The Pete Quiñones Show - *Throwback* The Origins of the Euthanasia Push w/ Stephen 'Radical Liberation' Carson

Episode Date: January 25, 2025

78 MinutesSFWRadLib joined Pete to read and comment on the 1992 article "Death With Dignity" by William McCord, in which he argues for state-sponsored "voluntary" euthanasia.Mrs RadLibRadical Liberation on YouTubeStephen on TwitterPete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's Substack Pete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekingiano show. Returning, Radical Liberation. How are you doing, sir? Very good. All right, this is a result of myself and Charlie doing the episode on the article from 1987. the gay rights activist talking about the plan

to go forward, which I don't know, some people are like, well, this is just a couple people writing articles. It's like, it seems like a lot of it came true. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the significance is not that like those two were the

key figures, the ones who wrote that article, right? It's more that here's the plans just laid out for you, right? Step by step. And what did they do? what they said. Yeah. And I think that once you realize that this kind of stuff, when people start talking about

this kind of stuff, people catch on a couple people, even if only a couple people read it, they're going to talk to other people, they're going to talk to other people about it. But not only that, it seems like it manages to make its way in the zeitgeist through, media, the press, magazines, things. People build upon it. They read and they're like, okay, let's keep this going. This is the way we can do it. Even if we

don't get all of it, we get some of it. And I think that led to you contacted me about a certain subject, but why don't you start off talking about how you would have even come upon something like this? Yeah, a long

time ago. By the way, on your comments you were just making, I'd say the usual caveat that that that way that those ideas slide out into the zeitgeist works for one side and not for the other right this is not a symmetrical idea battle of ideas but anyway uh less anyone have illusions yeah so um i remember where i think i was around 15 and i was thinking about mainstream media and what bothered me about it was that um it wasn't so much the thing of like I could blatantly see when they were biased sometimes, you know, because I was always in one way or another on the outside. I was sort of in a dissident space all my life.

So I could kind of see their angle on some things pretty plainly. What bothered me was the frame game. I didn't have that term for it back then, right? I could tell that there were times where just what I was thinking about was being shaped by this ingest of constant ingest of mainstream media, right? just what even matters and what doesn't get talked about what what quietly goes down the memory hole right that really bothered me i felt i felt manipulated right like um maybe i don't want to be thinking about the things that they want me to think be thinking about maybe i want to think about other things that they don't want me to be thinking about right so at the tender age of 15 i decided

to just stop i i didn't watch the news i didn't read newspapers even though i had sort of interest along those lines. And I never went back. What I did do, though, is I thought, well, I don't like this pretense to objectivity. I would like people who lay their cards on the table a bit more and say, this is our ideological goal. This is what we're driving towards. This is how we're doing it. That seemed like a certain honesty in it, you might say. So I stopped reading the mainstream media and I decided to read something on the right, don't laugh at me, Pete, National Review, and something on the left, which was the humanist. I quickly got more to the National Review, though it did introduce me to Eric von Connolt-Ladine, for which I'm grateful,

who I later got to meet. But I stopped reading National Review eventually and sort of went down the rabbit hole, right? But the humanist was quite interesting because they were pushing some of the things that I wouldn't hear about elsewhere for a long time to come. Or it wouldn't be big news, particularly big news. So I remember, and we couldn't find this article, but I remember, as I recall, reading an article probably in the late 80s, where they said, okay, it looks like, you know, Roe v. Wade, abortions in the bag. So what's next? And they said infanticide and euthanasia.

I was like, holy crap. They have ambition, I guess you could say. And so I found that sort of shocking and it's stuck in my head. And then over time, well, here's what brought it back to mind, is that my co-host Black Horse was sharing some. stats on euthanasia in Canada. And, you know, the way that's framed, right, people in these very extreme, you know, very unusual, very rare, edge case scenarios, you would understand that you'd want to do it, you know. I'm seeing the numbers and I'm like, oh, this is like a lot of the people

dying in Canada are being euthanized. Like, this is not trivial. This isn't like five people. These are bigger numbers than that, and we've got them handy to might get into them later. But so that kind of brought it back to mind that there were people who had been, you know, the article we found is 1993. So that's 30 years ago. 30 years ago they were like, we need to push for euthanasia. Now, what I think is interesting to look back at an article like this is why? Like what was their, why were they pushing for it? And what did they think would persuade people to go in this direction?

which I think back then when I was reading it, it seemed pretty edgy. It didn't seem like something that most people would go for, right? But we know the process of subversion and get the idea out there, put it into some TV shows, you know, and movies and stuff like that. You know, there's a whole chain of things they do to slow roll it until suddenly everybody just thinks it's normal, right? Yeah.

Yeah, and that's exactly what the article on how they were going to brainwash straight America into. And what's, I think the most interesting thing about it is they weren't concerned about turning straight America into activists for them. they wanted them, they wanted it to just be something that was just normal to them. Just like, I think they said just another flavor of ice cream. It's like, oh, these people just, they prefer chocolate instead of vanilla or vanilla instead of chocolate. So the attitude is, well, you know, these are, we're a free country and these people have a right to do what they want as long as they're not hurting anyone else. and you can see how that, especially with the absence of faith, it just goes right over into euthanasia and it goes right over into infanticide.

Right. Yeah, and where does it stop, right? Well, bad enough as it is, right? But how far can we? You know, what I haven't seen is the follow-up to, okay, abortion, infanticide, euthanasia. What's next after that? I don't know what the next part, the next step in the game is, right? Yeah.

So we have this, we have this article. I guess. Well, you want to pull up, you want me to pull up the article and start, yeah, and start going through this a little bit? Right. So this is from a U.S. magazine. There's a British magazine that we stumbled on to called the New Humanist, I think, where it's had various titles.

But this is a magazine called The Humanist, and this is from, from January, February issue of 1993. And I think they noted that the author had actually, he had died in August 1992. So I guess they were sitting on the article for a while. I don't know. Yeah. But he was a sociologist at City University of New York.

Cooney, I think they call it. Cooney, yep. Yeah. I remember. So that was the, if you couldn't get into a good school in New York like Manhattan College or something, you'd end up in Cooney. Right. I didn't know that.

