The Coalition of the Swilling

So you did.

And I thank you.

I have zero problems with the concept of assisted suicide, my problem with Kevorkian is that he seemed to enjoy it.

Ditto to Bill. He also seemed a little too interested in his own publicity.

Yeah, Kevorkian is a coward. No doubt there.

But....Mr. Bingley, when you didn't want to us THAT word, were you talking about this?

I fail to see how Kevorkian is a coward for this, unless his stated position was that people should be required to commit suicide, or simply be killed.

In terms of life or death, I view hypocrisy as equal to cowardice.

But that's me talking.

There is nothing hypocritical about it, unless he was saying people should be required to kill themselves. He's exercising a choice that was denied by law to other people (I suspect, though, that this choice may be at least in part because he has a martyr complex).

I will point out that some people against assisted suicide call it a "coward's way out" and say that facing long term pain is braver.

But in any case, Kevorkian is absolutely a poster child for why there should be long, involved debate about the issue and very clear controls on if, when, and how it should be legal.

No, Kevorkian did not say that people should be required to committ suicide.

OTOH, he promoted the concept with the zeal of a fanatic, including involvement with several assisted suicides. That's why he is in prison in the first place.

Yet, when up against the very same issue he helped other people to suicide over, he chooses not to follow his own mantra.

Granted, it's a choice. But if you talk the talk, you'd best be ready to walk the walk, else you are a hypocrite. And if that choice requires an act of bravery, rejecting the choice is the opposite of bravery, or cowardice.

The concept of assisted suicide means you don't want to suffer through a deibilitating or painful condition to a natural death. You avoid that. Some people call this the coward's way out, and they may be right.

But I expect (no, I don't know for a fact) that Kevorkian viewed assisted suicides as an act of bravery. Remember, he was bucking the system. He certainly viewed himself as a revolutionary of sorts. This is a mirror view of how you (and I) view assisted suicide. But no one said that Kevorkian is right, nor sane.

So, in my humble opinion (and it is only an opinion), based on the creed of Kevorkian, he failed to follow his own doctrine, which says that a clean death is better than a painful life.

Meh, maybe I'm talking through my hat. But I regard Kevorkian as an emotional leech, feeding off the fears of his "patients", and persuading them to commit suicide. Maybe they were right, maybe they weren't.

But when Kevorkian's turn came for the exact same choice, his real character shone out brightly: he turned tail and ran.

But in any case, Kevorkian is absolutely a poster child for why there should be long, involved debate about the issue and very clear controls on if, when, and how it should be legal.

I should have added -- no argument here at all.

"clean death is better than a painful life"

At the risk of playing armchair psychologist, I would rephrase that to "better than a miserable life". I think (speaking of talking through my hat!) it comes down to his playing martyr and trying to milk the notoriety, which makes living with pain and publicity preferable, for him, to dying now.

But you're right, opinions are pretty cheap. And other than the particular point we've been arguing, I can't disagree with anything you wrote.