There is shock, among many of us, over the way social mores in our society seem crazier every day. Throughout history, we see the death of civilizations following a collapse in the principles that made them great. If we see moral decay, it’s only because we first have a moral standard from which we perceive reality. A disconnect from reality has deadly consequences for the society we know and the country we love, as it does for individuals.

A Clown Murderer

Matt Walsh summed up the current zeitgeist of Western Civilization in a recent podcast in his opening statement below.

Imagine that a doctor is sitting across the table from you. You’re just meeting this doctor for the first time. You’re not sure if she’s a good doctor or a bad doctor. You can’t tell if she has any morals or not. You’re assessing things. And then, the doctor tells you about one of the highlights of her year. With a smile on her face, she starts talking about one time, a few months ago, when she killed a clown. We’re talking about a man dressed in full clown uniform, a red nose, who was giggling when he died. It was really important for him to be in his clown suit when he died, the doctor says to you. It was a wonderful thing.

The Canadian doctor specializing in medical assistance in dying, or MAID, describes how the law has changed and “opened up assisted dying for those who were not necessarily dying.” The medical profession now has a specialty in Canadian government-run healthcare with broad guidelines so doctors can kill almost anyone.

Medical Murder With a Purpose?

Walsh describes how many people had died while waiting for organ transplants in Canada until they passed MAID, and then, “very quickly Canada became the world leader in harvesting organs from MAID victims.” The Canadian press knows this and has reflected happily on the practical benefits. It saves money from not caring for the old and chronically ill and is profitable in selling organs. They even have funeral homes now renting out rooms to die in for a few hundred dollars. What’s next? Send them off on the embalming table to begin a more efficient process? Walsh suggests having them get into their own coffins first for efficiency!

What About America?

We’re not far behind in the United States. There are now 10 states, plus Washington DC, with MAID laws. The website Compassion & Choices lists them: Oregon, Washington, Montana, Vermont, California, Colorado, Washington DC, Hawaii, New Jersey, Maine, and New Mexico.

The UCLA Health website describes the California End of Life Option Act.

The California End of Life Option Act went into effect on June 9, 2016. This law allows a terminally-ill adult, Caifornia resident to request a drug from his or her physician that will end his or her life…

According to UCLA Health, there are multiple steps of consent. One must be terminally ill, of sound mind, or cleared by medical and psychological doctors, agree to several forms in steps over time, etc. But I think there is one thing we can count on. If Canada has become more “liberal” in medical killing, “progressives” already have or have waiting in the wings lawsuits and legislation to push our society more quickly and efficiently down the easy killing road.

Case in Point: A Neighbor I Enjoyed Debating With Makes It Personal

I had a brilliant neighbor with whom I enjoyed debating. Although our arguments became intense, they were not vicious or personal. This may have been because of his training as a lawyer. Although he was intelligent, he seemed myopic in his thinking. He was a quick calculator without an excellent theoretical basis for his ideas. Perhaps this is my opinion because he was way to the left politically, and I’m on the right side of things.

For example, he claimed that if Abraham Lincoln were alive today, he’d be a Democrat (like many on the Left will do). I quoted Lincoln saying he could not support public schools (the country did not yet have them everywhere) because it was wrong to tax one man to pay for another man’s child’s education. When Lincoln publicly proclaimed, “If slavery isn’t wrong, then nothing is wrong,” it was an argument against moral relativism. Today, the Democratic Party is moral relativist on steroids! No, I said, if Lincoln were alive today, he’d puke if he heard the Democrats’ ideas! He had no answer.

The last thing he said to me was at the end of our skirmish over abortion. I said that all medical textbooks agree that human life begins at conception. Isn’t it interesting that life begins at conception when you take politics out of it and rely on science? He looked blankly at me and said he was so glad he didn’t think like me.

Assisted or Just Suicide?

He could have chosen the legal route in California, not that it would have been good or right, but I guess he wanted to make a statement. What we believe becomes crucial when we’re facing death. Although he was only in his early forties, he’d been treated for cancer for years and was getting close to the end. They’d stopped treatments, and his doctor told him to find a hospice.

My faith tells me I must carry my cross, but I wasn’t in his terrible position. I believe any form of suicide is out of the question because eternity lasts forever in contrast to this life’s brief suffering. But what if your surroundings taught you entirely different ideas? This guy grew up in the San Francisco Bay area, after all.

When I tried to talk to him about faith, he said the only Christian teaching he had as a child told him there was no hell. He told me he had it all worked out, that there was only love and fear. His belief in an afterlife seemed wholly made up like a fantasy, cartoonish. I told him the devil’s best trick is to convince us he doesn’t exist. He shook his head at me in disbelief. An evangelical friend told him he should read the Bible and find a good local church where people would help him. He retorted, “That doesn’t work for me.” We both told him he could ask us for anything at any time.

The beliefs our society produces today seemed quite evident in this man’s life. He never knew his father at all. He heard that he was a Coast Guard captain, and he had a gleam in his eye. Pride in just a vision of the father he could have had. He disregarded talking to his mother because “she was crazy.” He had no wife, kids, or family he could or would call.

No one saw him for a couple of months. I thought he may have gone to a hospice. Someone called to have the police break in to check on him, but they wouldn’t unless a family member requested a wellness check. Someone had his brother’s phone number, but he refused “to have anything to do with him.” After much pleading from the lady who called him, his brother finally agreed to make the call. The police found him inside. According to them, “a buddy of his had dropped off a shotgun to him a couple of months earlier.” This “buddy” of his must have thought like he did.

I’ll stand by my beliefs: Faith, hope, and love manifest themselves in what we believe, which matters existentially for this life and all eternity.

James Malloy is the author of Economic Clarity or Political Confusion: The Classical Cure for Keynesian Debt & Deficits. He has a B.S. in Business Economics and is an active licensed California Mortgage and Real Estate Broker of over 20 years.