteers exploiting people and regions with out-sized financial power, these are empowering moments.
And no you will not equate the emancipation as an act of authoritarianism - you will not succeed in your Orwellian alternative phrasing of Emancipation. Though you do have a lot to gain for normalizing Authoritarians.
2
Mr Douthat, how about gun related suicides in US, are you lashing at the very lax gun laws and advocating for strict gun control to stay consistent?
Based on the American experience last few decades I am coming to the conclusion that outside of the confines of religion there is not much sense in conservatism. Politically it is just persistent and gross violation of Jesus Christ teachings. Leave governing to liberals, they at least recognize real problems and don’t manufacture fake ones.
9
" The only overt outrage to euthanasia is from the religious right." That is only the partial truth. It is debated by both the liberals and conservatives. But, " the only overt outrage to abortion and control of women's right over their bodies " is definitely from the religious right!
3
@NNI
There are very many women and men who oppose abortion and are not in thrall to religious dogma. Your statement is incorrect.
3
You don’t need a long incoherent thesis to express your objection to euthanasia. Every good policy can run amok if you push it the extreme and have nothing to do with liberalism or any other ism. Euthanasia is humane when it used to help terminal patients in their last stage to alleviate pain and suffering. The fact that it contradicts the author religious beliefs or values does not make it wrong.
181
@Michael
This article isn't against Eurhanasia, it's against free thought. Euthanasia is the straw man Douthat sets up to explain why his religion needs to keep all other ways of thinking in check.
If liberals can't stop people from commuting suicide, he argues, than we need Catholics to set us straight.
22
@Michael
It's an opinion column. Completely legitimate.
3
@Michael
Thanks for a short, concise and coherent reply to Douthat's use of an incoherent philosophical mish-mash to coverup for his attempt to intellectually impose his beliefs about a persons decision to self-euthanize, i.e. commit suicide. While he reveals virtually nothing about the reasons this young woman chose this path one must assume that it was not a sort of simple teenage angst that drove her to this action which is certainly one of the implicit takeaways from Douthat's tale. But who knows. If it's Douthat, he's not talking.
23
The author starts by refuting a story that Noa was euthanized but was allowed to choose to starve herself with palliative care instead. He then writes this entire article about the the evils of euthanasia, specifically of the mentally ill. This has powerful resonances as the Nazi regime began their "Final Solution" with eugenic slaughter of the mentally ill. However, Ross provides no example of a person euthanized against their will by imposition of a state or governmental entity. Nor does he interest himself in any of the efforts that preceded this decision that lead Noa's parents to give up on their daughter and allow her to die.
What the author is decrying then, is allowing someone to choose to die. In effect suggesting that the the state should intervene and force person to live against their will even if it entails unbearable suffering. This makes sense based on his Catholic belief that pain is part of life and given to us by a higher power, but it squarely aligns him with supporters of an authoritarian state that overrides individual freedom in the name of some high purported virtue that it gets to define.
So I challenge the author: Do you believe is individual freedom or a government that interferes with the most intimate personal medical decisions? You can't have both.
9
God what an exercise in intellectual vapidity, first it’s about euthanasia and a troubled teen. Then the conservative outrage machine vs the “liberal order “or “liberalism”, I’m not sure which. Ross conflates liberalism a political philosophy with the liberal order of governing by consent and consensus within a framework of individual freedom. Then there’s the false equivalency of reactions to government tyranny in Hungary and legalized euthanasia in the Netherlands. Something that conservatives like Ross like to engage in as an exercise in intellectual trolling. Meanwhile Ross doesn’t want to acknowledge that this a secular vs religious issue not one of political ideology and that euthanasia is a libertarian conservative issue as well as a secular liberal one. Finally we get a dose of conservative outrage culture in the following “But are you shocked, reader, or merely troubled?” “If depressed people are euthanized in Belgium, it’s just … troubling, and the only overt outrage is on the religious right.” Yeah because “overt outrage” is about all the religious right brings to everything these days. But the depressed teen is as lost in this meandering piece as she was at home, they might as well been engaged in an act of faith healing but that equivalency isn’t one religious Ross would be comfortable with. There is only one thing here to be “overtly outraged” about, that our appalling inability to address mental health care and stability worldwide failed this young girl.
7
Mr Douthat’s essay gives new meaning to discursive argument. He begins by relabeling euthenasia as a moral evil (Sin) legalized by Liberals Today Douthat sees euthanasia as the devils work implemented by his agents ,the Liberals.
To quote Douthat,“But suppose you believe a legal and medical system that colludes in the suicides of the depressed is as grave an evil as any populist policy to date. When such a system emerges as a seemingly organic feature of the liberal order, what then should be your attitude toward liberalism itself?”
He answers his own question by calling for the fall—perhaps destruction—of Liberalism as a consumate evil equivalent to slavery.
Quickly, he moves on to celebrate Lincoln and FDR as illiberal unconstitutional authoritarians.
He states, “America’s gravest moral evil, chattel slavery, was defeated by an authoritarian president in a religious civil war, not by proceduralism or constitutional debate. The crisis of the 1930s ended happily for liberalism because a reactionary imperialist withstood Adolf Hitler and a revolutionary Bolshevik crushed him”.
After another detour through populism of Left and Right he makes his point: in order to save the nation itself from the consequences of Liberalism, a “post-liberal authoritarian” leader might be necessary “to save liberal civilization from dystopia or disaster.” Simply put, Douth believes America needs a Napoleon to save it from the Evils of Liberalism.
3
I respect Mr Douthat's erudition and sincerity, and as a liberal, I read his articles to gain an understanding of principled conservatism, and as a corrective exploration of ways to modify my own liberal Christian views. But all to often, Mr Douthat descends into anti-liberal diatribe, with apparently little effort to examine or modify his own views. Perhaps that is endemic to conservatism, but when even the sub-head title of his article announces yet another attack on liberalism, I tend to shut him off. Cannot we discuss, rather than confront each other? Blessed are the peacemakers with other ideas, not the shouters.
4
This is the full story of Noa Pothoven:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noa_Pothoven
3
I dp not think that liberalism can be reduced to an affection for proper procedures, although "rule of law" is obviously a part of what we term "the liberal world." This is not to say that some
"liberals" might not favor what the rest of us would view as immoral or unjust legislation or government practice, but "the rules" should give opponents the ability to artguer the case against them.The column would have been improved by some reference to the nature of the Dutch debater about the law when it was passed and in particular why it could be applied to teenagers with mental health issues. An important "conservative" thought pattern is to avoid abstractions and look at particulars.
1
I admit that I have trouble with the idea that assisted suicide is an acceptable option. My own personal beliefs aside, as the father of two, I know that an arbitrary age whereby a person becomes an adult, while a current legal requirement, is actually hogwash. In terms of maturity and the ability to exercise thoughtful judgement a 17 year-old's "maturity" age is probably plus or minus, what 2, 3, 4 years? In the least judgmental terms possible, why any sane parent would offer palliative care to their teenage daughter while she starves herself to death is beyond my understanding.
2
The potential ill effects of Liberal Democracies is not our most pressing challenge. Climate Degradation and Technological Dislocation are the burning issues for the next 50-75 years
3
@Jesse Kramer
Thus reinforcing Douthat's point. If only there were the equivalent of a thoroughly Green dictator to force us to mitigate climate change, discarding the need actually to go through messy and protracted liberal political procedures, we might actually avoid annihilation, no?
3
It is so sad to think that a 17 year old could be allowed to starve herself to death. It sounds like an extreme case of anorexia nervosa. But at 18, or 21, adults can refuse care, whether for cancer or for anorexia. Perhaps the Dutch age for autonomy is 17. The cultural and religious context matters, asking: Is there life after death? Is there punishment and forgiveness? Would one’s suicide be forgiven?
And what about our own opioid crisis — over 30,000 deaths a year — it might not merely be the lethal combination of the addictive and hypo-ventilatory pharmacology of the drug, but the despair too, giving up out of shame for having become addicted. And many of these deaths are among the young too. Nature sees little difference between a 17 year old and an 18 year old, just one-eighteenth fewer years.
But mental illness is an enigma. One hopes this young woman had had a comprehensive evaluation, even functional MRI and PET scans of her brain, and genomic testing too — find that gene and see where the missing link for happiness was.
Douthat goes way overboard in trying to extrapolate from this individual’s mental illness, her tragedy, and the complex judgment of another culture onto “liberalism” whatever or wherever that is.
Many of us know people who have committed suicide or who refused care and died from another disease. We are moderate, practical people. Douthat’s extrapolations from medicine into politics are inappropriate.
4
Ross notes that the "only overt outrage (to euthanasia) is on the religious right."
The so-called "religious right" may be outraged by euthanasia, but I see none of the alleged outrage regarding the suicide by guns of nearly 22,000 Americans every year (about 59 deaths each day), including over 950 children and teens. These deaths are obviously sanctioned by our government, since neither Congress nor POTUS have expressed any interest in dealing with this public health crisis, absolving themselves of all responsibility by using a misreading of the Second Amendment; and the "religious right" that elected Trump and the Republicans that control the Senate have expressed no ire regarding firearm suicides.
How interesting that these pious folks are so outraged by the taking of life by euthanasia but have nothing to say about the ready access to guns that facilitates the taking of thousands of lives by suicide.
33
@Robert Stewart This argument doesn't make any sense: "these deaths are obviously sanctioned by our government"? What about ropes, knives, pharmaceuticals and bridges?
But apart from that, are liberals advocating for a ban on handguns now? Because sometimes that argument is decried as a "straw man" by the left. But it appears like a popular argument--all guns are dangerous after all.
6
@Robert Stewart
I understand you're expressing dissent with a differing 2A interpretation and without taking a position but merely offering an observation, your argument has an obvious an weakening flaw in that suicide and euthanasia are not analogous. Most likely you know this and the heat of the moment led you to overlook the former is the intentional killing of oneself while the latter is medical assistance in the ending of a patient's life.
1
@Robert Stewart: Ross abhors eugenics. He is even more intransigent than the Medieval Church. When the Norwegian king commanded Iceland to become Christian, its people pointed out that there were many birth defects in both people and livestock because they had become inbred in the isolation of the island, so they asked for and got an exemption from the prohibition of infanticide. With time birth defects declined in people as in animals, and Iceland is a very happy and healthy place today.
I look upon policies to aid procreation by rape and incest and cringe.
6
I think he's engaging in some reductionism. It may be popular in some circles to call Lincoln authoritarian, given that a good part of the country seceded (taking the U.S.'s forts, etc.), a more complete picture is called for. Also, that the North was willing to fight was to some degree made possible b/c of the decades of abolitionist work (also mostly religious - so what?). As to WWII, he reduces it to Churchill (and only the dark side) and Stalin, while surely Churchill himself merely motivated already existing notions of freedom or liberalism in his country and elsewhere. Not to mention, the victory was accomplished with no little help from the U.S., whose capitalistic prowess, also based on small "l" liberalism, enabled it to fund, to some degree, the efforts of Britain and the USSR.
Regarding another comment, slavery is our greatest moral evil unless you believe abortion is murder or you start counting the remaining American Indian population. Then, at best, a tie.
More to his main point, improvements don't always happen overnight, or sometimes in decades or centuries. But, the world is becoming a better place, and we should not look at our history based on the idea that when democratic reforms took root in ancient Greece, it should have immediately spread virally throughout the world forever. Thank goodness for writers like Steven Pinker and Matt Ridley.
As to euthanasia, I believe in it, but if ever government needed to regulate something . . . .
2
Douthat suggests that euthanasia is a "seemingly organic feature of the liberal order." A more accurate statement would be that euthanasia is "one possible outcome within a liberal order." It is misleading to suggest that euthanasia is an endogenous feature of a liberal, rules-based system. It is a discrete practice, one that has not been universally adopted. If it is in fact evil, why can't we address that evil within a liberal system, using laws, rules, and persuasive arguments?
13
This flap about Mars, the Moon, and Trump's linguistic disabilities can go way too far. Everybody knows that the Moon is only on the way to Mars, so it will supposedly be developed as a way-station. When you mock Trump's disability, you mock everyone who shares it, and then they sympathize with Trump.
1
@Steve Bolger
Sadly, and tellingly, NOT everyone knows that fact you reference.
2
I am not shocked at all. Mental illness isn't illness, it is protest. It is the body reacting negatively to the situation it is in often in a rational and easily predictable manner.
People who are mentally ill, more often than not are just people who are trapped in a system they hate and cannot escape. This causes them to get violent, depressed etc.
The state would like nothing than to be able to handwave away and disapear these non-conformists who often see absurditites of our modern society. The state wants everyone to think the same, they will continue to label those who think differently as diaseased.
1
@Who
That is so wrong, it’s impossible to really begin to address here.
4
@RT I think Who is at least partly correct. If you can’t adapt to this absurd society you are ‘disordered’ and medicated. Was it Krishnamurti who said it is ‘no mark of mental health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society’. Of course the protestations of the mental health survivor movement NEVER get listened to.
What we're experiencing and what we will continue to go through over the next several decades is a redefinition of what we are as people... of just what it is to be a human being. The balance between collectivism and individualism between the desire for immortality and the consequences of mortality call us to redefine what we are and what our lives mean.
The real revolution caused by the Information Age is not artificial intelligence nor robotics nor instantaneous communication. It's a call to be something different than we've ever been before and to do so consciously and with premeditation as part of a rapid profound dynamic process which can neither be shirked nor minimized.
Trump and his supporters can engage in outrageous behavior, the Chinese can lie and steal, the Europeans can stick their heads in the sand... none of it will shield from this call to become more... now.
2
The old myths of Islam and Christianity no longer function. Joseph Campbell once said, "the moral order has to catch up with the moral necessities of actual life in time, here and now, and that’s what it’s not doing, and that’s why it’s ridiculous to go back to the old-time religion. A friend of mine composed a song based on the old-time religion, 'Give me the old-time religion, give me that old time. Let us worship Zarathustra, just the way we used to, I’m a Zarathustra booster, he’s good enough for me. Let us worship Aphrodite, she’s beautiful but flighty, she doesn’t wear a nightie, but she’s good enough for me.'"
5
@Chris Tucker
Was your friend Heinrich Zimmer? Joseph Campbell, talking to Bill Moyers in the documentary, “The Power of Myth,” quotes these lyrics and ascribed them to a song written by his friend, Zimmer.
I think Mr Douthat would profit from a day's research on severe anorexia. Many young people die from it, too young, despite continuous treatment. I have watched parents try everything and then watch helplessly as the disease persists. The end is horrible as organs slowly shut down. Assuming treatments had persistently failed in this case, does Mr Douthat think it would have been more humane for family and physicians to stand by and watch this woman die in slow agony?
8
@Chris B
And Post-Enlightenment Chris B might dwell on just why we have a condition named Anorexia gripping our young girls.
1
A suicide in the Netherlands is a tragedy but a very weak anecdotal foundation on which to suggest that liberal politics lacks a values framework and operates by "liberal proceduralism" alone that can sometimes "lead to something truly evil" . All politics, liberal, conservative, or otherwise, has a values framework. Conservative political values lead to moral outrages equally divergent with your religious moral beliefs.
This argument is centuries-old. Anecdotal relativism persuades no-one that conservatism is the Hand of God and that liberalism is a harbinger of dystopia. Look deeper, Ross.
8
This entire column rests on a fallacy. The Dutch girl’s suicide had nothing to do with euthanasia. Individual suicides will always be with us. That the parents and doctors did nothing does not make it euthanasia. It gets worse from there. How can you blame liberalism for euthanasia and by extrapolation all the world’s ills? The problems on both sides of the ideological divide are human beings.
16
In the latter part of the 1800s, Karl Marx proposed that Capitalism, the darling of the right, contained within it the seeds of its own destruction. Writing in 2019, Ross Douthat proposes that Liberalism, the darling of the left, contains within it the seeds of its own demise. A pox on both. These paradigms are nothing more than sophomoric humbug which are not tethered to the real world.
2
Wait. You start with an example of "euthanizing" a mentally ill person, then use that as an example of demonstrably fake news, and then proceed to talk about the wrongness of euthanizing mentally ill people without either data or anecdotal cases to describe the practice?
Ross, I have found your recent columns to be worthwhile explorations of what it would mean to be a real conservative in contrast to these people who ally with authoritarianism and chortle "get over it" with stomping on my throat with their black boots. And while I passionately believe that we all have the right to make medical decisions involving reproduction without the state's interference (if the state has the power to ban abortion, it also has the power to require it, which so-called pro-lifers conveniently overlook), I appreciate anyone who opposes abortion and also questions the kind of deaths we condone as a society—that's truly pro-life, and may we expect more columns from you on the wrongness of capital punishment? And the properly Catholic attitude toward care of the sick?
