Euthanasia: Lecretia Seale’s First Day at High Court: Will Busy-Bodies Butt Out Please.

 Let me be forthright: Lecretia and her supporters can’t have anything to do with me - I’m taking a liberty referencing by her first name - because look at my blog; I’m a hot head. I see no reason to be nice, or play the game, with these politicians who have proven themselves to be compassionless, cruel bastards, and yes, cowards.

One of the bedrocks of a free society is that if someone is not harming you and wants to be left alone, then leave them alone, you have no business in their life. We truly are a nation of interfering busy-bodies and nanny-statists.

I’ve written on Lecretia Seale before: she’s a 41 year old lawyer, dying of brain tumours, taking her case to die with dignity – if that becomes her wish - to the High Court. Yesterday she had her first day in court, and it was cruel farce. Lecretia has always said this is her case, for her alone, dealing with her circumstances, it’s not meant to be precedent setting, and that was wise because she doesn’t have time for a drawn out case. Yet despite this her first day was held up by three applicants wanting to have their say in her case: the Care Alliance, the Human Rights Commission and the Voluntary Euthanasia Society.

I agree with the latter group, but butt out of her trial please. This is the one venue we don’t grandstand.

What the hell is the Human Rights Commission doing here? Yet another bloated taxpayer funded commissariat sticking in its oar where not wanted: bugger off.

And the Care Society: I’ve dealt with them in the body of my original post on Lecretia: they don’t actually care much at all; certainly not about an individual’s liberty, plus they are conflicted, in my opinion, by self-interest. You lot can bugger off also: just stick to what you do well, palliative care – even though that has huge holes in it, doesn’t it – morphine is not the cure-all for pain, and often is beside the point: some of us want to die with dignity when life degrades to what is not acceptable to us individually, that may well not be related to issues of palliative care at all.

I reiterate my oft made point: we self-manage our own health issues throughout our lives; managing our deaths is merely the final decision in that adult process. More, euthanasia will be voluntary, therefore if you don’t agree, your opinion is immaterial to the law: no one is forcing you. And I say that particularly to the Stone Age Faithers who would have us all suffer for their fairy tale God – grow up and grow a heart.

[Calming myself down.]

Anyway, Lecretia, or mainly her supporters, are keeping an excellent blog, Lecretia’s Choice: please read, bookmark and support it. And note that word: choice. This is a rights issue second (a Lecretia issue first).

Yesterday Lecretia’s husband Matt, who is now on leave from work to support her, posted his impressions of their first day in the High Court. Read that in total, please, but I want to point out two matters. Firstly, pertaining to the three busy-body organisations above, wise words:

I respect that all of these parties have plenty to say on the issue, but that belongs in the realm of public debate. Nothing I heard in the court today suggested to me that they would add anything to Lecretia’s particular case except complexity. These people have agendas, and they don’t belong in the courtroom, arguing over my wife’s fate, which is all that this case is about.

What angers me is that my wife faces a long, drawn-out, undignified death, and these applicants, if admitted, will almost certainly subject my wife to a long, drawn-out and uncomfortable trial. She doesn’t have time for that.

And secondly, the point I have been making in every increasingly frustrated euthanasia post in this blog since Labour leader David Cunliffe made MP Maryan Street pull her wonderful and wise dying with dignity bill before last year’s general election – a bill now kicked to oblivion under gutless new Labour leader Andrew Little. On the cowardice oozing from our Fortress of Legislation over this important issue – for those dying, there is no more important issue - Matt writes:

The judge will make a decision by Friday as to whether the applicants will be permitted to intervene. I really hope he will agree to keep the scope of the case to my wife’s plea, and leave the wider societal debate on assisted dying to be addressed by politicians, who should be the ones looking at the issue more broadly. Their silence is starting to appear cowardly. Their inaction is precisely why my wife has been forced to spend her precious remaining days pursuing this case through the courts. It’s time for politicians to do their job, so that people like Lecretia don’t have to take these sorts of actions.

                                                                                       

Let me be forthright: Lecretia and her supporters can’t have anything to do with me - I’m taking a liberty referencing by her first name - because look at my blog; I’m a hot head. I see no reason to be nice, or play the game, with these politicians who have proven themselves to be compassionless, cruel, heartless bastards, and yes, cowards.

So:

To Labour leader (albeit anything but) Andrew Little for quashing Maryan Street’s excellent bill: you cowardly callous bastard.

To Prime Minister John Key for promising in the heat of the moment last year a watered down version of Street’s bill, now totally forgotten: you cowardly callous bastard.

To David Seymour, leader of New Zealand’s supposedly only classical liberal party who’s only reply to me so far is he’s a bit offended at my approach: you cowardly callous egotistical bastard. You of everyone stand for an individual’s rights, David, pull your head out of your arse and do something other than toadying up to big government and sending me newsletters.

