It’s all in how he says it
In short order, Barack Obama made it all the way from relative obscurity to the presidency of the United States, and to international fame and popularity, on….what? His ‘eloquence’ and charm and sense of gravitas and self-confidence and purpose, especially to change things and inspire hope. And a lot of promises he made to powerful special interest groups.
He now governs as he campaigned: saying he wants to hear other voices, but shutting them down if they disagree. Take the announcement of his executive order on embryonic stem cell research, for example.
The announcement was classic Obama: advancing radical policies while seeming calm and moderate, and preaching the gospel of civility while accusing those who disagree with the policies of being “divisive” and even “politicizing science.”
Robert George is one of the top voices in this country on social moral issues and the orthodoxy of secular liberalism. In fact, his latest book Embryo is a brilliant dissertation on the humanity of the earliest form of life at conception. He can debate like few others, and always from the foundation of reason and the logic of natural law. And he brings clarity to the obfuscation politicians and media thrive on.
“Moderate” Mr. Obama’s policy is not. It will promote a whole new industry of embryo creation and destruction, including the creation of human embryos by cloning for research in which they are destroyed. It forces American taxpayers, including those who see the deliberate taking of human life in the embryonic stage as profoundly unjust, to be complicit in this practice.
And George and Cohen point out two particular points of contradiction in Obama’s claim to be taking politics out of science:
First, the Obama policy is itself blatantly political. It is red meat to his Bush-hating base, yet pays no more than lip service to recent scientific breakthroughs that make possible the production of cells that are biologically equivalent to embryonic stem cells without the need to create or kill human embryos. Inexplicably — apart from political motivations — Mr. Obama revoked not only the Bush restrictions on embryo destructive research funding, but also the 2007 executive order that encourages the National Institutes of Health to explore non-embryo-destructive sources of stem cells.
Second and more fundamentally, the claim about taking politics out of science is in the deepest sense antidemocratic. The question of whether to destroy human embryos for research purposes is not fundamentally a scientific question; it is a moral and civic question about the proper uses, ambitions and limits of science. It is a question about how we will treat members of the human family at the very dawn of life; about our willingness to seek alternative paths to medical progress that respect human dignity.
And no amount of finesse can escape the fact that what we’re talking about here are humans.
0 Comment
hello,
I just wanted to say that it has been breathtaking on how fast Obama has moved his agenda ahead. No one has time to digest it all! It seems that everyday he moves on to something even more horrible. For the first time in my life,I am truly frightened for my country! Satan is laughing hilariously! He’s so close to winning it all! I feel Obama is a slick, savvy, erudite, and oh so cosmopolitan rep of the devil. Perhaps one would think I am oversimplifying, but he doesn’t pause for one second to listen to the other side! Why doesn’t God intervene? Will there be an answer to our prayers? It seems it just keeps getting worse! Would love to hear the condemnation of this culture from the pulpit once in the while and would love it of the bishops would take the catholic pro death pols to task in a public manner. too many lives are being lost while the ‘debate’ continues!!
Our country needs a wake up call. More than 9-11- that only lasted a short time. Then everyone went back to their old ways. What more do we have to do to get this veil of evil lifted from this country’s eyes? Maybe we need to start with the catholics who bought into Obama’s message. Dear Lord! Help us! Attention priests and clergy!! Wake us up!
Embryonic stem cell research has divisions even among the most religious. Ask a Methodist or a Baptist and they’ll agree with Catholics. Ask a Presbyterian and you might get a different answer. Ask a rabbi and he’ll tell you life begins 40 days after conception (Rabbis are neat in that they always have a difinitive answer…exactly 40 days). We must presume up to that time the cells wander in a watery desert until they find their promised humanity! In any event, a rabbi and a Presbyterian, Episcopalian, and member of United Church of Christ (of the Calvinist tradition and Barack Obama’s old church in Chicago) have one thing in common. They will mostly agree that if there is a chance that such research can help alleviate suffering, it must be pursued. Add to this the now 15% of Americans who have no faith to guide them and as extra bonus Nancy Reagan, Christopher Reeve, and Michael J. Fox advocating for the rule’s expulsion, and you have a powerful argument that will not be won over with the image of a human in a petri dish. And so it shall be pursued, if those whose cells they are wish them to be donated. If if they do not wish it, those cells will continue to be discarded as trash as they have regularly ever since rule 13435 was put in place, and even before then. As for our tax dollars going for the destruction of human life, I can relate to that. For years I have been dismayed my tax dollars support captial punishment. In fact in Florida, when “Old Sparky” used to set folks on fire, I really became more than a bit queasy. And no amount of finesse can escape the fact that these too are humans.