WHAT AMERICA SHOULD LEARN FROM CANADA

Wesley J. Smith

Wesley J. Smith is one of North America's top bio-ethical thinkers. He has written and spoken extensively about the perils of assisted-suicide not only to the sick and disabled but also to the moral underpinnings of western civilization itself. 

Read his latest column in the American publication National Review Online: "Canadian Hospital Waiting Room Promotes Euthanasia" Canada legalized medically assisted suicide in 2016. Already the tentacles of euthanasia can be found in a Canadian ER. How many others? Legal euthanasia puts the sick and disabled in peril and threatens the proper place for palliative care. Canada legalized assisted suicide under the guise of Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID). What we got was euthanasia by lethal injection.

If the United States should learn anything from Canada it is not to be like Canada. 

SO YOU SAY YOU'RE PRO-CHOICE?

So you say you're pro-choice. Choose adoption, not abortion. Choose life, not death. Never choose death for yourself or another life. You may regret making life denying decisions. You will not regret making life-affirming decisions. It's really quite simple. You may say that it's easier said than done. Everything is easier said than done.

Here's a truth every person must understand. You

are valuable even when you've ceased to believe it. Decisions should not be made when you are submerged beneath the waves depression or dire circumstances. Your unborn baby is valuable even if he/she is unwanted. You may not want to be a parent but there are thousands upon thousands of childless couples who desperately want to be parents. 

So you say you're pro-choice? Choose to live and let live. All I am saying is give life a chance. -- MDP

CATHOLIC SOCIAL SERVICES AND CANADA'S LEGALIZED ASSISTED SUICIDE

In 2016, Canada legalized medically assisted suicide for terminally ill and severely disabled Canadians. Many Christian social service agencies did not know how to respond to this new legal framework, not only as professionals but as Christians. The federal government's law was couched within the euphemism Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) to make the murder of sick and dying people sound respectable. 

[NB: After more than two years of Canada's Medical Assistance in Dying, less than 1% of patients were assisted self-administered suicides. More than 99% were lethal injections by a doctor. That is not assisted suicide, it is euthanasia. It is not medical assistance in dying, it is medical killing.]

Even before the law passed pressures began to force Catholic institutions to kill suicidal patients who fit the criteria Canada's odious new law (bill c-14). For example, liberal newspaper columnist Paula Simons wrote a column: "If Covenant Health won't obey law, it shouldn't get public funds to run public hospitals"  It must have pleased the Prime Minister. He recently appointed this awful woman to the Canadian Senate. (Ah, the rewards of being on the progressive left in Canada.)

When the C-14 became law, I was asked to address Catholic Social Services in Edmonton, Alberta, to try and make sense of this horrible new reality. I spoke as chronically ill and disabled person—and placed my address within a context of Catholic teaching.  Click below to hear what I said. MDP

A PROFILE OF ALCOHOLISM

People know me as an advocate for Life and disability issues. Fewer people know that I am an alcoholic. It's been thirty-eight years since my last drink—but the alcoholic personality remains even without alcohol.  I think God left that thorn in my flesh so that I never think I did it all by myself. He led me out of my addiction. It was my first miracle. Early on He told me not to forget those days because many people are still there.

My family has been scarred by alcoholism dating back generations.

Over 30 million Americans are problem drinkers. At a tenth the size of America, Canada has 5.8 million problem drinkers. Alcoholism costs the U.S. economy an estimated $249-billion annually and $14.6-billion to Canada. The human cost is incalculable! 

Alcoholics Anonymous was started in Akron Ohio in 1935 and has helped millions of people stop drinking, and provides family support through Al-anon and Alateen. They do wonderful work and I have great respect for their presence in communities across North America and the U.K.. 

But there is much more that needs to be done at governmental, community, and research in scientific, psychological and sociological levels. It makes sense to support programs at governmental and community levels that address alcoholism, educate young people about risks of alcohol abuse, support recovery and programs and support families of alcoholics.

Alcoholism is no respecter of persons. It spans every social strata of society, both genders, and every racial group. 

