BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN
A friend learned that his beloved dog was deemed dangerous. The decision loomed like a tempest on the horizon. Tearfully, he fed his dog steak and then walked him ten miles along the North Devon shore, the November sun warming their backs until neither could take another step. The car ride home meandered, slowly, before taking a detour towards the vets. The vet was waiting in the car park with both needle and hip flask. The dog, worn out, after a heavenly day and still dreaming of sea and sand, did not wake to notice.
Dogs and humans differ in one crucial way: moral judgment is ours, and the weight of that choice rests heavily on our shoulders. We are their stewards, guardians of their brief lives. Animals lack moral rights; through observing the interactions between badgers and hedgehogs, lions and gazelles, it did not take me long to grasp this truth.
In the grey spaces, where mercy meets choice, there is occasional clarity. In war, when comrades lie broken in the dirt, to end their suffering becomes an honourable act. In such moments, with the echoes of gunfire ringing, I would shoot my friend, my brother, my son.
But the joy some, particularly those on the sinister Left, find in protesting for death leaves me startled.
Pro-abortion protests strike me as unsavoury celebrations, a gathering of smiles as laws pass that doom the innocent. The death they cheer, whatever their reasons, is sombre, tragic, and inevitably avoidable. Celebration seems misplaced.
The same was true last Friday.
The vote for assisted dying sailed through the Commons, and I felt a chill. Sympathy for the terminally ill weighed heavy, yet those celebrating — hugging, cheering, or exhibiting false empathy and virtue signalling — have misplaced their bearings. Their joy seems to mock the value of every heartbeat.
To celebrate death, or the means to it, is a bitter irony. Life should be our anthem, yet in a world that champions autonomy, the allure of facilitating an end remains foreign and unsettling.
In Britain in 2024, ‘served’ by a ‘government’ of moral relativists, some find themselves ensnared in a web of moral quandaries. Proponents of assisted dying speak of dignity, of the right to choose. But at what cost does that dignity come?
Each cheer may echo with a loss more profound than the victory they claim.
It is grim indeed to witness some fighting for life while others clamour for control over its end. To back or oppose abortion or assisted dying is to wrestle with the fundamental questions of existence. What does it mean to wield life as both weapon and shield? How does one weigh a life marred by pain against the longing for peace?
Alas, people lean into the brutality of their beliefs, leaving little room for understanding. This binary thinking — celebration or protest, right or wrong, life or death — is a perilous path.
Invariably, the truth resides in the grey, where compassion and conviction collide. Switching off life support etches a fine line between moral and murderous.
If suffering is my fate, let me with it at least pay the tip for a clean bill of moral health before I pass. With a hip flask in hand, let me find the courage to spurn the needle of the moral relativists who, whilst merely playing god, gamble away their Godlike souls.
Dominic Wightman is the Editor of Country Squire Magazine and the author of Dear Townies, Arcadia and Truth among other books including ‘Conservatism’ which publishes later this month.