So while as a liberal I'm increasingly disturbed about the intellectual oppressiveness of the farther left in squelching free speech and shutting down due process (so far confined mainly to college campuses and social media), and I think your question about the dangers of ideology in power is cogent … this column has a bogus setup.
3
"If the state has the power to ban abortion it also has the power to require it?" What kind of deep state, fake slippery slope argument is that supposed to be? Have you ever heard anyone on the left lobbying for government-enforced abortion or euthanasia, to address Ross's bogus concern here? It is the backwards conservative right lobbying for government-enforced death with their lack of gun control regulations. That is not a deep state slippery slope - that happens every single day in our GOP NRA/Russian-backed government.
3
This is an example of how the right wing likes to pretend to have the moral high ground. They latch onto something, somewhere, that someone else is doing, a private contract between two individuals, and say, “we have to stop this!” We don’t have to look at WHY people are depressed. We don’t have to do anything to make the economy better or society better. We just have to stop the very end result of it. Then all of the structures that led to it can remain in place. And the quaint, self-satisfied conservative soul can go to sleep happy, for in his view of morality, he can get extra credit points with his deity by stopping strangers from doing things that seem uncouth from 10,000 feet. If only they made themselves good instead of trying to make others “good.”
12
Oh my goodness, Mr. Douthat has had another encounter with the 21st Century.
Well, Orban is an autocrat and a dictator so when he banned the university it was the action of a tyrant, the decision of one corrupted man.
Good or bad, the Netherlands assisted death system is statutory, the product of majority opinion in a democracy. Yes, it is fraught but no it is not in any way comparable to Orban the banner.
And in this world there is no such thing as "full Marxist". Never has been in fact.
There has been Marxist tyranny, there is a big one now in China that bears no relation anymore if it ever did to Marxism.
There is monstrous one in North Korea that claims to be but is instead a medieval horror state.
There is one in Cuba, that comes close but is not because none can ever be and suffers punishment by the United States every day in every way.
There is the tragedy in Venezuela and it is not Marxist, it is a monstrosity.
And there was the Soviet Union, the Leninist/Stalinist myth and death factory.
But acts and sysetms of modest, moderate democratic socialism to leaven the excesses, outrages and provocations of unfettered capitalism is not Marxist. It's just decency Mr. Douthat, just decency.
17
Mr. Douthat,
From a family member who has suffered the ravages of mental health issues and two suicides, why did you have to begin your article as you did to subsequently illustrate your political and intellectual viewpoints? Perhaps I did not understand your opinions and rationale in so doing but they were how I perceived them to be and they caused me to relive my own personal experiences with profound sadness.
4
We can’t know what went on within this family, how they came to the point of allowing their daughter to end her life. However, we can know is was a terrible pain none of us would wish upon anyone. This is to say we can’t judge the single tragedy of this child’s pain and death or extrapolate the process of her death to the morality of liberalism itself. It’s cheap and easy to say we “shouldn’t allow a child to end her own life”, period. We can force her to eat, we can force her to take medications! However, isn’t such force even more against principles espoused by Republicans? She’s a child you say! Well, trying telling your 17 year old daughter she’s a child. Good luck. This isn’t to say a 17 year old has the wisdom of her parents. Certainly not but, can she experience pain that feels insurmountable? Yes. Would you be any happier if we made her wait to make the decision when she’s 18? Forced her to stay alive until she was of “legal age”? Is there a legal age? No, this to make the point that this isn’t about legalese, this is about an individual’s pain and right to choose her path. Is her pain and her decision tragic? God yes but it’s a private (should be) decision made within a family that does not reflect upon an entire system of governance or morality.
6
Look Ross, it is my body and my life and I think your Christian inspired, moralizing busy-body response has more holes than Swiss cheese. You are trying to put an intellectual fig leaf on a cousin to right wing anti abortion tyranny.
But I do admire how you used the hook of that sensational story out of the Netherlands as your lede. Using an outlier incident is a hallowed trick of the right wing, bravo, you are keeping to form.
How do people like you square your ideology about freedom with having the state control what I can do with my own body? You would of course go to the orbital level and shift the thread to a discussion of public policy.
Is there a shortage of people in the US? The world?
Again, my body, my choice, not yours; and especially not that of your Christian fantasy faith.
14
It's always about what happens next...I may be whistling past the graveyard, but I'm still worried. Good column. Thanks
2
What was good about it?
3
I think a lot of comments here miss the main point of Mr. Douthat’s essay. It is not about a suicidal teenager. It is about the shortcomings of humanism. Liberals often represent themselves as defenders of human rights and accuse conservatives of lack of empathy. Conservatives gleefully point to euthanasia and abortion to argue that liberal humanism is fake. But neither side asks: why humanism? Why do we accept at face value such a patently untrue statement as “All men are created equal”? Human beings are not created; and they are most definitely not equal in their capacities. Developments in science and technology have changed the very definition of humanity. With life extension, mood altering drugs, and digital interactivity we are not the same creatures as our ancestors were 500 or even a 100 years ago. We need a new ethics to go with the age of AIs and the Anthropocene. Mr. Douthat may cling to his religion but we as liberals have no such defense against uncomfortable questions that challenge our humanistic pieties. What if you could save the Dutch teenager by rewriting her brain and expunging her memories, thus creating a new persona in the same body? Would it be an ethical thing to do or not? Unless we confront such questions heads-on, liberalism will join Marxism and fascism on the dust-heap of history.
3
Your fears are the futuristic vision of a slippery slope for liberalism. Douthat's solutions are conservative evil at work every day in our country. I choose to worry about the imminent conservative threat, a threat to life in Earth, now. We can deal with AI, etc, if we are still around as a species in 50 years.
3
Another comment here led me to learn more about Noa Pothoven, the Dutch teenager whose suicide spawned Douthat’s pronouncement that liberalism is “truly evil” and thus “deserves” to die. And the facts and context put a frightening light on the post-liberal order he advances.
From what I understand, Pothoven was sexually assaulted at age 11 and raped by two men at age 14. Mental health professionals were unable to mitigate her emotional devastation, and at age 16—when under Dutch law she had the right to refuse medical treatment—Pothoven decided to starve herself, electing death over the misery of her life. At first, her parents chose to have her put in a medical coma instead so she could be fed by tube, but ultimately they acceded to their daughter’s wish to refuse force feeding.
This is the “dystopia” that inspired Douthat’s outrage—a young woman’s right, a right enshrined in Dutch law, to decide for herself what would be done to her body. He would, we must assume, elect governmental power to override that agency, to require her to remain in continued medical coma where her body could be kept alive indefinitely—bodily life with no real meaning.
Ultimately isn’t that the ideological choice—personal agency over the most personal of life’s decisions versus governmental power to impose someone else’s “morality” instead? Especially given what we have seen of our own government’s moral choices, it is hard to see how anyone would choose such post-liberal order.
10
Yet Douthat's conservative answer to helping the troubled teenager at 14 would have been forcing her to carry her rapist's hate-child to term, then dropping her and her forced-birth spawn of evil from welfare, healthcare, or public assistance. That is what Conservatism looks like today. Conservatism is already evil, and needs to be expunged.
5
Further and further down the rabbithole goes Ross Douthat. This essay has so many intellectual faults, it’s hard to know where to begin. Let’s start with the meaningless premise that seems to underpin many of Mr. Douthat’s columns: the battle of the “isms”. Liberalism versus populism: what do these nebulous terms even mean?
In the strange politicization of the topic of suicide in this piece, Mr. Douthat encourages outrage at liberalism in the Netherlands that allows a mentally unwell young woman to starve herself to death. He leaves unexamined the populism in America that allows the mentally unwell to freely obtain firearms, which they use to commit suicide by the tens of thousands every year. He calls the former “colluding” with suicide. So what shall we call the latter? A sacred freedom?
11
A child commits suicide in Scandinavia and, because of the country's view in assisted suicide, this leads Mr. Douthat to talk about some kind of liberal authoritarian state. Huh? What is that joke: if all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail?
You can pound this narrative down to a two- dimensional view of the world: left and right. And if you favor assisted suicide then you are closer to the crazy authoritarian state than those to the right side of the line. But Mr. Douthat is using this two-dimensional view to set up a straw-man argument: (1) Scandinavia allows assisted suicide, (2) Scandinavia is a socialist country, (3) therefore all socialists will embrace an authoritarian state where assisted suicides happen all the time.
There are too many holes in his argument to count. This article is barely worth the trouble it took him to type it up.
10
This column is just a mess, conceptually. The tragedy of a clinically depressed child is turned into a political event, with the fault laid at the feet of "liberalism"? Really -- since when did liberalism create depression? The main causative force behind this child's death was a psychological condition and not a political system. Then we read that our greatest unifier and leader, Abraham Lincoln was an "authoritarian" leading a "religious war." Douthat: What are you even talking about?! Lincoln suppressed habeas corpus and censored the "Copperhead" press because military information could have been disclosed and lives were at stake. The Civil War split many denominations in half; it did not in general pit one religion against another (as in the European Protestant Wars.) Lincoln deferred to his generals (to a fault) and personally championed the Civil War amendments to the Constitution. If he's an authoritarian, Trump is the Dalai Lama. This column reads like an over wrought freshman composition assignment destined for a lot of editing and a gentle suggestion: come down off the five espressos, take a walk, chill out, and rewrite it.
16
Douthat suggests that the liberal order does not really care about individuals as it claims to care. It really reacts to challenges to its power. "the populists are seen as challenging the liberal order, while the Benelux thanatoriums are operating within the procedures of liberalism"
First, Douthat defends a side that itself cares little for the individuals. Today's example would be abortion rights, elevating "life" over the actual life of the woman and over the potential life of a child they'd immediately abandon once born.
Second, the response to suicide of, "Okay, let's help her die," is not leftist, its what the Nazis did. They had socialism in their title, but it wasn't a leftist thing. Just saying you're leftist doesn't make it so. That a self-proclaimed liberal culture made this awful move does not make it a leftist thing.
Third, who's not outraged? Douthat claims only his side is outraged. Says who? Just him. I don't think any real leftists are saying, "Yup, that's what I meant, that was how to handle her issues."
This was messed up. Nobody will own this. Nobody advocates this. The response of, "See, that's who they are," really tries to take partisan advantage of tragedy and error.
7
You don’t need to look to a small country across the pond to find a dystopia. You shouldn’t point to an anecdotal aberration as evidence of that dystopia.
We have malignant narcissistic lunatic as president right here in America. We have outrageous wealth disparity and a broken justice system and a broken government right here at home.
Right here in America, we have a dystopia. The one that you and the American conservatives fought tooth and nail to create.
8
Mr. Douthat mentions "governments seen as populist" such at that of Viktor Orban.
Let's be honest: the government of Viktor Orban is vicious, racist, and right-wing; it does not stand up for "ordinary people", which is the definition of populist.
Mr. Douthat has made this error repeatedly. I have corrected him repeatedly. Paul Krugman has corrected him repeatedly: see, for example.
http://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/06/opinion/springtime-for-scammers.html
Mr. Douthat is obviously not interested in being correct, because he keeps making the same error.
2
Making uneasily reductive equivalences is a specialty of Douthat's project: "America’s gravest moral evil, chattel slavery, was defeated by an authoritarian president in a religious civil war, not by proceduralism or constitutional debate." Wow -- could it be that Trump and the Evangelicals are actually the moral heirs of Lincoln? No nuance for you, Ross -- but to reduce Lincoln to strongman status and call the Civil War a religious crusade is typical lib-owning provocation. Maybe people who haven't bothered to learn about Lincoln, his moral/political balance and his fidelity to a Constitution on which the ink hadn't entirely dried, will be persuaded that he was both tyrant and zealot, sic semper, but my hope is that more of us see through your tortured propaganda. Liberalism shouldn't be something we "get past" but something we strive to perfect.
7
It's always easy to criticize from the outside.
2
And chronic homelessness is not a sign of the dysfunction of liberal society?
3
And Mr. Douthat is yet again concerned about the "excesses of liberalism". This would be a good time to remind him that it was his "president" who ordered putting Hispanic infants and children into cages. It was his "president" who has demonized brown skinned people, calling them "animals", calling nations they came from with an ugly slur. It was his "president" who has said, more than once, that the KKK and neo-Nazis are some very fine people. And it is under his "president" that hate crimes have continued to skyrocket since 2016.
The fact is, among Western nations, the greatest threats to the health and well-being of marginalized peoples is now in this country. Proud Boys terrorize entire communities. Heavily armed, white racist militias tour our southern border. Many brown-skinned Americans will no longer go out of their houses alone.
And Douthat engages in this intellectual handwringing about euthanasia laws in the Benelux countries, focusing on one individual case to make his sweeping argument?
I cannot fathom how any American could focus on this issue now, when we are facing the very real possibility of ethnic cleansing in this country. Trump need give the word to his rabid, armed base, and they will start a bloodletting that they've been salivating for since he took office.
No, Mr. Douthat, Western Europe's liberal regime does not scare me in the slightest. But my fellow countrymen do now, more than I'd ever imagined in my sixty-five years.
9
But, but Jesus says it’s ok and American to kill yourself with a gun. How many Americans die yearly from suicide by gun, please tell us that’s ok father Ross. Then please tell us it’s OK for dozens of veterans to commit suicide daily, in America. The land of Trump, the cult of conservatism. Let us prey.
8
It is not "xenophobia" to believe that 1) border and immigration laws should be enforced, 2) America has the right to set its immigration policy in its own best interests, and 3) the nation is ill-served by unscreened millions of poor, often illiterate, non-English-speaking immigrants from rampantly criminal societies.
"Would such a society deserve the political loyalty of a... traditional...Muslim" What is the evidence that modern Western liberal societies have the loyalty of traditional Muslims today?
Wrong. It is the definition of xenophobia.
3
Is this Ross' mea culpa just in case fascism or some other "post - liberal" system of governance should come to exist?
2
Another interesting piece by Douthat, but definitely not one of his best. It’s somewhat muddled and somewhat cliche.
1
the conservative solution to mental illness seems to be suicide by cop, without the mentally ill person seeking death, until they have been treated frequently in a conservative mental health setting repeatedly: jail or prison.
5
Why is Ross criticizing liberalism when he should be criticizing market capitalism?
2
In parts of the world where abortion is illegal, botched abortions cause about 8 to 11 percent of all maternal deaths, or about 30,000 each year. Are you shocked, Mr. Douthat, or merely troubled?
I suspect you accept this trade-off of dead women in exchange for outlawing the murder of babies (as you would likely characterize it). The objective reality is that any policy will have examples of untoward consequences that result, ancillary to the policy goal. The personal determination made possible by liberal egalitarianism is unlikely to produce utopia (you will have to wait for Heaven, to obtain that). But its positive consequences are legion, and on balance, far exceed the outcome of authoritarianism, as you seem to obliquely champion.
Anecdote, used to proffer political policy, is the true refuge of the scoundrel.
8
The apostle Paul, speaking in Athens to a crowd made up of well educated philosophers, spoke of nations and their destinies." From one man he made all nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and He marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands." ( Acts 17: 26 ). Apparently God planned the exact times when nations should emerge and decline. Perhaps we humans should cease wasting our time worrying about our nation's future. It is not in our control.
2
Mercy death which is the heart of euthanasia over thousands killed each year in senseless gun shootings with body parts splayed all over the place. Which ones is evil Ross?
7
Another case of carrying a sensible idea too far. One thing if you have a condition that will cause excruciating pain for six to nine months at which point you will die. (This was my mother's experience with cancer throughout her body.) Another if you just thing life is just too much.
I view abortion similarly. One thing if you are raped by your stepdaddy. Another if you wanted a boy, not a girl.
Before someone points it out, I realize I picked situations at the extremes of the spectrums of the issues.
1
What hyperbolic pearl clutching on the part of Douthat! The tragic story of one young woman cannot equate an all encompassing critique of the entire trajectory of a progressive future. This a stretch at best, but more bluntly, it is yet another Douthat demonstration (demolition more like) of poor debating technique in what is one of this country’s most illustrious newspapers!
Many commenters have pointed out Douthat’s (willful) cognitive dissonance couched in the very premise of this article - when he ignores the many progressive benefits of living in Dutch society, while extrapolating a certain dystopian future from a single, misrepresented event.
But what pains me most is not that I disagree with Douthat’s opinions (and I admit I do), but that I deplore his sloppy writing tactics. A little closer analysis of this article easily reveals he is actually Sean Hannity, but cunningly disguised in academic-sounding phrases and logic. Google “common fallacies,” and meet Douthat’s friends: the straw man, the circular argument, non sequitors, generalizations, slippery slopes, and so many more.
My personal bleak vision of a dystopian future is a country whose ideas are most often represented in the press by pretentious, manipulative, pseudo intellectual zealots.
