Thursday, September 26, 2024

Part I

---

The World is at an ‘Inflection Point’ — President Biden’s Final Speech at the UN Reveals Global Trouble

It would be very tempting to think, perhaps very attractive to think, that whatever happens at the United Nations is not of importance to most of us, and most days that’s probably true. But sometimes things can happen at the United Nations and in particular at the General Assembly. The higher level, of course, is the Security Council. But in the UN General Assembly, you do have something like the Tower of Babel with the nations all gathered together. And most of the time it is absolute air and absolute nonsense and doesn’t matter much. It’s a great experiment in globalism, and if you look at it, you’ll understand why globalism can’t work.

But it’s also a bit of a show, especially during the sessions of the UN General Assembly when heads of state are speaking. Heads of government, heads of state, they often prepare very highly scripted remarks for the UN General Assembly because they’re trying to send a message to the world. Now, one of those national leaders who spoke at the General Assembly this week was none other than the President of the United States, Joe Biden, and there was a particular sense of history, and perhaps particularly on his mind because he knew this would be the last opportunity in which he would speak to the general Assembly of the United Nations. And so he did so suggesting that the world is at present in a very dangerous place and even at what he called an inflection point with so many simultaneous global crises.

Now, the very first thing we need to note is that in that statement the President can’t be wrong. It cannot be wrong to point to the crises that are now breaking out all over the world, and, of course, shaping so much what we have to talk about even on The Briefing, affecting so many lives around the world, and injecting so many question marks into our understanding of how the world works and what it’s going to look like in the future. You understand that all of these things are extremely relevant, but you also understand that declaring that we are at an inflection point really doesn’t tell us anything. In other words, it’s the kind of statement made by a political leader that isn’t wrong, but even if it’s not wrong, it’s not necessarily very telling, very revealing, or very important.

We are at an inflection point, but from a Christian worldview understanding, we are just about always at an inflection point. And that is because at all moments our decisions have meaning, our policies will have effects. And when you are looking at the kinds of crises that are shaping the world right now, just think of Gaza, just think of Israel having to face Hezbollah as well as Hamas and Gaza, you think of the trouble in the Middle East, and then you go to other regions of the world, you look at the threat of China. President Biden spoke to that, by the way, in his address. You look at Russia invading Ukraine. You just go continent after continent, twist of the globe after turn, and what you see is a pattern of crises just about everywhere.

Now, there are ebbs and flows in the urgency of these crises and the number of these crises, and quite frankly, in the management of these crises, and that’s why a specialist in these global affairs, Walter Russell Mead, in an article published before President Biden addressed the General Assembly, an article in the Wall Street Journal with the headline, “U.S. Shrugs As World War Three Approaches,” what he said is that the Biden administration has fundamentally fumbled so many of these affairs and crises and problems around the world. And it is also interesting to note that when you look at the criticism, you recognize that at times the criticism is that the Biden administration has done too much or assumed too much, and at other times it appears that the accusation is that there’s just too much inaction or inattention on the part of the administration.

Now, to be fair to any President of the United States in the modern age, it is impossible to manage all of these crises. And so a part of what any President has to do because of the stature of the United States and the exercise of office as the nation’s chief executive and Commander-in-Chief, every single president has to decide that he, or for that matter potentially now she, will focus on particular issues and will give attention to those issues. Not ignoring the rest, but saying, “We simply have to rank these in terms of importance, number one, number two, number three.” And that’s where one interesting move on the part of the Biden administration has been to move China higher and higher up that threat assessment, such that the Biden administration announced a matter of months ago that it now sees China as a major challenge for the United States and our interest and our allies, and, yes, for our military.

And the administration had detailed in that kind of threat assessment why China has moved up so fast. A part of it is the aggression of China around the world, a political aggression, an economic aggression, an intelligence aggression. And for that matter also the fact that, you look at Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and you look at a coalescence of powers opposed to the United States and our allies and Western civilization, the most important three on that list would be Iran and Russia and China. You could add to that North Korea. And what you’re looking at there is, let’s just say four, a quartet of danger. But as the President of the United States was speaking to the General Assembly of the United Nations, he was also making reference to other hot spots around the world. And let’s just remind ourselves, just think of the Houthi rebels there in Yemen. You could have an explosion just about anywhere, anytime. That’s a reminder of the fact we live in a very dangerous world.

Now, this is where Christians have to come back and say, “Well, the world’s always been dangerous.” Yeah, but the world’s not always been dangerous in this sense, because it was not possible in previous times that you could have the kind of weaponry that could all of a sudden leap across an ocean, and in a matter of minutes, travel from one continent to another with deadly effect. You also did not have the threats to national security that are now posed by high technology with hackers and foreign intelligence services trying to compromise information or, for that matter, shut down entire national systems. No, we are living in a unique moment and the threats do appear to be more pressing, and the velocity of these events appears to now be considerably accelerated.

