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- [00:00]
Ashley Frawley
Or lost. I'm gonna pull over and ask that man for directions. Hi there. We're looking to get to the campground.
- [00:07]
Matthew Schmitz
Well, you're gonna take a left at the old oak tree end of this here road. No, I'm just kidding. Let me get my phone out.
- [00:13]
Ashley Frawley
How are you getting a signal out here?
- [00:14]
Matthew Schmitz
T Mobile and US Cellular decided to merge, so the network out here is huge. We're getting the same great signal as the city and saving a boatload with all the benefits. Oh, and a five year price guarantee. Okay, here's those directions.
- [00:26]
Ashley Frawley
Actually, can you point us in the direction of a T Mobile store?
- [00:29]
Narrator/Advertiser
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- [00:51]
Matthew Schmitz
Cellular's network footprints will enhance the T.
- [00:53]
Narrator/Advertiser
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- [02:05]
Matthew Schmitz
Welcome to the Compact podcast. Today we'll discuss Trump's tremendous Greenland deal and the progression of assisted dying bills in the UK and the US I'm joined by Ashley Frawley. And I'm Matthew Schmitz. So Ashley, what's the attitude in Europe right now toward the Yankees? Are things friendly or are people a little impatient with all of us over here in this blessed country?
- [02:46]
Ashley Frawley
Yeah, it's. It's difficult to say. It really depends on where you sit if you're that kind of these adults in the room at Davos there was like, I don't know, before Trump started talking, there Was this kind of, like, pressure or in the room where people were kind of worried about what he was going to say, and then he just starts going off as he does, and people are like, oh, yeah, okay, same old, same old kind of thing. But there are, you know, a few things that have been going around, and maybe they've been going around on your side of the pond. So you tell me, just some lighter points on Trump and, and, and Davos. 1. Are you. Is there much talk about dementia rumors over there? Because that, that was, that was kind of dropped a few times in some of the discussions that I've been reading and listening to.
- [03:41]
Matthew Schmitz
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
- [03:43]
Ashley Frawley
Okay.
- [03:43]
Matthew Schmitz
You know, I had a kind of, you know, certainly, I'd say probably Republican friend of mine. Yeah, probably Trump voting friend said, you know, is he crazy? Has he gone. Has he gone crazy? I mean, people have always been saying he's crazy, but he's really gone that way. So, yeah, I think there was more talk of it. People kind of viewed the Greenland scheme as harebrained. I mean, I'm not saying this penetrates far into the populace, but among people who follow the news, there. There was a lot. There was just a lot of, I'd say, bemusements about this move.
- [04:20]
Ashley Frawley
Well, it's, it's not even just the move that's a bit weird. It's also just the way that he talks. He kept confusing Iceland and Greenland and. But, you know, also, how would you know if he was facing cognitive decline? Because it's like, it's part of his shtick that he gets the details wrong, like, all the time. It's actually kind of genius that you'd never know because he's. He's always kind of vague and fast and loose with the details. So that's, that's the other thing. And like, And I don't know, listening to him talk, I felt like he was. Yeah, he rambled, as he usually does, and was off the cuff, as he usually was. He seemed to get bored with his main kind of talking points. But also I felt like maybe he was reading more than he. Than is, as usual. And I started to think, you know, maybe this is cognitive decline. Maybe he. That his handlers are trying to keep him a little bit closer, more reined in by encouraging him to read a bit more. I don't know. I. I don't hear this man speaking probably as much as you do, so you'd be able to tell me, but I found that kind of interesting. I don't think personally that Greenland is A harebrained scheme. I, I found it. Well, I mean, it's kind of an obvious tactic. Trump always escalates in order to de. Escalate. So he, he will say very scary things and, and do. And sometimes follow through. You know, I think a lot of world leaders were thinking, well, you know, Greenland, Trump talks a lot of talk, you know, but he doesn't follow through. And then with Venezuela, he goes ahead and kidnaps the leaders. So that scared people. And so when Trump starts saying he's going to take Greenland by force, I think a lot of people stood up and took notice. And this is what I was talking about with this tension in the room in Davos. I think that when he started talking and it was the same old, same old, people started to loosen up a little bit. And then with the promise that Greenland wouldn't be taken by force, it was like a palpable kind of relief. But that is, that is kind of the way that, that's kind of the genius, if I can say of, of Trump in that he will, he has that madman kind of tactic where I might just follow through. And then all of a sudden taking Greenland not by force sounds like a great idea. It sounds actually