This is not a left-right issue. For my own mental well being, I resolve that this will be my last Douthat article.
5
Propaganda always includes some facts, some emotional appeal, nostalgia,outrage, all coupled to present a “compelling” argument that demonizes the opposition. The pretty young woman’s photograph, her tragic story presented as the victim of evil doctors and an evil liberal government. What Ross has done is ignored the terrible suffering and years of therapy to exploit her death for political purposes. Perhaps he is ignorant. That does not entitle him to exhume this dead woman and pretend that her choice to die now and end her untreatable suffering was a consequence of liberal government. Metastatic Cancer, multiple system failure, massive trauma or burns and brain death are all clear examples of terrible unrelieveable suffering. That an uninformed columnist does not recognize that mental illness is equally horrid but justifies his exploitation by blaming a government that permitted her to make her own choice is crass and morally and intellectually dishonest. Consider a government that insists that patients must be resuscitated, sustained, treated, and endure chemotherapy or dialysis, despite their choice to end their suffering after spending a week working in an ICU, CCU, Burn or Oncology unit.
Catholicism informs Douthat. The story of Lazarus, Jesus’ “brother” who died, may provide an insight not taught by the Church. Lazarus was in a state of decay when Jesus called him back from the tomb. What happened to Lazarus next? Was he condemned to suffer more and die again? John 11
3
Post-liberal? Dream on, Ross. You are enjoying the many privileges of a world shaped by liberal thinking and action. Maybe if you had to live the life of the teen you trot out as Exhibit A, you might be less quick with your willingness to overthrow liberal values.
3
Looking over these comments, it occurs to me you might appreciate some bucking up. I want you to know I’m a big fan of your work - thoughtful & sensible and always carried out with respect for the validity of opposing positions. I dearly wish such classy, careful pundits were more common. It would do us all much good.
I agree that our tradition of personal liberty poses threats to both sides of the aisle, and I agree that it’s simplistic to stubbornly assert that this tradition is responsible for historic triumphs & can be counted on to win the day in the future. But it really is an especially wonderful & important tradition & I, for one, very much hope that it does in fact win the day, both now & in the future.
1
I think we can all agree that the Trump approach is not and never can be the solution. So let's start there and see Trump is impeached or defeated in 2020. Everything else is background noise.
1
@D Marcot: It is always a mistake to remove something without having something else ready to plug into the hole it leaves. No ecological niche stays vacant for long.
I'm not particularly troubled by people committing suicide who have not been victims or suffered debilitating trauma. Our health care system should offer help where possible, of course. But some people are just born wired the wrong way, they are biologically unable to ever be happy because their brain is not working right. Suicide is in some cases the rational choice. Such a death is not much different from someone dying of untreatable cancer. Tragic, but also normal. Nature is random.
1
@GS: Acculturation begins at birth. Many parents are poor programmers of the psyche.
The lack of socio-political awareness revealed in these comments is astonishing.
Hint: Douthat is referring to "Western Liberalism" in the grand sense. Not some petty bickering between American liberal democrats and conservative Republicans.
As if we Americans haven't already proved his thesis. The oldest, most successful, and richest liberal democracy on the planet just elected a carnival barker as president. Some of you would like to believe Trump is the cause of our problems. No. He is the result.
Good luck America.
5
I think there is a general pervasive fear of adult direction in the US.
2
It's worth observing here that despite all the hand-wringing about euthanasia in the Netherlands, the suicide rate in the US is 50 percent higher than in the Netherlands, and within the US, suicide rates are higher in rural counties than in cities.
It is curious that the conservative rural counties in the US, which are seen as the bastions of the kinds of traditional cultural and religious values that Douthat endorses, fare far worse on supporting life than the liberal cities or the Netherlands.
50
Very disappointing (but less than surprising) to learn that even a well informed conservative like Douthat contends that the left's "imagining takes the form of a dire ecological extrapolation." There is certainly ample empirical evidence to the effect dire scenarios are anything but imaginary. Conservative temporizing on what does not need to, and oughtn't, be an ideological issue continues to get in the way of taking concerted action in time to avert them.
8
@Peter I read "extrapolation" as "prediction for the future", not as "imaginary worry"; I believe Douthat is not a climate-change denialist. More clear wording would have been nice there.
1
@-L-: Ross doesn't get that no exponential growth process can run forever.
6
Like I said, I think he's acknowledging the very real dangers of human-made climate change, just phrasing it in an unclear way that could be taken as skepticism!
1
“Liberalism has never done as well as it thinks...”
To start, conservatism has consistently done much worse. Today’s American Conservatism is more an example of a toxic ideology that is entirely focused on how to defeat liberalism rather than to solve any real problems in front of us. If they manage to do that, watch out, we may not survive to even the full display of climate disaster.
There is so much liberalism has to work on to make the world better. They may be successful, in contrast to conservatism, because they do not hide from real problems, and they do not manufacture fake problems. Take Netherlands and other central and northern European countries to understand what it means to solve social and economic problems in a democratic, humane and, in some degree, meritocratic (knowledge based) way. That they are still far from being optimal can’t be taken against them, this model is the best we have and it is only rational to keep perfecting it.
17
The U.S. has already lived for decades under an NRA-dictated regime that ensured plentiful guns not for taming long-gone frontiers but too often for suicide. Parents who leave the gun box unlocked have usually gotten condolences, not worldwide castigation. Hand wringing over the "sanctity of life" is often highly selective.
30
It's a mistake to do any kind of political theorizing based on a single shocking event that happened in a tiny country with limited living space that has grappled with its post-war inner demons by creating a permissive society in which such a thing can occur. This is the problem of the Dutch. I think "post-liberalism in the U.S." is, to put it simply, a society in which the conservatives say 'yes' more often, and the Democrats find the backbone to say 'no' with the same frequency.
6
@David Godinez; What is the problem with the Dutch? Their country is generally quite tranquil.
Yes, Viktor Orban kicking a university out of Hungary is indeed a crisis of the liberal order. You bet it is. I'm glad we agree.
Maybe we agree on euthanasia issues, maybe we don't. But I'm glad we've got the Viktor Orban argument settled. No need to bring him into any more debates in which he doesn't belong. No more red herrings. I think we are making progress.
9
Mr. Douthat liberals are the ones who support those things which are life-affirming. Affordable health care, food stamps, a living wage, and education come immediately to mind - all are supported by liberals, while conservatives do everything in their power to deny those things to people. You need to speak to this.
The question of euthanasia is best left to the professionals who understand why someone would want to end his or her life, and the ethical considerations involved, as well as the need for compassion. (Compassion seems to be a foreign concept to conservatives otherwise we would have had Medicare for all a very long time ago.) It is sadistic and cruel to force a person to endure a body racked by pain with no hope of ever getting better, and sometimes mental pain is all consuming, with no hope of rescue.
Until you have walked in someone's shoes who has chosen to end or his her life, you cannot begin to understand the why of euthanasia.
25
@Diana
Do you regard liberal support for the right to choose an abortion as "life-affirming"? I certainly do, but I think we need to make clear the difference between actual personhood, which alone qualifies one for political and civil rights, and a mere embryo that has developed a fetal heartbeat along with certain animal instincts but has not yet acquired the distinctively human power of conscious reflection.
4
Do new-born babies have the power of conscious reflection? Since they demonstrate zero ability of this, legalizing abortion on your terms would lead to legalizing infanticide.
@amabobama
I consider the right to seek an abortion as the right to autonomy over one's own body, just as euthanasia should be. Only you and you alone should be the one to make decisions concerning your body. I consider the fetus to be part of the Mother's body. Why a woman seeks an abortion is her business, and she may do it for life affirming reasons for herself or the fetus.
3
This op-ed lacks empathy. Instead of looking at the causes of PTSD and suicidal depression, and ways to support and prevent this, we are invited to political science class.
30
@PE -- As well said as I could imagine. Bravo!
3
@PE: You've come to the right place. Here we rollick in cognitive dissonance.
1
The pain this young woman's parents and friends must have suffered watching their loved one die by choice, did not mean they had not tried to change things.
Mental disease and agony cannot be measured by those of us who are not capable of truly grasping what they must be suffering.
I often think of how the parents of those men at the prison in North Ireland who were starving themselves to death over an issue that Thatcher could easily have settled, were suffering and unable to do anything about their sons choices.
I have had a family member die a suicide, and nothing on earth could have stopped him.
I have known two schizophrenics whose mental states caused them to prefer death to what they were suffering.
Politics has ABSOLUTELY no place here. Only grief, and pain, and regret.
169
@Sajwert It is a tragedy to hear about your pain and that of your loved ones. No doubt, these issues are as complex as they are emotional and everyone should tread lightly in discussing them.
But there is no life or even death without politics. Politics is simply an extension of our society. A place of action after and alongside a conversation we all must have.
Euthanasia is a medical procedure and as such is absolutely governable by law and therefore society. We cannot perhaps encapsulate every outcome in a discussion but we must work to improve the average one. People will feel differently about what is improvement. And there we find politics.
1
This example of assisted suicide is also an excellent general example that points clearly to when adherence to a belief or system of beliefs-whatever it/they may be-leaves this plane of a functioning reality (which requires critical and independent thinking, thoughtfulness, and common sense to fit said belief(s) into the parameters of the world into which it/they are being introduced), and skyrockets into fanatical lunacy (the only requirement of which, is that reality conform to the held belief(s) ).
1
Douthat's logic seems to be, "It's liberalism's watch now, so whatever happens is liberalism's fault. And past liberal triumphs were just luck."
And if Douthat doesn't like the fact that religious people (whatever that might mean) just get a few measly First Amendment protections from the liberal political order, I suppose they could all go someplace and live under whatever sharia they subscribe to. Just make sure it's no someplace the U.S. Constitution isn't in force.
5
Mr. Douthat,
If someone wants to end his or her life, it's a private matter. It's tragic, for sure, but sometimes it's warranted for very intimate reasons. All you are doing here is accessorizing this personal tragedy for polemical gains. I find it hard to believe that your implied empathy is genuine, especially when you start blaming your usual tiresome straw men.
17
The other thing that contributed to the sensationalism of the Dutch-girl story was that it was initially reported that she wanted to be euthanized because she had been raped. That's what got it to the top of the feed to begin with. Without that, I'm not sure that an anorexic teenage girl starving herself to death would have had the legs to keep the story going. Rightly or wrongly, that happens all too frequently, and I'm not sure that any government or political philosophy can prevent it.
1
This opinion piece is a perfect example of battling a straw man. Dutch liberals are just as shocked by the example as anyone.
3
@Casey Liston: These folks battle with their own straw men when they're not peering into the face of God in their mirrors.
1
The present changes our past - or at least our understanding of it. We may come to discover that the stories we were told about our heroes and villains were false or only partly true. Statues and memorials disappear; streets and lakes get renamed; faces disappear from bank notes.
The present changes our biases too. Less than 10 years ago Democrats were solidly against immigration, and now they are not. Less than 5 years ago Republicans were against tariffs and deficits, and now they see nothing wrong with them.
We rely on our understanding of the past and the present; struggle with (or cherish) our biases as we imagine and work towards the future. Some see terminal decay where others see natural evolution or natural cycles. Angst is the natural state of mind of a thinking person.
1
@George: No legends are fully revealed.
1
Again, it took Western Europe, including The Netherlands, about 2,000 years to become somewhat civilized. It will take the North American continent at least that long ... and Douthat's convoluted premise supports that thought. Again, our primitive political concepts -- liberal, conservative, Marxist, alt-right -- in the end are all about power and control: which tribe will rule all the other tribes. It may well take us another 2,000 years to achieve some semblance of human tranquility, if such can ever be achieved.
6
@Jody: The Pilgrims came to Plymouth to escape the cosmopolitanism of Amsterdam.
I wonder at Douthat's proposed solution to voluntary euthanasia. Short of strapping a person down and force feeding them, you can't make someone eat. You can't really stop a determined teen suicide no matter what you do. Not indefinitely. The alternative resembles Guantanamo Bay more than liberal democracy.
I spent time in a place known for pretty gruesome suicides. Speaking from experience, I would prefer they euthanized themselves quietly in their own private space. You don't want to see a mangled corpse get loaded onto a gurney after spending three days underwater in the campus pond. Not a great way to start your morning.
Furthermore, we need only mention the gory result of conservative America's commitment to gun access for a lesson in hypocrisy. Imagine the macabre scene of discovering a gun death compared to the peaceful and voluntary administration of a narcotic.
Point being: Euthanasia is more about mercy to the living than cruelty to the dying. That's why the practice fits within the liberal worldview.
104
@Andy: I contemplate suicide after reading every Douthat essay. There is something inspirational about Ross.
20
@Andy
Medicine was invented to cure the ill. I can't think of greater signs of civilization and humanity than it's will take care of ill and elderly.
I'm sure you've seen the cruelty we have towards the mentally ill. Maybe in high school, you ridiculed the misfits and weirdo's from the cool lunch table. In your world when the kid goes to the guidance counselor he'll be told he has an option to kill himself.
When did the liberal worldview come to connotate such cruelty when once it meant compassion?
4
@Andy One of the ways people used to get forcibly committed to public mental hospitals (back when we had them) was that they threatened or attempted suicide. That makes you a threat to yourself, and therefore mentally ill in a way that's dangerous to someone. And now the state has a right to lock you up and keep you away from sharp objects and long strings. This is perfectly consistent with liberalism. If you are depressed it was probably because of oppression by someone, and we're going to protect you from them.
1
This entire column is premised upon the disturbing death of a Dutch teenager. Readers should ask themselves, however, how many actual new facts, granular ones, does Douthat reveal herein that provides the necessary support for his wholesale condemnation of liberal thought, his usual boogeyman, that expectedly follows from this one example. He makes no specific reference to original Dutch sources, be they family, friends, or acquaintances, nor to official investigations started as a result of the tragic occurrence that provide the required context from which to intelligently comment upon the death. In short, his “reporting” on the subject matter is stunningly deficient making his personal opinions which follow even more so.
20
Oh, and Ross?
I happen to know people who lost a beloved daughter in very much the way you’re yelling about. I assure you that they were not liberals, they were not atheists, and they did everything that could have been done.
24
@Robert: When our children wonder why we bring them into the world, it is time to contemplate what we are doing.
1
The synonym for the era of liberal democracy is the Enlightenment, which is being abandoned in this day and age by the right, not the left. Its opposite is a new Dark Age, characterized by disinformation and lies, fear and tribalism, and abandonment of free media, constitutional self-goverance and the rule-of-law. This is Trumpism, and the moral relativity of the comparisons between Republicans and Democrats in this article is hogwash.
27
@Portola: It was a brief period. The US Revolution was followed by a huge religious revival,
@Steve Bolger: Religion and Enlightenment are not mutually exclusive, but still, the American innovation of separation of church and state has helped keep the peace among us for years.
2
This confused, meandering essay begins an error of omission. "It remains shocking that a young woman’s parents and doctors would give up on treating her at seventeen and let her kill herself.
Ms. Pothoven stopped eating and drinking in May, after many years of mental health agonies, including PTSD, and anorexia, and repeated hospitalizations. In 2018, she was put in an induced coma so doctors could feed her through a feeding tube. Does Mr. Douthat advocate repeating that as the less "evil" choice? Does he know anything at all about what Pothoven's family, in deciding to respect her decision this year, not again drug and force-feed her, and provide only palliative care, suffered?
29
Oh please. Just stop. Douthat’s message is the same tired “aren’t liberals horrible and dangerous” trope.
Yes, yes, we liberals spend our time creating euthanasia centers, when we aren’t conspiring to get rid of private property in America and make contraceptives free.
Doesn’t america have higher rates of suicide than other countries? We definitely lead in gun deaths and have poorer health outcomes. Isnt that where our outrage should be focused?
32
Well, I think your defaming of Lincoln and Roosevelt in such strident terms speaks to your extremism, which touches on the extremism of your kind of conservative, post-liberal thought.
I'm not going to touch the right to suicide topic. I will only say that compassion is much more powerful than literalism.
As to your views on church and state: Catholics in Kenya are now rebelling against celibacy, which I think will allow the Catholic church to change much more than any political or economic shift. It would dilute the central authority of the church, and its coffers, but would halt the pedophilia problem and make priests much more credible in counseling families and family problems.
12
@David: A church full of clerics who aren't supposed to do what most people crave cannot possibly be well informed, or helpful.
1
I find it interesting that Douthat manages to decry both assisted suicide and mood stabilizing drugs. Doesn’t leave much recourse for the gravely depressed, does he? There is no true compassion here.
