The Right to Death

Men suffering muscular dystrophy eventually get tied up to the hospital bed for an undetreminate time. Maybe their lifetime. Piergiorgio (not the man in the picture) himself had no means of communication, save by moving his eyelids. The advances in medicine might have given him a chance to walk again, but who is to say when and whether he will have enough money to pay for the treatment. By the time he was assisted in his suicide, he had already spent two years in bed, immobile. Imagine what it must be like lying in bed, paralyzed, while your mind is racing, coming up with new ideas and things to do all the time, and your body refusing to obey, and not even your pinky wants to move. Does it not struck you that in such a position you would, day by day, be going mad inside your head, at first over the frustration of not being able to act on your desires, and then over the fact that you cannot even show your frustration, or grimace it somehow, or communicate it? Would you not begin hating the machines and the people who are keeping you in such a vegetable state? Would you not rather be unplugged? Image from Fiji 2001.

Some days ago, I heard of a news report on an Italian named Piergiorgio Welby, who was suffering from muscular dystrophy and could thus only communicate by moving his eyelids. For this reason, he did not want to continue living. For this reason, the report said, he had to figt to obtain his “right to death”.

The report showed exactly the degree of ignorance of what rights are to an individual. This man did not seek to obtain the right to death, he was seeking to obtain his right to life! Why is that so? To answer this question, I will have to re-examine the very reason people have rights in the first place.

Unlike the mysticist teachings, which say that rights are given to man by a god or gods, individual rights have a rational basis. The concept of rights emerges when one asks the simple question: How are men supposed to live together and to collaborate in harmony? Now, the mysticist will be quick to answer that there is no rational answer to this question, and will rush to introduce his divine insight and how all men will live together and in harmony if they all worship the same god and follow the rules that god gave them; though – let’s face it – the mysticist himself invented the god and the rules. On the contrary, however, there is a rational answer to that question. It is contained within the concept of individual rights.

The right to live states that each individual is free to live his life, and do whatever he deems necessary to keep his life. It states no more and no less. The right to property defines the means by which he may exercise his right to life. It states no more and no less and it is not an expansion of the right to life, nor a factor which limits it to a certain domain. It is only a rational derivative of the right to life. The right to liberty defines the domain in which man is free to utilize his means. It states no more and no less. It is not an expansion nor a limiting factor of the beforementioned rights. It is the rational derivative of the right to life.

It may seem that the right to property and the right to liberty somehow limit the right to life, however they do not. It says that the right to life means one may do whatever he deems necessary to keep his life. The first thing that comes to mind is – does that include killing a man? It does. However, consider the scenario in which it is absolutely necessary to kill a man in order to preserve your own life. The most obvious one is when that man physically assaults you and threatens to kill you. Another might involve him stealing so much from you that you are doomed to starvation. Yet another might involve imprisoning you so that you are not able to get any food for yourself and again your life is threatened. Note that in all of these, your rights are violated. In the first, it is your right to life directly; in the second, it is your right to life again, but through the route of your right to property; in the third again your right to life, through the route of your right to liberty. You can see how deeply interconnected these rights are and that in fact, other rights are derivatives of the right to life and not its limitations.

So how do men collaborate using these rights? Simply by exercising their right to life. People want their lives to be easier, and if this can be done in collaboration with other people, then they will collaborate – and they are free to do so. Most often they will accomplish this by trading. If you move in little steps, from the basic principles laid out here, you will notice how the entire civilized society rests on these principles. If they are correctly interpreted and consistently implemented, the social system that “springs out” is laissez-faire capitalism – at this point the only known moral social system, which, unfortunately, has never existed.

How is this connected to the story of Welby’s “right to death”? Read carefully what the right to life says. It says that each individual is free to live his life. But if he does not want that life, then he can die. The right to life states that implicitly – once you are alive, you can either take it or leave it. If you don’t want to live, then die, no matter how terrible this may sound. But as long as you live, you are free to continue being alive – and interpreted without fallacy, this means at your own expense. The most basic of all choices – to be or not to be – is yours and yours alone!

This is why Piergiorgio Welby did not, in fact, fight for his right to death, but his right to life. By denying him the right to die, we would indirectly be violating this basic choice and making him accept our choice instead, and thus we are violating his right to live (or not live) his life. We are stating then that he must live no matter what kind of life that is – whether in constant agony, or complete paralysis (which is, in essence, only another kind of agony – a psychological one). Normally, however, he is the one to make that call, not us.

It was, therefore, correct of the doctor to assist his suicide, as he was unable to do this himself. But the reasons they offered are petty at best. They chose not to stand behind the principles laid out here and instead they hid behind the cloaks of refused medical care. Welby had refused to be treated and the doctors used this as an excuse to unplug him, while they had better principles to invoke, and these principles are individual rights, namely the right to life. It is a sad thing when good deeds are done in such a way, by invoking lesser principles at the expense of greater ones. It would have been by far more delivering if the doctor who unplugged Welby from the instruments which kept him alive, said “I did it because Welby had the right to live – and he chose not to practice it.” This would have shown clearly that he was not ashamed or afraid of it, and it would have shown that he is certain that he had done the right thing. Stating your principles always does that.

