Daniel Sulmasy

Most of the people, if you see, who really in the end want this and do it, at least in the United States, are people who are probably your listeners.

They're very educated, typically well-off, largely white people who are used to being in control of everything.

And the moment they lose control, they want to have this.

They want to have it in their back pocket, even if they don't use it.

And there's a sense in which...

They are indifferent to what the legalization of this does to countless other people.

Like you probably saw in New York, as in other places, the way in which the disabled community really is very fearful of these kinds of laws.

And it's not because they think they're going to be lined up in wheelchairs and forcibly injected.

But the fact that people say what's most important, and the state has now given sanction to this, is being in control, being independent of other people, not having disfigurement, being in control of your bowels, right?

That this is a justification for state-sanctioned suicide.

And the person who's in a wheelchair and needs help with toileting every day says, this is an affront to my dignity.

Well, basically, free will makes the possibility of morality real.

If you don't have free will, then there is no choice.

And if there is no choice, there's no possibility of assessing praise or blaming what any of us do, right?

Aristotle says that ethics is about what to do when what to do is up to us.

So to have a system of morality, you have to have a concept of free will.

But then you have to ask, what is the purpose of free will, right?

Why do we have the possibility of choosing?

And how do we use that freedom?

Things aren't right because we choose them.