All right. So what we're going to do here is the first paragraph is great. Then there gives background. They talk about Karen Ann Quinlan. They talk about Dr. Kovorkian. We're going to skip over that. And then we're just going to jump right to like political action based upon the Dr. Kovorkin's name and what he's doing being.

out there, what voters in certain states start to do. So I'll start reading and you stop me. And I know you're going to stop me after the first sentence. So I'll stop after the first sentence. All right. This is Death with Dignity by William McCord. Albert Camus wrote in the myth of Cicephas, there is only one truly important philosophical problem. And that is suicide. Yeah. It's a, it's a, heavy statement and it's in a way I guess it's what I've been thinking about a lot these days in two senses. One is people actually... Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th because the

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in the poor white communities? Fetano. Fentanyl, yeah, yeah. People slowly killing them. cells with fentanyl, fentanyl, various other deaths that I might call a sort of a death of despair or something, death of isolation and despair. But also, I was really struck by what I think A.A. shared it, where a lady was talking about how she decided to get herself fixed or whatever you call it, broken, so that she could not reproduce in her early 20s. And that, that I, from a sort of traditionalist,

or Burkean point of view, I kind of think of that as sort of a form of suicide, if you follow me. There's killing yourself and ending your line that way. And there's also just not continuing, not wanting to continue, not wanting to continue what came down to you from your ancestors and continuing it through your children.

You're going to be the stopping point, right? You can do it by killing yourself or you can do it by not reproducing either way. But in both senses, I think, as you see more and more of that, and I think we are seeing more of both, it's a form of broad, you know, civilizational suicide, right? We are not interested in continuing this thing anymore, which is sad and concerning. All right, continuing.

The significance of that sentiment, forcing each of us to a heightened awareness of the elements of human dignity, the sanctity of life, and the very meaning of existence has perhaps never been more explicit than it is today. For the first time in history, Americans have been asked to decide the crucial question. Is it morally permissible or even admirable for a human being to end his or her own life or to assist another in shedding this mortal coil?

Yeah, it's a little strange that he says that for the first time in history because he goes on to try to pull on precedence from like Rome and stuff, if I remember correctly. He tries to pull up some historical precedents and say, hey, you know, people have done this before. Well, the interesting thing about this is, and it's not really interesting, it's the significance of the sentiment forcing each of us to a heightened awareness of the elements of human dignity, the sanctity of life and the remaining has perhaps never been more explicit than it is today. For the first time in history, Americans have been asked, well, who's asking them? I mean, this is just academics.

It's just academics asking this question. The average 99.9% of the people don't care about this. They, you know, it's just them pushing it. Right. Yeah, this is the moral equivalent or the rhetorical equivalent to saying, have you really asked yourself whether five-year-olds can consent to sex voluntarily? I hadn't been asking myself that. Should I be?

Well, I mean, it's basically like saying, well, a lot of people, Americans are faced with the, you know, let's just change it. For the first time in history, Americans have been asked to decide the crucial question. Is it morally permissible to have sex with a five-year-old? Well, nobody is, who's asking that question? Yeah. Yeah. It's stated as if this is all around you. You're not in the conversation yet. What's your opinion? I mean, we all have opinions. You don't have your opinion yet. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So this is why I stopped reading the mainstream media. Now you know. I didn't want that. It gets in you. Right. You don't even realize there's so many tricks, right? Oh, yeah. So it talks about a couple cases here. Yeah. Yeah. You got a background. And then it jumps into, okay. So. So. Voters in the state of Washington decided to put the matter on a democratic ballot. In 1991, citizens of Washington considered a legislative proposition unlike any other ever debated by Americans. Initiative 119 asked, shall adult patients who are in medically terminal condition be permitted to request and receive from a physician aid in dying?

The proposition provided that adults could execute a medical directive requesting aid in dying, only after two physicians certified that they were mentally competent, terminally ill, and had less than six months to live. Two independent witnesses had to certify the patient's decision. Well, one thing that strikes me here, Pete, right? And this is just my big theme of banging on the progressives, I mean the progressives from, you know, 100 years ago. late 19th, early 20th century.

This is the experts, not the family, first of all, right? You're going to have your experts do this. I'm sorry, what am I saying? Not just the family. The church is out of the picture. The family's out of the picture. Society's out of the picture. The expert signed off on this.

Hey, we're good, right? Once the experts sign off, you can do it whatever you want. Yep. Yeah, I mean, we see, I mean, we see how the expert class in the last three years has just, I mean, jumped right to the forefront of everything. Yeah, it's not subtle anymore. You don't, you don't trust the science, Stephen? Yeah, exactly. Trust doctors. Although public opinion polls indicated that 61% of Washingtonians favored the initiative, a majority of voters, 54% opposed to the measure when it actually came before them. Some motivated by religious arguments feared it would undermine the sanctity of life. Others favored euthanasia, but questioned whether this proposal had too many

loopholes. Yeah, and by the way, this is part of the reason I like this article is that, you know, he does play some tricks, which we're calling out, but he also says, hey, some people were concerned about sanctity of life. He doesn't just completely, he does a little bit of reporting that is, you know, fair enough, right? Yeah. He's bringing up the concerns. That's why I say I like this article because this is sort of steel man, you know, if you're going to be, if you're going to face somebody arguing for euthanasia, I think this guy does the best that can be done, given his assumptions. Okay. Among the issues that disturbed the opponents to the proposition were these. Can physicians really know patients' wishes? Can they accurately diagnose and predict how much time is left?

Might not patients mistakenly labeled this terminal choose to die needlessly? Would the elderly choose suicide or even be pushed into death simply to spare their families' energies, emotions, and pocketbooks? Yeah, I think you're already making the point. You've already made the point, Pete, but this is where they call it in sales. It's talking past the sale or whatever. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we're all already past the point of should this even be on the table. And we're getting into the details. Right. You know, how do we, how do we put this into practice?

What's the prudent way to kill people? Yeah. Yeah, he's, he's begging the question here. He's already got the, he already knows where he's going. Right. The Washington vote hardly ended Americans anguish over the process of dying. A Boston Globe poll showed that 64% of the public favors, letting doctors give lethal injections to the terminally ill.

Derek Humphrey's final exit, a handbook on how to commit suicide, achieved bestseller status. And other states have prepared new and improved versions of Initiative 119. The first such measure was voted down by Californians in the 1992 elections. And maybe there's a good time. It seemed like you knew a little bit about this. What I didn't do is dig into where has this gone since,

legislatively. and you said it's mostly Oregon where we've seen any kind of attempts to kind of keep going in this direction strongly. Yeah, Oregon has the I can't remember what it's called. Let me look at my history real quick. It's...