Now, also very interesting to watch is the fact that when President Biden was making what he knew would be his last speech at the General Assembly of the United Nations, not only on the national scene, but on the international scene, he wanted to make his own claim to history. That’s also something very interesting to watch. If this was his valedictory address, his closing curtain address at the United Nations, what would he say? He said not only that the world is a dangerous place, at an inflection point. He also said, and you understand the political context of this, he said, “America is back.” In other words, he was patting himself on the back, congratulating his own administration for its handling of these international affairs with a very clear criticism at the same time implicit on those who came before him. So if you say America’s back, you mean America wasn’t there and had to be led back.

One observer in the New York Times pointed out in response, “America’s back, all right. He,” meaning Biden, “can make that case, but with severe limitations on its capacity to lead.” That specialist was Aaron David Miller, who is a longtime Middle East peace negotiator, according to the Times. He has advised, the Times tells us, presidents of both parties. He went on to say, “Biden’s administration is a cautionary tale, I think, of just how complicated and surprising the international environment is and the limitations of American power.” Now, those are also some good things for us to think about for a moment. Let’s start at the very end, the limitations on American power. If you go to the end of the 20th century, the United States is pretty much full of itself thinking that with the fall of the Soviet Union, and with the rise of American power and influence in the world, we could pretty much have our way or at least exert our influence all over the globe.

But history didn’t turn out that way. It turns out that the United States has two things that have to be factored into the equation. Number one, it has enemies, and, number two, it has limited means. So you look at the military of the United States and you say, “That’s the most powerful military on earth,” and measured comprehensively, it almost assuredly is. But you know what? It has limitations. It can’t be everywhere at once. It can’t address every problem at once. It can’t even be deployed in more than, say, two or three places around the world in any meaningful sense at anything close to full force. And that’s not a criticism, it’s just a fact. But then we go back to the even more urgent issue, which is that the United States has enemies. Civilization has enemies. And one way to understand that very clearly is to look at the threats to the world order right now that are not represented by nations.

You talk about Hezbollah, a militant Islamic group. You talk about Hamas, another terrorist group. You talk about the Houthi rebels, again, you’re talking not about a nation-state. You’re not talking about a government, you are talking about a terror organization, an extremist group. You’re looking at a militia. And in this case, what distinguishes a militia from an army is that an army represents a government. A militia. That’s something else altogether. But you know what? In deadly effect, they can be pretty much the same. But I want to point out one other thing that the Christian worldview clearly speaks to here. Not just war and peace, not just to mayhem in the world, not just to the way history unfolds, but to a more personal issue.

The President of the United States arguably represents and holds the most powerful position, not only in the world, but probably in the history of the world. There have been those who had more, say, raw power in a totalitarian sense, but in terms of the combination of power and influence, personality, and just constitutional and international heft, you can’t come up with anyone on the world stage more powerful than a president of the United States. So, following that logic, when Joe Biden spoke to the General Assembly of the United Nations, you would think that the entire world would drop everything and listen to him and then hang on every word. But that’s not the way it works. First of all, because most people around the world, not only were not in that meeting of the General Assembly of the United Nations, but secondly didn’t care.

But the second issue is this, power ebbs and power flows, and there is no one who looks more powerful but is actually in truth less powerful than an elected official on his way out, whose term is about to end. And so everyone listening to Joe Biden speak, they probably knew this was an interesting historical moment. But as for the future of the relationships of those nations with the United States, that’s not going to be based upon a relationship with Joe Biden, and everyone in the room knew it. That’s not a criticism of President Biden. It is just an understanding of how power works in a fallen world, and I can assure you that is the way power works.

Part II

---

A High-Tech Death Machine: Controversy Erupts as Woman Commits Suicide in a High-TechAssisted Suicide Pod in Switzerland

But next, we need to turn to a very dark issue, and this is assisted suicide. And a big headline news story that came out of Switzerland. It’s complicated, but it’s really important. The complicated part is that Switzerland has arrested persons for having used a device known as the suicide capsule, or the Sarco capsule, and a woman identified as in her 60s, an American woman, had brought about her own death inside this machine, which is absolutely macabre. It looks like some science fiction invention. It is a capsule with a lid. The person gets in and reclines, and then the lid comes down on the capsule. And then after answering just a limited number of questions, the person hits a button and the atmosphere inside the capsule turns absolutely deadly. Nitrogen is piped into the capsule, and, of course, that pushes out the oxygen. Eventually, it brings about a loss of consciousness, and then it brings about unquestionable death. And that’s exactly what happened in this case.

