Biotechnology and Ethics

The Claremont Institute has an interesting discussion about the National Association of Science’s report on embryonic stem cell research, and the mindset behind it.

In short, the NAS thinks that human affairs should be as “value neutral” as the physical sciences. Gee, I thought Robert Openheimer showed us why that’s a nonstarter, but I guess the “scientists” never really learn the limitations of their knowledge.

In the meantime, check out Wesley J. Smith’s blog on bioethics. Smith is the author of A Consumer’s Guide to a Brave New World. Travis D. Smith (no relation) writes a splendid review of this book.

Essential reading for those wanting to learn more about the state of bioethics.

Traditional Definition of Marriage Constitutional: Legal Expert

Today’s National Post (subscription required) reports that Eugene Meehan, a former national president of the Canadian Bar Association and well-published legal scholar, has argued that restricting marriage to a union of man and woman would be constitutional.

According to Meehan, C-38 undermines religious freedoms as well as federal-provincial boundaries because it’s up to the provinces to sacralize marriage and the bill does not protect individuals and religious groups from provincial laws:

Mr. Meehan also casts serious doubt on the federal government’s assurances those who do not support same-sex marriage because of their religious beliefs will be protected.

“A same-sex couple denied the right to hold their wedding ceremony in a particular hall could lodge a complaint before the relevant provincial human rights commission, alleging discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, even though the refusal was based on religious grounds,” Mr. Meehan stated in his opinion.

He also noted that Manitoba recently informed marriage commissioners their licenses would be revoked if they did not perform same-sex marriages.

This decision suggests that Lorne Gunter was correct to suggest that while C-38 only (weakly) protects religious officials, but no one else.

Lawyer Gerry Chipeur, representing a gropu of lawyers, is distributing a summary of the legal opinion to every MP and Senator.

Before or After, Don Cordonnola?

Alfonso Gagliano, the disgraced former Liberal Minister of Public Works, claims that the Quebec separatists were conducting much worse business than his own government’s unethical and illegal plan to subsidise his party’s finances. Gagliano has gone as far as to suggest that “Quebec’s then-separatist provincial government spent five times more” than the Liberals did. It is not clear what he means by spend, but he seems to be saying that the Parti Quebecois defrauded tax payers by amounts five times greater than the Liberals did?

We’re showing to Quebeckers the bad things that happened during this sponsorship program… but there’s no inquiry in the other side.

Right now, we’re just looking on one side and that is helping the separatist movement to gain momentum

If Quebeckers would know what the separatist government in Quebec did in those same years, on the same files, they would be more outrageous.

This statement begs the Watergate questions, what does he know and when did he know it?

By the sounds of it, Gagliano seems to be saying that the Chretien Liberal government set up its scamming programme to counter the separatist one. That would mean that as a Minister of the Crown, he and his boss had knowledge that crimes were being committed by the PQ and failed to report them. That is an abandonment of responsibility as officers of the Crown, and an abdication of their fiduciary duty. Instead, they chose to engage in similar unethical and illegal activity. That makes them silent accomplices. It also begs the question about what Paul Martin knew.

If, on the other hand, the allegations of separatist wrong-doing began after Adscam was up and running, then Chretien, Gagliano, Martin and the rest of the Liberal cabinet could hardly point fingers at the separatists –maybe the most likely scenario. And then we would have to conclude that the Chretien government established the template for the separatists to follow.

In short, if the separatist are reaping a political boost from the sponsorship racket, his party bears the blame on two counts: showing them how to use and improve the federal scheme to defraud tax payers, and for abdicating their duty to prosecute the wrong doing.

Either way, the Liberal government surrendered its responsibility to fight for this country –in that is in fact what they were doing– while remaining within the bounds of the rule of law and in dutiful performance of its responsibility. The RCMP shroud be taking notes.

Lastly, Gagliano’s account is very similar to his boss’, Jean Chretien. There is no contrition or admission or wrong doing. He has in fact said that there was nothing wrong with the defrauding programme. Instead, he is trying to shift the blame on to the Gomery Commission. IT will be responsible for the destruction of the country that Gagliano has forseen. My four year old boy is more responsible than that.

