individual rights — VOICES for REASON

Montana has joined the short list of states that permit physician-assisted suicide . . . sort of.

It started with a court case brought by Robert Baxter when he was terminally ill with lymphocytic leukemia. His symptoms included infections, chronic fatigue, anemia, night sweats, nausea, massively swollen glands, digestive problems and generalized pain.

“I have lived a good and a long life, and have no wish to leave this world prematurely,” Baxter told the trial court back in 2008. “As death approaches from my disease, however, if my suffering becomes unbearable I want the legal option of being able to die in a peaceful and dignified manner by consuming medication prescribed by my doctor for that purpose.” Without court permission, Baxter’s doctor could not prescribe such a lethal dose without exposing himself to a charge of homicide.

The trial court granted Baxter’s petition—but tragically, not until the day he died.

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Frustrated Americans around the country are gearing up for another round of grassroots “tea parties” on Tax Day, April 15. Up to this point, it is unclear whether the loosely-connected protests will amount to anything other than a fleeting backlash against an onslaught of government intervention. What unites the protesters is not a consistent intellectual outlook–they appear to hold a hodgepodge of viewpoints–but rather their anger at the alarming expansion of our government. To have real impact, they’ll need a consistent intellectual framework.

Although the Tea Party name adopted by the protesters evokes images of the American Revolution, there is, at present, no basis for comparison. The American Revolution was fundamentally an intellectual movement–a revolt against the anti-freedom ideas motivating Britain’s treatment of the colonists, and, most importantly, a revolt for the idea of individual rights. These radical new ideas about what government should and should not consist of were enshrined by America’s Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence, and were the motivating force behind the revolt.

If today’s tea party protesters intend to spark any significant change, they need to understand that ideas drive change, and they need to advocate the right ideas. Both of these points are addressed in Onkar Ghate’s video presentation, “Atlas Shrugged: America’s Second Declaration of Independence.”

I recently attended a Heritage Foundation panel discussion, “Advice to President Obama on Judicial Nominations,” featuring prominent legal commentators. They touched on a variety of factors that go into choosing judicial nominees these days: collegiality, “humility,” diversity, judicial experience, scholarship, age, religion, gender, geographical roots, and so forth. Interestingly, however, none of the panelists suggested ascertaining a potential nominee’s commitment to the basic political principles on which this nation was founded. The individual rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness–apparently, these are regarded as irrelevant in choosing judges, or perhaps too abstract to form a basis for evaluation.

I disagree. The Founders’ wisdom is as true today as it was two centuries ago. Protecting individual rights is the fundamental reason why governments (and judges) exist. As I have argued elsewhere, “America desperately needs a new generation of judges who understand that their function is not to uphold social opinions but to protect our rights.”

The panelists were Walter Dellinger III (Duke law professor, former Solicitor General of the United States), Stuart Taylor, Jr. (author and contributing editor to Newsweek), and Jonathan Adler (Case Western law professor). The program was chaired by Edwin Meese III (attorney general under Ronald Reagan).