Each of you men is happy, yes, happy, that’s the only word I can think of, to leave this crucial issue to souls with no options left, such as Lecretia,  consigning them to waste the remaining journey of their lives to pleading for a right which should be theirs – ours - of right. You rotten brutes; seriously, why are any of you even in politics if not for this?!

And you bet this is important with every survey conducted showing New Zealander’s overwhelmingly want this right:

That is a perfect example that #euthanasia conversation needs to happen in. May not become law but needs open convo. pic.twitter.com/Fj6zfKdnl4
— Logan Morton (@LoganMorton94) April 21, 2015

To Lecretia, her husband and supporters; may you get the humane treatment by a judge at the High Court that seems impossible from that waste of space in Wellington, the minds of our elected officials in the Fortress.

Further Reading:

Lecretia Seales Fight for the Right to Die: RNZ Interview.

Lecretia Searle Takes Her Case to High Court | MIA Our Politicians.

Why this Government Urgently Needs to Pick Up Maryan Street’s Bill.

Email to Dr. Mark Peterson, Chair of New Zealand Medical Association I.

Email to Dr. Mark Peterson, Chair of New Zealand Medical Association II – The Response.

Lecretia Searles Takes Her Fight to Die With Dignity to High Court | MIA: Our MPs.

I’ve written on lawyer Lecretia Searles before: she is dying from brain tumours, and though saying she would not necessarily avail herself of euthanasia, she does, however, sanely want that choice, and so in a legal first for New Zealand is taking her case before a judge at the High Court. Unfortunately her case will be particular to her circumstances and not precedent setting, but it may add more impetus for the growing demand to have legislated this basic individual right/choice for all of us. Best of luck Lecretia, let’s hope you get the humane hearing in court that doesn’t seem possible from our law-makers.

On being headed for the courts, the fight for euthanasia will generate plentiful publicity for – hint – a classical liberal party to wear for itself if it weren’t so gutless, Mr Seymour, and it means euthanasia truly becomes the terminally ill elephant in every ante-chamber of the Fortress of Legislation, sitting with a  gun or some such wretched, violent device, knowing it faces no choice other than to blow its brains against a cold concrete wall, or perform the lonely struggle for oxygen with its head in a plastic bag, because our political masters haughtily won't deign to leave aside the mundane everyday matters of their tax-paid careers, currently being entertained on something as irrelevant and unimportant as the Northland by-election and let us not forget, of course, flags – FFS – and grant us the rightful ownership of our lives and deaths.

Everything I said in my previous post stands, there’s little need for me to repeat myself, other than to note the RNZ audio interview with Lecretia on that link is worth a listen, and this one thing more, which is to say it’s a shame, no, disgusting, Lecretia has to spend the last of the time she has fighting for this right in the court system, when she has better things to do: this is a matter that wouldn’t need be in the courts if we had a representative legislature which philosophically understood the nature of rights in a free society, per my earlier post:

…the fickle path of a private members bill [or a court action] is not good enough for a matter so intrinsic to our lives as this is. Assisted dying legislation needs to come from responsible government: John Key has promised this, and his failure to keep to his word damns him. As with his intention to water down Maryan Street’s very good bill.

Although as bad as our MPs are, the Christian monsters of Family First, within an hour of Lecretia’s piece, Saturday, insensitively nailed to the cross of their sadistic brand of inhumanity, a press release commanding we must suffer for their fairy tale god of war and pestilence, and arrogantly – that word so often synonym for ignorantly - proceeded to tell the legal and policy advisor to the Law Commission, 41 year old  Lecretia Searles, she should not be allowed self-management of her own health issues:

Family First NZ says that the heartbreaking situation that Lecretia Seales faces should not be solved in the courtroom or by a change in law, but through the guarantee of the best palliative care that the country can offer her and others in a similar situation.

In this damnable press release, and I'm talking direct to you Bob McCoskrie, is yet another Arrogance of contemptible, arrogant, meddling fools. How dare you use a word like heartbreaking when you have no hearts at all. Just bugger off with your Stone Age faith teaching suffering for no purpose at all, and thinking it’s your right to have your nose in my face and my life, and in Lecretia’s affairs.

Palliative care simply does not work for all, not by any stroke and for some is unacceptable according to their rational value system – even if drug cocktails of palliative care were to mask pain in some type of vegetative or, for them, undignified state. But more importantly, no one has the right to judge another’s unhappiness as these Christian brutes would do here. Those who don’t agree with voluntary euthanasia are not being forced into anything against their volition, so have no right to be heard, and my life must not be handed by Parliament to the cruel cold hands of a dead God: Family First’s press release is the voice of the school yard bully, pulling the wings off Lecretia’s volition over how she wants to live, and how she wants to die, which is no business of theirs.

Footpiece:

[Note about my father, currently in palliative care, redacted, as last thing I would want to do is offend any of my (Christian) family.

ACT’s Duplicitous War on Classical Liberals | ACT the Conservative Party in Parliament.