Right to die, is that what you said? Something like that. Yeah. It's the Death with Dignity Act. Death with dignity. Yes. All right. Yeah.

And so in theory, we're holding the line in the United States. But what do you see in other countries? That's very interesting that it's the Death with Dignity Act, considering that's the name of the title of this essay. Oh, I missed that. Yeah, wow.

This guy introduced some important rhetoric here. Right into the name of the bill. Thank you. I missed that. The fact is that the euthanasia issue, especially when linked to the controversy over abortion has emerged as one of the great debates in turn of the century America.

The public must choose between the various right to life and pro-choice arguments as they applied to death as well as to birth. Right. And remember, he's writing in 93. Roe versus Wade is going on 20 years at this point. That battle is done and dusted and they're moving on the next thing. So in a way, you could read that paragraph as a bit of a flex.

Like, you know, this is like abortion. And we already won that one. So we kind of know where this one's going too, don't we? Right. Yep. Because some Western nations, notably the Netherlands, have long tolerated euthanasia. People on both sides of the issue look to them for enlightenment.

How many people do you think that is? I mean, I knew about it, because I have an understanding. interest in this issue, but I would say that's trivia question for an American. The Dutch experience is particularly relevant since the practice of euthanasia is more open and extensive there than any other place in the world. Although Dutch law formally forbids assisted suicide, authorities and doctors have long chosen to ignore the prohibition. According to a government report, 25,300 cases of euthanasia, active or passive, occur each year in the Netherlands. This represents 19.4% of all deaths. Okay, now I fact-checked that,

and I could not back that up. I don't know why he would do this, but from a quick Googling, I could not see anybody making such a claim of such high numbers. They did have numbers for euthanasia in Holland, but it wasn't like that. Canada, on the other hand, where is that? There we go. Canada, 2016, they have a medical assistant, sorry, what's the thing called? Maid is the medical assistance in dying. Okay, that's the thing they call it in Canada. And I'm looking at the numbers here. 2016, it got rolling, 1,019 people were euthanized.

By 2021, it's 10,064 with my Canadian co-host, Black Horse saying, He expects that sort of, you know, exponential growth to spike up once we get the 22, 2022, 2023 numbers. Everything he's seeing, everything, all his indications are, this is just getting bigger and bigger. So it's starting to become not negligible, you know, like I said, not like, yeah, okay, there's a few very hard cases, you know, and there's five people that this happened to. I mean, 10,000 people in a year, this is starting to become a part of how people die. Right.

Is through this process, right. Right. All right. Of that total, there were 13,691 cases in which an overdose of morphine or the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment brought about death. And approximately 39% of those deaths, the physicians and families reached the decisions of practice euthanasia. After the patient's deteriorating state had rendered him or her unconscious, is unconscious, and there was no prospect of improvement. Right.

Meaning that they unilaterally decided, because remember he was talking about making your own choice, but in that case, it's the person is not making the choice, right? Right. In the other cases, the patients themselves reached their decision after rational and prolonged consideration. One study, regulating death by Carlos S. Gomez, indicates that there are no rigid rules governing the Dutch system. Contrary to American opponents of euthanasia, the Dutch approach has met with wide public

approval and has not led to devaluation of human life per se. Well, we don't know. Yeah. Maybe. Should America follow the Dutch example? In the great debate over this issue, which is not a great debate, it's a couple of people. A controversy, controversy which is bound to inflame the 1990s,

not really. No. Two issues require careful separation. Yeah, real quick. Real quick, Pete, what's your memory? I remember the Kvorkean stuff. Yeah, I do too. That was kind of in the news and everything.

And then Karen Ann Quinlan, the name is about all I remember. I don't remember the details of the case. But I don't remember a lot of talk about it after Kavorkian, frankly, do you? But then, of course, I stopped watching the mainstream media. There was, in the 2000s, there was Terry Shivo. Okay, yep.

Yeah. Yeah, and I would have these cases. That was the husband trying to pull the, get the plug pulled. So it would have been family seeking to do that. Yeah. Okay, two things. Two issues. Go ahead.

Okay. First, does the individual human being have the right to end his or her existence? Second, should society remain aloof from this decision or should policy establish the ground rules governing the individual, his or her family, and the medical profession? There's more questions that can be included in this. These aren't the only two questions. Right, right. Right.

And just that second one, what he's talking about is establishing a whole bureaucratic apparatus around killing people, just to, just to, you know, not make too fine a point on it here, right? I mean, when have we ever had a problem establishing a big bureaucratic apparatus like this, right? What could go wrong? People run to that. I mean, the politicians love that. Oh, you want a law. Okay. you're going to give us more power. Okay, thank you. All right. Yeah. On the level of the individual,

a classic lineage of thinkers from Socrates to Shakespeare to Arthur Kessler have affirmed that humans should have the privilege of selecting their own death. A voluntary, rational, conscious ending chosen not by accident, but by lucid, free choice. Yeah, I would like to fact-check with academic agent on Shakespeare endorsing, uh, suicide. I'm not exactly sure that's what he was up to, but I'm a Shakespeare scholar. Yeah, all he has to do is pick, like, oh, Shakespeare had somebody commit suicide in one of his plays. Air Grid, operator of Ireland's electricity grid is powering up the Northwest. We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area, and your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans.

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And he could be leaning on that. Right, which does not, definitely does not, because he portrays it, does not mean he endorses it. Correct. The great Stoic tradition particularly emphasizes that persons have the prerogative of rational suicide. A humane and dignified termination of life chosen courageously and with deliberate self-control.

I mean, they're heroes for doing it. I know. Bureaucratic apparatus, experts deciding whether you live or die, heroism and courage. I don't know. Somehow it's not all meshing for me, you know? Following epithetis, the Stoics, sought to rid themselves of the fetters of the wretched body

and to assert their will against kings or thieves who by controlling men's bodies try to dictate their faith. The Stoics and the Epicureans chose life. Treasured life, sorry. They were not in any sense naysayers who wished to escape into a realm of nothingness. As Epicurus wrote, he is a little man in all respects

who has many good reasons for quitting life. And as Epictetus advised his disciples, wait upon God, when he gives the signal and releases you from this service, then you shall depart to him. Nonetheless, the Stoics and the Epicureans believe that the final choice was properly their own, not that of fate or attributable to a supernatural being. Rational persons should make the choice with dignity and fortitude. Remember, Epictetus wrote, The door is open, depart instead of staying to moan.

