The total state will kill you for being old

The United Kingdom’s daily efforts to censor speech and undermine its farmers have left the once-great nation resembling a communist regime. Yet its leaders remain determined to continue their march toward dystopia — now by targeting elderly citizens with state-sponsored euthanasia. The push for legalized euthanasia has reached British shores, accompanied by grim subway advertisements and endorsements in the Economist.

Canada’s monstrous euthanasia program should serve as a warning for other Western nations. Instead, the U.K. seems intent on diving headfirst into this moral abyss. The growing embrace of industrial-scale medical suicide is no coincidence; it reflects the natural trajectory of the modern totalitarian state.

Every elite class requires a political formula — a narrative to justify its authority. For the managerial elite, that formula is expertise and efficiency. In a complex world dominated by massive bureaucracies, these sprawling systems demand the technical knowledge and managerial skill of those at the top.

Bureaucracies thrive on uniformity, and the managerial elite depend on predictable outcomes to deliver the promised efficiency and material abundance. This obsession with control fosters a need for social engineering — a new kind of human subject, malleable and obedient to the designs of the ruling class.

In the modern total state, control extends to every aspect of life, including death. The push for euthanasia reflects the ultimate expression of this ideology: a system that dictates not just how people live but when and how they die.

In 2009, the debate over the Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare” as it became popularly known, was in full swing. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) famously warned that government-controlled health care would inevitably lead to “death panels” that would decide whether patients could continue receiving treatment. The media mocked Palin, labeling her ignorant and accusing her of spreading misinformation about the ACA. But her warning has been vindicated. The link between dependency and sovereignty is undeniable — when the state assumes responsibility for an individual’s care from birth, it will inevitably influence decisions about when that individual’s life should end.

In 2016, Canada introduced its Medical Assistance in Dying program. Like other state-sponsored euthanasia initiatives, MAID was initially marketed as a compassionate option for terminally ill patients to end their suffering. The messaging focused on dignity, self-determination, and the idea that the program would be a rare solution for extreme cases. By 2022, however, MAID accounted for more than 13,000 deaths annually — a 31% increase from 2021 — and represented 4.1% of all deaths in Canada. Far from serving only the elderly or those in chronic pain, MAID has facilitated the deaths of poor people unable to afford rent and people suffering from mental illness. In a striking example of the slippery slope, Canada’s euthanasia program shifted from offering a “dignified” end for the terminally ill to ending the lives of young people grappling with anxiety over the cost of living.

The managerial revolution that began in the 1930s and 1940s led Western governments to build modern welfare states. These welfare programs, like Social Security in the United States or the National Health Service in the United Kingdom, relied on massive bureaucracies and experts who claimed they could predict human behavior, including fertility rates and life expectancy. Policymakers structured these welfare systems like Ponzi schemes, assuming continuous generational growth would sustain them. A sharp decline in birth rates created a crisis for social planners. In response, many governments embraced replacement-level immigration, both legal and illegal, to offset demographic decline.

When immigration failed to stabilize their systems, managerial states turned to euthanasia to ease demographic pressures. What began as a welfare state’s reliance on predictable human behavior has now devolved into using death as a solution to economic and demographic challenges.

As a man who lost his wife after a painful battle with cancer, I understand on a deep level why the arguments for euthanasia can seem compelling. Watching a loved one suffering in a situation that will not improve is heart-rending. But mass industrialized euthanasia is a terrible solution to a very difficult problem. The state is not killing you to spare your dignity; it is killing you because you are inconvenient.

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