Monday, December 2, 2024

Part I

---

The Culture of Death Sweeps Great Britain: British Lawmakers Pass Assisted Suicide Bill

Well, the culture of death scored big last Friday in Britain and it came quickly in terms of the bill that Parliament actually adopted on Friday moving forward, a proposal about legalizing, so-called assisted death in Britain. On the other hand, it came as a result or at least the latest result of long-standing patterns in British life that quite frankly are a reality to one degree or another, on both sides of the Atlantic. We’re talking about a post-Christian culture, and we’re talking about a culture which is not only post-Christian, but increasingly post-conservative. More on both of those. But let’s just look at the bill first. As you look at the bill, you recognize that this private member’s bill is unusual even for reaching the floor, not to mention in record time. But that means that you had the party system in the United Kingdom in Parliament working such that this was not brought forward by the majority government, the Labour Party government under Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

No. Instead it was brought by Kim Leadbeater and she’s a fairly newly elected member of parliament. A private member’s bill. Well, most private member’s bills die before ever seeing direct action. The fact that this one received action in a matter of days tells you something. It was also a vote, a free vote as ruled by the party leaders, which meant that the party whips did not discipline members who would vote against the party position. So this was a true free vote, and when the vote came down, it was 330 to 275.

Now, just a bit of history, a similar bill went down to defeat by frankly similar numbers back in 2015. So we are looking at a major moral shift in Britain. It is akin to the major moral shift we have seen in the United States on the issue of same sex marriage. We had about 70% against it, 30% for it. 5 years later, 70% for it, 30% against it. By definition in a five-year period, you’re talking about many of the same people. So this was a substantial change in mind and moral judgment in the United States, one that we tried to explain in terms of increasing social liberalism, decreasing Christian influence.

But in Great Britain, you’re here talking about assisted death. Britain on the issue of same-sex marriage and all the rest, very socially liberal, increasingly secular, and far more secular in terms of church attendance and other issues than the United States, frankly. But as you are looking at the action undertaken by parliament, it’s not the final action. This is going to have to go forward through a process of revisions likely to take about six months. But the big issue here was the moral statement made in the vote. That is the Rubicon that has been crossed. This is the barrier that has now been leapt over. It is the barrier between life and death, the barrier between a Christian understanding of medical ethics that would say that doctors are not to intervene to bring about death. And in exchange for the Christian position, a post-Christian position, of mere secular personal autonomy, individuals should have the right to decide when they will die.

Now, one of the things we need to note is that the British legislation, the bill that went forward and will now be acted upon, that bill offered some pretty specific guidelines. There has to be a medical diagnosis of a terminal disease likely to lead to imminent death, physicians and also overseen at some level by a civil judge. And so you look at that and you recognize, well, that looks like there’s some protections in place. But then recognize that as you look around the world, those protections have given way one by one such that in many, if not most of the jurisdictions that have moved at all towards euthanasia or assisted suicide or what they now euphemistically call assisted death. The reality is that the criteria are widened more and more such that for instance, you go across the English Channel, look at the Netherlands there, even though there were very strict criteria principles put in place, going back a generation ago when assisted suicide was first legalized, well, you’ve had one barrier fall, then another barrier fall.

And just to take the Netherlands for an example, you can have young children now making that decision in terms of assisted suicide and with the complicity of medical and legal authorities in that country. I want us to recognize what we are really looking at here. Just when you have the term assisted death or medical assistance in dying, MAID is sometimes the euphemism. Now, the very fact that the proponents of this kind of policy rename it in order to call it something, in this case assisted death rather than assisted suicide, it tells you something. Morally, it tells you that the act is the very same act, but it’s being redefined to take out the stigma and the moral judgment on suicide. Those who do so argue that it is because this is not suicide in a general sense, but it’s rather assistance in bringing about a death more quickly that would otherwise come more slowly.

But that’s where we recognize several different factors. And one of them is that can be defined in so many different ways. And eventually you can end up with a system such as you have in some jurisdictions where it’s not just a physical death or physical pain or physical trauma. It can be extended to psychological pain or psychological trauma. It is basically no longer being possessed by a desire to live, that can be translated into state and medical assistance in bringing about one’s death. So you can call that whatever you want to call it in terms of legislation, but it’s the same thing. It is assisted suicide.

Now because there are so many big urgent issues we simply have to discuss today, I can’t spend as much time as I would like on this issue, I think as much time as it deserves. We’ll have to come back to the issue in months to come. And no doubt there will be unfortunately plenty of opportunity for that.