not so bad in the end because it could have been so, so much worse. And, and, and then of course on just underneath the, the rhetoric, I don't think it's a crazy idea. I think this is what we've talked about this before. It's a long standing, you know, something that you might have said at an economics conference and over dinner and a few glasses of wine, you know, the US should really take Greenland. As the, you know, the ice starts to melt, the resources in the Arctic Circle are going to get more and more desirable. And it's important for the United States to have a stake in that. That makes sense. As profits become more and more difficult to come by, countries will be looking to open up new territory. And if you can do that without blowing people up with, and you can develop, there's. There if there are spaces for development, okay, yes, this is neo colonialism, imperialism, blah, blah, blah. But we're just building on top of that. I mean, it's already a colony of Denmark. It's not like something new here happening. Yeah, I mean, that's a, that's a space for expansion and growth and that's what that ever been the, ever been the tactic. And I think a lot of people are making comparisons to World War I and how, you know, it starts out with, you know, we'll take this territory we'll take, you know, we're going to take Serbia and we're going to kind of flaunt this in your face, and then it just takes one little match and the whole thing explodes. Absolutely. But with mutually assured destruction, everybody is kind of tiptoeing around this incredibly volatile and terrifying global situation that we have at the moment. And so people are being careful, much more careful perhaps than they would have been in the, at the beginning of the 20th century. And the fact of the matter is, I'm not, I'm just describing this, I'm not like cheering this on or anything, but the fact of the matter is that there is a need to expand. And if you can do that without firing a shot, why not? I mean, that is, it makes logical sense that you're going to need to do that. Now maybe they're there. I mean, there's probably a reason why China, for instance, wasn't making a move on Greenland, didn't appear to be anyway. Maybe they're overestimating the degree to which this is a solid economic decision. But the fact remains that as this is the way that capital moves, you've got to expand. You've gotten to have new frontiers. And if you can do that, as I said, without blowing up infrastructure and so on, you, if you start, you need to kind of push to the ends of the earth or beyond, if need be. Yeah. So I think it makes, I don't know, it does make economic sense.
- [09:20]
Matthew Schmitz
I think it's so fascinating that Trump has been disruptive in this way to said, okay, we need to possess Greenland, we have to own it. And then he's backed off that and signed this deal, which maybe isn't so radically different from the status quo ante. What's going on here? My read is that Trump just mistrusts what some people call the liberal international order, or I guess the rules based international order with a little less ideological charge. And he mistrusts it because he thinks it's not serving American interests. He thinks it's fake, it's just not a real thing. So he wants to tear that up. Or maybe, as he would put it, it's not so much tearing it up as just recognizing it's, you know, fake to begin with. And so I think that the idea that the America, that, the idea that America needs to own Greenland or seize it really only makes sense if you put no stock in this rules based international order. And so the real question about Trump's, you know, political instincts, when you zoom back from his individual Decisions which are often seem quite erratic. It's just whether he's right about that, whether he's right that the liberal international or rules based international order is fake or is failing, is coming apart in some way. Certainly he is helping to dismantle it and I think it's something that states are going to have to react to. So it just seems that increasingly, certainly under Trump, and I suspect this will hold after he's gone to a degree, America is going to be less invested in creating these neutral seeming systems of coordination and will instead be trying to craft deals that are kind of one off, ad hoc and perceived as more pro American. That's, that's the Trump approach. So I think that, you know, the Greenland, do I want to call it a fiasco? The Greenland incident shows that, you know, these changes are not as apocalyptic as, as we're often told. But it's also not entirely clear to me what the upside is or has been. I mean, a lot of people have been annoyed. We're getting a somewhat better deal. You know, we can put more weapons there. We're getting enhanced mining rights, it appears, which will help to box out China. But I'm not sure that we're, we're really getting that much in exchange for all of the angst we've caused. So maybe we're back to Lampedusa's novel the Leopard. The more things change, the more they remain the same. As a character says in that novel, we're tearing up the rules based international order. We're instituting America first deals. But how much has really shifted?
