Federalism and the GOP

This week, Attorney General John Ashcroft informed the DEA that assisting in suicide is not a "legitimate medical purpose" for drugs according to federal law.

This effectively nullified an Oregon law that allowed physicians to legally assist terminally ill patients in committing suicide.

I am extremely ambivalent on the whole matter of assisted suicide. I don't think that someone with six months left to live should be made to suffer unnecessarily, but at the same time I'm wary of any steps toward allowing the medical profession to kill off patients. A lot of insurance companies already dictate certain courses of treatment in order to save money; it's not hard to imagine a future in which insurance would cover putting you to sleep as the only insured response to certain dire diagnoses.

And this is aside from any concerns about the fact that assisted suicide raises a lot of issues of ambiguity of the Hippocratic oath. In the West, we assume -- always -- that life is preferable to death, and that doctors should keep you alive to the best of their abilities. This may not be true in all cases; but I think we need more self-examination before we draw any conclusions about such issues.

Anyway, what I think doesn't matter. In the United States, only Oregon has legalized physician-assisted suicide. The people of Oregon voted, in 1994 and 1997, in referenda to permit physician-assisted suicide.

In 1997, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the states of New York and Washington had the power to explicitly outlaw physician-assisted suicide. The same year, the Court refused to hear a case challenging the Oregon law explicitly allowing it.

And now Ashcroft, an unelected official, has effectively done what the Supreme Court refused to do: thwart the will of the people of Oregon.

This all exposes some interesting hypocrisy on the part of the Republican Party.

Republicans -- who like to call themselves "conservatives" -- are these days, generally, overwhelmingly supportive of states' rights. Outlaw abortion through sly backdoor means? That's the states' prerogative. Encourage prayer in schools? Up to the states. Teach creation "science" in public schools? It's a state decision. Discriminate against homosexuals? Nothing in the constitution about them, so it must be up to the states.

And you know what? In most of these cases, they're right. The federal government should not be able to force the people of, say, Utah to accept laws that conflict with their beliefs. The entire purpose of the U.S.' system of government is to resolve (or at least mitigate the effects of) the inevitable conflicts created by the differing cultures of, say, Salt Lake City and San Francisco. The federal government does not have the legitimate power to tell the states what to do, except in certain narrow circumstances.

But the GOP's opinion of federalism changes drastically when the opinion of a state's citizens wanders too broadly from the Republican platform.

Want to allow physician-assisted suicide? How about allowing desperately ill people to seek relief by smoking dope? Or perhaps some other thing that conflicts with the Republican Party's specific value system? Well, in those cases, things are a little different, say the GOP.

Studying the feelings of the Founding Fathers, to see what they really meant by cryptic and ambiguous statements like "Congress shall make no law", the GOP finds that in fact they thought that the people and states were unqualified to make decisions on their own, and that a paternal central government would best serve their interests.

This is why the Tenth Amendment specifically points out that the "powers not delegated" to the federal government are "reserved to the states... or to the people" -- to ensure that the federal government could overrule states' decisions in order to avoid conflicting with the religious sensibilities of the President or Attorney General.

I know, it doesn't make sense to me, either, but then I'm not a Republican.

The Democrats are not any better, but at least they're consistent. The Democrats do not hide the fact that they are in favor of strong central government to the detriment of the states and people.

Not only do the Republicans betray their heritage and violate their oaths of office, they lie about it, both to us and to themselves. The Democrats tell you that they know what's in your best interest, and then they set out to protect you from yourself. The Republicans preach liberty and conservatism, and proceed to protect your from yourself in defiance of the principles this country is founded on.

Which is more dangerous and repugnant? The wolf, or the wolf in sheep's clothing? The answer, of course, is something that isn't a wolf at all. Barring that possibility, I'd prefer, and respect more, the predator that does not conceal its true nature.