Forced to Live with Colonel Cathcart

In a wonderful exchange that gave title to a wildly popular novel in the 60's, a World War II bombardier named Yossarian, looking to remove himself from harm's way and having learned that "crazy" fliers are grounded, is told by a Dr. Daneeka that this was in fact the case but that in order to qualify such a person must request that certification.

"And then you can ground him?" Yossarian asked.

"No. Then I can't ground him."

"You mean there's a catch?"

"Sure there's a catch," Doc Daneeka replied. "Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy."

That title has since passed into the popular lexicon. And no one in the crazy world of politics is more often confronted by this kind of conundrum than we poor, benighted libertarians.

A perfect case in point is the current Ballot Proposal B to legalize assisted suicide.

Perhaps the most fundamental tenet of libertarianism is the notion of self-ownership. If we have not even legally established that each individual owns his or her own person, it seems to us rather pointless to get into hair-splitting over control of any other possessions.

The implications of self-ownership are fairly self-evident. Proceeding from this premise there can, for instance, be no moral justification for prohibition laws of any type. So long as an individual harms no one else, what substances he or she chooses to ingest is no one else's business. All of our state's bizarre laws criminalizing various sex acts between consenting adults, to cite another example, are also a wholly unwarranted intrusion.

Likewise, the state has absolutely no business whatever dictating to any free citizen whether or when or under what circumstances or with whose assistance he or she may end his or her own life. The life belongs exclusively to that individual, not society. And it most certainly does not belong to the state. A competent adult need not seek anyone's permission to end his own life.

Further, the right to seek the assistance of others is, even by traditional, common law, let alone libertarian, standards, undeniable.

While conceding the obvious -- that it is necessarily futile and a bit foolish to try and legally forbid suicide -- some have argued that the state may legitimately prohibit others from offering any assistance. But this argument is unprecedented. Historically, the right to do a thing has always included the right to seek the assistance of others to do it. If I have a right to build a house to live in on my own property, that includes the right to hire a contractor to help me build it. If I have a right to defend my life and property, that includes the right to hire police to help me. If I have a right to end my own life, that must include the right to hire a physician to help me.

Now comes this proposal to create a new government bureaucracy specifically to rule on questions that can only belong to individuals and their doctors and are, by the most fundamental of libertarian precepts, absolutely none of the state's business.

Libertarians hold that the only legitimate function of government is to protect its citizens from force and fraud whenever possible and to redress wrongs committed against them when not. To us, the notion that violence or the threat of it should be used to protect sane, adult individuals from themselves is not only a fool's errand but utterly immoral, as well.

Obviously, we have a very long way to go in reducing government to what we regard as its legitimate functions and eliminate all parts of it not necessary to accomplish these. We are, therefore, loathe to support the addition of any new powers and the bureaucracies to enforce them.

Unfortunately, the practical reality of the situation is that, if Proposal B is rejected by the electorate, the recently implemented legislation making assisting a suicide under all circumstances a five year felony will continue in force.

Further, religious fanatics -- far too many of whom seem to find peaceful persuasion not nearly so effective a means of doing "God's will" as employing the coercive power of the state -- will spin the defeat as proof positive that the people of Michigan are completely opposed to legally permitting anyone to assist anyone else in ending his or her own life.

What is a libertarian to do?

Yossarian would understand our dilemma.

Tim O'Brien is the Executive Director of the Libertarian Party of Michigan.