So basically real chads kill themselves, Pete. I don't know if you miss that in your training about how to be masculine. And you're irrational if you don't agree with that, because rational persons should make the choice. Right. And just in case it wasn't clear, the humanist was a secular atheist kind of, that was their whole mission, was to sort of be a religiously secular atheist. Yep. Similarly, in recent times, Friedrich Nietzsche deplored the unfree coward's death that most people trapped in contemptible conditions, trapped in contemptible conditions at the wrong time and deceived by a slave's morality must endure.

Instead, he celebrated free death. From love of life, Nietzsche argued, one should deserve a different death, free, conscious, without accident, without ambush. Yeah, okay. So here's the thing that jumps out to me, and this is something I've thought about a lot, just thinking about what I think of as the planners, the social planners in the 20th century. And C.S. Lewis hits it really well in the abolition of man. It's this whole emphasis on taking control. You know, in the past, the evolution of man just happened to man.

But now mankind will mold itself, right? in the past we just died. Now we're going to take control of death, right? In the past, you just had babies. Now we're going to take control of that, and if we don't want to have a baby, we'll kill it, right? So to me, this is sort of a regular theme, conscious control. And they'll use words like that. He used the word conscious, right?

Conscious control. And, of course, the Christian, and I don't think it's just Christians view is that, you know, there's a form of trying to control everything that is really, really toxic. I'm thinking of like 12-step type stuff, you know. The attempt to control things that ultimately really aren't under your control or out not to be is to make yourself a little gob, and that way lies very, very dangerous things. Right. So anyway, that's what this passage makes me think of. Today, those who contemplate asserting control over suffering and dying

contend that the possibility of rational suicide preserves humankind's fragile dignity in the face of brutal circumstances, ironically prolonged by the most modern of medical technology designed to sustain or preserve life. Indeed, they point out that one of humankind's unique and defining attributes is the ability to foresee to contemplate and potentially control our own death. It is this noble quality which sets us apart from all other animals. There you go. Aristotle, that's what he really meant when he talked about what man as a rational animal or whatever. He meant that you can commit suicide. There you go. Boom. Rather than degenerating helplessly, the ill person can choose the timing, the setting, and circumstances of death.

He or she may prepare friends and family for the end, make reasonable provisions for the welfare of others, complete worldly duties, and take leave of loved ones in a dignified manner. Yeah. This is just making me think of the whole thing of, you know, rather than just sort of submitting to the reality that, you know, death comes for us all and you know then it comes your time comes when it comes and all that stuff we're going to we're going to be the master of reality right makes me think a little bit of the

trans thing you know um yeah reality dealt me this deck of cards in terms of my biology but i'm master over that right and so likewise i will be master over my own end by affirming this uniquely human capacity to mediate and mold death, we enhance our threatened autonomy in the face of a remorseless fate. What is, are they saying as the state is growing, are they saying as the state is growing, suicide is one way to fight against it? I mean, what the hell is going on here? What does that sentence even mean? Mediate and mild death, we enhance our threat and autonomy in the face of a remorseless fate. Well, remorseless fate just means.

death. And he's saying we, our autonomy is threatened. Our autonomy is threatened by the fact that we die eventually. I mean, uh, ugh. Well, hold the word, let's keep going. Let's hold that word autonomy in our minds, right? That's going to be very key. To take the opposite path, as most people do in a mindless submission to the dictates of fate betrays our highest quality, our capacity for freedom. A death with dignity is a final proof that we are not merely pawns to be swept from the board by an unknown hand. Okay, well, I know that's striking. Yeah, that's, that's, that's, that's shaking your fist at God, so to speak.

Yes. As a courageous assertion of independence and self-control, suicide can serve as an affirmation of our ultimate liberty, our last infusion of meaning into a formless reality. Right. So this strikes right at the heart of one of the reactionary critiques of the modern understanding of liberty or freedom, right? What does it mean to be free? What he argues is, to be free is to have autonomy and to have control over as I argued, reality. Yeah, I'm sorry, I missed it. He actually uses the word reality.

Our last infusion of meaning into a formless reality. Reality has no meaning. It's random, right? Remember, these are people coming from a materialist perspective, you know, extreme materialist perspective. Reality has no meaning. We're going to impose meaning on it by taking control, right? And expressing our autonomy and our freedom.

which is what we mean by freedom as our autonomy. And it's courageous to do so. Right. Yeah. All right. If rational suicide can serve the cause of human dignity, and I mean, come on. Come on.

You can't, this is what every materialist does. Yeah. They argue against God. And then they use terms like dignity, what does that mean? Yeah. Right. Why is you committing suicide less random?

He just said we're in a formless reality. Right, right. Why is your autonomy, your courageous act of autonomy, less meaningless and formless and pointless and pointless than dying naturally? I don't know why it would be. with materialist friars, you know. I mean, I can, atheists are just,

so many of them are just so insufferable with this. It's just a, it's like, what's that guy, Yarron Brooke? Yeah. I mean, he, he, God doesn't exist. And then he just, he jumps right into materialist language. I mean, into, he jumps right into, metaphysical language.

Right. And he's sorry. It's like, come on. Yeah. And by the way, this is part of the reason why, perhaps controversially, I don't know, I'm a big fan of Sorin Kierkegaard, who really gave birth to the atheist existentialist because really, if you read Kierkegaard and you really get what he's saying, you have two options. You either embrace Christ, basically. You embrace meaning. You embrace God.

And are able to use words like dignity. and have it mean something, have it grounded in something metaphysically. Or you stop taking half measures and you realize that, okay, life is just absurd and I'm not going to pretend anymore that it isn't. And the famous ones are the ones that took that path. But there's actually a lot of Christian existentialists who were influenced by Kierkegaard and took the other path of embracing meaning, right? And completely rejecting the materialism of our age. All right. I'm going to start that again. If rational suicide can serve the cause of human dignity and autonomy, it should also be recognized that such a death may often represent a compassionate act of shielding the person's family, children, and comrades from suffering, needless toll, psychological torture, and even economic catastrophe. Right. Now, I don't know how this feels here and what Pete just read, but understand what this means.

we went from you are expressing your autonomy as an individual with control of your life to you need to do this for the people around you. You need to set an example. You need to let them off the hook in terms of providing care for you and so on and so forth. What psychological torture, look, they're going to have to watch you be uncomfortable. And they might feel uncomfortable with that. And boy, that would be tough for them, wouldn't it? We don't want that. So what does this mean?

