Matt writes:
“Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical,” US President George W. Bush said yesterday “a nation founded on the principle that all human life is sacred.” That, of course, came during his address on the need to ban embryonic stem cell research.
Except that it didn't. Rather, it came during his address on the need to veto a bill permitting the use of federal funds to undertake embryonic stem cell research. The conclusion, however, seems unrelated to Bush's line of reasoning. If the cells are sacred human life, then surely it's not okay to kill them in a privately financed manner. The nonsensical nature of Bush's position on this issue is old news, but continues, in my view, to be under-remarked upon in mainstream coverage of the issue. Years ago, he hit upon a goofy split-the-difference compromise and ever since then he's been wandering the country insisting that he's taking a bold stand of principle.
I feel like I've heard this line of argument a lot, and in some sense of course it's true: If killing embryos is wrong in the way that Bush suggests it's wrong (and in the way I think it's wrong) then it should be prohibited, not merely left unfunded. But in another, more accurate sense, the critique is somewhat silly. Bush's approach isn't a "goofy split-the-difference compromise," it's a politically realistic split-the-difference compromise, which is what politics happens to be all about. Let's suppose, for instance, that a President believes - as many people do - that free health care is a universal human right, and that the government, not private organizations, should provide it. And let's suppose that the Congress passes a bill that gives free health insurance to children, but not to adults. And let's further suppose that said President signs the bill, and in the course of the speech remarks that "I applaud the Congress for recognizing that health care is a universal human right." Obviously in one sense this is BS, since the bill doesn't recognize any such thing - but it's still a smart thing for the President to say. Sure, he could be completely honest and say: "This bill is a small step in the direction of my real goal, which is the complete takeover of the health care industry by the U.S. government." And similarly, Bush could have vetoed the stem-cell bill while remarking that he hopes to one day ban all embryo-destructive research, and maybe even pass some Italy-style laws protecting embryos in general. That would have made him consistent; it would also have made him an idiot.
(In a related vein, for anyone interested in the embryo controversy - regardless of your point view - this Mother Jones article from last summer on America's "embryo glut" is required reading.)
I take this post to mean that Matt's point is right, and Bush's point of view is, by your analogy, "BS." But he's only BSing because it's politically palatable.
Well, that clears that up!
Bush is making a pleasant-sounding moral claim that he obviously doesn't believe, and that the portion of the public opposed to banning IVF doesn't believe, to the detriment of people suffering from disease.
So there's more than rhetoric-parsing going on here. Matt's point is well worth making.
Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | June 21, 2007 12:28 PM