Part II

---

Assisted Suicide, a Parable for the Death of Christianity’s Influence of Britain: Great Britain’s Shift From Christianity to Religion of Personal Autonomy

But before we leave this issue, I do want to point to two dimensions that I think are absolutely crucial. We are talking about this being possible only because Britain is increasingly a post-Christian society and a post-conservative society. And what I mean in the first place by post-Christian is that what you see in the United Kingdom and Great Britain is increasingly a society that had a pre-Christian past and then it had a long period of dominant Christian influence. And now that influence has basically subsided and crumbled to the effect that Britain is now basically a post-Christian culture. And that’s acknowledged by many people in Britain itself, by many people in the Church of England and Evangelicals in Britain observing the very same patterns.

And of course, the difficulty is that a post-Christian society may be even more resistant to Christianity than a pre-Christian society precisely because in the post-Christian mode, societies, especially the cultural elites, they just make the assumption we tried that and moved on. But just to take the matter as clearly as possible, the Christian moral tradition, biblical teaching, the Christian worldview simply does not allow for anything like assisted suicide. Now here’s what’s interesting. The Christian worldview reflects the fact that we believe that every single human being is made in God’s image and thus possesses not only a life that is sacred because of the Creator, but a life that possesses dignity simultaneously because of the Creator. And when it comes to human dignity, particularly because we are the one creature made in God’s image, and that means that human life is to be respected from the moment of fertilization until natural death.

Now, what’s interesting is that when you have a culture of death making encroachments in the post-Christian age, it works on both ends of that spectrum. That is to say, it goes at the earliest point of life and it goes at the later stage of life and it seeks to erode human dignity at both ends of the life spectrum. So we see that in abortion, we see that in other assaults upon unborn human life, and we see it increasingly in terms of the movement for assisted suicide. And of course that disproportionately affects the aged. But when you think about Britain, you think about the towering spires, the looming cathedrals, you think about the abbeys and all the rest, and you’re looking at the fact that Britain still has a state church, it has an Erastian system, a fusion of state and of church. The state church is, of course, the Church of England and the head of the Church of England is the monarch who is also the head of state.

And so there you see the unity of the Church of England with English culture and even English government. But you also see what happens when there is an erosion of the biblical convictions that are at the heart of Christianity. Once those biblical convictions are abandoned, all you’re left with are the steeples and the towers. To put the matter bluntly, you simply could not have the adoption of this kind of bill on this kind of issue if Christianity had any major influence in British culture. And increasingly we see that it does not. That’s reflected in church attendance. It’s also reflected in the general social liberalization of the culture, and it’s a culture in which increasing numbers of people there in Great Britain are unaware except perhaps by the architecture and the calendar and the monuments of what had been a Christian past.

Part III

---

Great Britain’s Post-Conservative Age: Former Prime Ministers Come Out in Support of Assisted Dying Bill

Now, just as evidence of that, I point to the fact that a former Archbishop of Canterbury, that would be George Carey, now Lord Carey, he made a public statement in support of the bill. Now, the current Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby came out against it. So did many other Christian leaders and that would include both Protestants and Roman Catholics there in Great Britain. But they were basically ignored and especially when you have a former Archbishop of Canterbury come out in favor of assisted suicide. And by the way, his language is absolutely ridiculous. He lamented the fact that in his words, “Church leaders have often shamefully resisted change.”

Now, when someone talks like that, you have to know exactly what the context is. In this context that is nothing but moral abdication. He went on to call for support of the Leadbeater bill because “It is necessary, compassionate and principled.” Just think about that. “Necessary, compassionate and principled.” Think of the misuse of compassion there. That is not compassion used in a Christian context, even if it is said by someone who was the former senior cleric in the Church of England.

What you have in Britain is the shift of one religion to another. And we often talk about that. You don’t have a shift from religion to no religion. You have a shift from one religion to another religion. And in this case, what you have is the shift from Christianity. That doesn’t mean everyone in the Christian age of Great Britain was Christian. It does mean that Christianity formed the worldview and that includes the worldview that produced the ethics and the laws. But it is true now that what you has a different religion in place and it’s the religion of personal autonomy. And that comes right down to the kinds of arguments made for so-called assisted death in this legislative debate. It came down in the public debate to argument that individuals should be able to exercise their personal autonomy to make this choice. And this is where the Christian worldview comes back and says, there are certain choices that we are not meant to face. And this is at the top of that list.

And by the way, we did not make the choice to be born. That choice was made for us and not just by our parents. It had to be made for us by the Creator who made us after all, gave us life and who had made us in His image.