Well, it's a pretty short move from that setup to someone who's not feeling very well getting pressured to sign off on killing themselves, right? By doctors, by family, by whoever. Hey, you've become an inconvenience, you know, you're making, I'm having uncomfortable feelings because you are having pain. could you just, you know, sign up for the medically assisted death thing, please? Because it's bugging me, you know. So you're in a weakened state because you're sick or whatever.

And now you've got people coming at you emotionally manipulating you to sign off on your own death. Yeah. I don't know if that's ever happened, but I don't know. Seems like a plausible scenario, you know? Yeah. I'm going to go on. Okay. by these considerations dignity autonomy and compassion all all metaphysical concepts a rational suicide may be a noble alternative to enduring the excruciating torment of a final illness after contemplation mature persons may choose a death with dignity that affirms their ultimate autonomy and consequently softens the blow that that fall upon those they leave behind

Thus for defenders of rational suicide, as for the ancient Stoics, the image of perfect nobility is the rational person lovingly doing his or her duty to others and meeting death with pride and freedom and courage. Wow, I mean, they're practically saying, what did Jesus say? There's no greater love than someone who lays down his life for his friends, right? this is the teachings of Jesus twisted and coming out through the humanist here yeah it's just a it's a complete inversion of it right right yeah opponents of the that was good opponents of the whole concept of a right to death appeal to a wide range of orthodox Jewish and Christian dogmas they draw two on the organizational strength of the right to life movement which portrays euthanasia

as one more step towards justifying the elimination of the helpless and the unfit. For them, the biblical command, thou shalt not kill, applies to oneself as well as others, thus precluding suicide, as well as any assistance in suicide. The absolute sanctity of life takes precedence over all other considerations. Life must be prolonged regardless of the cost in suffering or debasement. And by the way, notice the arguments here, it's not that hard to slide from what he's saying here. You know, portraying euthanate as one more step for justifying the elimination of the helpless and the unfit. It's not too hard to slide from his arguments to euthanizing people who are mentally handicapped, down syndrome children, things like that, right?

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Does it mean that you're in pain? Or does it mean that you're not able to live a fully autonomous life? Well, he already makes the argument for possible infanticide of any sick children by bringing up economics, by bringing up cost that could be saved. Right. That's just, you can slide right into that. It's like, oh, well, I mean, think how much it's going to cost you to raise this sick kid. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. The sanctity of human life does not depend upon its costs. Cardinal O'Connor of New York argues, and since humans are made in the image of God, the act of suicide necessarily involves deicide. To usurp God's gift of life would be an act of the gravest hubris. The duty of a community of faith. faith is to extend its care to the weakest, sickliest, members, not to destroy them.

Christians invoked the example of Jesus. Our Lord healed the sick, raised Lazarus from the dead, gave back sanity to the deranged. Malcolm Mugridge has pointed out, but never did he practice or envisage killing as part of the mercy that held possession of his heart. Well, fair play to the author for including that great Mugge quote. However, the fact that. is that the Orthodox religious traditions have often sanctioned killing or even suicide in the service of some higher goal.

For Jews, the mass suicide of the... I can't believe he's going to do this. I can't believe he's going to do this. For Jews, the mass suicide of the Maccabees and defiance of Roman oppression is now celebrated as a glorious event. This is Masada. Yeah. He's about Masada.

Yeah. It's a real big difference of being in battle and knowing you're going to die. Then it's just... Actually, I'm sorry, I might be wrong. The Maccabees, I think that would be earlier. Oh, yeah. Yeah, the Maccabees would be pre-Christ. Pre-Christ.

Yeah, yeah, sorry. Oh, wow, there's multiple mass suicides that have been celebrated in Jewish tradition. I didn't know that. I knew about Masada. I watched the movie, you know. Yeah, anyway, go on. For Christians, the otherworldliness of the Pauline tradition sometimes led early converts into an epidemic of suicide. Is he calling martyrdom suicide?

Oh, I was thinking he was talking about some sect or something. But yeah, maybe from his point. Well, keep going. Yeah. Tritilian describes how entire populations of Christian villages would flock to the Roman pro-council, imploring him to grant them the privilege of martyrdom. Lucian regarded these Christians with scorn. They desired death and gave themselves up to be slain

in eager anticipation of eternal salvation. Like Shiite martyrs today, some early Christians sought to be slaughtered by their enemies as a sure means of gaining immortality. You may never have thought of the parallel between the early church and suicide bombers, but this author is here for you. Oh, man.

All right. Contemporary Christians can dismiss these early tendencies as aberrations and argue that dogmatic justification of some forms of killing, capital punishment and just wars, for example, are misinterpretations of Jesus's commands. Jesus certainly did not describe martyrdom or suicide as a path to salvation, but just as surely he never told humankind to cling to life. at all possible costs. So now we're appealing, now we're appealing. So silence. Yeah.

Yeah. Jesus didn't talk about hot dogs. So let me give you my opinion on the hot dogs. Right. He probably, he was probably kosher. So, yeah,

there you go. His two fundamental commandments, to love God and to love one neighbor, one's neighbor as one's self, do not in themselves, logically condemned suicide. In fact, a death with dignity, if undertaken in a spirit of compassion for others,

could be considered as an ultimate fulfillment of these injunctions. Jesus's poignant acceptance of a crucifixion, he could have easily escaped, testifies to his conscious willingness to sacrifice his own life for a higher goal. This is the meme, right? Pete, the guy's...

saying, yeah, I don't believe in the Bible, but maybe the arguments will work on you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's going to give us a little theology here. Yeah, we're going to, let's see how deep he gets into satirology here. You know, what's... Right. I think this is some satirial, some satirological... Inflation pushes up building costs, so it's important to review your home insurance cover

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Friggin gymnastics here. This thing about it can be compassionate, he says, undertaking a spirit of compassion for others. Well, what's the flip side of that, right? It's that maybe if you don't do it, if you don't kill yourself when you're a burden on your family or whatever, maybe you're being selfish, you know, and you're not being compassionate.

That's just saying what he said the other way, right? Regardless of religion, some philosophers such as Emmanuel Kant and Albert Schweitzer have been firm opponents of suicide. Cont knew of the stoic concern that a noble death for a wise man was to walk out of this life with an undisturbed mind whenever he liked, as out of a smoke-filled room. Nonetheless, Kant argued, man cannot deprive himself of his personhood so long as one speaks of duties, thus so long as he lives. On grounds that are far from clear, Kant thought suicide obliterates morality and degrades humanity since, It eliminates the subject and morality.

