I WANT, ergo I MUST

An academic wants to witness assisted suicide. A fight is brewing over his right to do that.

So goes the front page headline.

The key words here are "want" and "right."

As we have all learned by repeated lashes on irrationality, "want" and "right" have now become equivalents in Canadian culture.

I want to bash people's heads in; therefor I must have that right.

I want to kick or shoot or main Jews, blacks, Scots, dogs or sales clerks; therefore I must have the right.

I want to talk loudly on my cell phone during violin concertos, libraries, restaurants, buses; therefore I have the right.

So...

I want to see people end their lives. This will make a good paper.

Therefore...

Now, don't leap to misunderstand me.

Academic research and academic freedoms are important. They are often frivolous, ridiculous, entirely self-serving, a complete waste of taxpayers money and human energy, but they must be maintained and upheld because one of those investigations out of a thousand might actually yield some shard of information that will actually be of some use to humankind sooner or later.

Still, that leaves many questions.

I want to witness the raping of babies for my academic research and therefore I should be allowed to stage such and watch and take notes?

This is not as outrageous and far-fetched as you may think.

In the 70's, a husband and wife team of psychologists, called the Sobels, actually had a bar built in a classroom at the U of T so that they could teach drunks to sip.

I am not making that up.

Several years later, they made the cover of Time magazine, by confessing that they finally realized that what they were doing (trying to teach drunks to "manage" alcohol) was destructive and immoral.

The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) has formed a brassy committee to investigate the death-watcher's concerns. Perhaps CAUT should be CAUGHT.

The committee is a panel of blue ribbon...wait for it...academics.

This is akin to the police investigating themselves, and we all know how well that works.

If CAUGHT really wants to study this issue - and it should because it is a deeply moral and philosophical matter - it should add to the committee housewives, house husbands, doctors, rabbis, priests, CEOs and school children, among others.

Excuse me, I have to go watch a gang of teens swarm a harmless old man at a bus stop and kick him to death. We're set to go at eleven.