The Swiss authorities then moved into arrest the persons who were involved in this, charging them with various crimes. But as I say, it’s complicated because Switzerland is a place where assisted suicide is fully legal. And Switzerland, a very liberal society in this sense, is one of the European nations involved in this very, very unethical practice. But it is singular in the sense that it allows non-Swiss citizens to travel there in order to bring about their own assisted suicide. So it’s basically an international market for assisted suicide. Now, there are Christian worldview considerations here that just loom so large before us. For one thing, it’s a reminder to us that when we talk about the dignity and sanctity of human life, we are talking about the unborn, but we are also talking about the dignity and sanctity of human life from the moment of fertilization until, here are the keywords, natural death.

Natural death. This is not a natural death. This was a death brought about by intention. It was a death brought about by technology. It was an event brought about by the politics of Switzerland. Now, one of the complications here is that the folks associated with this company, with this technology, with this capsule, they were arrested for allowing its use. Now, that raises a very interesting question. Why would the Swiss government arrest persons for doing what Switzerland has notoriously declared to be legal? Well, they said there were inadequate precautions taken, inadequate safeguards that were in place. It was an assisted suicide that was unauthorized. And not only that, the criticism coming from the Swiss government is even weirder, and this is incredibly revealing.

Switzerland’s Health Minister Élisabeth Baume-Schneider, she was asked by the Swiss Parliament what had taken place here. And she said, speaking of the Sarco assisted suicide capsule, she said, “On one hand, it does not fulfill the demands of the product safety law, and as such must not be brought into circulation.” She said, “On the other hand, the corresponding use of nitrogen is not compatible with the article on purpose in the chemicals law.” Okay, let’s just understand for a moment what’s going on here. This representative of the Swiss government, the Swiss government’s Health Minister, did you catch the irony, speaking of a technology of a death capsule intended only to bring about death, said that it fails to meet the nation’s product safety laws. Product safety laws? How in the world can you talk about product safety laws and a death device in the same breath? What sense does that make? But it just reveals the illogic and, frankly, the immorality of the assisted suicide movement. It’s just made abundantly clear with that very language.

Just imagine the bureaucratic response to this. Yes, we have full legalization of assisted suicide, but only after the technologies or the mechanisms pass a product safety test. But then again, the deadly element in this case was nothing other than nitrogen. In this case, nitrogen gas. That’s a naturally existing gas. Yes, but when you concentrate it and you put it in a capsule that presses out the oxygen, what you end up with is suffocation and death. But remember that the Health Minister said that “the corresponding use of nitrogen is not compatible with the article on purpose in the chemicals law.” In other words, not speaking of the death of a human being, but rather to the chemical laws in the country. She said that was not an allowed use of nitrogen, as if this is basically a matter of chemicals.

By the way, on the Sarco device is a quote from the late astronomer, Carl Sagan who said, “We are made of star stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.” You have to be of a certain age to remember that Carl Sagan of Cornell University was infamous for his PBS television program, and it was known as Cosmos. And he began by saying, “The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be.” He said that at the beginning of the series and at the end. I’ve often described that taxpayer supported PBS program as a form of secular evolutionist, materialist televangelism. But I think that’s an appropriate quote to be on this kind of machine because it just reduces human beings to nothing more than chemicals or, more romantically described here, star stuff.

According to CBS News, about 1,300 people died by assisted suicide in Switzerland in the year 2020. Now, the reason those figures are old and out of date is because we always get these a matter of, say, a year, two, three years later. So that must be the last year of accurate documentation that’s available. But nonetheless, look at that, 1,300 people. That’s 1,300 human beings brought about the end of their life by what is euphemistically called assisted suicide in Switzerland. But interestingly, Switzerland allows assisted suicide but not euthanasia. And the distinction is this. In assisted suicide, there is an agent who allows or helps someone to make a decision and invoke a technology or take a pill, or whatever it is, to end that person’s life. Euthanasia, that’s a macabre, ironic word meaning “good death” going back to the Greek. Euthanasia involves another party actually taking action to bring about the death of an individual. So that’s the distinction with assisted suicide.

Both of them from the Christian worldview are horrifying acts. Both of them are acts that defy the dignity and sanctity of human life. Both of them embrace death rather than life. And this is where Christians have to understand, this is the way things look. And once you go down this road, once you go down this road, you look foolish for saying this machine is illegal. And you look especially foolish for saying this machine is illegal because it hasn’t yet passed product safety laws when the entire function is to bring about death. And from a Christian worldview perspective, you just need to understand that, that illogic is actually pointing to a deeper moral truth. We should not do this. Furthermore, what we have seen on the issue of assisted suicide and euthanasia, what we have seen is that the logic moves from A to B to C to D with breathtaking speed.