Elizabeth Vargas
new book
Between Breaths
available at
bookstores & Amazon

I came across a revealing and brutally honest interview with former ABC news co-anchor Elizabeth Vargas about her journey with the disease. It is excellent and I thank Ms Vargas for her courage and willingness to talk about a disease that needs to be addressed more. Click on the link below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPLJuyULAZ8

TERRORIZING TUCKER CARLSON'S FAMILY

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS A PHOTO OF AN ABORTED BABY

__________________

Linkedin says Will Oremus is a technology columnist

at the liberal online publication Slate. Slate published an article on November 8th 2018 by Oremus entitled No, It's Not OK That Leftists Threatened Tucker Carlson's Family at His D.C. Home. Now I suppose you might be wondering why Slate's technology reporter would be writing about the liberal left's shenanigans that had little or nothing to do with technology? That's fodder for another post.

Oremus gave us his take on the leftist group "Smash

Smash Racism DC/antifa
chanting & threatening violence
outside Tucker Carlson's house

Racism D.C." and their descent on Tucker Carlson's home on the night on November 8th. In a scene reminiscent of the Ku Kluz Klan surrounding the house of a black family, about twenty protesters hooligans threatened the Carlsons with Klansmen style intimidation tactics  They rang the doorbell and chanted threats such as "Tucker Carlson, we will fight! We know where you sleep at night!" A thug threw himself against the door. They spray-painted his driveway. Apparently, one woman was heard shouting she wanted to "bring a pipe bomb."

Neither Mr Carlson nor his children were there at the time, but his terrified wife was home and she hid and called the police. 

Oremus' disapproved of the behaviour of the mob but went on to say it was "understandable that Antifa activists would feel a desire to make Carlson taste the kind of fear immigrants and minorities often feel in Trump's America." He did not understand why they would actually do what they did? They did what they did because they are Antifa! Thugs. And like the Ku Klux Klan, they hide their faces because they know, in their heart of hearts, what they're doing is immoral.

As a vocal pro-life Christian, I am acquainted with the dirty underbelly of progressive left tactics, but is also fodder for a different post. Let's look at the statement of Oremus that he understood why the Antifa mob would want to "make Carlson taste the kind of fear immigrants and minorities often feel in Trump's America." 

Legal immigrants have nothing to fear. Only illegal

immigrants and undocumented migrants should be concerned and with good reason. They snuck into America illegally, in violation of established immigration laws. They have no right of citizenship by simply being in the United States, any more than I would. That is not "Trump's America." It is the long-established sovereignty of America. As far as minority populations go, their problems existed long before the Donald Trump Presidency. 

Antifa activist and their motto

America is a nation of laws. Antifa does not recognize the rule of law. They are anarchists. Antifa is not simply exercising their freedom of speech, they are trying to silence opposing views through threats of violence and intimidation.

Oremus said that "Carlson and his ilk thrive on the perception that liberals are hypocrites, that they lack basic decency." Replace the word 'liberal' with 'progressive left' and Oremus could lump me in with Carlson's ilk. They are hypocrites. They do lack basic decency. I would bet that the progressive left and their ilk (to use Oremus' word) have many of the same faces in groups like 'Smash Racism D.C., Antifa, and rallies supporting abortion. I would imagine many are liberal Democrats. If they do not show up for organized mob events, the progressive left gives discreet winks of approval. 

Oremus said, "Carlson and others like him revel in highlighting isolated acts of violence of liberal activists or immigrants to rile up conservative viewers." I take issue with Oremus' assertion that violence by liberal activists is isolated. It is not. Acts of violence by liberal activists against pro-Life people are on the rise. (I know, I keep track.)

Supporting the violence of abortion is a lack of basic

decency. Claiming to support human rights yet supporting the killing of unborn babies or euthanasia is hypocritical. Expressing one's own freedom of speech, thought and expression yet trying to deny it from others is hypocrisy. Advocating democracy yet obstructing a duly elected President because things did not go the Democratic Party's way in the 2016 election is hypocrisy. It is not democratic. It is actually contempt for democracy.