I don't know well enough to comment on that one. Yeah. Albert Schweitzer, the great proponent of reverence for life, as a supreme ethical principle, believe that suicide ignores the melody of the will to live, which compels us to face the mystery, the value, the high trust committed to us in life. Schweitzer did not condemn those who relinquish their lives, but felt that we do pity them for having ceased to be in possession of themselves.

In truth, Schweitzer did not apply his principle of reverence for life very strictly, and under all circumstances, since he did not hesitate to eat animal flesh and believe that some wars were justified. Oh, my God. Is anybody know familiar with Schweitzer's life? I mean, this was a man who sacrifice was probably the words to describe his life. Hmm. Yeah, well, maybe he didn't know the.

meet his murder by the Smiths, and then he would have been more consistent, you know. Oh, man. Current opponents of death with dignity believe that society must maintain the taboo against suicide because the right to choose one's own death can quickly become mixed up with the right to choose someone else's. Where suicides be legalized, these people foresee a quick descent into other forms of euthanasia an unreasonable expansion of powers of physicians and an increase in state control over life. Gee, I wonder why they would think that.

The slippery slope is undefeated. Yes, absolutely. Indeed, during the debate over Initiative 119, Washingtonians made clear their concern over these possibilities. Many Americans approve of death with dignity for themselves, but fear taking the grave step of giving physicians or the state lethal power over others. So this paragraph made me again think of abolition of man by C.S. Lewis where he says that first we have power over nature, the power of man over nature, and then we have the power of man over man, right? And that's what I'm hearing as he talks about this, that the power of taking my own life,

or that autonomous choice to take my own life becomes a choice to have maybe somebody help me take my life, right? And then soon enough, slippery slope, right? Soon enough, other people are just, experts are deciding that you should be killed because the socialized medical system doesn't want to pay for your end of life costs. Right. Yeah. Oh, all right. When we consider euthanasia as a public policy, we must directly consider, confront these issues. In California and the other states to follow, the clash over current

medical and legal arrangements for death will undoubtedly raise such stark problems as these. Should the right to die extend to those who have already lost the mental capacity to choose for themselves? Opponents of rational suicide believe that allowing such an option would open the door to eliminating everyone deemed unfit. To avoid reviving the nightmas, mayor of Nazism, proponents of euthanasia must clearly affirm the principle of autonomy. The conscience, free, and consenting person must make the original choice of terminating life. Living wills and the protections afforded by Initiative 119 must guarantee that the patient voluntarily and intentionally requested assistance in death before an incapacitating illness or coma occurred.

such a provision would bar the door to experiments in eugenics, such a provision would bar the door to experiments in eugenics and would, in fact, impose stricter restrictions on the right to die than now exist in many states. Right. And so the reference to Nazism, oh shoot, Eichmann in Jerusalem, who wrote that, Hannah Arendt, yeah. So Hannah Arendt writes that the, air grid operator of Ireland's electricity grid is powering up the northwest we're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area and your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans our consultation closes on the 25th of november have your say online or in person so together we can create a more reliable sustainable electricity supply for your community find out more at airgrid dot i.e ford slash Northwest. Employers,

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or donate to a good cause. Make your awards more rewarding. visit Optionscar.com.I.E. Today. Staff that were used to euthanize people who were viewed as not having a life worth living, which included, I guess, very elderly sick people, mentally handicapped people and so forth, were then used in the Holocaust. That was her claim. I don't know the truth.

But that's the background for what he's talking about here. saying, well, we can protect against that because you're going to sign off on it. And we're not going to just do this to you. Right. It's going to be an exercise of your autonomy. All right. Next point. Should persons afflicted with serious conditions, but who are not near death, be allowed

to end their lives? Proponents contend that people who are still able to choose, but who are physically helpless, such as paraplegics, and those who are diagnosed on being on the, brink of an inexorable decline, such as Alzheimer patients, should be allowed to consider suicide as a viable option. Opponents contend that such a concession would open the door for the mentally unstable, the temporarily depressed, or the immature to end their lives prematurely. Yeah, yeah. So that's the big problem with this, right? Charles Haywood talks about there's this fight against anything that's not a constantly chosen bond, right? So if you don't feel like being

married today, you ought to be able to just walk away from the marriage, even though you might regret it tomorrow, right? Well, the big problem with this particular issue is that if you feel like killing yourself today and then you change your mind tomorrow, if you actually killed yourself, it's too late, right? There's no take-backsees once you are euthanized. Well, I read this sentence and I think of some of the reports I've read coming out of Canada. There was one person who chose assisted suicide because they believed that after their illness, they were going to be homeless. So, I mean, what do, how far is this going to go? This was not an immigrant.

Otherwise, otherwise they probably wouldn't have been concerned about being homeless. Yeah, well. Sorry, dark joke. Yeah, well. probably be putting up in a four, in a five-star or four-star hotel. What is it? How do they do? Yeah, yeah.

All right. Clearly, people who pass through a period of clinical depression often entertain the idea of suicide, but reject it when they are properly treated. Similarly, a large number of American teenagers, roughly one in 12 high school students, grades 9 to 12, say that they have tried to commit suicide at least once. In fact, the rate of actual suicide is much lower than, than for the elderly and those with degenerative diseases. Nonetheless, the fact remains that temporarily dejected people,

for example, teenagers who have separated from someone they love, or even revengeful persons do commit suicide, which it will be impossible to prevent all of the, while it will be impossible to prevent all of these deaths, an argument for the right to die with dignity does not mean the society would make it easy for the deranged, irrational person to end life capriciously. No, it may not make it easier.

In their mind, it would make it more acceptable. Ah, that's a really good point. It changes the framing. Yes. Right. Yeah. You feel like you're a, you know, you're an angsty teenager. You feel like you're just a burden on everyone around you.

And we have people who are, it's all legal and fine and everything and compassionate to relieve the burden on the people around you, right? By making this choice. Yeah. And, you know, well, this famous person chose to commit suicide. Right. Yeah, yeah. And everyone celebrated it, right? And, you know, the usual circus.

Right. To guard against this public policy should provide the only mature mentally, should provide that only mature mentally competent adults with acceptable reasons are allowed to make the decision. And then only after a certain waiting period. Before a person's request for assistance in dying is approved by a public body, It would be wise to have psychologists or psychiatrists consult with the patient and explore all the options open to that person.