The response to a letter sent to ExxonMobil

When I received an e-mail from The Ayn Rand Institute, claiming that two American senators, John D. Rockefeller IV and Olympia Snowe have sent a letter to ExxonMobil, “urging” the company to end the funding of groups and individuals who reject the idea of global warming, my first response was a gasp and a question “What?”

First of all, I was surprised, and I mean positively, that there is in fact a company which funds such things. I’m coming from a country where “large corporations” do not even endeavor into funding projects with better than good success probability, let alone things which are not expected to bring any foreseeable profit at all. These “large corporations” in Croatia are technically owned by the government, although the people who speak in their name usually take the blame for all the wrong-doings and non-doings of that company.

Second, I was surprised, and this time negatively, that the senators of a supposedly free nation would interfere with the workings of a company. To make things straight, I think that rational persuasion is a proper tool of spreading an idea to other people. Any other method is a violation of other people’s rights. I did not know whether the method in the letter was rational persuasion, but it seemed odd to me that two senators would ask such a thing of a company, particularly because I flinch every time I hear the name of a government official and the name of a corporation mentioned in the same sentence. My rule of thumb tells me that in such cases it’s about the government interfering with private businesses, and I am very much against that.

In order to find out what this was all about, I have googled the key terms and names mentioned in an e-mail from ARI and found the text of the letter in question. What I discovered is that the letter did not give any rational argument for why ExxonMobil should stop funding the groups it funds. Instead, the letter appeals to ExxonMobil’s “sense of stewardship of [its] corporate citizenship” in order to “end it’s dangerous support of the ‘deniers’” because “[it has] made it increasingly difficult for the United States to demonstrate the moral clarity it needs across all facets of its diplomacy.”

The sentiments expressed by that appeal are nonsensical at best. In effect, they state that the decisions of one American corporation have incapacitated the US government to properly execute its (primarily foreign) policies. It states that these policies are now somehow rendered less moral because of it. Where are they rendered less moral? The letter gives an answer to that too. “[...] climate change denial strategy carried out by and for ExxonMobil [...] has thus damaged the stature of our nation internationally.”

Now, I am convinced that the government’s first duty is to its citizens. The proper government is required to protect it’s citizens’ rights no matter what, in both domestic and foreign issues, and these rights include the right to free speech. The only way, therefore, for the US to keep their “stature” internationally is to consistently practice this principle. It is ExxonMobil’s right to fund whatever organization, group, or individual it deems appropriate, regardless of the validity of the ideas they uphold. Therefore, it is not ExxonMobil who is jeopardizing the moral clarity of the US – it is the senators!

Not only do they ask of ExxonMobil to stop doing what it has the right to do, they also “[...] believe ExxonMobil should take steps to improve the public debate”, and they “[...] recommend that ExxonMobil publicly acknowledge both the reality of climate change and the role of humans in causing or exacerbating it”. They claim “[...] ExxonMobil should repudiate its climate change denial campaign and make public its funding history.” And certainly the most unspeakable, “[... they] believe that there would be a benefit to the United States if one of the world’s largest carbon emitters [...] devoted at least some of the money [...] to global remediation efforts.” In other words they claim that there would be a benefit to the United States if ExxonMobil shot both its feet – make public their business secrets and begin funding that which might eventually make them obsolete.

As if this isn’t too much already, the letter also states “[...] ExxonMobil and its partners in denial have manufactured controversy, sown doubt, and impeded progress with strategies all-too reminiscent of those used by the tobacco industry for so many years.” It is well known what is going on between the tobacco companies and the governments in the world, as well as in America. Cigarettes are heavily taxed, and tobacco companies are sued through and through and probably will be until every dime is squeezed out of them, because apparently it is their fault that people consume their products (while in fact it is the other way around – tobacco companies exist because there is a market for their products). This gives the senators’ letter a bitter taste of demand and threat, rather than request – it effectively says “You do what we ask, or else…” The e-mail I received from ARI identifies the analogy with the tobacco industry as a “thinly veiled threat.”

Finally, I will not even go into the debate of whether or not the environmentalists are correct. In this discussion, which is about rights, this is not relevant. People are free to believe that which is wrong, as well as that which is correct, no matter who they are, or what they represent. The senators are opposing this moral principle and consequently they themselves blur that moral clarity which the US needs in its policies. For this reason, ExxonMobil, as well as every person who holds his freedom dear, must acknowledge that the letter is a violation of ExxonMobil’s right to free speech, for no government may claim the right to tell its citizens what ideas to embrace by issuing threats. Only then can we speak of US’ moral clarity.