The right question

Eric Cohen argues that the question is not, as modern liberalism would have it, What would Terri Schiavo want?

For some, it is an article of faith that individuals should decide for themselves how to be cared for in such cases. And no doubt one response to the Schiavo case will be a renewed call for living wills and advance directives--as if the tragedy here were that Michael Schiavo did not have written proof of Terri's desires. But the real lesson of the Schiavo case is not that we all need living wills; it is that our dignity does not reside in our will alone, and that it is foolish to believe that the competent person I am now can establish, in advance, how I should be cared for if I become incapacitated and incompetent. The real lesson is that we are not mere creatures of the will: We still possess dignity and rights even when our capacity to make free choices is gone; and we do not possess the right to demand that others treat us as less worthy of care than we really are.

Cohen doesn't note an important point that I would add. The founders spoke of rights given to us by our Creator as "unalienable," in reaction to the likes of Thomas Hobbes. What does "unalienable" mean? Hobbes saw that if rights are possessions, then there are circumstances under which it can be assumed that we have transfered our rights to the state. But rights aren't possessions in that sense, so they are unalienable, even by our own will.