But there’s a second aspect of this that demands attention, and that is that Britain is increasingly a post-conservative culture. And that doesn’t mean there are no conservatives in it, but it does mean just to state the matter clearly that the so-called Conservative Party is not very conservative. Now, we will talk about this at greater length and I’ll be writing about this as well. There’s a certain point about a decade ago when you can date when there was a turn in the Conservative Party away from conservative morality. And that basically came with the rise of David Cameron as the head of the party and eventually as Prime Minister at the head of a Conservative government. But I’m using the word Conservative here for a party designation and not for his own personal worldview. What the current Conservative Party in Britain has represented since David Cameron came to power. He is by the way, now Lord Cameron in the House of Lords, what you have is a fusion of social liberalism and some kind of fiscal conservatism.

But that does not a Conservative Party make. It does not amount to conservatism when you undermine the conservative worldview by denying conservative moral principles. So the Conservative Party calls itself conservative, but on moral issues, it’s not. It is basically for same-sex marriage. It is for so many different liberal projects. And you had not only former Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron coming out in favor of this assisted suicide bill. You also had the very same thing coming from the last Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. So you had two former Conservative prime ministers come out in support of the assisted death legislation, and that tells you that whatever they are, as if you didn’t already know, they’re not conservative.

Watch, by the way, for similar moves to be made by some who will call themselves conservative in the United States. Similarly, they may choose to use the word conservative, but that does not make one conservative, one has to affirm truth as understood and conserved by conservatism. All right, we’ll be tracking this issue and I think you can sentence its urgency and priority according to Christian morality and the Christian worldview.

Part IV

---

A Great Misuse of Pardon Power: President Biden Pardons His Son, Hunter Biden

But we now have to shift to the biggest headline news, breaking certainly on this morning and through this day, the conversation is going to be centered in President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son, Hunter Biden, “For whatever crimes he may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024.” So that’s a statement taken directly from the President’s pardon statement. The White House did release a rather lengthy statement, but let’s face it, here’s the reality. After months, indeed years of President Biden saying that he would not pardon his own son, that is exactly what he did yesterday. He issued a pardon. And that pardon is absolute. And Joe Biden as President of the United States, he has the power to make that decision, to extend that pardon.

Article 2, Section 2, Clause 1 of the United States Constitution states that, “The President shall have the power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States except in case of impeachment.” So that’s a pretty blanket statement. The President of the United States has the power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States. So that is a limited power only in the sense that it has jurisdiction only over the United States. Which is to say federal crimes. The President does not have the power to pardon people who are found guilty of state crimes in a different jurisdiction. But Hunter Biden was facing federal crimes and he had been found guilty of violating gun laws and he had pled guilty to repeated counts of tax evasion and he was headed into a sentencing process that might well have sentenced him to as many as say 17 years in federal prison. It was unlikely he would’ve had the maximum, but nonetheless, that was what he was facing. And so President Joe Biden has simply short-circuited the entire process by pardoning his own son.

Now here’s the interesting thing, and this is just a matter of historic fact. Nothing like this has happened in American politics ever. So I state it again, just as simply and straightforwardly as possible, nothing like this has happened in all of American history. Period. Just to go back to the era of the framing of the US Constitution in the late 18th century, the framers of that constitution, they did not have the foresight to say except when the party to be pardoned is the President’s own son. That was simply not on the moral radar at the time. It wasn’t within their constitutional consideration. And it is important that a president, or in the case of another system of government, the head of government or in many cases, a monarch, have the power to pardon crimes against the Crown or against the government as is true here in the United States. And that’s because there can be grievous misconstruals of justice in such a way that acts of injustice are perpetrated by a court and it would be up to a President of the United States simply to issue a pardon.

Now on the other hand, pardons have also been extended to those who clearly were guilty of the crimes, but there were other factors that were involved including the judgment of history in some cases in which pardons have been granted, and at least symbolically you can think of some of them granted virtually posthumously. But we are looking at something dramatically different and stunningly new here. And that is a president father pardoning his son, who by the way actually did commit the crimes. He pled guilty to at least some of these crimes. He was also found guilty on the gun violation.

Now when you look at this, you say, “Well, I guess there are a couple ways you can ponder this issue. You could say this is a father demonstrating his fidelity to his son.” But there’s another way you need to understand this. And this is a President of the United States conducting a radical miscarriage of justice, a misuse of the pardon power, and quite frankly, doing so under circumstances that make his actions even more suspect. And as I’m going to indicate, are likely to lead to even greater legal problems, if not in a criminal context then certainly in terms of a political context. So if it does not become a legal crisis for the Biden family, it is likely to loom as an even larger political crisis and a crisis in terms of how the name Biden is going to be remembered in history.