- [12:47]
Ashley Frawley
Yeah, that's interesting because Carney at Davos started out his speech by saying, by drawing this analogy to socialist really existing socialism where you had to put up. The shopkeeper puts up a sign in his window that says, you know, seize the means of production or workers of the world unite or something like that. I can't remember the specific line that he used and he's like, this was. He didn't really believe it, but he had to keep putting the sign up because as long as everybody played a part in the charade, the charade was able to carry on. But as soon as he takes the sign down, then it all begins to fall apart. And so, so funny because I was like, oh, wow, he's starting out with the trans issue. How interesting. He said, we all have to pretend to believe in this untruth, but as soon as a few people stop believing in it, then it all falls apart. And I was like, wow, bold move, Carney. And that he turns out that he was actually talking about the rules based international order. And so I don't know, I guess for him, he, he started to kind of say that this was something that we didn't. We all had to pretend to believe in, but we knew that if one powerful country started to throw its weight around, then the whole thing fell apart, would fall apart. But it was kind of a way of saying we should keep this thing alive, that you have to. It's basically a plea to Keep this post 1945, post 1991 settlement alive in the face of, you know, American hegemony. Something like that. The other point is that Carney's speech got a standing ovation and I'm 99% sure it was written by ChatGPT. Were quite a few tells in his speech. You know, we review a lot of submissions and I get a lot of AI submissions. I think I'm getting good at spotting this at this point. But hey, there was a whole session on where is growth going to come from? And everybody said AI. So maybe I shouldn't be so picky.
- [14:56]
Matthew Schmitz
Yeah. I did not watch Carney's speech, but I saw it was really widely praised and as a sign that he's an immensely intelligent and, you know, perspicacious leader and exactly the kind of adult we need in the room.
- [15:12]
Ashley Frawley
Yeah, of course, that's, that's why I hate Carney so much. Like he's. And it, it's, it's. That's exactly what Davos is. You know, there's so many, like, if you look, you know, I was watching all of the. I'm not in Davos, obviously I haven't got that kind of money. But if you. So I've been watching the speeches on YouTube and if you look at the comments underneath, oh boy, there's a lot of like, oh, look, the Jews are uniting to talk and da, da, da. Very scary kind of stuff. But because world. The World Economic Forum associated with so many conspiracy theories for such a long time and. But what it really is is people like Carney, people like these, you know, these. What's the word I'm looking for? Smug kind of adults in the room who come in and they're like, all right, you've had your fun. You've had your fun and now let's talk order. Let's talk order. And it is. It has been for a long time, in my opinion, in spite of a few outlier talks and sessions, a. An institution that represents the aspiration for managed decline. How can we keep this declining world system orderly. And you could see that in the, the subjects of a lot of the talks which were, which were things like, can we afford longevity? Can we afford longevity? That is crazy. What a thing to say. And you know, and the, the, the chair was like, leaving morals and ethics aside, would it be better for government to. People just didn't live so long, you know. And like, and that's true. That is what. That is what governments around the world are discussing. Like, hey, you know, the liberal aspiration of our societies for such a long time has been to the. To lengthen life and make it more enjoyable. But you know what? We, we crunch the numbers and look, grandma, you're gonna have to go like Belgium, like will every five years. Seriously. Table May after age 75, you should just be offered euthanasia, you know, to prevent a crisis in social care. I like to quote the Belgium Belgian insurance guy saying, you know, that these are, this is decline. This is how do we manage a world system that is spitting people out the bottom. And another, another one of the sessions was something like, can, can we save the middle class? You know, is that something we can do here? And then they're talking about growth. Where's growth going to come from? AI, Not a mention of a human. And then in that longevity debate, the French woman was very interesting. She was like. To the. In response to the question of like, well, seriously, should. Maybe people shouldn't live so long, she was like, well, look, there are ways you can deal with this. You can