Healthcare is Frankenstein
Healthcare is an almost unique combination: once a technology is invented, it must be used. The physician has no morally acceptable — or legally tenable — ground upon which to say no. So, every available technology must be offered to every patient. Read more »
The Powder Keg
There are substances that cannot mingle without exploding. There are forces that cannot mingle but in a tornado. Two such forces, in the Western democracies, are: increasing cultural diversity, and increasingly centralized governments. These are a deadly mix.
“Cultural diversity” is the opiate, the mantra to the liberal mind. It evokes thoughts of rainbows. But on the ground it means opposed values, which means social groups who cannot live closely together. I’m sorry to have be the one to break this news. Read more »
All. Governments. Will. Torture.
No democratic state will take a course that opposes the moral consensus of her people. This may seem like a tautology to you, but a surprising number of people — and pundits — think that one function of the apparatus of policy is to keep a country on a certain moral track, which it might otherwise stray from. This never happens in a democracy. The law is simply a reflection of what the people think, and this is more true the more the founding documents become “living”.
Which is why the “ticking bomb” — no, change that — the “kidnapped child” scenario is neither a distraction nor a frivolous inflammation in the torture debate — it is the crux.