While such an approach would screen out some disturbed, impetuous, harassed, or temporarily dejected patients, it would allow people who rationally anticipate a life of misery to choose death with dignity. Okay, well, what I can't help thinking out, Pete, is the stories I've been hearing from like detransitioners who, you know, there's a, there's a, all this, oh yeah, we really, before we do make any permanent changes, we really make sure that

this is what they really want. And then the detransitioners say, oh, yeah, they talked to me like twice, and then they signed off on it, right? So that's the reality. This is a, this is a pipe dream here. Well, I mean, to let, to allow someone to transition sex, especially a young person, is just basically another form of. Inflation pushes up building costs, so it's important to review your home insurance cover to make sure you have the right cover for your needs. Under-insurance happens

where there's a difference between the value of your cover and the cost of repairing damage or replacing contents. It's a risk you can avoid. Review your home insurance policy regularly. For more, visit Understandinginsurance. dot i.e forward slash under insurance brought to you by insurance Ireland um population control and that's what this is it's just populate because they're generally their whatever drugs they're taking or whatever surgery they have is going to take away their ability to procreate um and then also um in that first

sentence there it talks about acceptable reasons only uh adults with acceptable reasons Well, who decides what the acceptable reasons are without some kind of metaphysical grounding. Right. Right. Well. Acceptable reasons because it's become very expensive because of the screwed up medical system. The state's screwed up medical system. It's become very expensive to keep living. And so it's an acceptable reason to say, well, it's just too expensive. Is that an acceptable reason? I bet it will be acceptable reason to the welfare state. Yes.

especially in Canada, which is a huge welfare state. Right. Some other issues to consider. Should physicians be in charge of the actual death? Their oath requires them to prolong life. If they shorten it, this sends an ambiguous message to the society. Thus, in general, physicians should not be directly involved in ending life, certainly less so than they are now. In the termination of feeding or indeed in capital punishment, Kovorkian and

suggested that doctors should not use his suicide machine. Instead, consistent with the principles of autonomy and dignity, the patients themselves or trusted relatives must take the final action. Kovorkian envisioned suicide clinics administered by paramedical workers who would be salaried so that there would be no profit motive involved. So we already are familiar with the idea of abortion clinics, but just seeing the phrase suicide clinics gave me a shell looking over this article down the corner you know next to the quickie shop or whatever you can walk in and have someone set you out for a suicide and what a vision what a vision of our future Pete what an inspiring vision of

where our civilization could go here yeah more more protesters to be called you know Jesus freaks and yeah right what if doctors make a mistake. Inevitably, doctors may miscalculate their diagnosis or a miracle may extend the life of a hopeful patient. Miracles in quotes there. Conceivably, a new treatment could result in unexpected cures, although the lag between the discovery of a beneficial therapy and its application is seldom less than a year. This is unquestionably one of the great risks of medical practice, and it suggests, again, that the role of the physician should be minimized. The doctor should be an expert counselor, but not the person who controls or executes the decision.

I love that it's a decision. The burden of the choice must be borne by the patient. The exercise of an individual's autonomy should be that person's sole responsibility. Yeah, so I was asking Dave, the distributist at the conference, what does he think is the core issue subverting the church? and I suggested to galitarianism, he brought up autonomy. Holding up autonomy as sort of an ultimate moral value. Turns out to, seems like there's some problems with that.

It sounds pretty nice from a certain point of view. Well, I like to be able to do what I want to do and stuff, you know. But somehow when we take autonomy and really run with it, we end up with some frightening results, some of which we're seeing and some of which this article is suggesting we could take further. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

I was going to go off on a rabbit trail, but I'll go for another episode. If rational suicide were freely and broadly allowed, would the elderly, terminally ill, or even seriously ill, choose to, it's simply to spare their family's lives and pocketbooks? Possibly. Like the terminally ill in pre-modern Eskimo society, patients might well act out of consideration and compassion for their families. Such self-sacrifice should not be condemned as necessarily evil, but it must not be undertaken lightly. As in other cases, a frank, open, and loving consultation between patient and families should

proceed any action. I like how the such, it's, first of all, it's a self-sacrifice for the family, and it should not be called evil. right under no circumstances should it be called evil but we're not going to take it lightly right yeah I mean how many times

you use the word compassion in this article I'm losing count it's Orwell's yeah Orwell's um what is that the tyranny of language

or the tyranny of language I can't remember what it was actually I did an episode on I can't remember I'm doing great maybe Maybe I'm up for this. Is there a grisly possibility that someone, even a person's own family,

could push that person into suicide against his or her own will? Is it possible that a murder could be hidden as suicide? This could occur, as indeed it already does. Ooh, there's a libertarian argument. Whenever you say, well, what would you do in Ancapistan about this? Well, that already happens now. Well, yeah, if it already happens now, it's probably going to be a bigger friggin issue if there's no authority around or, you know, seeming authority. But I went off on a tangent there. I'm sorry.

Is it possible the murder could be in as this as indeed it already does? The Dutch experience, however, indicates that the legitimation of rational suicide does not increase this possibility. what the safeguards proposed even in Initiative 119, it seems reasonable to suppose that the chances of murder massed suicide would actually be decreased. So I want to speak to his first point here in this paragraph where he says, could someone, even a person's own family, push a person in a suicide against his or her will? I think it's safe to share this. My father's passed now, and he never named anyone. But he did share with me as a pastor that in his pastoral work, he had learned that women were very often pressured into abortions by boyfriends, by family, etc. And then later, as should be known more widely, but is not maybe very well known, very often after an abortion, it turns out that the woman realizes she has had a traumatic experience.

She's having nightmares, et cetera, right? And then she starts remembering that she had a lot of pressure on her to make that autonomous decision, right? So to me, it seems quite obvious that in the kind of regime being proposed here, people would be pressured, again, in a weakened state, right, be pressured to sign off on their own, they're on their own death under pressure from people who can't wait to inherit the money after they die, et cetera, many reasons, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, you could see that. It's, I, I lived in South Florida for a very long time. And I'm sure people are familiar with the level of wealth there is in South Florida. and I knew 40 and 45-year-old men, even approaching 50, who were basically living, doing menial labor, just waiting for their parents to die so they can inherit the money. Yeah.

