California governor Jerry Brown signs death with dignity bill

[Brian Howell]

At last, Californians who are terminally ill individuals who are expected to die within six months can obtain a dose of lethal drugs by which to commit suicide. (There are several safeguards.) California now joins Oregon (the first state to pass such a law), Washington, and Vermont.

I have long been in favor of such a law here in California, ever since Oregon passed its own death with dignity law in 1997. And my father's death from lung cancer made me all the more in favor: he suffered needlessly, at one point asking me to euthanize him with morphine. I neither had a sufficient supply of the drug nor the requisite state of mind to immediately honor his request, even if I had. He died two days later. 

Cancer has claimed a number of my relatives, including maternal aunts, grandmother, grandfather and step-grandfather, and my father and younger sister—she died in Oregon and considered doctor-assisted suicide—and several other people I know. It's always a horrible way to die. I've seen some severe suffering. Hereafter, perhaps, there won't be as much to see.

[Scott Hotes]

Agreed, it is a good day for California.  As the US slowly sheds the shackles of a religion rooted in the iron age...

Scott

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[David Fetter]

On Tue, Oct 06, 2015 at 07:33:31AM -0700, Scott Hotes wrote:
> Agreed, it is a good day for California. As the US slowly sheds the
> shackles of a religion rooted in the iron age...

It doesn't help to trade them for another religion, most especially
not one started in the 1930s to fetishize bungling serial killers
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/01/how-ayn-rand-became-a-big-admirer-of-serial-killer-william-hickman/
and robber barons.

http://www.liberalinstitute.com/IsOrthodoxObjectivismAReligion.html

#justsayin'

Cheers,
David.
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[Scott Hotes]

On Tue, Oct 6, 2015 at 7:56 AM, David Fetter <da...@fetter.org> wrote:

It doesn't help to trade them for another religion, most especially
not one started in the 1930s to fetishize bungling serial killers
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/01/how-ayn-rand-became-a-big-admirer-of-serial-killer-william-hickman/
and robber barons.

I'm happy to argue the case on its merits.  If it makes you feel better to put unsettling ideas in a box, or write-off ideas people have that you don't share by associating them with Nazis or serial killers, that's your business.  If you really want to know more about the background on this story, maybe take a look at:

http://freestudents.blogspot.com/2010/03/smearing-ayn-rand-nietzsche-and.html

Including the actual quote from Rand's diaries:

The protagonist in the The Little Street would be Danny Renahan. Remember all the information that is purported to show Rand’s evil views come from her own journals. Yet, what they don’t quote is Rand’s own appraisal of the relationship of Renahan to Hickman. She said that Renahan is “very far from him [Hickman], of course. The outside of Hickman, but not the inside. Much deeper and much more. A Hickman with a purpose. And without the degeneracy. It is more exact to say that the model is not Hickman, but what Hickman suggested to me.” 

On a separate note, as even I am now completely bored with the question of whether or not Rand was a Nazi, or whether or not she didn't like children, or whether it was right or wrong for her to accept Medicare, or if she was a sociopath, or if she is a cult leader, etc., etc. here is something else...

It was wrong of me to conflate the rise of individual rights and freedoms with the ebbing of Christianity in the US.  Like everything political, Christian ideals have been warped to serve the purpose of the antagonist.  It's not the fact that Christianity has values rooted in the Iron Age that is the problem, the basic concepts of Christianity are very positive, and were a healthy reaction to the sociological trends of their day.  The problem relates more to the fact that people often live in fear, and one thing they fear the most is change.  Organized religion is a wonderful vehicle for capitalizing on that fundamental truth.

Scott