have immigration, you can push people in, more women into work, you can make people work longer. You know, that was her. Like, that's the world that we're living in right now. That's exactly where it's like euthanasia, immigration, more women working just like squeeze blood from a stone. And the disruption to that is someone like Trump who's coming in and he's like, let's redevelop Greenland, let's redevelop Gaza, let's push these frontiers. That's the dynamic destruct can be very destructive aspect of our world order like that, you know, imperialism, pushing for war, this sort of thing, and the reconstruction that can come after that. That's what Trump is pushing for. Whereas all these quote unquote adults in rumor, like, no poops hit the fan, you know, already. We are living in the aftermath of that. Trump, you need to, you're. You're screwing this all up. We all know what the deal is. Can't you just fall in line of like, we have to manage this decline. The dynamism is gone. And I think that's what the World Economic Forum is. And it. A lot of people mistake that they have this conspiracy, that it's like the socialist communist conspiracy, something to do with the Jews. Very scary kind of stuff that people are saying. But this is the negative abolition of capitalism. This is capitalism kind of undermining itself but not producing anything new. And these are that. This is what our elites are doing, just gathering to discuss with each other how to kind of, you know, dole out the pieces in the aftermath.
- [19:34]
Matthew Schmitz
I think that's such an apt description of Davos, you know, kind of people who want to oversee a managed decline. Maybe that's better than uncontrolled collapse or something. But, yeah, there really isn't any exuberance, any high aspiration, and that's so notable. And I think you're right. I mean, the idea of America possessing Greenland just appeals to me. I'm sorry. The idea that we would annex this huge piece of territory where something might happen, maybe not extensive settlement, though, who knows, with global warming, but development, mining, as you say, a kind of frontier, and above all, just our country expanding on the map seems to open, you know, possibility once again. So I, you know, the idea just appealed to my imagination, though I couldn't see how that could practically be brought about without some great act of injustice, you know, going, whatever, shoot, shooting at these Greenlanders who have done us no wrong. But, yeah, so I think that's. That's something that Trump kind of taps into just at the level of. The level of vibes, you know, during his. Shortly after his inauguration, Adam Rowe, the historian, wrote a piece for Compact called the Return of American Exuberance. And it's sort of that idea, that mode is one of the things that Trump represents, and he hasn't really delivered on that in terms of changing the map in any big way. He's certainly backed off that with Greenland, but that's one of the things that he expresses that makes him different from other politicians, I think.
- [21:43]
Ashley Frawley
Yeah, I mean, it's that last gasp of a kind of dynamic capitalism as opposed to one that acquiesces to the inevitable, like the slowing down and all the degrowth and all that. All these fantasies that have come out that have really been sort of defining of the World Economic Forum and the kind of their pie in the sky thinking is like, you'll, oh, very famously, you'll own nothing and be happy. Right? So this is like they're seeing, oh, line goes down. Well, you Know what? Maybe dispossession can actually be harmonized. You know, maybe that's, maybe it's not so bad. So they're trying to like sort of harmonize this, the stasis, this, this difficulty that capitalism is having with growing. Whereas Trump and these kinds of disruptors are demanding the impossible, which is this continued expansion. I don't think it would work. I should say my own opinion now. I don't think it will work. But it's definitely better than, as a, you know, you can bleed out humanity drop by drop and literally like actually like just wipe a whole bunch of us off the map. And that can go on for a really, really, really long time. And I think at least the attempt to push beyond is worth something. And who knows, maybe we'll push so far, we'll find a new planet and then it'll be like, it'll be like finding, you know, finding North America and maybe, maybe capitalism can carry on for a certain period of time after that. I don't know. But at least it's looking toward the stars and not within limits because that, those are sessions in Davos right now as well. Like planet space travel within limits. You know, they always have to put that on there, have to put within limits. Obviously we can't imagine reaching beyond managed.
