Starker on 28/4/2018 at 05:24
So, Draxil, are you saying that parents should have the right to refuse their children life-saving blood transfusions based on their religious beliefs?
jkcerda on 28/4/2018 at 05:25
Yeah I dont get why the govt insist in letting the kid starve to death vs letting someone else take over
Starker on 28/4/2018 at 05:41
The child cannot swallow food and is unable to keep it in his stomach without problems. They have to inject it directly into the small bowel. Which they are doing, from what I understand.
Starker on 28/4/2018 at 06:40
Quote Posted by Draxil
This is a case of the UK exerting it's role as the lessor of parental rights. Parents in the UK have the right to decide things for their children unless the state, the Ultimate Parent, says otherwise.
Citizens have rights, including children, and in cases where the government intervenes, it is not acting "as a parent", it is acting "as a state" by protecting the childrens' rights.
From the same document (bolding mine):
Quote:
(
https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/alder-hey-v-evans.pdf)
59. Though F cleaves to the need for a diagnosis i.e. to understand what caused Alfie's condition,
there are no more tests which can now sensibly be undertaken. Indeed, even if some were identified they would be of no use to Alfie. The brain does not regenerate. As Dr M says a “label will not help Alfie now”.
60. Whilst I have, for the reasons stated, rejected the evidence of Dr Hubner, I do not exclude the possibility that travel by Air Ambulance may remain a theoretical option. It requires to be considered however in the context of the matters above and one further important consideration.
All agree that it is unsafe to discount the possibility that Alfie continues to experience pain, particularly surrounding his convulsions. The evidence points to this being unlikely but certainly, it can not be excluded.61. Alongside all this it must be remembered that Alfie can not sustain life on his own. It is the ventilator that has been keeping him alive for many months, he is unable to sustain his own respiratory effort.
62. All this drives me reluctantly and sadly to one clear conclusion. Properly analysed, Alfie's need now is for good quality palliative care. By this I mean care which will keep him as comfortable as possible at the last stage of his life. He requires peace, quiet and privacy in order that he may conclude his life, as he has lived it, with dignity.
63. The plans to take him to Italy have to be evaluated against this analysis of his needs. There are obvious challenges. Away from the intensive care provided by Alder Hey PICU, Alfie is inevitably more vulnerable, not least to infection. The maintenance of his anticonvulsant regime, which is, in itself, of limited effect, risks being compromised in travel. The journey, self-evidently will be burdensome. Nobody would wish Alfie to die in transit.
64.
All of this might be worth risking if there were any prospect of treatment, there is none. For this reason the alternative advanced by the father is irreconcilable with Alfie's best interests. F continues to struggle to accept that it is palliation not treatment that is all that can now be offered to his son.
Quote Posted by Draxil
To me, this seems a(nother) very dangerous precedent for the subjects of the UK. And never has "subject" been a more fitting term. You are subject, absolutely, to the whim of the state. Of course the state has a "monopoly" on legal violence. It make the laws. They could pass a law tomorrow, dismember Alfie and take his still-beating healthy-little heart for another more deserving subject, and that would be legal. It's not a very far fetched scenario, either.
And there are checks against the state's power. In a lot of modern states, you can't just pass laws willy-nilly, they are balanced against the constitution, which guarantees certain rights.
Quote Posted by Draxil
Why stop at medical interests? Why not educational, social, physical? It's illegal to home-school in Germany; if caught doing so you can face hefty fines and have your children taken away. Do you approve? Why should parents be allowed to raise their children on a diet of McDonald's and KFC? Do you know how unhealthy that is, and what studies show about obesity in children and depression, yadayadayada...
Yes, indeed, when parents neglect their childrens' educational, social, physical needs, I do think the government should intervene. Not in the absurd strawman examples that you bring, but for example when the children are not attending school due to parental neglect or because they are put to work instead. Also, in the case of malnutrition, the government absolutely should intervene.
Homeschooling is a different matter. I think it should be allowed when the parents are up to the task.