Now, when you look at the current political landscape, you look at the two parties, you look at, say the now former President of the United States and President-elect Donald J. Trump and you look at President Joe Biden, you’re looking at two very controversial figures. And both of them have used the power of the pardon. And in the case of former President Trump, he even pardoned his son-in-law’s father on federal charges. And there were very serious federal charges. By the way, a little footnote here that may well be why Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, was not chosen by Donald Trump in 2016 as his running mate. And that is because Chris Christie as United States attorney, was the prosecutor of the elder Kushner in this case. And let’s just say that families tend to have long memories. And in his first term, and particularly at the end of his first term, President Trump also extended pardons to some who were accused of political crimes or in some cases even convicted of political crimes. And that would mean his political allies. He did that going out of office.

Now, presidential pardons have often been controversial, but quite frankly in both of these cases, the controversy has grown far larger than had been true in the past. The only exception to that would be the 1974 pardon by President Gerald Ford of his predecessor in office. That would be then former President Richard Nixon. And that was for crimes that may have been committed during the time of the so-called Watergate scandal. It basically absolved President Nixon of any criminal charges during the time he was in office as President of the United States.

Most constitutional scholars believe, and I would say even the majority of historians probably agree that that was the right thing for Gerald Ford to have done. Not as political payback to Richard Nixon, but as an understanding that it would’ve been greatly injurious to the government and to the prestige and to the world role of the United States government to have a former president under extended, and it would’ve been extended and excruciating and it would’ve been excruciating criminal process leading to a criminal trial. In the American system, we understand in keeping with long legal tradition that no man should be above the law, but there are situations in which there may be a national imperative that frankly outweighs even the call of specific justice in relation to specific wrongdoing.

But when it comes to Joe Biden’s pardoning of his son, Hunter, there was no national crisis. This was a family crisis. And Joe Biden as President Biden had stated repeatedly that he would not extend a pardon to his son if his son were to be found guilty of criminal charges. And there is now no doubt about that guilt. But you know what? Much of the particulars related to Hunter Biden’s business in which he ingratiated himself and saw influence of foreign governments for a fee, related only to the fact that his father was then, and remember this, not only Vice President of the United States, but also in charge on behalf of the Obama administration for policy related to Ukraine, particularly with matters related to both Russia and Ukraine. And we’re talking about big dollars and big deals. And Hunter Biden was known to have said to foreign authorities that he had access to “the big guy.” In congressional testimony, it became clear that the use of that phrase by Hunter Biden had also taken place in the context of conversation with an energy company in China.

In historic terms, it may well be that a turn in the use of presidential pardons came with Donald J. Trump and with Joe Biden. But at least at this point when it comes to Joe Biden, it is singular in terms of the fact that he has now issued a presidential pardon, which he said he would not do to his own son for criminal wrongdoing that is more suspect rather than less suspect because of the issuance of this pardon. Now, in political terms, what does Joe Biden have to lose? The answer is nothing. His own party increasingly dislikes him, blames him for the loss in the ’24 election, even though the party, especially the leaders in the party, were absolutely complicit in covering up his mental decline. In those political terms, Joe Biden is not ever going to face the American voter again. So in that sense, he has nothing to lose.

But I just want to point out in the current political context, he does have something to lose in another sense. And that is this. Even though he issued a pardon to his own son, and in this case the constitutional power is simply there, and he used it even though he said he would not do so. But this puts no limitation whatsoever and a lot of motivation behind, some kind of congressional investigation into the circumstances of the business dealings in which Hunter Biden had been involved and exactly how involved the big guy was in that entire process. That is not outside the scope of political possibility. And this pardon almost makes absolutely sure that something like that is going to happen if not in the House then in the Senate, likely eventually in both. In this case, in the pardoning of his own son, Joe Biden appears once again to be something of an enabler of his son’s misbehavior, in this case, illegal acts. And that at least probably has something to do, almost assuredly has something to do with the trajectory of Hunter Biden’s life.

But the bigger issue for the nation is the morality of a pardon by this president of his own son under these circumstances. In that sense, the greatest damage is likely to be to the legal credibility of the United States and the moral authority of the presidency. There are some who say this is just another demonstration of the vaunted Biden family loyalty, particularly the loyalty demonstrated by the President of the United States as the patriarch of the clan. But there’s another word for that, and that word is omertà. And the context that conjures seems incredibly relevant to the developments we’re talking about. I’ll leave it there.

The Christian worldview tells us that actions have consequences, but the Christian worldview also goes on to tell us that no one will escape the justice and the verdict of God. And that means that everything will eventually be known, all will be disclosed. And horrifyingly enough that applies to every single one of us in our sin, which underlines again the fact that there is no refuge except the redemption that is ours through the atonement accomplished by the Lord Jesus Christ.

But it is really interesting in moments like this to imagine what it will be like when all the books are opened and all things are known. It should be humbling to all of us and in the context of American political life when it comes to both sides across America’s political divide, the fact that one day all things will be known should be enough to humble just about everybody.