15
Please allow me to proffer another scenario that is more accurate. Imagine if our legal system designed to administer law equally and free of favor is completely administering the opposite. Further, imagine a scenario through which our elected leaders write the laws with clarity that serve the people and not the financial power and are held accountable by a truly informed populace? In that stasis, it all works and there is no chance for dystopia. However, that is not our reality. Our institutions are rotting to the core and media is hedged or simply not capable anymore. You and I live in a corporate-fascist state. How's that for dystopia?
6
@Patrick Lovell: This legal system is designed to assist lawyers to bilk clients contesting issues the litigants don't understand.
2
To date, six brown skinned children have died at our southern border while in the custody of United States authorities. Are conservatives shocked or merely troubled by this event? And what does their reaction to this tragedy mean to the world of conservative conservative thought.
When such a conservative system emerges which condones behavior allowing these deaths to occur, what then should be your attitude to conservatism itself?
24
"If depressed people are euthanized in Belgium, it’s just … troubling"
This is also false. Depressed people are not euthanized in Benelux countries.
7
"The crisis of the 1930s ended happily for liberalism because a reactionary imperialist withstood Adolf Hitler and a revolutionary Bolshevik crushed him. " You seem to forget the most powerful of those who ended the crisis: an affable disabled liberal populist who said he welcomed the hatred of millionaires, who got his enormous liberal program through despite the "nine old men" more reactionary than the set we face. The home-grown crisis of the 1930s -- depression, farm crisis, weather, rage and despair -- wasn't ended y him, but it seems hard to imagine that it could have been successfully survived without him. And unlikely that the Japanese and German dictatorships of death could have been so quickly defeated. You have a tendency to go for a neat phrase quicker than for a nuanced thought.
21
On that specific case: the “treatment” that the author apparently wanted to happen for Ms Pothoven was forced feeding, which has long been considered torture (usually in the context of hunger strikes). And if you think providing people who will commit suicide either way with means to do so more humane than throwing themselves off a building or in front of a train is “worse than anything” the new right populists have done - well then you’re just wrong aren’t you.
8
This piece relies on emotional manipulation rather than intellect.
First, I am outraged that 17-year-old Noa Pothoven was allowed to starve herself to death under the watchful eye of her parents and doctors. I am not religious nor on the right politically and yet I am outraged, which seems to be impossible in your mind. Is it more likely that this tragedy is an example of extreme human fallibility or the inevitable outcome of liberalism?
Second, there is a world of difference between people making a tragic mistake and a government behaving illiberally. Intentions matter. In the former, I can only guess the intention was to relieve young Noa’s suffering but the judgment was unequivocally wrong. In the latter, the intention is to restrict freedom of thought and behavior.
Finally, your examples of Lincoln during the civil war and the Allies during WWII, actually prove what many Americans understand about the current moment. That NOW is the time to raise the alarm on illiberalism, to turn it back, to snuff it out. Had slavery never been allowed to gain a foothold in America, Lincoln would have been unnecessary. Had Hitler and Nazism never been allowed to rise up in Germany, WWII could have been averted. It was our failure to stop illiberalism sooner that led to crisis.
7
I usually look forward to your erudite commentary. But this essay strikes me as a word salad straining to maintain conservative "cred." Are we not in a post everything age; where personality "trumps" intellect? "Conservatism" took the money train to loony-town leaving a mentally troubled reactionary in charge. Meanwhile "Liberalism" erects new blacklists or wrings its hands about what to do. Surely you can find better fuel for your analysis than a family tragedy in the Netherlands.
4
I await Mr. Douthat's comparable column psychoanalyzing a culture that not only tolerates but facilitates homicide by firearm on the grounds of freedom.
09:55 EDT, 6/09
31
1. History doesn't end. Of course there will be a post-liberalism. And you're right: we'd better reflect deeply on what it may look like, or else it may be imposed on us while we're not looking.
2. Speaking of which: Josh Hawley is a U.S. Senator. Mike Pence is Vice President of the United States. Ted Kaczynski is in prison for life without parole.
3. As you say, the post-liberalism of the left, if it exists, is unformed. It isn't Venezuela and at least hopes to be explicitly democratic: it says private, unaccountable corporate power shouldn't dominate over human beings.
We all know aspirations don't always come true! But in contrast to the right, your allegedly post-liberal left hasn't at all given up on democracy yet. At least so far, it wants more voters, more participation, fairer elections. Very un-Leninist!
In stark contrast, the right's post-liberalism is explicitly founded in philosophies we *have* seen before. As Steve Bannon knows quite well, it's grounded in Europe's far-right and fascist traditions.
We know *exactly* where that leads. To Francisco Franco and beyond; to mass death, to ruins. It doesn't make *anyone* great again.
Both post-liberalisms say there's more to the world than markets. But European fascists permitted very comfortable lives for compliant capitalists who listened when Der Führer told them what to do... as long as they weren't Jewish, or of non-confirming gender, or the state didn't find some other reason to murder them.
4
Life sure would be easier if one could just read a manual to learn how to operate one's emotions at birth.
5
Ross, I find your throwing around of political labels to comment on an unfortunate medical case in another country totally confusing. What are you trying to prove?
8
War, prison, death penalty, guns that can kill dozens in seconds, risking lives of women by controlling their decisions, locking kids in cages for no rational reason, allowing pharma to kill every day. Time to look in the geographical mirror.
8
Instead of decrying liberalism, Douthat ought to look in his own backyard at the state of U.S. conservatives today.? The fact that they’ve coalesced around a habitual liar who is taking a sledgehammer to our Democratic norms on a nearly daily basis is appalling...
3
Note that the current outrage is all over states which want to limit abortions and none (here) over New York allowing abortions on demand for 24 weeks.
We have replaced "is it humane?" by "Do liberals like it?"
2
Ross-getting a little thick and opaque there, are we, towards the end of this dissertation? Your outrage just might be appreciated a wee bit more if you explained yourself better. You know; be more Huxley like. Of course, that's why he was great.
4
I cannot believe her parents went along with this nonsense. There are treatments for depression and therefore she didn't need to take her own life. I don't think a 17 year old is a child, so she made the decision as an adult, but her relatives are all spineless if they went along with this foolish act. Where were all the fighters? Apparently people don't fight anything in this culture. It's a culture of enervation.
31
@benedict
A whole lot of assumptions and proclamations about a culture derived from one heart breaking story. If you are going to denounce a family you don't know (and even a whole culture) perhaps delve deeper into the backstory. You might find that it was full of fighting, that she was horribly traumatized and lived with unendurable pain, had tried suicide, been treated and it was time for mercy. To call her parents spineless without doing so just compounds their grief, laces her story with more hate and is an example of how so many prefer the pleasure of easy quick judgement to the work of compassionate investigation. Should they force feed her? She had made her choice, as young as she was. She had agency in the end. So should we all.
33
@benedict. This story is truly shocking though Mr. Douthat recounts only the end of it. This is also about the predation and rape of a child by adults, and other children, and how a young girl internalized it as shame. She was raped by classmates at age 11 and 12 and raped by two men at age 14 and did not let others know. Rape is trauma and negation of self at any age and the leading cause of PTSD. She found the strength to write a book, yet was unable to imagine transcending her experience. This story is tragic in every respect.
34
@Gowan McAvity No decent parent has a laissez-faire attitude toward their children. In life's school of war you need to fight, especially when the person is young and the illness is treatable. Would you let your child just step into the coffin foot by foot in such a manner? Absolute nonsense.
1
What does Douthat think they should have done for her?
What does his side advocate in this situation? What does he defend?
Nothing. This just attacks something that happened, and blames it on the other guy.
I much prefer people assert and defend what they themselves do believe, rather than set up straw men of what the other side did or would do wrong.
So what caring and concern does Douthat suggest?
What spending would he support for mental health care to get her over this?
It is just that she should have committed suicide without palliative care help? "Die, but leave the rest of us out of it?"
It is up to Douthat to say what he'd support here. He doesn't.
It is not up to me or others like me to assign a straw man to what he'd support, so as to attack that like he just did.
So what spending would he support? Who should spend it? What would have helped?
13
I would not support active euthanesia to kill a depressed person merely on his/her request. That is too defeatist a clinical attitude. All reasonable efforts should be made to pull this person out of the depression. Most depressions are self limiting. Time itself is a great healer. Supporting such a person, even for an extended time, is good and appropriate therapy.
Euthanesia for incurable and debilitating diseases which make a person's life miserable and painful and which make him/her feel a burden on society, and which cost enormous amounts of money and other resources, which the suffering person or the society may not have, is much more justifiable and worthy of consideration. It would offer a humane solution. The old idiom of “God giveth and God taketh” is too old fashioned and not a sound argument in these cases.
1
Doctors refused to allow electroshock therapy to a 17 year old girl who was mentally ill and not competent. But doctors were perfectly fine with her parents allowing this mentally ill child to kill herself by starvation. What have we become?
31
@Wesley Dodds She wasn't just depressed - she had anorexia nervosa, along with other psychiatric disorders. Eating disorders have staggeringly high mortality rates. As far as the efficacy of ECT for eating disorders, I found a 2009 case study from Finland where ECT was proclaimed as effective in the treatment of an anorexic young woman, although it described the course of treatment as also including a lot of talking therapies, and "[m]echanical restraints, nasogastric refeeding, and constant observation 24 hours a day were provided. She nevertheless managed to abuse herself by hysterical cutting and vomiting." Her IQ dropped from 116 to 102, although that could have been the result of long-term institutionalization and not just the ECT. But her Beck Depression Inventory scores improved! Given the prospect of being institutionalized for life, force fed on occasion, and having ECT, sometimes several times a week, I'm starting to see Noa's decision as rational.
12
Mercy killing is an age-old practice. Survivors of battlefield carnage used a dagger called explicitly the “misericorde” to do to their hopelessly wounded comrades-in-arms what they themselves would have wanted done to them in their situation.
There has also always been the problem of deciding at what point giving up trying to save a person becomes morally equivalent to actively causing him to die.
And it doesn’t help clarify the moral perplexities surrounding the idea of merciful death by calling it by the question-begging name “euthanasia.”
1
It is a rhetorical stretch to argue that the outrageous and horrifying abuse of the "right-to-die" we have just seen in the Netherlands is a logical extension of liberalism. Perhaps Mr. Douthat forgets that mass euthanasia of those "unfit for life" due to physical or mental disability was pioneered by right-wing authoritarians.
12
It would have been constructive if Mr. Douthat had concluded his commentary with a conservative (and supposedly superior) solution to this divisive problem. Perhaps because there is none?
8
The availability of guns in this country - a common tool of suicides that, when unsuccessful are often regretted seem to me a far more substantial concern than allowing a determined adult to die. It must have required quite substantial determination to starve oneself to death, more than slitting her wrists, nor is this a seductive way to die like shooting yourself. Nor is there evidence that mental health treatment was not offered during this period. Would it have been better to refuse this avenue likely resulting in more violent and prompt suicide later and alone?
4
Kurt Vonnegut predicted the practice of ethical suicide in several of his books and short stories. He missed on point in his prediction, however: the thought the suicide parlors would be Howard Johnson restaurants with purple roofs instead of their signature orange roofs... Howard Johnson's are long gone... but there ARE a number of empty fast food "stores" and department stores that might suffice...
2
Describing Lincoln as an “authoritarian” president serves neither his memory nor our history. He took actions permitted under the constitution during periods of civil insurrection. And if he were really an authoritarian, there would have been no general election in 1864.
12
If there is a choice between your brand of social structure and the liberal model, I'd rather go down for the count as a liberal. What you continually propose is at the very least suffocating and at its worse dystopian.
9
Dystopia is us already, Douthat. How many people live on the sidewalk in the Netherlands? We've been discussing the same problems for many years. No wonder people are wild.
7
Social dystopia, I suppose, would mean human misery and despair; and liberal dystopia a political correctedness where our speech would be controlled somehow, hence, indirectly our thoughts as well. But if you say 'liberalism' per se, I think it did free us in many respects from imposed rules denying our freedom to think, speak and act according to our needs and wishes, hoping there is an ethical or moral guidance, so that our freedom does not impinge on the freedom of others. Now, just briefly, you mentioned 'euthanasia', with an apparent negative connotation for not trying to help that young woman become free from depression or anxiety or whatever was in her mind to seek ending her life. Being in concurrence, that we ought to do whatever it takes to prevent somebody, anybody, from wanting to die prematurely, personally I would like to keep euthanasia as a choice if circumstances become unsustainable. Defining what this means right now is close to impossible, but still, knowing I am free to pursue it, while fully conscious, is a relief. And this is freedom, not license, nor shocking to contemplate.
3
"If Viktor Orban pushes a university out of Hungary, it’s the Crisis of the Liberal Order. If depressed people are euthanized in Belgium, it’s just … troubling".
I haven't noticed Victor Orban's actions getting a lot of publicity, but if the contrast is between the moral clarity of the responses in the two cases, then maybe that is because the Orban case is morally simple, whereas the appropriate response to a near-adult's wish to commit suicide is not morally simple.
7
allowing young people to place themselves 'in harm's way' by volunteering to engage in wars that are not declared and serve no national interest and which are not fought with the intention of winning is no better than allowing to commit suicide.
5
Anything, taken to the farthest extreme, can become evil. I see this column as taking a deep swipe at liberalism. In this case, a young girl was given permission to starve herself to death, because of liberalism. The other extreme, conservatism, would probably have force-fed her. Conservatism opts for ruling over people's bodies, as we see in the abortion debate, while liberalism seems to permit the killing of tiny fetuses. The question remains: who is in control of private individuals; should government rule over them?
2
"slavery was defeated by an authoritarian president,...not by proceduralism or constitutional debate."
No, slavery was ended by constitutional debate, culminating in passage of the 13th Amendment in 1865. The authoritarian president, in 1862, declared his "Emancipation Proclamation," but that was a wartime measure and only applied to territory still in rebellion against the federal government. If the war had ended by settlement in 1864, as advocated by the Democratic nominee, General McClelland, the chattel slaves liberated temporarily by Lincoln would have returned to their erstwhile masters.
8
At least in America suicides are typically done in private, shocking innocent family members, usually left with tragic memories and images of horror, depending on the method employed.
In America, we have outrage become numb about gun violence, child abuse, spousal abuse, rape, homicide, and a range of other violations of a human being's right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
It matters little to me whether one subscribes to conservatism or liberalism, past, present, or future -- our home-grown dystopia has enough misshapen features to occupy my anxiety without having to travel overseas for criticism.
5
I am aghast, Ross. I expect the rough-hewn right wingers to treat truth like an ingredient in a mixed drink, but I have always expected you to do the best you can reinterpreting reality to suit your worldview that includes a deity who is omnipotent but chooses to do nothing to stop evil. Sort of like the Netherlands, should we agree that euthanasia is evil.
Next, I was struck by your reimagining of the Civil War. If, indeed, the war was to free slaves, it broke from an authoritarian past to imagine a more egalitarian future. The President resorted to means that would appear to be necessary when your very city is under threat of attack. For all his swagger about being a war President, GWB never had to worry about swarms of dirty white supremacists infesting the Rose Garden.
Yes, William Lloyd Garrison invoked the almighty to drive home his point that slavery was an unmitigated evil. Remember, though, that in those days using the Lord's name in such a way served to emphasize the message. When born into a culture that insists that reality is malleable and continually imagines a supernatural thumb on every scale, simultaneously upgrading our self-image to "Deity-approved" while providing a stream of excuses for passivity in the face of evil, a person might adopt the argot.
Imagine, if you would, though, what Bill O'Reilly, had he the Fox soapbox in 1830, would have said about Mr. Garrison, a true threat to American values. Liberalism an impediment to progress, Ross? Please.
9
I don't remember Mr. Douthat, our ever reliable right winger who provides "fair and balanced " opinions, opining about the immorality of the 50 or so executions committed in American penitentiaries over the past five years. Shakespeare posed the question:"To be or not to be" and his honest response was that individual conscience and not the Catholic church "doth make cowards of us all". I would prefer that the 7 million hominids that walk this lonely planet decide for themselves whether they want "to be or not to be."
4
And then the Rapture will come and Jesus will return and all will be well with human civilization once again. Come on, Mr. Douthat, that suicidal teenager in Holland and what appears to have been the popular acceptance of her fate tell us virtually nothing about where society is at the present moment- any more than does the popular resentment over a video showing a huntress beaming at the body of a giraffe. Nationalist governments like those in Hungary, Italy and the U.S. constitute a clear and present danger for millions and millions of us. Isolated example of post-liberal extremism? Not so much.
comment submitted on 6/9 at 10:43 AM
10
If there had an article to be written on this tragic case, it should have been an article about the devastating consequences of child abuse and rape. The dystopia is not the decision to end a life. The dystopia is about children’s lives being broken in an irreversible way. Why irreversible? Because those kids never go back to a life without rape. It will be part of their life experience for the rest of their lives. Some of them succeed to reconstruct, others don’t.