Cross posted from Civitatensis

US Not Becoming a Theocracy

There’s a lot of debate these days in the US and abroad about the course American society is taking, and the role religion plays in shaping its politics. Despite the expectations and hopes of secularists, the religious life in the US is vigorous, and its electoral politics frequently reflects the demographics.

Despite the expectations and hopes of various religious figures, however, there is no “Christian America” because the pluralistic structure of its constitution forbids it.

There is also the issue of whether liberal constitutionalism requires some kind of Christian ethic to sustain it (i.e., virtues promoting trust, cooperation, sacrifice, etc.), but the specific virtues usually associated with such an ethic tend to be what medieval theologians called “natural” virtues, in contrast with supernatural ones like faith, hope, and charity, meaning they could be practiced by non-Christians.

All of this to place Michael Barone’s recent column into context. He calls on Americans, especially on the secular side, to take a deep breath, and rejects as paranoid fears that America is becoming a theocracy. Just because America hasn’t become fully secular, doesn’t mean it’s going to become a theocracy:

America has not moved in the expected direction. In fact, just the opposite. Economist Robert Fogel’s The Fourth Great Awakening argues that we’ve been in the midst of a religious revival since the 1950s, in which, as in previous revivals, “the evangelical churches represented the leading edge of an ideological and political response to accumulated technological and social changes that undermined the received culture.” In the 2004 presidential exit poll, 74 percent of voters described themselves as churchgoers, 23 percent as evangelical or born-again Protestants, and 10 percent said they had no religion.

That said, American exceptionalism will continue mainly because churchgoers tend to have more children:

Who inherits the future? In free societies each generation makes its own religious choices, but people tend to follow the faith of their parents. Secular Europe, with below-replacement birthrates among non-Muslims, could be headed for a Muslim future, as historian Niall Ferguson suggests. In the United States, as pointed out by Phillip Longman in The Empty Cradle and Ben Wattenberg in Fewer, birthrates are above replacement level largely because of immigrants. But, as Longman notes, religious people have more children than seculars. Those who believe in “family values” are more likely to have families.

This agrees somewhat with Pippa Norris and Ronald Ingelhart, who, in Sacred and Secular, argue that demographics tends to explain the worldwide resurgence of religiosity (that is, outside of Europe and Canada).

So, fears of America becoming a “theocracy” are really an expression of failed expectations on the part of secularists, whose Enlightenment dream of a “rational” society has not taken hold:

This doesn’t mean we’re headed toward a theocracy: America is too diverse and freedom loving for that. But it does mean that we’re probably not headed to the predominantly secular society that liberals predicted half a century ago and that Europe has now embraced.

One clue of where we’re headed may be found in the most recent example secularists cite as the theocratic turn: Senator Bill Frist’s speech at a Family Research Council sponsored even protesting Democratic filibusters, and general rally against secular influence. As the San Francisco Gate observes:

the Senate majority leader neither referred to religious faith nor addressed criticism that the event was inappropriately dragging religion into a partisan dispute.

Instead, he focused on the allegations of Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic minority leader, that Frist was a radical Republican for participating in the telecast, which was designed to build conservative Christian support for his threat to eliminate the filibuster of presidential nominees — a parliamentary tactic that allows a group of at least 41 senators to reject a nominee by refusing the 60 votes to close debate and call for a vote. Democrats have threatened to virtually halt Senate business if Frist follows through.

“I don’t think it’s radical to ask senators to vote,” Frist said. “Now, if Sen. Reid continues to obstruct the process, we will consider what opponents call the ‘nuclear option.’ Only in the United States Senate could it be considered a devastating option to allow a vote. Most places call that democracy.”

In other words, Frist appeared via video (not in person) and spoke about the procedural issues (and their impact on the political views of the nominees) but spoke not once about religious faith as the event’s sponsors had done (and perhaps hoped Frist would as well).

Frist’s appearance is the classic equipoise of a politician seeking a broad base of support. He appears (on video!) to solidify his core support, but doesn’t commit himself to all their views in order to build coalitions with a broader part of the population that does not necessarily include Focus on the Family people.

