I agree JDFP (about the longer posting, I mean. I respect for you it.),
I thank you for your kind words, and it means a good deal to someone in my situation to know my voice is heard and at times appreciated, or even helpful. I'll also say that I respect the MANNER in which you express yourself, even when you are vehemently disagreeing with someone, a great deal.
I'll try to address my responses point-by-point as you have.
I. The Individual's Right of Self-Determination Vs. The Needs of the Many Outweighing that Right:
JDFP: I get what you're saying on this issue. In other words, you're basically saying "Desperate times call for desperate measures." It's the same basis as the premise for imposing Martial Law on a society in distress. However, our Founding Fathers (some at least, and maybe more that we simply don't retain documentation on) vehemently disagreed with this premise. Benjamin Franklin was the most eloquent of these, printing in his famous Poor Richards Almanac "A society willing to sacrifice freedom for security deserves neither."
That's an intellectual disagreement though. Here's what I feel personally: Should "the Many" get what they need by "suspending" the individual's right to choose for themselves even once, the Many will soon find justification to "suspend" personal liberty again to get what they need, and then again, and again, and again. Until finally the Many no longer even bother to pretend They are "suspending" this or that individual's freedoms, and at last do away with the very notion that ANY INDIVIDUAL has a RIGHT to their personal liberty. Oh yes, the Many may well survive the Apocalypse by resorting to these means. By then, however, the MANY will have become something that....if it were within MY power, I would PERSONALLY consign to extinction and RIGHTFULLY SO. Why? Because the Many have become nothing but a mass of bodies dominated by, and dominating ALL OTHER BY mob-rule. In other words, the lowest sort of tyranny. The kind the French have GOOD REASON to refer to in their history as The Terror.
Suspension of personal liberty for group needs, taken to its logical conclusion leads only to the DESTRUCTION of all liberty and freedom of any sort that makes the individual secure in their person.
I'll continue this later. My back is KILLING ME, and I don't see a Save Draft function.
Continuing:
II. The Dale and Andrea conflict:
JDFP, I respect your right to your own opinion and would even fight to defend your right to have that opinion. HOWEVER, as someone who sacrificed HIS FUTURE to save a young woman from irreparable emotional/psychological harm and in all likelihood her actual life by taking on all FOUR of her would-be-gang-rapists late one night at a LARPing Convention alone, I possess the moral authority as someone who's "been there, done that" to say the following:
You CANNOT and SHOULD NOT FORCE what you consider to be "saving" on another human being. Furthermore, if the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are self-evident as we as a society have agreed they are, and a great many of our forefathers fought, lost their futures (As I have, though not in service nearly as exalted as theirs), and died to defend, then implicit in those last two rights is the RIGHT of the Individual to die on terms of their own choosing in the event such choice is made with a sound mind, and that choice is being made to escape a fate WORSE than simple death.
Andrea was not hysterical. She was not exhibiting symptoms of PTSD, a Major Depressive Episode (this one I'm INTIMATELY familiar with), or any other psychological pathology that the law recognizes as rendering an individual "not of sound mind, or a danger to themselves or others". Now, before you seize on that 2nd part, let me say that just as in your opinion the extraordinary circumstances occurring in TWD-world justify otherwise unjustifiable acts, I believe the EXTREMELY HIGH and DAILY threat of being EATEN ALIVE by 1 or more unnatural monsters for so long as her natural life continues, constitutes more than sufficient justification for an individual choosing to die instantly, painlessly, and at a time of their own choosing.
I do not accept, and if necessary would fight to the death until my very last breath any attempt to deny someone their Right to Die under such circumstances. In our world of therapy, courses of medication to control mental pathologies alone or as supplement to such therapy, and a society 99.85% free of the danger of being torn apart and eaten alive. In OUR world, the case can be made that "self-euthanasia" is NOT JUSTIFIABLE, on the SOLE GROUNDS that reasonable alternatives and methods of relieving daily suffering are available. In the event they are not (such as in the cases of those afflicted with terminal and/or quality-of-life-destroying disease) I believe the Right to Die is valid, humane and moral.
How can I say this, yet claim to believe in God, Christ and His/Their Word? This is how: The Bible describes a Suicide as "a sentry deserting their post." In the event the Sentry is dying, or about to become incapable of taking any positive action due to the aforementioned diseases, the Sentry is ALREADY ABSENT from their post.
In other words: I do not believe the loving God I put my faith in would demand I lay in a bed being diapered and changed when I unknowingly soil myself as I lay twitching, insensible and moaning in unremitting agony that has destroyed whatever remnants of Self the disease did not, for the next 50 years of my life.
Do you JDFP? Does anyone?
I'm glad we agree on the issue of Dale stealing Andrea's gun, and will have more to say about that later in the Bloodletting Thread.
Courteously awaiting your reply.
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Originally Posted by White_Zombie
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