Quote Posted by Draxil
third: If any judge in this country tried to do to my family what Mr. Justice Hayden has done to the Evans family, I, or someone in my family, would kill him. I'm very certain of that. It's a coldly comforting thought, and a nice touchstone--I know exactly what it would take for me to take up arms against the state. Is there anything the state could do to you that would make you take up arms against it?
fourth:
I love living in a country where I have the means at my disposal to make #3 a reality, and this entire episode has steeled my pro-gun position. The UK could only benefit from angry mobs gunning down black-robed-wig-wearing despots, methinks.
Except assassinating/lynching judges is not really taking up arms against the state, is it? It's simply taking revenge because you don't agree with a ruling.
Edit: since you asked, yes there are things the state can do that I would take up arms against. And my family has done that in the past and suffered the consequences. Granted, it was a foreign occupying state, but nevertheless. The judicial system not working the way I want is not among those things, however.
ffox on 28/4/2018 at 08:09
Alfie died in the early hours of this morning.
Renzatic on 28/4/2018 at 09:25
Quote Posted by Starker
Homeschooling is a different matter. I think it should be allowed when the parents are up to the task.
Hell, we had one of the best homeschoolers around posting here at one point. Fett made learning look fun!
The whole point of schooling in general is to prepare your kids for the world at large. If you think you can do a better job of it that public or private schools, more power to you. But if you're doing it for entirely ideological reasons, like you think science is sinful, and you want to keep their kids at home 24/7, reading from Revelations alongside Jack Chick tracts, then no. You're crazy, and your children shouldn't be made to suffer due to your craziness.
demagogue on 28/4/2018 at 12:37
My brother homeschooled my nephew. I wasn't a fan since I thought it makes him have that weirdness people have when they haven't been around other people for a long time. I mean kids always have a weird phase, but being subjected to the harsh light of other kids' opinions can have a humanizing effect. You learn how to deal with people with radically different worldviews without losing your shit. But to each their own, I guess. He's not so badly off.
Not sure why we're talking about this. This is a gun thread. Now that the sane people have established why gun control is all that, can we talk about our favorite guns, if only for sims & firing ranges? Pretty cool are the M27, MG4, MP5 & SA80 ... but I think I'll have to go with the Steyr AUG in the end. 40 years later and it's still cyberpunk AF.
Draxil on 28/4/2018 at 14:21
There's an awful lot to try to respond to here, and I hate quote trees. Bear with me, and please let me know if I've missed anything.
Quote Posted by Starker
Citizens have rights, including children, and in cases where the government intervenes, it is not acting "as a parent", it is acting "as a state" by protecting the childrens' rights.
From the same document (bolding mine):
And there are checks against the state's power. In a lot of modern states, you can't just pass laws willy-nilly, they are balanced against the constitution, which guarantees certain rights.
1) Alfie had a terminal illness. He would never have a normal life, and had slim (short of miraculous) chance of recovery. Even with extraordinary care his lifespan wasn't going to be long.
2) The state could argue a compelling interest in his case when the financial burden of caring for him was being shouldered by the taxpayer
3) The minute a third party stepped in and offered to shoulder that burden, the state should have said "OK", and gotten the
fuck out of the way
4) Instead, the state thought it best to make this a precedent where it is the final arbiter of which lives are worth preserving/prolonging and which aren't.
5) All men are endowed (not by the state) with the right to life. In the event that they are unable to exercise that right, it falls to their family, their appointed surrogates, or at last resort, the state to intervene on their behalf. The state, in this case, said that it was the final arbiter in the matter and everyone else had better get in line.
6) The populace, after allowing itself to be deprived long ago of the means to do otherwise, gave a half-hearted angry "baaa" and got back in line.
Quote:
Yes, indeed, when parents neglect their children's educational, social, physical needs, I do think the government should intervene. Not in the absurd strawman examples that you bring, but for example when the children are not attending school due to parental neglect or because they are put to work instead. Also, in the case of malnutrition, the government absolutely should intervene.
Homeschooling is a different matter. I think it should be allowed when the parents are up to the task.