Terrorizing a family at their home must be decried by all people of good will. It must not be tolerated. The people behind Smash Racism D.C./Antifa must become pariahs in society. As a member of Tucker Carlson's 'ilk', I stand with him and his family and against these thugs and their 'ilk'.

MDP
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https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/11/tucker-carlson-threatened-antifa-wrong-liberals.html?fbclid=IwAR1Z7dnmyyQieJCmxrFIkr1juMd59QIBCAgYySSBiofQMArCFSy8u17uyik Article

DARE TO DREAM (EVEN IN DESPERATE CIRCUMSTANCES)

Dare to dream. Sometimes dreams are all we have. There is beauty in the world and yet the greatest beauty lies within you, for you bear the image of God. That small flame of pure beauty still flickers even if depression, desperation or defeat say otherwise. Attune that small internal voice you've heard since early childhood to recognize the presence of that divine Image. Live your life in a way that brings flickering embers into a full flame that illuminates your whole being. 

One must not make the terrible decision to commit

suicide—assisted or otherwise—when they are at their lowest point. Suicide closes the door to possibilities the future may hold. If I had ended my life after being diagnosed with aggressive multiple sclerosis thirty-four years ago, I never would have known my five beautiful grandchildren. They need me and I need them, they love me and I love them. Never extinguish the possibility of love that may be around the next corner.  

Don't listen to autonomists who hold extreme self-determination as the highest human ideal. They would watch you self-determine yourself out of existence! Suicide kills more than people—it kills possibilities and dreams yet to be dreamt. It kills the future.

Please don't make decisions involving death when you are submerged beneath the waves of desperate circumstances. There is a way to rise above the surface. I know, I found it. 

MDP  

BARRIERS TO BEAUTY

Disabilities and the modeling industry. Is it just a flash in the pan? I hope not but fear so. The concept contradicts many perceptions of beauty that do not conform to the modeling industry's constructs of perfection. There's another reason.

People with disabilities do not generally have the financial resources to have much impact as consumers. Many are just trying to survive without being concerned with high fashion. In fact, if any other segment of the population had the levels of poverty, under-employment, and unemployment as people with disabilities, it would be considered a national scandal!

And yet, I applaud people with disabilities as models. Why? It chips away at so many prejudices and barriers. It challenges cultural perceptions of perfection and beauty. Beauty simply is. It is not a human construct, it is a God construct. It can transcend human definitions—and even itself—through struggle, to become a more complete beauty. Perfection can and does exist within imperfection. What is seen with the eyes is the beginning of an internal change in people's hearts. 

And when human hearts change, barriers to inclusion and acceptance can come down.  That which challenges our senses or perceptions or prejudices are often the fertile ground where real internal human growth happens. (Granted, not everything that challenges is good, that is where discernment is needed.)

Jesus described the eye as a lamp of the body. The eye is an entrance to the heart and mind and even the soul of a person.

"The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness."[1] 

He was referring to eyes that see well, and perceive well, and illuminate a person's whole being—or the opposite. It is possible to perceive darkness as light or light as darkness. Bad eyes lead to bad perceptions. 

We live in an era where that strange possibility has materialized all around us. Evil is called good and good evil. That's why the Bible must be the standard for right versus wrong, morality versus immorality, liberty versus licence. It is immutable.

Moral good is that which allows people to rise to their full potential that God intended when He created them.[2] I would even go further and say that 'good' includes encouragement and nurture of individuals to find purpose and meaning in their lives, within a prayerful and proper Biblical context. 

Part of human nurture and encouragement involves helping to clear away barriers to people reaching their

fullest potential and discover the purpose and meaning of their lives. A redefinition of beauty — both physical and in art — clears barriers that bind and restrict human development.  Then there is the worst tragedy of all. Barriers to beauty kill dreams.
MDP
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[1] Luke 11.34 & Matthew 6.22.
[2] See CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, 1906.