Who are we to judge about this girl?
7
Why is it necessary to address every problem through the lens of right versus left ideology? Is this what the think tank industry has given us? I have no idea what it means to be conservative or liberal any more. When I ask people about their views on any issue, the responses are some combination of what someone like you would call conservative and progressive. Your approach, almost universally practiced by pundits like yourself, puts a pseudo-intellectual sheen on the emotional responses to sensationalized news that drives people into different political camps. It is harmful and frankly lazy. I can read this sort of boiler plate left versus right column every day in almost any paper and hear it constantly on television. I suspect you could do much better.
6
So many labels that, to my ears, have more than one meaning. Please define your terms.
2
Assisted suicide happens every day in the US. The assisting comes from gun manufacturers, gun dealers, and politicians who are okay with 20,000 gun suicides per year.
25
It's difficult for me to see in these columns how the bounds of "Liberalism" are anything other than what Ross wakes up feeling grumpy about on a given day.
Certainly in this supernova phase of our trajectory as a species there is much excess, grumpiness being no exception. It's the fertile ground in which opinion writers flourish. I prefer growing tomatoes. They occasion less argument in nearly all cases.
I will observe that it takes a truly generous amount of extrapolation to vault from the circumstances of one Dutch girl to "We're utterly hosed in the largest cultural sense possible." We may be. Nonetheless, any halfway decent word rider could have have travelled the same inferential distance and ended up in a variety of other territories. It's just Ross being Ross in truly liberal fashion. The poor Dutch girl's story, for Ross, is just a handy springboard for cannonballing into the kvetch pool like Bret or Squee heading for the beer cooler. The particulars of her story? Not so useful.
I find it ironic that the messy and difficult considerations of a human life in this case or in the cases of millions of women facing decisions about unwanted pregnancy matter so little to Ross, while their value for grinding the axe in the service of over-large conclusions seemingly has no bound.
I require no further lectures from Ross about the sanctity of life...much less about what "it" all means.
5
"Western nations are normalizing euthanasia for mental illness among otherwise healthy adults."
And where is the evidence for this claim? You yourself note that the lead story you start out with turned out to be false. I suspect that if there were any real evidence you would have started with that, not with a "story" that turned out to be false.
Maybe the reason that "the only overt outrage is on the religious right" is that only the religious right is overly concerned with fantasy.
The rest of this bizarre rant against "liberalism" is equally fantastic. There really is a climate change crisis--and it has already started, with drought and wild fires in the West, and floods and tornadoes in other parts of this country, not to mention devastating climate induced crises elsewhere in the world.
And the North fought the Civil War to restore the Union, not for religion or even to abolish slavery--that came later (1863). If it was a "religious war", that was only the viewpoint of the South.
12
Why must the media only sensationalize women who commit suicide, especially when they have to go all the way to Holland to find a pretty white woman to memorialize. 80% of suicides are men. Why are they ignored?
I think the difference is victimization. Women are allowed and encouraged to be victims. Men aren't. The media are just packed with stories of victimization of women. Women are allowed to think of themselves as victims and ask for help. Men aren't allowed to be victims and therefore cannot ask for help, even though they are just as victimized as women. Men’s only out is suicide. Women attempt suicide much more often than men, but this is just another example of women asking for help. Men don’t see a mere attempt as an option.
4
Whatever malignant cancers threaten liberalism won't be excised by oversimplifications of history. Reducing the the Civil War to a victory, "by an authoritarian president in a religious civil war," and attributing the demise of German fascism to a "reactionary imperialist" and a "revolutionary Bolshevik" ignores the context and complexity from which arise our greatest conflicts. Liberalism itself is a simplistic construct that constricts the mind more than it enlightens it. All of us are already both pre- and post-liberal. History moves on faster than we achieve the vocabulary to describe it. That's why we need the tools of science, history, philosophical inquiry, and reasoned discourse. More even than great men, these are foundation stones of civilization and our greatest armor against dystopian diseases.
5
Ross Douthat and his Conservative fellow travelers have a very interesting take on human freedom and the sanctity of the individual.
Their belief in the Freedom and Sanctity of Life requires woman to bear the children of their rapists, opposes all aid to families, send the children of the poor off to endless wars and insists that those with intractable mental and physical suffering continue to live in agony. That's Freedom!
But the problem, as always, is liberalism. And the solution, as always, praise for an 'authoritarian president', a 'reactionary imperialist' and a 'revolutionary bolshevick'.
How fortunate for Ross and the Rpublicans that they already have an an 'authoritarian president', a 'reactionary imperialist' and a 'revolutionary bolshevick' in the White House already.
Happy Days Ahead!
13
How disingenuous, Mr. Douthat! I could have sworn you were talking about the resurgence of autocracy instead of the demise of liberalism. According to my take on your thoughts, we should all just simply resign ourselves to the evil whims of those whose goal is to enslave us by dividing and conquering us so that they may reap the rewards of their ill gotten gains.
How humorously ironic that your comments fall a few days after the 75th anniversary of D-Day and the defeat of that very same system.
7
If Douthat is outraged at the Netherlands’ euthanasia laws (which he then bootstraps to a critique of liberalism), he might look closer to home where Americans die daily either from the State’s indifference to poverty and lack of access to medical care or from State-approved violence in the form of the NRA’s agenda that denies reasonable and constitutional regulation of guns.
10
Let's take our political fears and concerns one at a time.
For the moment, the only one worth worrying 24-hours-a-day-about is the mental case who currently resides in the White House.
7
I don't specifically recall you yelling fire in the theater, either, when Trump started separating immigrant families and caging the children.
But no doubt you had some heartfelt concerns.
Let's call it even.
8
Douthat asks, "are you shocked, reader...?"
Yes I am shocked that you would engage in a pathetic and perverse exercise, attempting to link liberalism to the tragic death of a mentally ill teenager. Liberalism is not the same as 'anything goes.' That ideology belongs to Libertarians who are just maladjusted Conservatives.
My guess is Douthat sees no contradiction in legislating his faith despite the Constitution's prohibition against establishing a national religion. Outlawing abortion - valuing an embryo over a person - while supporting the death penalty. Misinterpreting the Second Amendment to sacrifice lives on the alter of the NRA. Worshipping capitalism at the expense of 80 percent of the population.
These are but a few end results of conservatism. Thus, conservatism violates the Constitution, turns America into a Christian, serfdom police state: a dystopian world where authoritarians dictate their will upon the people.
17
American conservatism is home to bigotry, and authoritarianism. Goldwater's accept speech at the 1964 Republican Convention reject liberalism. Since that time Republic and and the right have been trying to create an oligarchy of the very rich and figure out how to keep the minorities at bay.
7
Serious flaws with liberalism? You bet.
But this column seems like another attempt by a conservative to impose some "balance" against the so-obvious awfulness of Trump and Trumpism, and against the resulting very sorry current state of conservatism.
I think Mr. Douthat is mostly trying to console himself with the thought that, while conservatism is so sick that it is rapidly approaching evil status, liberalism is terrible as well.
The Never Trumpers get lonely sometimes, and they really miss the comfort of the old conservative tribe. This results in many false equivalencies like this one, all of them born of desperation.
5
Years of sexual abuse and Rape, starting at age 11. Who would NOT be severely depressed ? Who among us are able to comprehend her suffering and unrelenting pain ? Not me. And not you. I commend her Parents for respecting her wishes, her human dignity and her choice. Not everything is about you OR your Church, Sir.
Seriously.
5
I read Mr. Douthat's column with interest most weeks. This one is a loser, as he goes from noting a suicide in the Netherlands to a complaint about liberal democracy. The argument doesn't hold up.
I live in a dystopia now. It's called the United States. Focus on that, Mr. Douthat.
8
Grow up. The rest of the world has no interest in subscribing to America’s ideas of puritanical “freedom”. As Wilson set out in his 14 points and FDR borrowed from them - self-determination. The people’s of those lands decide how they want to live. Stop exporting America’s version of liberalism as though it is an absolute. Especially when it is to illicit some kind of political reaction in America where Netherland morals and mores do not apply.
1
Just a tangential point about your opening vignette: this girl had an eating disorder. The mortality of eating disorders is high. "Standardized Mortality Ratio (SMR) is a ratio between the observed number of deaths in an study population and the number of deaths would be expected. SMR for Anorexia Nervosa is 5.86." (from https://anad.org/education-and-awareness/about-eating-disorders/eating-disorders-statistics/) Your cited link states that "her parents and doctors agreed not to force-feed her, offering her palliative care instead." If the treatment of eating disorders, "force-feed" equals tube feeds (and she is pictured with an NG tube in place); "palliative care" might mean drug treatment that might include trying somehow to get enough calories into her to keep her alive in the hope that her severe depression would turn around. SO this turns out to be a story that has absolutely nothing to do with euthanasia.
So I don't know about "liberals", but I personally will become outraged about rampant euthanasia when there is actual evidence that it is imminent. The same goes for rampant infanticide of normal third trimester fetuses and rampant murders of US citizens by illegal immigrants. Single anecdotes don't make it.
7
Allowing a depressed teenager to commit suicide is unwise or irresponsible, but it is not 'evil'. Throwing 20 million people off their healthcare coverage is evil. Separating children from parents is evil. Discriminating against LGBTQ people is evil. Conservatives will never seem to understand what is evil - it is actively hurting other people (usually the poor or those different from you)
218
@David Gold
To your examples I would add, preventing women from getting contraception and then complaining about abortion is evil.
35
"The working of its own principles" is code for someone who does not agree with a particular ideology, yet takes it to what he thinks is its ultimate conclusion, and then seeks to blame all those who do support parts of it for crimes against humanity.
The real world simply doesn't work the way a carefully-constructed New York Times column tries to imagine it does, and those who are deluded otherwise really need to pull themselves away from their computers and go for a walk.
1
I think this is the last column of Russ Douhat I'll read. What's the use? It's all about justifying his own belief system of received "wisdom" and not about trying to reduce suffering by using what is proven to work. Mark Twain said, "Faith is believing what you know ain't so." Mr. Douhat has no faith because he has no doubt about what he believes.
10
I disagree that American conservatism is not already post-liberal.
I have been fascinated recently by the absence in current conservative discourse of references to the Founding Fathers and political liberty as a fundamental conservative, indeed American, value. Not long ago the Right decked itself out as the Tea Party and wore tri-cornered hats at demonstrations. No more. I think the Right has already determined that the values they hold dear can no longer survive under our present system of government and given demographic trends. For the Right, I think, it is no longer about strategies to win in free and fair elections. It is about consolidation of power, and if it’s necessary to abandon the Constitution to get there, so be it.
I believe the far Left is not there yet but heading now in that direction. In their increasingly strident belief that one-size solutions fit all, I sense a real lack of concern for the respect of the rights of their opponents. For example, impose Medicare for All on everyone rather than simply creating a public option for those who want to buy into Medicare. From the viewpoint of safeguarding personal liberty, there is reason to fear any public policy that takes away choice from people. Yet the Left would appear to be there.
I personally think America’s experiment with liberal democracy has failed. The best we can hope for in the future is a hyper-powerful Gaullist style presidency that dispenses with checks and balances.
4
@Kinsale I get your point but there is a very real argument about what Medicare for All might look like. There is no consensus on this from the left. I’ve spent a decade in this industry and suggest one other thing about “choice,” in health care: you don’t have it. If you are employed and covered by employer provided insurance your choices are limited to the insurance companies they choose and the network of providers the contract with.
3
@Reese Thanks for your thoughtful comment. My fear is that even the limited choice you refer to in the private sector will vanish under Medicare for All. But as you say, this is not yet a done deal on the Left. That’s one reason I said the Left is not as far gone as the Right at the present moment. I think the strength of American higher education, for example, has been in its mix of public and private options. A plurality of options always protects against what Madison referred to as “crafty encroachments upon the public liberty.” JMTC...
I think most commentators miss the point of the article, a liberal government that can “accept” teenage euthanasia on procedural grounds loses moral authority in the eyes of many who are governed by it. This is just one example, but abortion laws especially comments from democratic leaders saying the mother and the doctor should decide if an “fetus” that has left the mother’s body should be allowed to live or not. Readers may feel comfort that these are exceptions to an otherwise liberal philosophy that gives freedom to individuals in sexuality ,end of life decisions , and providing a solid safety net for the poor and disadvantaged while trying to maintain the classical liberal freedoms of liberty, religion, and property. Indeed the comments of many readers comparing the US with Holland show that many are comfortable with this trade off.
However, a government that can condone evil outcomes is one that will , in time, be used to justify those outcomes for the good of society. It’s not a big leap to move from abortion to the Spartan practice of killing infants that were not healthy or strong (think of the current debate on what to do with a fetus that has Down’s syndrome marker). Nor is it a stretch to go from teenage euthanasia to “forced” hospice to those who healthcare costs are a burden to society.
The line between individual freedoms to choose and societal need to choose is blurring.
2
What about a conservative government which can ignore its schoolchildren being gunned down in their classrooms? Maybe Douthat and his merry band of conservative apologists, liars, and hypocrites might want to take that one on before their next random liberal-bashing.
2
As one who shares the critique of liberalism from the left (specifically ecojustice), I take seriously the problem of individualism run amok as well as corporations run amok.
But, as Douthat hints, the concepts of post-liberalism would be very different between right and left. Where the rightist conception might well be some version of theocracy, the left version might be a secular communitarianism. But then it faces the question how to confront the inevitable tyranny of the majority within such communities and preserve some sense of human rights?
There's not much room to compromise between the two visions. One can only imagine how the conflict would be resolved.
2
Mr. Douthat puts his finger on the root of the problem when he says: "A lot of this talk is overstated. Just as the argument about “socialism” among Democrats is more about whether to back Medicare for All than about whether to go #fullMarxist, many conservatives supposedly debating “post-liberalism” are really just debating the balance between libertarianism and economic populism, not preparing to give up on the Constitution."
Today both the Right and the Left fail to recognize the contradictions of their own visions of western liberalism. On the right are demands for exercising the awesome power of the sovereign state against all manner of foreign threats. How then do we expect to constrain this power from stifling the freedom of the citizens within the state. On the left, the power of the state is to be used aggressively to enhance the security and opportunity of the citizens. But, who can be trusted to be the Solomon in charge of a state in tasked with organizing of so much of our lives? Classical liberalism will survive if we educate ourselves about the limits of our own personal political inclinations.
1
@Capt. J Parker in a free democratic society the elected reps. would be that Solomon, but in the US the rise of the "Donor Class" has severed the link between the citizen and those elected to serve them. It is the 'Donor Class" who will determine the outcome of left vs. right, and so what serves them best?
4
@ALAN MILLMAN, Hillary was the beneficiary of the "Donor Class" much more so than Trump and she outspent Trump by miles. There is very little data to support the idea that the biggest campaign spenders always win no matter their political apeal. Claiming that left progressivism would work great "if only" the election process worked in "such and such" a manner is just another way of failing to admit the limits of your own political preferences.
1. Assisted suicide of a 17-year-old. Three conflicting principles perplex me.
(a) Sane adults should be allowed to do what they want with their lives, both in living and dying.
(b) There is a non-sexual question of age of consent here. Is a 17-year-old to be allowed to die?
For sexual activity I think the age should be 15 as it is in much of Europe, and, within the age cohort---similar ages--- in many states. To the contrary, assisted suicide is one action that might be banned until (ugh) age 21.
(c) I was depressed and suicidal for several decades. After a number of cycles of treatment, including some months of hospitalization, it finally left me. I have been at least "normally" happy for 35 years.
Perhaps she would have recovered at 20, or 30, or after 40 years. Should the state intervene on these grounds?
I am in favor of no restriction for the possibility of being cured. We have individual rights vs.the nanny state abomination ("this is for your own good").
2. The Left is not just whacko.
There is a socialism which is radical and minus the authoritarian philosophy (Plato, Marx, etc.) that have disgraced earlier forms: Libertarian socialism.
(a) Narrow wealth distribution via changes in the Form 1040 numbers. Aim for an after-tax difference of high and low income of, say 1:5 or 1:10. Not 1 to a million.
(b) Other than that do your non-criminal thing.
(c) Intervention for externalities, monopoly, disasters (eg, climate crisis). MAYBE.
4
This is a very confused column, because it does not define the term it uses throughout, "liberalism."
If Douthat means what most political philosophers mean by liberalism, he means an open society that protects the rights to free speech, religion, due process, etc.
From which it would follow that "post-liberalism" would be a society that, for whatever reason and in whatever direction, fails to do so. In which case, regardless of whether progressives or conservatives are then in charge, it would be a tyrannical society, and the only question would be: how tyrannical has it become?