You go to a nation like the Netherlands, which allows legalized euthanasia, that’s bringing about by action the death of another human being, it now allows it. It says, “Well, we’re going to allow it in the beginning only in a case of excruciating pain with a terminal diagnosis of an adult.” And that had to be a conscious decision. But then very quickly they said, “Well, let’s lower the age.” Exactly what they said they wouldn’t do, they did in very short order. And you have the distinction between passive and active euthanasia. Passive euthanasia meant not employing medical treatment to try to prevent death. Active euthanasia means actually taking actions that bring about death. The slide from passive euthanasia to active euthanasia, it came with almost lightning speed. The very people who said, “We’d never do that,” were the people just very shortly thereafter doing that.

And then there was the argument, “Well, if this is made available to people who are at the very end stage of a terminal disease, it should also be made available to those who are in deep suffering by their own diagnosis, whether or not it is a terminal disease.” Then it was, “Well, what about a psychological torment? It’s not enough that you just limit this to a physical torment. If someone’s psychologically or psychiatrically tormented, they should be able to demand the very same thing.” And then the next step was, “Well, what about younger people? What about teenagers? Well, certainly not children, but teenagers.” And then very quickly, “What about children?” And that’s where we are, looking at the problem squarely in the face. The culture of death has an absolutely insatiable appetite. It will not be satisfied until death is the universal reality, and we have nations that are actively serving the culture of death.

Part III

---

Canada and the Culture of Death’s Insatiable Appetite: Assisted Suicide is in the Top Five Leading Causes of Death in Canada – And It Will Continue to Grow If Not Stopped

And by the way, we’re not just talking about some of these very liberal and secular. By the way, those two things go together. We’re not just talking about some very liberal and secular European nations. We need to recognize that another nation that is on the fastest slide when it comes to euthanasia and assisted suicide, that nation is Canada, right across our northern border. Not too long ago, Nicholas Tumano wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal with a headline, Welcome To Canada: The Doctor Will Kill You Now.” He summarized in this paragraph, “Canada has undergone a crash course in what the country calls medical assistance in dying, or MAID.” He says, “The experiment began in 2015 when the Canadian Supreme Court ruled in Carter versus Canada that laws prohibiting physician assisted dying interfere with the liberty and security of people with grievous and irremediable medical conditions.” Parliament codified the decision the following year.

The very next sentence is this, “Lawmakers thought they were imposing limits.” Yeah, they thought they were imposing limits. The limits didn’t stand. Tumano then goes on to say, “First, they came back and said it doesn’t have to be an irremediable medical condition. It can just be one in which death is reasonably foreseeable.” By the way, that could cover an enormous amount of territory in the medical world. And then they opened the door even wider to this kind of assisted death. They dropped some of the safeguards. And, of course, what happened is the numbers just went up. According to the Wall Street Journal, “In 2022, assisted death, in this sense, medical assistance in dying, represented,” and I’m quoting here, “the fifth leading cause of death in Canada.” Get that, the fifth leading cause of death.

And here, we’re not talking about Belgium. We’re not talking about the Netherlands. We’re not talking about Switzerland. We’re not talking about a suicide capsule that is somewhere there in the Swiss Alps. No, we are talking about Canada, very close to us. And there are states where assisted suicide is already legal in some sense, and that logic is spreading among us as well. According to this documentation, 44,958 people have been put to death between the years 2016 and 2022 in Canada. Again, that’s virtually 45,000 people. That is a decent size city now completely gone and not by natural death. This underlines a reality we have to keep ever in mind, and that is that if you begin to subvert the dignity and sanctity of human life, you begin to deny the value and the objective status of human life, if you do so in the beginning of life, say, in the womb, very quickly, you’re going to do so at the end of life. And then, here’s the big warning, you will find a way to do so at every point of life. First of all, only those with a terminal disease. The next thing you know, well, the disease can be psychological as well as physiological. The next thing you know, not just adults, but teenagers. Then not just teenagers, but children. This is the culture of death and it doesn’t get more deadly.

So, okay, I’m going to come back to the first issue of our consideration, I’m going to go back to that statement made by President Joe Biden, and I’m going to say that taking it in that context is one thing. I want to put it in this context and say I’m in total agreement with the President of the United States and his remarks at the United Nations General Assembly. We are at an inflection point. But I’ll end by saying that this consideration about assisted suicide and this machine in Switzerland reminds us that there are inflection points in more ways than one, and some such as what we just documented in Switzerland and in Canada turn out to be incredibly deadly.