Hélène de Lauzun in The European Conservative laments France’s imminent introduction of a euthanasia law that will make chronically ill people with several years left to live (as well as the mentally ill) “eligible” for assisted suicide. Just one doctor’s agreement will be needed to put someone to death, and doctors will risk professional ruin if they refuse to go along. Of course, what’s new and still shocking in France is standard practice in Canada.
Blueprint for Alberta?
Writing in Jewish World Review, Frederic Fransen reminds Americans of a key lesson from Revolutionary War-era pamphleteer Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. “The colonies need to declare independence,” Fransen summarizes Paine, “because so long as their goal was seen as reconciliation, foreign governments would consider the Americans as rebels and the conflict an internal affair.” But a unilateral declaration of independence, Fransen notes, instantly converts mere complaints from an aggrieved group into a negotiation between sovereign states.