26
After reading many of the comments, I tend to agree that Douthat seems to have latched onto this death as a way to make his own point about liberalism (using his own definition).
Also I agree with those who feel that we still have a pretty good nation here.
And that is coming from someone who was chased into the Navy by the Vietnam war when our current president did a 'cut and run' claiming bone spurs.
While I like the comparison one person made about the plans put forth by the Dems versus the lack of plans by the the Conservatives. But that could be that the status quo is the Conservative plan.
I do think this status quo will be the death of our planet, but as someone noted, its not my problem. However, I do have hope that someone in the future will come up with a solution. (I will vote for a carbon tax and dividend plan.)
One last thought. Mr Douthat, do you read these comments and what are your responses?
12
It might help in the reception of the arguments in this column to clarify that "post-liberal" encompasses a wide range of possibilities for social and political organization, at least some of which include a robust conception of human rights and democratic participation in governance. The difference lies in degrees of moral "thickness": liberalism is morally thin, requiring only consent to a minimal set of procedural rules and negative rights; (small-r) republicanism (e.g., that of Rousseau) is morally tick, requiring a broad consensus on a more substantive vision of what constitutes a good human life in the world; there are many possibilities in between.
In short, "post-liberal" need not mean "anti-democratic", though a post- (or pre-)liberal democracy would require something more than mere consent to a minimal framework of rights and procedures.
5
This entire column is predicated on the judgment that the decision made by this girl and her family and doctors is "evil". If it is "evil", then the argument holds together. If not, however, then it doesn't. Is abortion "evil"? Allowing people to own semi-automatic machine guns, even if it results in school shootings?
From my own moral sensibility, I don't see this as evil, but I see it as sad - at the level of the individual decision. What I see as "evil" is the fact that a 17-year-old can think her life so meaningless that ending it is her best option. In this regard, I agree with Douthat. Liberalism has failed. But how could it not? Liberalism, like feudal structures and other authoritarianism, is at its core meant to unite the upper and middle classes against the poor to continue the kleptocracy that is at the heart of all civilizations - that is the organized theft of wealth from the poor to allow for rich. In the past, religion or violence was used to placate the poor and get them to go along.
Perhaps its time to stop debating what is good and evil, and change the material conditions that create hopelessness and anxiety, which in turn create what we might consider evil. We live in a post-industrial era; its time to create a post-industrial economic model that allows for human flourishing. Simply, the economy must serve the needs of the people, not the other way around.
19
Don’t most 17 year olds feel that way?
@Bandos: The sheer number of people dilutes the value of the Earth.
The column seems to imply that political liberalism is merely a set of procedures. But is this right? American constitutional procedures were designed to produce outcomes that were consistent with a way of life. It didn't work the first time around, "and the war came." Procedures aren't working well now, either. Political liberalism is being tried again because we don't agree on the range of acceptable outcomes.
3
How about a political party that wants to strip health care protections from its citizens?
37
Do you mean the ones that we’ve had for nine years, when we didn’t have health care rights for 230 years.
With all respect, you should not be writing on euthanasia in the Netherlands without visiting that nation and spending a few weeks to talk to about 50 different people about toleration of suicide, medically assisted suicide, freedom, liberty, autonomy, human dignity and acceptance of the choices of others.
What I learned is that the Dutch have strong views on freedom, liberty, autonomy, human dignity and acceptance of the choices of others. You and I and many other Americans might disagree with those views. It is how their society operates. Using the incident as a starting point for an essay disrespects the Dutch.
86
@Brad: With all respect for your declared respect for Douthat, I think you’re rather disrespecting him by assuming he doesn’t know enough about the views of people of the Netherlands to talk about them.
@Brad: Respect for personal privacy and choice is ingrained in the Dutch perspective. My father's parents were Dutch immigrants.
3
'After Many a Summer Dies The Swan', wrote Huxley, in his portrayal of an America, where black people serve the country, and its landscape is filled with beautiful ornate children's cemeteries. The ruler in his isolated castle remains detached and in eternal pursuit of youth.
It might be right, if Mr. Douthat were to tend to his own thorny Country side, filled with nettles and weeds where lies a serpent on a rock, before looking at the young green sprigs and tender rose petals, growing in the mist of this new century.
'One cannot see the modern world as it is unless one recognizes the overwhelming strength of patriotism, national loyalty. Christianity and international socialism are as weak as straw without it', so wrote Orwell in one of his essays, and my thoughts are with this young girl where the lines of T.S. Eliot come to mind:
"Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter,
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end which is always present".
Cast aside Fear, Mr. Douthat, and invite your readership to go forth in the day of the light, as written in The Book of The Dead, by the ancient civilization of Egyptians
13
Unfortunately the alternative, forced hospitalization and forced treatment is also no panacea. Read Elliot Valenstein's "Great and Desperate Cures: The Rise and Decline of Psychosurgery and Other Radical Treatments for Mental Illness", or Mary de Young's "Madness : an American history of mental illness and its treatment" as cautionary tales.
21
I recall columns by Mr. Douthat which mocked concerns that we were moving toward a Handmaid's Tale world where evangelical men ruled over the self ownership of women's bodies. Ross said that our president was too "sybaritic".Now as we watch Southern legislatures that are made up overwhelmingly of men who are evangelical I don't hear him raising this point as often. Rather what we hear in this column should inspire all readers with fear. Most Americans have little understanding of the Liberalism of FDR and LBJ as opposed to the liberalism that he is questioning in this essay. What Ross is suggesting is that our Constitution, that any form of democratic republic, might not be entitled to impose laws on the authoritarian religous minorities . His polite style & deep sincerity should not blind us to the radicalism of what he is proposing. When he argues that Christians & Muslims might have no duty of political loyalty to a world such as he mischaracterises from the pages of Huxley he is actually proposing that they might have the right to impose theocratic laws upon the lives of those who do not share their theology. The new generation of anti abortion laws are not laws that give the fetus a right to life, rather they claim that the state has an interest that reaches into the bodies of every woman. As sad as the death of the Dutch young woman is, it is quite unlikely that this nation with it's history wants that RC Church or it's crusaders like RD to rule their families.
81
@Greg Jones: The US founders agreed to handle anyone's claims to know what any God thinks about anything as a fantasy that cannot be respected in legislation, in the very first clause added to the US Constitution by amendment.
I think it is a good prescription for public mental health.
4
@Steve Bolger
Yes, liberalism understands that religion cannot be used for the basis of political argument, or hence to write legislation, because logical arguments can only be built on common assumptions.
People sitting next to each other in the same church often have different assumptions about morality.
The Constitution lays out the assumptions that we are all supposed to start from when arguing over legislation, but the right keeps rejecting those assumptions, because they reject the Constitution.
The right isn't post-liberalism. It's pre-liberalism. It it's against the Enlightenment and the Constitution and calls our government "the enemy."
4
"It remains shocking that a young woman’s parents and doctors would give up on treating her at seventeen and let her kill herself. And it remains shocking that Western nations are normalizing euthanasia for mental illness among otherwise healthy adults." You are engaging in hyperbole and making a lot of assumptions. Because this young woman died because she refused to eat and drink doesn't mean her parents and doctors gave up on her. Anorexia is a tragic disease and there is a literature on the treatment challenges, and in spite of parents' and doctors' best efforts, patients die. And to even remotely equate what happened in this case with euthanasia is preposterous.
81
@sheltow points out the absurdity of conflating a complex medical condition with political ideology. Politics does not belong in the treatment room. The decisions made in and around treatment and the specifics of clinical decision making should remain in the domain of the medical profession bracketed by laws that reflect social norms, not the other way around where laws are passed in response to medical procedures and or treatments. Every case is unique and involves complex specificities that cannot be legislated. It is the essence of professionalism that patient autonomy and welfare are respected, something that cannot be legislated case by case.
37
@sheltow Hyperbole is Douthat's stock in trade. So is partisan muckraking.
8
A suicide can be a tragedy or it can be an assertion of one's will-- it depends.
And it is in that 'depends' where liberals and conservatives diverge.
While conservative dogma asserts the primacy of the individual, conservative practice does not. Common conservative practice asserts the primacy of the state in many personal decisions. Liberals prefer to leave these personal decisions to the person who is affected.
The suicide of this child is tragic. However we don't know the circumstances and probably never will. For those reasons, I will not ex post facto, deconstruct and condemn the decision nor will I excoriate the parents.
There are many things that the machinery of state can not understand--abortion and suicide being primary examples. Accordingly, under most circumstances the machinery of state should not be involved.
44
@LKF: Technology only makes the lack of privacy in a village global.
8
I am horrified by the euthanasia of that child but I am also horrified by the rate of the suicide in the US. We Americans unfortunately kill ourselves without the help of the State at a much higher rate than Luxembourg's suicide rate. And wealthy countries have a much higher suicide rate than poor ones.
6
@Laura Giles: Wealth defers death, which means one has more time to think about it. Poverty has more sudden death.
4
A tragic story, but one that troubles me only because it's sad to see a young woman so emotionally distraught that she prefers death to life.
As far as the parents' and doctors' decision to allow the young woman to do what she wishes, that doesn't trouble me. In these difficult situations we need to balance the right of individuals to have control over their own bodies with our desire to protect lives. "Judge not, lest ye be judged" is the best standard to apply. Who am I do say whether the parents and doctors were right or wrong in this case? They were there, I was not. They know the girl, I do not. Even if they made the wrong decision, there was no easy right answer, so benefit of the doubt must be given.
No different, I'd add, in the case of abortion. Those closest to the situation should be granted significant latitude to judge the best course of action. Lawyers and government officials should be involved only when there's clear reason to believe that the person making the abortion or euthanasia decision is abusive.
As far as the collapse of the liberal (neoliberal) order—well, yes. It's been highly successful in many ways, but increasingly it is leading us to a world of vast economic inequities, persistent financial insecurity, the disintegration of communities, and an environmental catastrophe. One hopes democracy can survive such a threat, but it will take a world more open to global, collectivist solutions. Otherwise, we'll retreat to authoritarian nationalism.
25
@617to416 This is the root of the problem. This was a mentally ill minor. Not a "young woman." Under our shared human rights and laws of democratic nations, a mentally ill minor must be entitled to some protection of her life and medical condition, from those who would allow a non-competent minor to kill themselves. If we can't agree that even these level of vulnerable individuals don't deserve protection, what type of a world are we?
4
@Wesley Dodds
Again, I don't know the young woman. But reading more about her, she had already published a book on the trauma she experienced being sexually abused at 11 and raped at 14. She had written and spoken extensively about her desire to die to relieve her suffering. She applied for and was denied euthanasia, but then decided to commit suicide by refusing food and fluids. Honestly, this seems to be what she wanted to do with her life. It was a cause she was willing to die for. If I were her parent, I'm not sure I would have stopped her either. If death made her more happy than life, I'd choose her happiness. In my value system being happy is more important than life itself. Others may have different values. But my point is who should judge what's right in these deeply personal issues? The affected individuals or lawyers and the government? I would leave it to the individuals.
14
@617to416: Here in the US, many people think forcing a child to bear a rapist's child should be public policy. What kind of world is this?
7
Otherwise healthy?
Is that how you see mental illness Ross?
And because this young woman was in so much pain and grief, you cannot grasp why she would want to die or why no one stopped her and because of this, we are sliding into some kind of dystopia?
Here is another thought Ross.
I suffer from bi-polar disorder. It is a ruthless, amoral disease that takes no prisoners. I was also abused (both physical and mental) as a child and still have physical scars that I cannot run away from.
I have taken every combination of drugs and unfortunately, none of them worked.
I have also been through every kind of therapy. I am still in therapy and have been, on and off, for decades. I call it a reality check.
Lately, I have been trying to push for alternative treatments like ECT or ketamine, but there is resistance in terms of coverage and I cannot afford these treatments without that coverage.
I would not wish my life on anyone and diseases like bi-polar and severe depression are indeed fatal Ross.
They effect your ability to work.
Relationships tend to be dysfunctional.
If the medical community had effective treatments for all kinds of mental illness, then that would be one thing Ross, but that is not the reality.
Why condemn a person to a lifetime of mental anguish and grief if you do not have all the answers?
Until you do, then euthanasia should be an option for those like myself and this young woman. We have suffered enough.
56
@ThinkingIsAGift This was a MINOR. A child. If we can't protect a child's health and right to life, whose health and right to life will we protect?
1
@ThinkingIsAGift
I am so very sorry for your anguish. I understand that I do not and can not understand it. I hope that we as a nation can work to support in meaningful ways people who suffer so. I have no judgement for what happened to the girl and her family. I do have great sadness that apparently there wasn't any meaningful help for her beyond a comfortable ending.
1
@Wesley Dodds
You obviously do not want to grasp or understand the limitations of treatment in relation to mental illness.
Nor does Ross.
Nor do either of you grasp the sense of hopelessness one will end up feeling when you have tried everything, then end up blaming yourself because of these limitations.
Perhaps 40% of the US population derive some kind of benefit from drug treatment and some even live with side effects, which tells you how desperate they are to rid themselves of these out of control emotions.
What about the remaining 60%?
What happens to them, especially those whose illness is severe and profoundly difficult to co-exist with?
What are you going to do?
Warehouse all of us because of your definition of a right to life?
And how you protecting those who suffer like this?
Whom are you protecting them from?
Themselves?
You?
One can debate if her traumas associated with sexual assault were the prime motivator or she already had these proclivities and the traumas became the trigger.
Then again, either way, it will not change the outcome.
Her illness was clearly resistant to treatment and she wanted her suffering to end.
She wanted it so badly that she starved herself to death.
What more do you need to understand?
5
I prefer liberalism and its idea that people should "live free or die". But freedom isn't just a political concept.
Freedom includes the freedom to accept, as a rational human being, wether life is worth living with a certain disability, such as untreatable depression or a physical disability. That many vary by the individual, a professor who likes to sit and read may not be as devastated by sudden paralysis as an olympic runner. We should make every effort to help people adapt and find new meaning, but accept that some may find it's not enough to enjoy a free, self actualized life and wish to depart this world.
Compare that to the medieval concept of suicide, where your body and soul belonged to god, and suicide was such a horrible sin that you couldn't be given a christian burial, no matter how horrible your condition in life was.
25
I don't know if I'm Liberal in the sense that you use the term, because I find your language convoluted. But I can say this: basing governance on religious beliefs scares me, because religious beliefs do not have to be defended; they just are. Subject to interpretation perhaps, but deriving their authority from the divine.
57
@AIR But when nine people in Washington make decisions which are immune from the power of the people, their decisions might not be "religious" but they undermine liberty in an important way.
23
At least those nine people have a logic guide, and law, not blind faith to support their decisions. One hoped, until recently, that such blind religious belief would not become the deciding factor for those nine. Civilization requires some compromise. Even a stop sign is a compromise for the greater good. Forcing people to obey a religion not their own is not a compromise, but an abuse. That is not equal to upholding the need for a stop sign.
22
@Ludwig: The Supreme Court toys with the meanings of word and phrases. It dances around "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" and it refuses to interpret "free exercise" as "strictly voluntary".
4
I think any post-liberalism will be rooted in developments in neuroscience. Liberalism is based on the principle of utilitarianism, the greatest good for the greatest number. In a world where the mental states of others are fundamentally unknowable, a corollary of utilitarianism is that people should have the maximum freedom to do what they want unless they hurt others, because they know what makes them happy better than the government or other people. However, if it becomes possible to know (and manipulate) others’ mental states, then you could have a situation where personal freedom no longer maximizes utility. But it seems that the policy implication of this is that a post-liberal order will resemble Brave New World, where people are manipulated into happiness. From the perspective of our pro-personal freedom values, that seems dystopian, though it’s questionable whether people living in such a society who don’t share the personal freedom value would find it dystopian.
Also, one should not confuse anecdotes and data. The Netherlands’ overall suicide rate remains well below that of the United States.
23
@Aoy. Interesting theory but technological solutions always come with their own downsides. It is just the way reality lays itself out. Try and think of any technology that hasn't had a downside. The internet is one of the biggest polluters because of the energy it requires. And its creators in Silicon Valley won't let their own children engage with it because they realize its addictive tendencies that create short attention spans, etc. As someone very familiar with the medical field, every medical advance comes with side effects -- many of them not small.
7
@Aoy: I don't see the point of making machines to feel happiness for me.
@Aoy
Interesting take. We may call this neuroscience-aided, post-liberal, maximum happiness model precision utilitarianism.
Liberalism carries no baggage of unprovable beliefs that must be held to avoid post-mortal punishments.
Ross sees fear of post-mortal punishment as an essential tool to control behavior.
We are not on the same planet.
76
@Steve Bolger
If we collectively did not believe in "post-mortal punishments", why would we care about climate change? It is not going to affect today's adults all that much compared to the cost of preventing it, and probably not even today's children or their children. They will be free to move to a new city or state if they are in a bad location and wealthy enough to do so if we abandon most of our environmental regulations now.
