Death with "dignity": the wedge that divides the disability rights movement from the right to die movement

Much of the American debate over physician assisted death (PAD) is framed as an ideological split between conservatives and liberals, pro life and pro choice advocates, and those who emphasize morality versus personal autonomy. Less examined, but no less relevant, is a split within the ranks of progressives--one that divides those supporting a right to die in the name of human rights from disability rights activists who invoke human rights to vehemently oppose euthanasia. This paper reviews how "dignity" serves both as a divisive wedge in this debate but also as a value that can span the divide between groups and open the way to productive discourse. Supporters of legalized euthanasia use "dignity" to express their position that some deaths might indeed be accelerated. At the same time, opponents adopt the concept to argue that physician assisted suicide stigmatizes life with a disability. To bridge this divide, the worldviews of two groups, Compassion & Choices and Not Dead Yet, are studied. The analysis concludes that the two organizations are more parallel than contrary--a finding that offers opportunities for dialogue and perhaps even advances in public policy.     

From slime mould to rhizome: an introduction to the groupuscular right

Conventional academic research into the legacy of inter-war fascism has generally neglected the myriad minuscule and often ephemeral formations of the extreme right that have sprung up since 1945, and has concentrated instead on abortive attempts to emulate the success of the Nazi and Fascist party-based mass movements, and more recently on non-revolutionary ‘neo-populist parties’. However, when examined closely, many of these formations can be observed to behave as fully developed, highly specialized and largely autonomous grouplets that simultaneously form the constituents of an amorphous, leaderless and centreless cellular network of political ideology, organization and activism that is termed here ‘the groupuscular right’. As such, these ‘groupuscules’ are to be seen as the product of a sophisticated process of evolutionary adaptation to post-1945 realities that allows extreme variants of revolutionary nationalism to survive in the ‘post-fascist’ age in a form that is largely resistant to attempts to suppress them, and may represent a number of permanent, if mostly inconspicuous, threats to liberal democracy.     

Norway: The 1981 election confirms trend to the right

The Storting election of 13 and 14 September 1981 resulted in a marked swing to the right, a trend which has been evident since the middle of the 1970s (Valen, 1976; Valen, 1978; Kristiansen & Holbæk Hansen, 1980). The socialist parties lost their majority in the Storting, and the Labour minority government which had been in power since 1973, resigned. After an unsuccessful attempt to form a coalition government between the three leading bourgeois parties, the Conservative party, the Agrarian Centre party and the Christian People's party, the Conservatives formed a minority government with parliamentary support from the two other parties.     

Old right or new right? The ideological positioning of parties of the far right

Abstract.  Since the 1980s, parties of the far right have increased their share of votes in many Western European nations, and some have even participated in governing coalitions. The ascendancy of far right parties has been met with various hypotheses attempting to rationalize their role in the politics of these nations: Are far right parties a manifestation of protest politics, brought about by hard economic times (old right model), or are they representative of the continued political development of Western industrialized nations (new right model)? Most analyses have focused on the voters for these parties; this work focuses on the election manifestos of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), National Front of France (FN), Italian National Alliance (MSI-AN), Lega Nord (LN) and the Germany Republikaner (Reps) in order to reconstruct the dimensions of party competition in each nation and determine where each of these parties fall within the dimensions of party competition. Support is shown for a new right axis of party competition, suggesting that parties of the far right may in fact be part of the political development of Western European nations.     

The case for a right to housing

Abstract

America has the resources to guarantee everyone a right to decent, affordable housing, making real the now 50‐year‐old congressionally promulgated National Housing Goal. The issue is one of values—constantly expanding notions of social, civil, and economic rights—and can only be won through political struggle, as has been true historically of all rights expansions.

The costs of not attaining this right, to those suffering from substandard housing conditions and unaffordable costs as well as to society as a whole, should be acknowledged and offset against the increased government outlays required to attain this goal. Ways in which some housing rights now exist are identified as a basis for wider expansion to a true right to decent, affordable housing.     

Dissent from the right

Among many writings, he is author of Talmudic Thinking: Language, Logic, and Law;and The Talmud: Close Encounters.     

Constraining war: Human security and the Human right to peace

Conclusion The explicit articulation of a cosmopolitan conception of human security and a corresponding right to peace is a positive development in global politics, inasmuch as it decenters the state in our understanding of the human community and delegitimizes organized violence as the generally accepted means for the “continuation” of realist politics. I have argued that just war theory, when defined in suitably narrow fashion, helps to contribute to our thinking on issues of human security in several ways. First, it provides a stringent normative framework for a reasonable humanitarian justification of the resort to force. Second, it enables us to conceptualize significant moral and legal constraints on war and thus on the powers of states to wage war, thereby displacing the use of force from the statist paradigm of security. Third, it contributes to the delegitimation of unjust wars, that is, military actions undertaken for any purposes other than human security. Fourth, insofar as it provides a justificatory basis for the increasing demilitarization of society, it may influence the progressive and just pacification of global politics. As long as the types of human wrongs that present the gravest threats to human security continue to haunt the global community, there remains a need to be able to respond effectively so as to protect the rights and well-being of individuals. This need poses a genuine dilemma for humanitarian morality and politics, insofar as many of the military capabilities required to defend and to aid vulnerable persons can also be the source of threats to human life and welfare. Yet the existence of this dilemma need not lead us either to apathy or to cynicism. The nexus of human security, the right to peace, and just war theory offers a resolution to the traditional security dilemma by challenging the realist rationale for aggressive militarism, and by supporting the emergence of global security structures and processes guided by the humanitarian norms of just peace. *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** A28BB021 00002