- [23:24]
Matthew Schmitz
Decline is an interesting term. It sounds a lot like assisted death, doesn't it?
- [23:33]
Ashley Frawley
Yeah, I think these things are linked.
- [23:37]
Matthew Schmitz
Yeah. So I think this is a.
- [23:41]
Ashley Frawley
A.
- [23:42]
Matthew Schmitz
More real and legitimate transition than you usually get on podcasts between two topics. But Ashley, you've written a lot on assisted death. You tell me that the bill in the UK is now passing through the House of Lords. What's the state of things? I think people hear these headlines, okay, people are moving forward assisted death bills here and there, but what's going on at this moment? Why is it worth paying attention to?
- [24:09]
Ashley Frawley
So this bill, so the terminally ill adults end of life bill, which was a private members bill, so that means that it wasn't on any manifesto. And I find that really, that really irks me. And there's like, you know, Starmers, labor is doing this all the time. Like humongous changes like that were not promised, not voted on. And they took this opportunity to say as little as possible during the election, knowing that their, that the Conservatives were so incredibly, incredibly unpopular, they would just be swept into government. So they didn't say very much about what they would actually do once they're in government. And woof, when they're in government, they bring in all of These awful like anti human developments and one of these is assisted dying. And it was rushed through very little debate because they know they had the people on the, on their side because most people, when you first hear about it, it's like terrible suffering just at the very end of life, you know, and you're like, they will tell these horrible stories of suffering. They're like, you're gonna die in pain. Wouldn't it be better if you could schedule it and it would be painless and it's gonna be like, you know. And that's what they did. And they knew as long as they said that it was going to get through. But the more the people think about what this is actually about, what's likely to happen, they're more likely to turn against it. And so they rush it through. They didn't have it as part of any kind of democratic debate. So now it's in the Lords and the big question is, can the Lords actually quash this? Because they're not really meant to, but it is a private members bill and in spite of misinformation that has gone around, it does appear that they could do. And at the, at the very least there, the, there is enormous debate that is go. That's going on in the Lords that has been really important to watch and it looks like at the very least they're slowing it down. And now as of today, I think the Guardian reported that it is near impossible for it to pass the House of Lords, at least by the end of the current parliamentary session. So it's being slowed down. So what happened was there was enough of a pushback, enough debate that was happening, that the Lords have said, okay, like this is us, this is our responsibility here and even if there is majority, which I don't think there would be in the end, but majority in favor, just kind of like slowing it down is having a big effect. But one of the things that occurred to me recently as people like Kevin Ewell have kind of been compiling, Kevin Newell and Dan Hitchens have been compiling a lot of the things that have come out in these debates, what they have admitted and it is so shocking and terrifying. So they're basically like, they started out with these very minimal kind of claims, as they usually do, but they're like, no, no, it's just with people, six months to live and we will have the strongest safeguards in the world. Nobody says that one anymore. But they started out by saying that and then it was just like slowly, slowly, like yeah man, like we can't afford all these people and you know, there's only so much money to go around, literally was said, there's only so much money to go around, literally that was said in a speech. And these questions of like, why people might seek it, they've been trying to avoid that. And they're like, well, you know what? Yes, some people feel like a burden, but if they, if they seek it because they're a burden, that's none of our business. And it occurred to me this is exactly like the trans issue. And I know I've made this parallel twice now and I'm going to sound like I'm obsessed, but because I work in, in the area of policy rhetoric and the development of policy and the trajectories and the levers that people pull and so on. And I'm recognizing some commonalities here. So part of why the trans issue was able to go so far is first of all because obviously they avoided public debate as much as possible. That's really key. If you can kind of hide behind slogans and nice sounding things that most people agree with and avoid scrutiny, you're obviously much more likely to be successful in having your desired legislation passed. And this is what famously, and if you're not familiar with this, I suggest you go and have a look at our coverage of this in Compact magazine. I've written about WPATH myself. Famously. What trans organizers did, trans activists did is that they, they bundled their desired legislation and hit it behind or with, and hid behind gay rights legislation on gay marriage and they kind of piggyback on the, the popularity of that. But anyways, they, they, so when they were