If that reasoning sounds selfish or immoral, why does it sound that way?
What happens to our great-grand-children and their children matters to a lot of people. The "campsite rule" is all the post-mortal incentive needed.
7
How do you equate religious beliefs based on unchallenged faith, to the science of climate change?
6
@P Maris
The assertion in the original post is that religious and the science-based are so different that their is a gap that cannot be bridged.
Much of our world view can be quantified in the discount rate that we use. The higher the rate, the more short-term focused, and the lower the rate, the longer term view. Whether it is based on science or religion, long-term thinkers will tend to think similarly, and short-term thinkers will tend to disagree with them more than they disagree among themselves (at least once they also agree to use game theory in their thinking and are working with the same information).
Trump and other criminals are cartoon-like extreme short-term thinkers. We see it in the focus on the news cycle and in climate models that use crazy discount rates or time cutoffs. It is also apparent in the constant lying and monetizing of political office.
If one cares about the future of human society - issues such as the health of the planet, extinctions, air & water quality, the rule of law, freedoms of thought and expression, advancing our knowledge - one is almost inevitably taking actions based on caring what happens after one is certain to be dead. People who sincerely believe in an afterlife or divine judgement are also likely to act this way when the stakes are high.
For long-term thinkers to win politically, we have to recognize who are our allies are and who is just looking to benefit from our good intentions.
Liberal Democracy is a very recent experiment. It is only within the last 100 years that developed nations such as the US and the UK have allowed any citizens except male white men of property to vote. What was previously called “Democracy” was rally a government by the elite for the elite.
The essential concepts behind modern Liberal Democracy of the last 100 years are that people as a whole have the right to determine their own fate, and that they, as a group, will be wiser than the average individual and thus wise governing decisions will be made.
The Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Trump, and Brexit, as well as numerous other examples in such countries as Brazil, Hungry and Israel seem to prove otherwise.
I have no idea what the solution to this major problem for modern civilization is but not to recognize it as a problem is a huge mistake.
13
@Hubert Nash: Democracy is a bet than an educated public can make the right choices.
2
I think a useful measuring stick for small "l" "liberalism" of any flavor is how political enemies are treated.
Part of the American formula for this is the sense that there is always somewhere new to move to or expand to within the USA. As people, especially people tied to specific (often far less small "l" liberal) locations lose that sense, the world increasingly becomes viewed as a zero-sum game. This is especially likely when economic growth slows below a point where it cannot overcome the effects of wealth concentration.
The rule on the federal funding of abortion is an example of such a compromise - one side has lost, but the world can function without completely trampling on those that lost. The problem is the anti-abortion states now sense they might have won and have abandoned that spirit and minimize abortion with no thought to their political opponents. It seems this recognition of compromise needs both sides to participate to survive in the long term.
6
@Alan: Liberals do not bring guns to negotiations.
3
In iconic social welfare liberal Sweden it is illegal for any health care professional to participate in euthanasia even if requested by a suffering patient. They may only give palliative care or "pull the plug" if the patient so wishes. Amongst "liberal" European countries many feel that Belgium and Switzerland are Libertarian outliers, making the role of health care providers more problematic for everyone.
6
@Timothy Platt: My father starved himself to death. It was the last tough thing he did.
2
The story of the complicity of medicine and law in this child's suicide is in fact truly horrifying. It is the "culture of death" in action. I sometimes don't agree with Mr. Douthat, but I am asking myself how anybody could disagree with this statement.
1
@David A. Lee. Her death is horrifying, but we need to be honest that we live in a “culture of death” in the US when mass shootings of school children and adults at work is considered inevitable collateral damage of the NRA’s gun culture. Many, many more Americans, especially children, die every day due to guns than in any other advanced country. That is appalling.
29
@J. Well, I have never made any secret of my belief that every semi-automatic weapon of any kind ought to be banned in the U.S., and I have said so in newspapers in gun country where it matters. I guess I don't comprehend why I can't hate gun violence, abortion and euthanasia in the same brain and heart. It is political fools on the wrong sides of these issues who ask me to divide my mind and heart on such things, and that's something I'm just not going to do.
2
Conservatives own the "Culture of Death" - wars, guns, lack of healthcare. I don't see how we can ignore this.
2
It's pretty interesting to me how often liberal or progressive commentators talk about liberal and progressive ideas and policies and how often conservative commentators talk about those liberals (or those liberal nations or the liberal order) and their ideas and policies. There are dozens of progressive candidates churning out hundreds of pages of policy proposals and ideas (ok, most are from Elizabeth Warren, but the others are trying to keep up) and not one nationally known conservative laying out a constellation of policy ideas for the future. instead of Euthanasia in the Netherlands, how about the rate of suicides and accidental deaths in this country and the role of gun ownership on those numbers? How about republican majorities that prevent NIH research on gun deaths? How about a republican getting outrages about and tackling ACTUAL REAL problems like global warming and drought in Central America? Why is that not a thing?
157
@James Because the conservatives have had nothing to say since 1980. Their intelllectual wing died long ago. Now they only react and point.
8
@James Also how about Republican efforts to actually deprive citizens of healthcare?
11
Right on! Freedom doesn't mix that well with, for example, inequality, antibiotic anarchy, climate change, or the looming singularity. If we want to save freedom, we had better get to work.
5
Yes! We have to destroy freedom to save freedom! Right on!
1
Any systems that evolved with or were selected by fossil capitalism should be questioned. That some still extol it as an end in itself, as a continuing and domineering world view, should bring such massive critique. Seeing it in such a dystopian way does not mean I am left or right, but just ecological, which may just be too much of a subversive threat to the fossil capital way -- the "big" standard that way too many believe the world should stay on.
2
@vole: Nature does not deliberately conduct eugenics.
How much of the "crisis" narrative that leads people to think the liberal order is failing - like parents giving up on suicidal child, or police shootings of innocent people - are marginal situations that are amplified by the internet, as opposed to regular occurrences?
They are like plane crashes, newsworthy because they *aren't* frequent.
Maybe I am insulated by privilege. But it seems that life hums along pretty much as it always has. People still get married, kids go to school and soccer and ballet, families gather for holidays, people die, the cycle repeats. The poor are still poor and bear the brunt of society's ups and downs, as they always have, the rich are still rich, the middle still works hard and for the most part, does more or less fine.
The world could certainly be improved, but I don't see "crisis" in my day to day life. I see normal, mostly two parent families going about normal life. Statistically, crime is down. Divorce rates are down, marriage is delayed but healthy, at least among the college educated (and increasingly secular). Unemployment is low. Wages are rising. Immigrants are assimilating. Many social pathologies have improved drastically in the last 30 years. Life is better than ever for women. There are pockets of problems, but there have always been social problems.
I can't help but wonder what agenda those on the left and right who push a constant narrative of CRISIS! have.
There is power to be found in exploiting crisis.
22
There isn no such thing as a "perfect" approach to human governance. Liberal and conservative are terms that are so squishy that they have become nearly meaningless. I am a liberal because I think it is important for humanity to keep looking for new ways to solve the very real problems of the world. Conservative organizations fail in shocking ways as well. Consider the Catholic Church. The response to failure is critically important.
15
I have been reading the comments and I am wondering if the commenters so far have missed the point. I am of the impression that Douthat is writing about liberal democracy vs. illiberal (authoritarian) democracy, not the usual conservative vs. liberal. If I am wrong, tell me so and why.
3
@Charles E
I think you are right but I believe he is directing towards both scenarios as his columns often imply. Seems to me that Lincoln, Churchill, and Stalin have some differences among them.
5
"All of which hints that a genuinely post-liberal politics might, indeed, someday be required — to save liberal civilization from dystopia or disaster."
Which post-liberal system are you advocating for, Mr. Douthat? Benign dictatorship? Authoritarian oligarchy?
The truth is that liberal government - small "l" people - is messy and difficult and can result in both bad outcomes and good. But authoritarianism, if we look around the world today for examples, usually is based on corruption and abuse of power that injures citizens to enrich the ruling class.
Liberalism - small "l" - is the winner every time, even if it makes mistakes, as one can argue is demonstrated by the death of the brutally depressed Dutch teen.
When people talk about increasing central authority while decreasing liberal freedoms for the benefit of civilization, they have a picture of the type of leader they'd imagine running the show. I see Obama - smarter than most of us, caring, pragmatic and absolutely anathema to the voters who'd prefer Trump, whom I view as hollow, narcissistic, unable to comprehend complex situations, uncaring of others, fast to accept the last notion presented to him, bombastic, undisciplined and greedy.
Which post-liberal leader are we looking for?
I'll stick with trying to rectify our mistakes through liberal democracy, with its messy freedoms and responsibilities.
51
@Cathy
I thought this too! I really want him to answer what the alternative plan would be moving forward.
1
we are all spinning listlessly, and civilization, especially Western Civilization - for better AND for worse - has fallen victim to the false anchor to our mortality, both false anchoring of and to colonialism, slavery, war, and convenient morality.
Here, I think Mr. Douthat searchingly illustrates that these reference points no longer sustain, yet both conservativism and liberalism try to resist the flailing while progressivism tries optimistically to revamp that void.
4
When any journalist, educator and or politician discuss either side of any ideological argument, there is one reference seldom brought up into the conversation, which might be taken as a given, conveyed as a vague gesture, or even perhaps a deliberate oversight.
Information is too often forgotten as a “product” that the reader, listener or the general public digests, which brings into question if there should be a legal obligation by the presenter to expose any disclaimers?
As consumers that in most cases the products/services we purchase usually there is some form of “disclaimer” on the limitations and expectations, yet when a person in any other these fields has a public dialogue on a social issue, be it to a target audience or the general public, should there be a form of consumer protection in place?
Since Congress has taken on the social media giants about privacy rights, fake news, and the potential monopolies they pose are being brought into question for consumer protections, should journalists, educators or for that matter, any public speaker be held to a similar standard?
Information is power, which the presentation of information by any public figure should include any such disclaimers, such as what personal stake they may have to substantiate or argue against the pros and cons of their stance to enlighten and better serve their audience. Many will argue this maybe a violation of the 1st Amendment, however this does not protect the public from propaganda.
1
Describing the American Civil War as "...a religious civil war..." is disingenuous.The war was only religious in that both combatants believed God was on their side. You would search long and hard to find a war where this wasn't so, excepting governments that were officially atheist such as the USSR, China, Cuba, etc. Even then, I expect every soldier going in harm's way prayed for the protection of a God who believed in their cause.
42
Liberalism is an exercise in good faith and forward looking, aka--progressive,. It requires both (all) sides to trust that the other side is acting honestly--aka good faith.
Conservatism was also about good faith, but it is backward looking. Its good faith got lost in its false belief in its own omniscience. Its faith became directed towards itself rather than the country it serves. It now--oxymoronically, pointing to religion's salvation in the afterlife not during-life--assumes the past is where salvation lies.
When they clash, liberalism--still operating in the good faith of reason not in the blind faith of Believers--falls. This forces liberalism to die for its cause or to be guilty of the same non-reasoned, unreasonable tactics as conservatives and that is we find ourselves in this culture war of faiths.
10
My guess is most readers will miss Ross' point about how the Left views classic liberalism as a hindrance to something like fighting climate change. Calls for packing the Supreme Court, getting rid of the Electoral College, eliminating the Senate and a host of future mandates on everything we eat, drink or even read all derive from a frustration that traditional liberal democracy does not work. The oddity is that for all the complaints about Trump, the desire to control and mandate citizens lives on the Left all emanate from a basic conclusion that liberal democracy allows too many people to stand in the way of what they think is progress.
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@Chris
Interesting and thoughtful comment that I believe hits on important criticisms of so called liberal thought. I say so called because the term is thrown around without clear definition. I always read Ross Douthat's column's because I usually disagree with him but there is always a salient point. It's usually hard to find and this one is more so than usual. It is often obscured by the implication that religious (specifically Roman Catholic) authoritarianism is the basis of a just society and that the First Amendment protects that.
In this column I see, illustrated to a degree by the viewpoints above, is the fractionated and at the same time all-or-nothing approach of the Democratic activists calling for impossible and wrong changes that will offend almost half the country rather than a cohesive group of of viewpoints that can get the population and the voters behind them. It is indeed a challenge to the Democrats who must recognize that the the "country belongs to us, might makes right, individualism, originalist" appeals to many when they don't see anything from the other side, that says we know better than you, I want to take away the Electoral College which just proved its worth, "coastal elites".
WE can't double down on that attitude but must show that we believe in free markets, self-governing allies(imperfect as they are) and military strength but used to foster our political goals. That the involvement of all political stripes makes our democracy stronger.
How many fatalities are we talking about when discussing this euthanasia issue compared to say the results of American gun violence, or an unnecessary military intervention?
Yes, the ethics of suicide are interesting and worthy of discussion, but I don't believe Douthat is realistically capturing the liberal ethos by posting a picture of a beautiful young woman and implying that liberal values allowed her to die.
Certainly, most liberal parents I know would likely have forced a tube into her stomach to save her life while hoping for a medical cure for her depression.
A more important discussion may be why so many human beings are falling victim to clinical depression. I seriously doubt the answer will be found in our politics, liberal or conservative.
However, the rates of suicide go down at times when human beings are more focused on shear survival, so perhaps the liberal attempt to make life less a struggle for the majority will contain some collateral damage of more suicides as people's focus turns away from the desperation of making rent and health care payments.
The war against the rapacity of American capitalism will have its collateral damage as all wars do. For some, desperation to survive is a cure for depression. Most of us could benefit with a little more peace and contentment in our lives, however.
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Reading the most popular comments, it is obvious that many readers do not understand what Douthat means by "liberalism." He is referring to a political philosophy first clearly articulated by the Whigs (read some history, please, just don't google it), based on free trade, free markets, and limited governmental intervention in the economy, as well as rule of law. Douthat is not writing about Ted Kennedy and Elizabeth Warren.
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@Mark Nuckols
You appear to be well informed. And I agree with your concern that people talk past each other because language can confuse more than clarify. Definitions for terms is critical but rarely given. But if liberal democracy, as you define it, is so perfect, then why is it the host for the capitalistic system which, while producing great wealth for some, is a cancer on the long term viability of life on this planet? Capitalism is a model - a set of beliefs - it shouldn't be blindly accepted as God's final gift to mankind. Its lack of concern for sustainability is it's inherent flaw.
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A legal and political system - liberal democracy - which has brought forth peace and prosperity unprecedented in human history is fatally flawed because of a few dozen state-assisted suicides in a handful of small countries in Europe? Listen up, people, there is no alternative, unless you're willing to endure dramatically falling living standards, civil conflict, and war of all against all.
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"On right and left, it has become easier to imagine ways the liberal order might deserve to fall, because of evils generated from within itself."
I'd love to see a column by Ross Douthat that discusses conservatism before and after Trump. He's fixated by the bashing of the "liberal order," when liberalism hasn't held much sway in this century.
Aside from healthcare, President Obama wasn't able to do much of anything to pursue liberal policies that actually lift up poor and working class families. He was too busy containing the fallout of Republican greed from the toxic mortgage crisis.
The last significant liberal government was that of Bill Clinton, and even there, for many, he didn't go far enough.
For me, the questions Ross should ponder are these: Why did the GOP decide to turn the presidency into a cult? Why were officials so eager to jettison long-standing conservative principles for a man who flouts the emoluments clause? Since when do free trade and America's role in the world need to be reimagined to indulge the fixations of a president not known for reading and deep thought?
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Other than Bill Clinton being liberal with a certain staffer, his liberal policy to allow banks to lower the standards of obtaining a home mortgage was the inherent liberal trap, and the seed of the mortgage crisis.
Obama did not save the day, since the Federal Reserve has the autonomy to regulate interest rates, thus in essence the banking system and economy.
Now, we have several so-called Democratic candidates that are competing to be seen as the most liberal choice for voters to ponder, yet one in particular, Senator Warren is suppose to be a guru on matters of consumer protection but fails to convey the pitfalls of many liberal policies that will mature into another type of crisis down the road.
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@MDCooks8 Because it is in the nature of liberals to try new things that may or may not solve a particular problem.
What frightens me most about recently modern conservatism in the US is that they have abandoned all pretense of genuine solutions and seem to have switched to smash and grab.
20
Trump is not a conservative.
4
Charles Taylor has written extensively about the pitfalls of procedural liberalism and the distortions it causes in society by putting some people and even groups at an insurmountable disadvantage. This column is a case in point. What is needed is to have more dialogue dedicated to the issue, not name calling, because with our demographics merely closing our eyes to the problems of others ceases to be a viable solution for the peace and well-being of society as a whole. The Netherlands may not have a perfect system to deal with this but the "problem" is not as simple as is suggested by the case discussed in the column.