Let me change the narrative again. Euthanasia is not an 'extreme libertarian' position, we know this because the member who almost brought in euthanasia legislation via the ballot was a Labour Party MP. What is the extreme position in this debate is the inhumane notion that we must die in sometimes excruciating, undignified circumstances because a fairy tale, angry God deems that as our lot and it's the ticket  price of that Never Never Land called Heaven, a notion every bit as insane and extreme as the 40 virgins bullshit. Yet 120 children masquerading as adults in the sandpit at Wellington seem to believe in just that, including the faux great classical liberal hope, David Seymour. 

ACT held its conference this weekend, and confirmed their status as National’s toadying conservative partner, and the enemy of the libertarian, and thus classical liberal, vote. 

My comment to Lindsay Mitchell’s broadly supportive post on ACT’s policy position, sums up where I’ve been heading since my earlier post against David Seymour’s double-cross of the libertarian vote via not endorsing a position for euthanasia on either a party or personal level:

Afraid for at least a decade I can't stand pragmatism and the 'game' of politics.

Conservatives, which Seymour most definitely is, are not classical liberals: they believe in the small state economically, but the big moral state in your face and life, often in personal issues that are bigger, for me, than the economic state (though all are linked).

I understand David Farrar spoke 'for' euthanasia at the ACT conference; Seymour, however, remains, as ever, silent, and the issue was side-lined. ACT is a (social) conservative party.

I am now a single issue voter. I see no more important right than ownership of my body, thus euthanasia, because that has to be the foundation of all rights for a classical liberal party: the individual. I will vote for any party, including Green Party, that promises euthanasia legislation for their three year term. I will totally prostitute my vote for that single issue (and related issues such as legalisation of cannabis proper, and especially medicinal cannabis).

That won't be any party with Seymour pulling the strings.

Worse, Seymour’s following statement is where pragmatism and doublespeak becomes the ruling politick, punching the face of liberty forever:

Our tribe is the standard-bearer for classical liberalism in NZ, representing a general orientation towards a defence of private property, freedom of contract and limited government.

This is by no means an extreme or pure libertarian position. Classical liberalism takes a larger and more realistic view of government.

Classical liberals believe in individualism, not ‘tribes’, David. Tribes are cleaved to by Marxist identity politickers and collectivists of all hues… remember?

And your statement against the ‘extremism of libertarianism’ is the Left’s infantile misconception of what libertarianism even is: libertarianism is in fact, via individualism and from that minarchism, synonymous with classical liberalism. Your statement is the final double cross to classical liberalism, and one swift, vulgar kick into the gonads of former ACT leader Jamie Whyte, who was ACT’s only glimmer of hope. What a shame he didn’t stand in Epsom, although, noting your premier positioning out of the conference is for a referendum on superannuation, hopefully looking to at least  means test it again, admirable in itself, but given that is the voting base you appear to be looking for, retired God-fearing oldies, strategy is not one of ACT’s strengths.

For me, any party putting euthanasia legislation down as priority policy, including their non-negotiable policy plank in coalition negotiations, gets my vote for the next general election. In the absence of any party offering this basic right, then they have my wrath, and I’m throwing my vote away on the landfill of this immoral majoritainism forced on us by social democracy. A pox on it and its petty partisan politics; its tribes that vote out of mindless subservience to the body politick, not, as a classical liberal party would, issue by issue, voting for individual volition and the dilution of the state, regardless the consensus or an MP's career prospects.

David, in neither committing your party, or worse, even yourself, to any socially liberal cause, such as euthanasia, you can go to hell, which, as you’ve buckled so readily to the God-Squad majority in ACT, you no doubt believe in. My wish for your abomination of a party is electoral oblivion, so we can clear the slate and get an actual classical liberal party from the ashes.

And finally a footnote. Let me change the narrative again. Euthanasia is not an 'extreme libertarian' position, we know this because the member who almost brought in euthanasia legislation via the ballot was a Labour Party MP. What is the extreme position in this debate is the inhumane notion that we must die in sometimes excruciating, undignified circumstances because a fairy tale God deems that as our lot and it's the price of Heaven, a notion every bit as insane and extreme as the 40 virgins bullshit. Yet 120 children masquerading as adults in the sandpit at Wellington seem to believe in just that, including the faux great classical liberal hope, David Seymour.

Update 1:

This letter to Lindsay’s thread makes a fine point backing up my own:

Anonymous said...

But I can no longer be bothered getting emotionally het up about people who take a different perpsective to mine. Unless, of course, they are socialists.

Ok. So far so good. But then Seymour says:

In short, we all know that government must respond to problems of pollution, the creation of infrastructure, of monopoly power, and raise funds through taxation

In short: ACT is socialist.

Can’t dispute that either.

ACT, National, ACT, National, ACT, National … can you see the difference? I can’t. There might be some minor differences of degree between the two, but there are no differences in principle.

.