high, hidden behind scrutiny, they were able to reconceptualize trans medical care as, through a complete and completely and totally medicalized understanding. So it was like gender dysphoria, being trans. This is a medical condition. It's an actual real medical condition. And we don't say that. Well, we do, but we don't say that like cancer is by like, you know, people being around other people and like, and when I say we do, I mean we say caused by lifestyle or whatever, but for the most part we don't say that things like cancer are caused by who you hang out with. Right. It's the same thing. This is a medical condition. And once you conceptualize something as a medical condition and, and treatment as medically necessary, there is pretty much nothing that can stop you from giving this medically necessary treatment. And I saw this when I looked at the WPATH files, it was really shocking. Practitioners were Coming in and they were saying things like, well, look, this person is schizophrenic. This person has this. This person has that. Should I really be referring them for these really drastic surgeries? And the people were coming back and saying, well, yeah, you wouldn't decline. You wouldn't keep insulin away from a diabetic, would you, because he's schizophrenic. They really were saying that, right? Because they had conceptualized it so medically that it was a medically necessary intervention, a treatment that you have a right to have. You can not. There's almost nothing that can stop you from giving that treatment. And this is what is happening with the happening with assisted dying. They have conceptualized it so much as a medically necessary treatment that literally nothing can stop you from prescribing it. That would be a form of discrimination. So that's why in the lords and previously in debate, they were saying these really scary things around, like, well, if you're in poverty, so what? Oh, well, if you are coerced, so what? If you're feel that you're a burden on other people, so what? Right, because they. This is a treatment that people need. So literally nothing else matters but what they've lost is the fact that there's a whole social context around why you may wish to be trans and why you may wish to take your life. This is. But if it's just a medical treatment, none of that matters. And that is why they're so brazen about it. And it's the. Luckily for us, once it comes to light, they realize, or we all realize, that is a paradigm that is not widely shared. Most people don't think of killing people as a necessary treatment. They don't think of it that way. And they're very, very worried about it getting out of hand. And the debate has shown they don't care if it gets out of hand. It cannot be it. If it is a treatment, it must be accessible. It doesn't matter what's going on in your life. So this is the thing that I think is the sort of takeaway from a lot of this debate. And, you know, this debate is opening up in the United States and it's. It's opening up, as I showed in my MCC report on euthanasia, it's in pretty much almost every European country except for some Balkans holdouts. And it's followed the exact same path. It expands and it expands. And, you know, I had a debate with somebody on X recently, and he was like, oh, well, we can't that can't be an argument for passing necessary legislation, the fear of it expanding. You could say that about any law. And yes, I do say that about any law. And that's why you shouldn't have that societal tick that we seem to have of late, which is there ought to be a law. There ought to be a law. Well, look, when there is a law, the tendency is for the law to expand, not to be rolled back. So think hard next time you say there ought to be a law about such and such. You know, once something is united in law, no man shall part it, essentially. So we've got to be. Yeah, we got to be really, really careful allowing states to kill people, you know, allowing states, as we're doing now, to conceptualize killing people as a necessary medical intervention, which is the path that it has been going in every country, in almost every country, and even in countries where the numbers don't grow year on year, which they have been in almost every country, you have advocates and governments complaining that not enough people are taking it up and why, why, and we should promote it more. So there is a powerful, you know, this is, without even getting into what I think I've talked about before, this managed decline aspect of it that's, you know, they're reaching for it. They're looking at all these aging people and they're like, this isn't a wonderful thing for humanity that we're growing older. They're like, this is a cost. This is a form of the keep. Why are we going to keep these people alive when they're not doing anything for us? We need to squeeze more blood from the stones. You know, either you're going to work until you're 75 or you see yourself out. You know, that's, that's the cold economic logic that I think is at the bottom of a lot of this. And every now and then people will say it completely unabashedly. Anyways, I could go on about this forever, but that's, that's kind of what's happening. And God willing, you know, these, this debate in the Lords will, will be able to put a dent in the, in the velocity. This is a mixed metaphor here, but whatever, you know, with which this bill has been proceeding in the uk, I.