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What a strange idea of dystopia. The Netherlands has a system of universal healthcare - including mental healthcare - that ensures that we all can seek treatment when we need it. Employed, unemployed, healthy, chronically ill, young, old, rich, poor - we all see the same doctors, go to the same hospitals, get the same treatment. And you want to hold this liberal (in the American sense of that word) society up as a warning of that dystopia is around the corner?
Here in the Netherlands, people who are 16 and older have medical autonomy. That doesn't mean that you can demand any kind of medically unnecessary intervention you might want; it means you can refuse treatment, refuse to seek treatment, and end treatment - without having the state or anybody else standing in the way. In this case, her parents and doctors encouraged and supported her during years of treatment. And in the end, they chose to keep loving her when she had had enough.
Looking for a dystopian society? Start closer to home - where children die regularly in school shootings, where infectious diseases stalk the big cities because there are no sanitary facilities for the thousands of permanently homeless people living among the richest people in the world, where 40% of 'middle class' families can't cover an unexpected $400 expense, where healthcare is a privilege reserved for the rich and healthy. I'd say that today's America is already a real-life dystopia for millions of people living there.
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@V. R. Bravo. There is so much truth in what you say. I wonder what Ross thinks of our dystopia?
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@V. R.You are correct.Ross ignores that conservatives refuse to control guns resulting in 30,000 plus deaths per year,75% of which are suicides.Clearly conservative dystopia!
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@V. R.
Any society that is not conservative and Catholic is dystopian too Mr. Douthat.
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Why does Mr. Douthat assume that people, at least adults, should not have a right to determine whether they continue to live in misery or end their own life on their own terms? Their life is, after all, theirs, not ours or the states.
His other false assumption is that society gives up on those whose wishes it so respects. I often disagree with what my friends do, such as getting drunk or engaging in risky business undertakings, but apart from expressing my opinion, what would Mr. Douthat have me do? He appears to favour treating them as things I own with the right to decide how their lives will be lived. The proper name for that is slavery, and it's neither liberal nor nice.
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Maybe, Ross, just maybe we don't trust, or want, Government in our own sacred spaces: our bodies, our marriages, and our deathbeds. People should make their own decisions.
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Of course the religious right would be outraged, as they believe in a life after this one on earth and that this present life is for the purpose of preparation for that next and eternal existence. If there is no God, or if there is no existence after death, than suicide should be acceptable. After death one would know nothing. The only people to suffer would be the survivors of that person. Of course if there is a God, the one who commits suicide, or enables another, would face Godly judgement for their actions.
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It is also important to ponder what suicide, war, capital punishment, and infanticide do to the living.
That is the grave question that, failing to answer, allows us to incrementally nudge our beliefs to an unknown place.
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@Aron Adams
If there is a god, I very much hope that he will explain the reasons for the unbearable sufferings this girl had to endure during her too short life. And if he has anything close to compassion he should understand that there is no reason whatsoever for a judgement other than the judgement for the rapists.
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@Aaron Adams, if there is a god, I hope that he has a good explanation why this girl had to go through all the drama in her life that led to her suicide.
2
Another tweak to this young woman's "mental illness" is that she was raped as a child. In the US we scarcely believe girls and women who are raped. In rare cases when a rape is prosecuted, perps often get off easy (and sometimes the child gets blamed). Appropriate medical care might not be available if the child's family doesn't have insurance or the resources to obtain it. Politicians in some states would make such a child carry a pregnancy full term, if she were impregnated. As another writer noted, we have astounding drug, alcohol and suicide rates in the US -- far worse than in the Netherlands. Rape of a child is a traumatic experience and some victims never recover. The drug/alcohol/suicide rate in the US could in part be influenced by the high rate of unreported sexual assaults. The teenager in this case attempted suicide before, medically assisted and not. What would Mr. Douthat have suggested, that her parents compound her loss of body autonomy by having her force fed? And what happened to the rapist?
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@ZR What happened to her rapist? With her suicide he victimized her a second time. Yes, force feed her. Time may not heal all wounds but it makes them less painful. Live as long as possible and try to do as much good as possible.
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@h dierkes: She DID “live as long as possible” — as long as it was possible for her.
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I'm a believer in liberal democracy -- in fact I'm pretty far to the left of the Democrats -- but I was appalled by the case of the Dutch teen. As tragic as the case is, it says more about how difficult it is to treat mental illness then about liberal democracy.
I will say that Douthat makes a couple of interesting points: it's not clear that our political system will withstand a major ecological or economic disaster.
13
I am not shocked that someone suffering a mental illness committed suicide. Legal or not, it happens all the time; and at some level I (and probably you) would prefer someone kill themselves than committing murder.
.
What bothers me is that nobody wants to admit that mental illnesses are just as serious as other illnesses. We would never blame a person who died of heart disease or cancer for their own death, but we’ll hold someone suffering from severe depression responsible if they just can’t go on. It isn’t fair and it isn’t productive.
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@ZAW
I think that is because most people believe, and science affirms, that the brain is malleable. Otherwise, our therapy professions would be useless and even deceptive.
I do not put a ravaging cancerous cell in the same league as a mental condition without qualifiers. And I also remember having suicidal thoughts as a teenager; something I eventually attributed to my maturity and grew out of (and I hope my family is grateful...I know I am).
7
@Stuart I think this poor girl's problems went beyond suicidal thoughts and being "depressed". It sounds like she had the Stage 4 cancer equivalent of mental illness. I don't think her family so much 'assisted' in her euthanasia as simply threw in the towel when it finally sank in that they couldn't keep her alive.
7
@ZAW The critique is not aimed at her, but at the society that stood by and let a child kill herself.
A society that doesn't value the life of a 17 year old and allows, no, actively assists her effort in treating her depression by ending her own life is utterly repugnant.
The case is absolutely appalling.
As I started to read this, I was thinking about how rarely I agree with the author.
Then he starts to exploit this tragedy to invoke his complaints against liberalism. Wish he could learn control that impulse.
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But, unlike many conservatives who would not date read something but causing their ideology, at least you read Douthat enough to wish he could stay on point.
2
The extremes of liberalism and conservatism both lead to miserable ends, but it’s the role of divided government to achieve a rough balance.
Euthanasia is a case in point. Conservatives fear death to such a degree that they demand to be in control of it: they’re often religious, which means they’ll never really die. They generally support capital punishment, even if a few innocent people are executed. They insist on letting everyone have guns, even when mass murders are a daily event. War is always on the agenda, yet the terminally ill dare not usurp the power life and death from them. They won’t even let the family of a brain-dead person pull the plug. Abortion is not tolerated, because _they_ will tell a woman that she will carry a fetus to term, no matter what.
Liberals tend to be more realistic, valuing quality of life more than quantity.
The United States is not a Scandinavian country, with its lax assisted suicide stance, nor with its tax-supported medical care for all, excellent public transportation, its higher standard of living, its lack of religious fundamentalists, its high happiness index and a host of other benefits.
America is a very different country, but these are the things liberal work toward, and that conservatives will block at every opportunity.
Conservatives seem willing to emphasize and even encourage social discord to make us think doom is just around the corner. And with them in charge, it is.
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@gemli
Beautifully stated. Thank you.
17
@gemli What a wonderful caricature of both conservatism and the Scandinavian countries.
I hardly imagine the Conservative Prime Minister of Norway, let alone the Monarch, would agree with your analysis. And contrary to your caricature, US liberals could take a lesson from the clearly superior Norwegians as much as US conservatives can:
-Support, don't destroy, the old traditions, such as the Monarchy in their case and American civic traditions in ours.
-Suicide is bad. Don't support it.
-Bad habits are bad and people should be aware, but it's not the states job to live your life for you.
-No Open Borders. If you can't control it, shut it down! The Danish Left just came back into power a week ago with promises that effectively translate as "Build The Wall"
And My God, this may just be the most wonderful woman in world politics today. Please follow her Scandinavian example!
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/10/world/europe/norway-minister-smoking.html
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@gemli
As always, an astute comment from gemli.
But this minor clarification:
Re "... they’re often religious, which means they’ll never really die."
Let's correct that to, "... they're often religious, which means they ***think*** they'll never die."
18
Perhaps Mr. Douthat would like to do an article comparing the Netherlands to the US.
More than 150,000 Americans died from alcohol and drug-induced fatalities and suicide in 2017. Nearly a third — 47,173 — were suicides.
And Mr. Douthat could showcase how Republicans have been working to fix the problem.
After 35 years of trickle-down Reaganomics, we got an opioid crisis.
Republicans cause the problems and then criticize Democrats for not fixing the problems.
386
PS -
The Netherlands doesn't have the poverty the US has.
The Netherlands has universal health care.
The Netherlands has better education for the working class.
The Netherlands has better economic mobility which is the ability to pull oneself up by their bootstraps.
This is probably due to their better education system.
And we are the richest industrial country on the planet GDP / capita.
Of course we have much higher income inequality.
According to the CIA Factbook, the Gini coefficient for the Netherlands is 30.3.
The Gini coefficient for the US is 45, pretty high up there and right there with Cameroon and Peru.
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@Independent
About 2/3rds of the 44,000 Americans who die from gunshot every year are suicides. And they are overwhelmingly white men and veterans who tend to use handguns.
While mass shootings are increasing in frequency in America only about 1% of the gunshot victims perish in such events.
10
@Independent
True, but the Netherlands is kinda small, know what I'm saying? Comparing the Netherlands to America is like comparing a Chihuahua to a St, Bernard.
1
This column begins with the sad - potentially(?) preventable - suicide of a depressed teenager in a liberal country, and proceeds to question the entire world liberal order (or what's left of it) as a cause. Bit of a stretch. Anecdotal arguments usually appeal to emotion more than to reason.
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@Rethinking You hit the nail on the head. Douthat seems in this column to be looking for reasons to distrust "liberalism" and "liberal democracy" as the model for human progress. So he muses about a "post-liberal" future, whatever that is, on the grounds that liberalism as we know it is somehow failing (and worse, i.e, leading us into a "dystopia"). Sorry, there is nothing "post" about liberalism and liberal democracy in my expert opinion is indeed the model that can see the human race through to long-term survival on Planet Earth. And it has been such in modern times since the 18th century Enlightenment.
But one final query: Did I read correctly that Douthat referred to Abraham Lincoln as an "authoritarian president?" If that is what he indeed wrote then I truly have to wonder about Douthat's intellectual sanity.
11
At the crux of the matter, is what it means to be truly free?
There are those on the far right of the political spectrum, that believe that life is precious, and that as soon as there is a spark of cells within a woman's body (no matter how they got there), that the woman no longer has control over her own body, and that life must come into the world.
The same people are comfortable with taking a life (capital punishment) by humane means, but if a person wishes to end their own life by the same means, then they are against that. Strange indeed, isn't it ?
Furthermore, once a life comes into this world. it is tracked from day one, and boxed into an area on the map. They no longer can just be, but rather must move along in public spaces, or be charged with loitering or worse. They are expected to conform to society in a multitude of ways, and pay taxes for things that they may not believe in. (or even things that further infringe upon their human rights and moral proclivities)
We are all in some form of bonded indenture.
So, when columnists (on any mark of the political spectrum) try and label one thing of the other as a certain philosophy, then I become fascinated how they turn themselves into a pretzel trying to explain.
This column seems to be no different.
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@FunkyIrishman Perhaps that is why I could not understand the point of this article - there was no logic, no reasoning, just a woe-is-the-world because it's bad to be a liberal.
True conservatism, to your point, is not about being pro-life or pro-individual rights, but rather the idea that in many cases, governmental overreach and over-management is worse than the situation it tries to correct. A perfect example is the current mess of Twittering trade policy to combat the mess of an overly simplistic immigration issue that is really an effect of a tight labor market, diplomacy, and an absurd mess of ineffective regulations.
A true conservative would expect the government to focus on necessary functions. Essentially, stay out of my wallet, and stay out of my bedroom, except where we need core Federal functions to ensure basic human rights are met, here and abroad.
Given the Trumpian state of the GOP, I am no longer a socially moderate Republican, but a fiscally conservative Democrat. Does that make me part of the Liberal Order? Where do I pick up my grey uniform and hitch a ride to the Death Star?
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@FunkyIrishman
What a thoughtful response. If I might just add a few more examples of what we, as individuals, can’t control: even if we are environmentally responsible, we have no suffer the consequences of pollution and climate change from those who are not; we have to contend with the dangers of nominal gun regulations determined by others; and, in the case of America’s Electoral College, a majority can, ahem, have the will of a minority imposed on them. And so on.
Thanks, as always, for what you wrote.
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@Julia Scott
Actually, it should be easy to be a fiscally conservative Democrat.
Deficits went up under Reagan and W Bush.
Deficits went down under Clinton and Obama.
And Clinton got almost 50% more jobs than Reagan.
And Obama got almost 400% more jobs than W Bush.
Obama also got us through the worst recession since the Great Depression.
And 20 million people got health care.
Now with the Ryan / McConnell / Trump tax cut, Republicans have done it again. The deficit is increasing from $600 Billion to $1 Trillion.
The projected ten year increase in the debt is $12 Trillion which is $80,000 per tax payer.
And depending on interest rates, we could end up paying more for interest on the debt than for defense.
After 35 years of trickle-down Reaganomics, we got an opioid crisis.
161
I don't disagree with Mr Douthat's point about the need to re-imagine liberalism or its successor, though his perspective is the opposite of mine.
The evidences of Left-liberalism's failure that the Right constantly dredges up & peddles are indeed from the margins of the society (or from the margins of right-wing media's imagination): anecdotes like the Dutch one, "welfare queens" & recreational abusers of Medicaid, silly campus PC campaigns, imaginary gangs from Mexico, etc. Whereas the failures of right-wing economic liberalism pretty much define the way we live & govern ourselves, from the disastrous & murderous invasion of Iraq & the financial crisis of 2007, to the legalization of political bribery by the Supreme Court. And where Mr Douthat sees the dire consequences of left / cultural liberalism's success in, say, the election of Mr. Trump, I see the dire consequences of a right / economic liberalism which sold politics & democracy to entertainment & profit over the last few decades. Where Mr. Douthat sees Huxley's Brave New World as representing one possible future threatened by Left-liberalism, I see it essentially as the world we now inhabit, thanks to right-wing liberalism.
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@Martin
Excellent comment--you put your finger on something I was ruminating over but was having trouble articulating.
Many thanks.
18
@Martin
You make an excellent point.
8
Martin, what you call "right economic liberalism" and "left cultural liberalism" are symbiotic sides of the same thing.
Liberalism is always about personal autonomy, the constant indulgence of desires, material and otherwise, and incentives to satisfy desire.
Every "left cultural liberal" movement creates or assists profit opportunities for "right economic liberalism" to exploit.
We can watch Pride Week being monetized right now. Nothing can be outside the market, so civil society, church, synagogue, mosque, family are eroded by the atomism encouraged by constant cultural revolution and advertising.
Look at the commercial opportunities and economic growth provided by feminism, from the advertising of cigarettes to women as "torches of freedom," up to the consumption of women in the present day, greatly enhanced by their independent employment and fiscal autonomy.
I'm ok with liberalism as it is now, but if it's going to be replaced, I'd prefer Catholic integralism or even Sharia law to a 1984 or Brave New World tyranny. At least with religion, there are fixed limits and tradition.
1
Maybe Mr. Douthat can tell us what the Republican solutions are.
Whatever the problems of liberalism, it is far better than what Republicans are offering.
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@Independent
Douthat is writing about what Europeans commonly refer to as liberalism, and not what you have in mind, old fashioned Ted Kennedy style Democratic Party politics.
With Caligula in the White House, with babies in cages on the border where 6 of them died in custody, with MBS being given nuclear technology, and manufacturing of weapons even after using our weapons to murder civilians in Yemen, and the brutal assassination of Khashoggi, with our military on alert for war in Iran, Douthat thinks that America should condemn liberalism because a pretty young woman was permitted to end her life after years of therapy failed. This is such a twisted bit of sophistry that it escapes any honest consideration and is reminiscent of character assassination common to tabloids. There is no excuse for allowing any columnist to ignorantly exploit the terrible suffering of this woman because she chose death over her unrelenting pain. Because she did not have terminal cancer, her suffering was not visible but to the experts who were treating her they were real and not treatable. Armchair medicine is a fraud.
31
@Independent Republican solutions? Ross Douthat has become profoundly pessimistic in his columns lately because he realizes he is a stranger in a strange land; i.e. he finally understands that the political party that he truly felt represented his conservative philosophy was in reality a fig leaf covering a hodgepodge of racists, evangelicals and robber barons. Now he is down on everybody and everything.
21