My point about children and McDonald's wasn't a (
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/fattest-children-to-be-taken-away-from-their-parents-898972.html?cmp=ilc-n) strawman. There are dozens of instances I can link to in that vein, in the UK and the US. If you start unloading parental rights and obligations on the government, at what point do you stop? It's a very slippery slope, and you can always justify just a little more government intervention. 200 lbs at age 10 is ridiculous. But if that's ridiculous, then why not 180? If 180, why not 150? Why not 145? 140? Cut-off point at 120? BMI greater than 26 or 90th percentile? What if you teach that evolution is hog-wash in your homeschooling? What if you don't teach sex ed? If you teach that birth control is immoral? That homosexuality is unnatural and sinful? That there is such a thing as immutable, biological sex and gender? That sin exists? That there is a God? Are these reasons for state intervention?
Quote:
Except assassinating/lynching judges is not really taking up arms against the state, is it? It's simply taking revenge because you don't agree with a ruling.
Edit: since you asked, yes there are things the state can do that I would take up arms against. And my family has done that in the past and suffered the consequences. Granted, it was a foreign occupying state, but nevertheless. The judicial system not working the way I want is not among those things, however.
One man's terrorist etc. as your side frequently says when defending Islamic radicals. I'd say it's taking up arms against the state. Who better constitutes "the state" than an appointed judiciary? They're not subject to democratic recall, and are not accountable to the populace they are appointed to serve. There is no redress available to the Evans family. The state has deemed that their child isn't going to live, and is forbidding them from taking any measures to prolong his life. There's absolutely no justification for usurping their parental authority in this case. If it's willing to do this to a child, it's willing to do it to Grandpa. Then dad. Then a wife or sibling. You knock US citizens for living in an Orwellian surveillance state, but you defend that same surveillance state when it arbitrarily exercises its power in life and death decisions.
Yeah. If I lived there, I'd say it's time to overthrow the state. I was at that point long before this decision, though. When the Lord Mayor of your most populous city declares that "there's no reason to carry a knife", and that all men are subject to arbitrary searches by the police, then you know you're living in a totalitarian state. When your government refuses to let you own arms, you live in a totalitarian state, no matter how benevolent. The Evans affair was an instance of the totalitarian state testing its boundaries. Apparently there aren't any boundaries. And there's no point that is "too much" for the subjects of the UK.
N'Al on 28/4/2018 at 15:33
Quote Posted by Draxil
as your side frequently says when defending Islamic radicals.
No one's going to take you seriously when you post idiotic rubbish such as this.
Draxil on 28/4/2018 at 16:14
Quote Posted by N'Al
No one's going to take you seriously when you post idiotic rubbish such as this.
Sorry, would "One's man's terrorist is another man's (
https://www.wsj.com/articles/another-mans-freedom-fighter-1422649506) armed insurgent" be less rubbish?
Mark Steyn has a characteristically pithy (
https://www.steynonline.com/8616/life-belongs-only-to-the-strong) summation of the situation:
Quote:
Likewise there is no compelling reason for the British state to kill Alfie. So, when the Pope has championed his cause and the Italian government has conferred citizenship upon him and there is a plane standing by to fly him to the Continent, why not err on the side of generosity? Why not let his parents enjoy whatever extra time may remain with their helpless child? Why is it so necessary for the British bureaucracy to be seen to kill this two-year-old on their timetable?
One might almost get the impression that the state's determination to teach British parents who's really in charge overrides other considerations. One notes, for example, the weird obsession of the High Court judge who passed Alfie's death sentence with aspects of the Evans' public campaign and their supporters - a topic entirely irrelevant to any point of law but one which Mr Justice Hayden lacks the self-discipline to stay silent on. And, as with almost any other story out of the United Kingdom these days, this tragedy would not be complete without the thuggish boobs of Her Majesty's constabulary clamping down on any errant Tweeters opposing the diktat of the authorities.
Alfie Evans died in the early hours of Saturday morning. We were told that there was no miracle awaiting in England, Italy or elsewhere for poor little Alfie. Two-thirds of his brain had been eaten away. But, in the grander scheme of things, it is not the baby but Mother England that seems increasingly brain-dead, and for whom it might be kindest simply to unplug...