This seems to be the more likely future course of religion and politics in America: more of the same, as formed by the Constitution with its checks and balances.

Meanwhile, Winfield Myers and Professor Bainbridge and others continue debating whether Democrats exhibit anti-Catholic bigotry in filibustering Bush’s judicial nominees (see my previous post on that subject).

Canada: Next Failed State?

Austin Bay makes some prognostications about the future of Canada in the wake of Adscam:

Canadians in the western and maritime provinces already dread the political power of populous Ontario. (Quebec serves as a political balance to Ontario.) If Quebec bids adieu, “remnant” Canada’s political rules will be subject to revision. Subsequent regional bickering could lead to further fragmentation.

…

Quebec has the people and resources to make a go of it, though the economic price for its egotism will be stiff. British Columbia also has “nation-state” assets: Access to the sea, strong industrial base, raw materials and an educated population.

Oil-producing Alberta might join the United States and instantly find common political ground with Alaska, Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma. Canada’s struggling Atlantic provinces might find statehood economically attractive and extend the New England coastline. A rump Canada consisting of “Greater Ontario” — with remaining provinces as appendages — might keep the maple-leaf flag aloft. As for poor, isolated Newfoundland: Would Great Britain like to reacquire a North American colony?

Well, don’t forget the Alberta-Colorado connection, with Ian Tyson as the new republic’s troubadour.

Legal Status of Fetus in Alberta

The Calgary Herald reports on a private member’s bill in the legislature that would enable a child to sue her mother for damages sustained while the mother was pregnant. This would allow the family to sue the mother’s automobile insurance company so they can get some financial help caring for the child, who is blind and brain damaged.

This of course enters that topic Canadians have supposedly put behind them: the rights of the fetus and whether, indeed, the fetus is actually a human being, despite how much Canadians ignore scientific evidence showing that it is.

Cases like this have arisen in the US as well.

“Nightmares”: Final Installment

This is my post of the 3rd part of the documentary, “Nightmares,” which the CBC broadcast on Tuesday night. I also posted comments on the Sunday broadcast of Part I (and here) and Monday’s Part II. I also posted comments connecting this documentary to broader trends among contemporary ideologies.

***

The bulk of the show punches holes in the view that al-Qaeda is a unitary organization with bin Laden at its head, which picks up on the theme of Part II.

It also parodies the paranoia in the US and UK over Al-Qaeda’s threat. I pointed out in my analysis of Part II how and why Al-Qaeda’s power has been overrated. Jason Burke, whom the documentary interviews, has been pointing this out in a series of books and articles over the past few years (see here and here). It also reveals the incompetency of various police organizations who’ve investigated and charged numerous individuals who’ve ended up being found innocent.

Fair enough.

However, it’s one thing to claim that Al-Qaeda’s threat is overrated but quite another thing to claim it is nonexistent. Moreover, the documentary fails to identify what groups constitute actual threats. The overall effect is that the documentary lulls viewers into thinking that all reported threats are simply “myths” created by the neocon cabal, which is highly irresponsible.

At one point the narrator claims that such simplistic “myths” are related to the power the media has in modern society to manipulate the masses. Is this the same media that produces “Nightmares” with its own simplistic vision of reality?

The narrator claims that postmodern societies now conduct themselves according to the “precautionary principle.” This means that they imagine threats and act decisively on them before those threats can materialize, and on the slenderest of evidence. Thomas Hobbes calls this diffidence, which is one of the 3 causes of war. This should make us skeptical that the “precautionary principle” is something new.

The narrator suggests that neoconservatives have been able to act according to this principle because it was pioneered and legimated by environmentalists all the way back in the 1970s. For the past 30 years, environmentalists have claimed the world will end in environmental catastophe unless precautionary measures, based on the slenderest of evidence, are taken. One need only consider the politics of the Kyoto Accord to see evidence of this.

An interesting suggestion, but hard to prove the connection with environmentalists, since the “precautionary principle” has been around for a very long time.

