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THE EURO-WEENIES MAKE IT PLAIN…...

....that it’s the government who will decide what your “rights” mean…..

Doesn’t the “European Court of Human Rights” sound grand…..? Doesn’t having a “court of human rights” make you feel a little safer - I mean, knowing that if your government was violating your human rights, you would have someplace of appeal where human rights would be upheld?

Silly you! “Human rights” are DEFINED, folks…..thank God that in the United States, our rights are recognized as “given”...pre-existing the State, and superior to it. Because when your rights are defined, the devil is in the definition. Not that there aren’t plenty of folk over here who would like (and are working to move) us to have the same kind of “rights” as they do in Europe - SO much more efficient, don’t you see? Save money and time, besides, just like in Europe.

So then, today we have a cautionary tale….poor LESLIE BURKE, an Englishman with a hereditary, progressive, neurological disease which at some point will prevent him from communicating, or swallowing, and eventually is going to kill him. Except that it won’t kill him, because…

....the BRITISH NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE has decided that they will pre-empt the disease and stop feeding and hydrating Mr. Burke at some point after he can’t swallow anymore. After all, the cost for each year of life that he would be granted, should they continue his food and water after he is paralyzed, surely outweighs the value of that year of life! And according to the new rules, the ethics committee of physicians and “ethicists” and (presumably) lawyers - none of whom will have ever met or talked to Mr. Burke or his family - gets to decide whose life is worth the money and whose is not…..

But, how does this involve the European Court of Human Rights you may be asking….. Well, Mr. Burke took the NHS to court in England - and WON his case! The High Court ruled that dehydrating a mentally competent man to death would violate the European Convention on Human Rights. Naturally, the NHS appealed the case….and the appeals court reversed the lower one and gave the State back its life and death power over an innocent citizen who merely wants to be fed when he is no longer able to swallow.

Mr. Burke appealed to the House of Lords (recently revamped, with many of the traditional peers tossed out and the place packed with political cronies of the government), which refused to hear the case. The last appeal available was to the European Court of Human Rights itself, and that was where Mr. Burke went next.

Please remember that all this “human rights” stuff in Europe got started at the end of WWII, when the full horror of what National Socialism had perpetrated became plain. The individual citizen was going to be PROTECTED against the State, and never again would anyone have his right to life taken away.

Ahhh, but that was then…..and this is now. THE COURT HAS RULED that it’s really too early for Mr. Burke to file suit, since he isn’t in any immediate danger of being “murdered”, a word that they applied to what Mr. Burke is threatened with - the dehydration of a competent patient. The fact that the NHS has made its intentions plain in his case doesn’t seem to impress the judges in Strasbourg—after all, they were

...satisfied that the presumption of UK law was in favour of prolonging life wherever possible in accordance with the spirit of the Convention….and approved the view of the Court of Appeal that it is not for the High Court to authorise medical actions but merely to declare whether a proposed action is lawful. Doctors were fully subject to the sanctions of the criminal and civil law and would only be recommended to obtain legal advice, in addition to proper supporting medical opinion, where a step is controversial in some way. Any more stringent legal duty would be “prescriptively burdensome”.

So here we have it. The European Court of Human Rights is ignoring the expressed intent of the NHS in England, and furthermore is refusing to require that a person who has expressed the desire to be fed and hydrated should have his case heard in court before the doctors withdraw his food and water. We’ve come a long way, baby…...one really does wonder what chance a Jew in 1938 would have with this kind of reasoning. After all, if you’re still living in your home town with your family, your fears that you may be taken away and killed are just that….fears. When the occasion arises, THEN it’s time for you to appeal to the courts - after all, German law doesn’t permit the wholesale killing of Jews and Gypsies!

I know, I know - you’re going to say tht’s a bit of a stretch as an analogy…..but is it really? Perhaps, but only a bit - and only if you compare it to the “Final Solution”. The more relevant comparison is to the early ‘20s, when this precise sort of judgment was just getting underway. Think about it—here’s a man who has been told that the NHS maintains their right to “murder” (the European Court’s word, apparently) him, and the Court tells him that only when his murder is imminent may he ask the law for protection. AND, if he isn’t able to ask, there is no compulsion for the NHS to get permission from legal authorities. READ ALL ABOUT IT

It’s a different world out there than the one I grew up in - and I don’t think it’s a better one.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 11/21 at 08:11 AM

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