Responding to Douthat's thought experiment about assisted suicide, Kevin Drum puts all his cards on the table:
[A]side from our religious differences, I suspect that the big difference between Douthat and me is that I've suffered from chronic depression nearly my entire life and he hasn't. Luckily, my case is moderate, and I've never felt like drowning myself in a bathtub. Still, I understand keenly what it feels like, which makes it easy for me to have a pretty good sense of what it would feel like if it were more serious. And that deep-seated understanding of what serious, long-lasting, incurable depression probably feels like is part of what drives my policy preferences here. I can actually imagine myself being in a situation where I'd want that prescription available to me, so reasons of self-interest dictate that I'd prefer it to be legally available. If you can't even conceive of such a situation in your own life, you'll probably feel differently.
The Dish 