- [34:43]
Matthew Schmitz
Recommend Charles Murray's article in compact, why I changed my mind on assisted suicide. You know, maybe a lot of people haven't seen it because the term suicide is so heavily suppressed on social media. It can be hard to get these things out. Yeah, I was very struck a while back By Andrew Roberts, the kind of Tory historian, popular biographer of Winston Churchill, giving a speech in the House of Lords saying, oh, assisted dying. This is the ethic of the Romans. This is the true expression of the Western belief in freedom. This is what we need. And he kind of shrouded these legal developments in all this kind of high flown, pseudo Churchillian rhetoric. And I thought, wow, there are just no real solutions on offer from our governing authorities on the left or the right. I mean, you know, obviously there have been brave dissenters on both sides of the aisle. Friend of Compaq, Danny Krueger, the former Tory mp, he's now with reform. He's been very opposed to assisted dying. And there are also people with impeccable left wing credentials who have been opposed to it. But the mainstream of, of the parties, certainly in the UK has, if they've just fully supported this and the idea that it's advancing solidarity, say if you're on the left or, you know, individual agency, and then if you're on the right, the idea that it's, you know, advancing freedom or somehow connecting us with our higher traditions, it just seems totally, totally unhinged. So I really enjoyed Murray's essay because he's someone who I think is admired and read by a lot of more secular minded, libertarian leaning people who are inclined to approve of something like assisted dying. And I hope more people come to his conclusion and heed his words.
- [37:01]
Ashley Frawley
Yeah, it's a really beautiful piece. And it was almost like the anecdote that he gives, which I won't spoil for you, but it was almost the exact conversation that I had had with my husband like 10 years ago, where I was like, oh, you know, if I, if I start to decline in old age, you can just wheel me off a cliff. Don't worry about it. And he was like, absolutely horrified. And he said this to me recently, so it wasn't just young love, but he was like, no, I would take care of you. And I was really shocked because I was like, I thought that I was being selfless, you know, but I didn't realize that if I were to do something like that. And it's often women that do this as well, women who are afraid of being burdens that will therefore opt for assisted dying. If I were to do that, I would be taking away from him what he thought was a really important part of his responsibility to me, which was to take care of me if I can't take care of myself, and obviously vice versa. And this idea that he would be a burden on me after taking care of me all these years is just utterly shocking. And people say that all the time. They don't even realize, like, my mom, who's, like, totally apolitical, like, she was like, oh, you know, people don't want to be burdened. I'm trying to do a Canadian accent. And I was like, mom, you took care of your mother in her last year where she was very, very ill. Was she a burden on you? And she was horrified. No, of course not. These were really important. This was a really important time that we spent together. Yeah. And this idea that you just take that away, that this is just worthless, this is a life unworthy of life, is so disgusting and, and, and so concerning. And, you know, when I, I put that out, that Murray piece out on X, and it was really shocking the amount of people that were like, oh, that's really sweet and everything, but, you know, we, most of us have to work. It's really hard to care for older people. Yeah, it is. That's a problem. The idea that the solution to that is to kill them was stunning. That that's what people were saying. That's what people were saying. And then, you know, they'll be like, no, no, no. And they'll fall back on autonomy and so on. And, oh, we wouldn't put animals through that. Look, you know, we used to kill animals because they broke a leg. We'd kill our cherished pets because they broke a leg and we couldn't afford to pay for it. You know, that's not an aspiration for humans. Now. Yes, we console ourselves and say, no, I didn't want to put them through the suffering, but the fact of the matter is, you don't want to clean up after them when they start becoming incontinent. I get it. It's a dog, not a human. Why are we bringing this over to humans? That's mad. It's a. It's terrifying.
- [39:40]
Matthew Schmitz
On that heartening note, thank you, Ashley. Thanks, listeners. For more, go to compactmag.com subscrib.
- [40:14]
Narrator/Advertiser
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