The new Shakers?

Mark Steyn has a piece this morning on the fact and consequences of Europe's rapidly declining birthrate. As usual it is hilarious — and it makes some very good points. An excerpt:

Shortly after 9/11, I wrote in these pages about one of the most curious aspects of the new war - the assurance given to Islamist "martyrs" that 72 virgins were standing by to pleasure them for eternity. The notion that the after-life is a well-appointed brothel is a perplexing one to the Judaeo-Christian world, and I suggested that Americans would be sceptical if heaven were framed purely in terms of boundless earthly pleasures.

But, on reflection, if the Islamists are banal in portraying the next world purely in terms of sensual self-gratification, we're just as reductive in measuring this one the same way. America this Holy Week is following the frenzied efforts to halt the court-enforced starvation of a brain-damaged woman for no reason other than that her continued existence is an inconvenience to her husband. In Britain, two doctors escape prosecution for aborting an otherwise healthy baby with a treatable cleft palate because the authorities are satisfied they acted "in good faith". You can read similar stories in almost any corner of the developed world, except perhaps the Netherlands, where discretionary euthanasia is so advanced it's news if the kid makes it out of the maternity ward. As the New York Times reported the other day: "Babies born into what is certain to be a brief life of grievous suffering should have their lives ended by physicians under strict guidelines, according to two doctors in the Netherlands.

Cruelty

Michelle Malkin has her usual swift roundup.

This is such a sad affair, on so many levels. Much of the focus recently, and very naturally, has been on the immediate issue of whether Terri should be kept alive or should be "allowed" to starve and dehydrate until she dies. There are legitimate issues and questions on both sides, and emotions are running very high amongst people who are thinking about Terri's situation. I am myself amongst those who believe there are enough questions about the circumstances surrounding the decision to remove her feeding tube to justify reinserting it while those issues are examined. As President Bush so eloquently put it: in a situation as grey and blurry as this one, there should be a presumption of life. Terri should be kept alive while we figure this out.

But there's another issue at play in Terri's case that I haven't seen much discussed, and I think it deserves to be. To wit: if, as a society, we decide that there are circumstances in which people like Terri should be "allowed to die," why would we do so in such a cruel manner?

Can you imagine the howls (from every political direction) if we condemned a murderer to die by withholding food and water? Certainly such a sentence would never stand in the United States. Why, then, would we even consider doing such a thing to an innocent? I cannot fathom the logic here at all. To me, the solution seems incredibly simple: in such a circumstance, the patient should be killed (euthanized, if you prefer the antiseptic term) in a manner that is truly as painless as possible, with an absolute minimum of suffering. Such a death is easily within our means...we have the technology to do so.

Certainly I would hope that if I ever found myself in a situation where my fellow citizens said that I must die, that is the kind of death I would want — whether the reason for that decision was my crime or my health.

Shake 'em up

Fred Barnes is always an intersting commentator, whether on TV or in his writing. Today he has a short column in the Wall Street Journal (paid subscription) talking about President Bush's recent spate of controversial appointments. Mr. Barnes believes that anyone who is surprised by these appointments simply has a basic lack of comprehension of what President Bush is all about — he sees these appointments as totally in characters...and as predictable. Some of his key points:

Anyone shocked by the nominations of Messrs. Wolfowitz and Bolton doesn't understand the president's approach to multilateral organizations. The conventional idea is that these organizations are wonderful, though perhaps flawed and infused with too much anti-American sentiment. And the chief task of U.S. representatives is to get along amicably, not buck the system and cause problems. This idea is popular in the press, the State Department bureaucracy and diplomatic circles, and with foreign-policy "experts." But not with Mr. Bush.

The president's idea is simple: No more Mr. Nice Guy. He believes international organizations have failed largely and must be challenged and reformed. He was miffed when outgoing U.N. Ambassador John Danforth rushed to the defense of Kofi Annan in the midst of the Oil for Food scandal. Mr. Annan opposed the war in Iraq and even declared it illegal. More important, he's viewed by Mr. Bush as part of the problem at the U.N.
...
The nominations of Messrs. Bolton and Wolfowitz produced shock and awe around the world. Ms. Hughes's didn't. But what's significant is that all three have agendas that reflect the president's own world view. Or, put more precisely, their agendas stem from Mr. Bush's shake-up-the-world view.

Quote for the day

The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms.

   Albert Einstein