So it's... They weren't doing anything with their lives. That's weird. Yeah, they're just waiting for the... They're waiting for the inheritance to come. Yeah, boy, wouldn't it be nice if it came a little sooner, right? doesn't the hospice movement offer a better alternative than rational suicide? It certainly provides an important alternative and a human mode of coping with death under circumstances of relatively little pain.

However, whether it is better to perish slowly but numb by morphine cocktails or to be allowed to choose the mode, manner, and timing of one's death is, in the opinion of this author, a matter best left to individual discretion. Yeah, just to drive the point home here, I feel like there's a bait and switch, right? On the one hand, hey, it's all about individual autonomy. It's all about your free, conscious choice. On the other hand, yeah, you're probably going to get pressured by family, by a bureaucratic structure, by people at a suicide clinic, by a socialized health system that views you as a cost that it can't afford because, of course, it's always perpetually out of money. So, you know, what is really the nature of this individual autonomous choice in real life, in reality, not in some imaginary way, things that, you know, that imagine, imaginary world that isn't the way the world really is, right?

Yeah. All right. Let's close this out. Last paragraph. The obstacles to a public policy of euthanasia are admittedly formable. formidable, but they are not insurmountable. A failure to decide these issues because of personal or social anguish over contemplating the unthinkable will continue to condemn many people to humiliating

debility, pointless suffering, and perhaps meaningless final exits. If I thought, didn't he say up here that life is, uh, what do you say? It's a formless reality. Formless reality. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They always want to have it both ways. Right. In contrast, sensible provisions for rational suicide governed by the principles of autonomy, dignity, and compassion,

offer humankind the possibility of ending a life that was so acceptable that it required no further deeds or days. Right. So what's the problem? So I think this brings it squarely to this. issue of autonomy because that is the, I think, the driver through all of this, right? And what is the problem with autonomy? I mean, there's a lot of ways to come with this, but just speaking from sort of a right-wing traditionalist point of view for a moment, I think the problem is that it is picturing a disconnected individual who's not in connection with other people, not bonded with other people, they just have this choice they make, you know.

It also does not situate someone's life and the value of their life in a larger order, right? Whereas what we see in Burke, what we see in the scriptures, what we see in all tradition is that you're not this atomistic individual. You are part of a chain connecting your ancestors. to your children. You're part of a chain of being in terms of there are people who are looking to you as an authority and there are people you are looking to as an authority, right? So rather than picturing people as this isolated atom, autonomous atom making their decisions, we should see ourselves as what we are, what we know emotionally we are, which is in a web of connections to other people, meaningful connections, right? And I think it's from

that perspective, something like that perspective, that you push back against this huge emphasis on individual, autonomous, conscious choice. It is that you're not on your own, and your life does matter. And those bonds with other people are meaningful and real. You can feel them. And, you know, as a Christian, I would go a little further and say that you have a bond to God who created you in his image, loves you, and wants you to treat yourself in the way that a person made in the image of God should be treated. I'm reminded of my dad's great line, he's a pastor, my dad's great line that if some people love their name, neighbors as themselves, their neighbors would be in mortal danger. You know? So I think it is, it is, I think we all recognize that we ought not to treat other people

as trash, but we also ought not to treat ourselves as trash. It keeps on talking through the article about the kind of message you're sending to the people around you, right, and having compassion and stuff like that. Well, what kind of message do you send to your depressed teenager or whatever, your angsty teenager when you decide to do the euthanasia option? Right. So those are some of my thoughts. Like everything else, it becomes memetic. And, you know, that's what happened when it's how everything is always sold.

You know, abortion was sold as, oh, you know, this is for people, rape. and incest, things like that, and then it just becomes acceptable over time. As birth control, right? Yeah, and as I keep arguing, I think the most inevitably obvious consequence, which I'm sure is being played out in Canada right now, of putting this in place, is that in the face of the bureaucratic machine, bureaucratic technomachine, right, we get viewed as a cost. If we're not being productive,

if we're not contributing to the machine, we're a draw on the machine. The rational thing to do is to cut costs, right? That's not how a moral human society deals with people in need, right? That aren't a net contributor at the moment, right? We honor them as humans with dignity and made in the image of God. That's normal and healthy. but that's not how the modern bureaucratic machine views humans. You're either contributing to the machine or you're not.

If you're not, why are we keeping you around? You're taking up space. Yeah. And they choose their allies. There are people that are a net negative on the system that are more valuable to them than somebody who's actually contributing. Yeah, right.

Who decides who's a nut contributor and who's in that drain, right? Yeah, may have a lot to do with whether they consider you friend or enemy politically. Right. So once it gets to that, I mean, would, honestly, what people should ask, you know, is if you are at all on the right or not on board with what this regime promotes and promotes as a religion at this point, would you want them to have the power to, for their apparatchiks in the medical industry to be able to make decisions like this for you?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's truly frightening. Well, thanks, Pete, for taking my suggestion to discuss this. This was great. At any time, you have an open invitation to come on anytime and talk about anything. Thank you.

Promote your channel, anything you want, and we'll leave. Yeah, well, in light of what we discussed today, I guess I'll promote, I've sort of got three shows. I'll promote one that we don't do as often, which is the show I do with my wife. I'm called Radlib online, and so my wife is called Mrs. Radleb. and on our show, which is mostly her, she's a someone who worked as a Christian biblically based therapist up until two weeks before our first child was born. And she's just generally, I don't know how to put it, a wise person. And so we discussed topics like courtship, sex and society.

we just talked about honor thy mother and thy father, especially when they're hard to respect. And I recommend it to you. I've had a number of people who find, you know, personal issues to be something they really want to think about. They watch one of those Mrs. Red Lips shows, and then a week later they say, I just binged it all.

I just watched everything you guys have talked about, and it was so helpful, you know. So I'd recommend that to you. And it's a show that comes with something that you mostly don't get in our parisocial world, which is that my wife hangs out in a channel on Discord run by our friend Luke, Lambda. It's called the Mrs. Radlib Channel. And so we bring up some really heavy issues. And there's a great community that we make sure stays nice and positive and constructive,

where you can come and you can talk about the stuff that we raise or whatever else. else and my wife is just available. So there's something you don't usually get with the show. Awesome. Yeah. Any other? No, no. I think that's the one to push for this topic, this heavy topic.

Awesome. I really appreciate Stephen. Every time I talk to you, it feels like I'm talking to an old friend. Yeah. Thank you, Pete. Thanks.