(December 19, 2016 at 9:15 am)bennyboy Wrote: This is one of the jobs of legislation-- to protect us from those boogeymen which most trouble us. It is to keep the harsher side of reality out of the light, so that we can function as citizens without constantly fearing that our worst nightmares will be manifest at a whim.
No, it is not. It is the job of legislation, in a functioning democracy, of enforcing the social contract in order to assure the smooth operation of society.
(December 19, 2016 at 9:15 am)bennyboy Wrote: But anyway, the right to die of a healthy person is not one that is really controlled by the government. People know how gravity works, how bullets work, how to tie knots in a rope. It is mainly for people who need others to be complicit in their deaths that we are discussing rights. But really, we are talking about the power of an individual to suspend the responsibilities of others in a specific case-- to allow them to kill without consequence-- that we are talking about. But what happens when this suspension is granted more and more easily?
That's a dangerous slope, indeed.
Fallacious appeal to consequences. You've not addressed the point, which is that bodily autonomy is not something which should be subsumed to the greater good of society, which seems to be the crux of your argument. If the government can force you to remain alive for its own purposes, how is that not forced labor of a sort, when the person in question finds even living a chore?
You want to talk about dangerous precedents? Let's talk about this idea that the government has the right to treat us like pawns, and that our lives aren't our own to spend as we please. That would be quite the slope we could ski, there.