I think a better immediate reason is the fact that leaders like Bush and Blair simply had no clue of the threat Western democracies faced after 9/11. Recall the weeks after 9/11: fears of additional airplane attacks, anthrax attacks (no one’s been caught for those), etc. With the 9/11 Commission Report, we’ve come to learn just how ignorant Western intelligence agencies were of al-Qaeda or whatever you want to call the groups associated with bin Laden and radical Islamism. The 9/11 Commission Report was published after this documentary was produced, even though its contents, especially reports on intelligence gaps, were circulating long before the commission published its findings. The documentary interviews several former CIA people, who very likely had political axes to grind against the administration, though we don’t know what role these individuals played in producing the inept culture in the CIA and FBI that led to such intelligence breakdowns.

Lacking knowledge, it makes certain sense for leaders to overreact because failing to act could leave the door open for a catastrophic attack like 9/11. This is what Hobbes called “diffidence.” It is not necessarily a prudent strategy, but it has rationale.

Finally, a word on the basic premise of this documentary.

The narrator explains that the Bush administration’s “war on terrorism” is part of a postmodern rejection of idealism in favor of a politics of fear:

“Instead of delivering dreams, politicians now promise to protect us from nightmares.�

A society that believes in nothing, says one of the scholars interviewed, will base its politics on fear. It follows that terrorism is the worst nightmare. Nihilistic liberal democracies find their counterpart in apocalyptic Islamists.

The documentary implicitly draws on an “end of ideology” or “end of history” narrative where moral ideals and ideologies no longer play a part of framing political debate. Instead, postmodern cynicism expressed through the politics of fear is the new mode. In essence, it borrows from Francis Fukuyama’s claim that nihilistic boredom will characterize politics at the end of history (ironically, Fukuyama is one of the neocons mentioned in the documentary). Having nothing better to aim for, elites in liberal democracies will play cynical war games for the fun of it. Their subjects, still not evolved to the stage of postmodernism, will dumbly follow along along the lines the documentary suggests.

What the documentary’s premise overlooks is that ideological leaders (or those who provide a “vision”) have played the politics of fear as well. One thinks of the central role that fear plays in Thomas Hobbes’s political thought. Consider the fear of enemies of state that tyrants like Stalin and Hitler used. Moreover, fear has placed a central role for “ideology” since the term first entered political existence during the Napoleanic era. Fear is all ideologues ever delivered – both in practice and in the supposed logic of their visions. For details, see my post on ideologies (linked above).

Alexandr Solzehnitsyn observed of Soviet totalitarianism, and Hannah Arendt observed of Nazi totalitarianism, that its official histories were always getting rewritten. Partly for reasons of propaganda: people without memory are easily manipulated. And partly out of a historicist view of the world where things that mean something one day will mean another thing a week later.

A dozen or so years ago, a conservative, referring to Solzhenitsyn, told me that he thought within ten years leftists would claim that the Cold War never occurred. At the time I thought his comment was over the top.

With this documentary, I conclude that he had only underestimated how long it would take for them to revise history.

The CBC welcomes your comments about the show.

Pettigrew: “I’m Outta Here!”

CBC reports that DFAIT Minister Pierre Pettigrew is leaving the federal Liberals to take up a post with the Organization of American States:

The prime minister has lobbied Pettigrew not to take the job, saying people might think the foreign affairs minister is leaving because he is unhappy with the federal Liberals, according to other reports.

Pettigrew, a key Quebec minister for Martin, narrowly defeated the Bloc Québécois candidate in his east end Montreal riding during last June’s federal election.

Naturlich!

Readers will remember Mr. Pettigrew as an intellectual lightweight when it comes to foreign policy and a soft Jacobin when it comes to culture.

Of course, his own government doesn’t even support him in his bid for his new job:

A spokesperson for Pettigrew’s department said Canada officially supports Mexican candidate Luis Ernesto Derbez for OAS secretary general.

No offense to Mr. Derbez, but I wish Mr. Pettigrew best wishes in his application for that job!

Senate Filibuster and (Non-)Religious Test?

According to Article VI of the US Constitution:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

Some conservatives are starting to argue that Democratic opposition to Bush’s judicial nominees (and for that matter Bush Sr.’s and Reagan’s) amount to discrimination against religoius conservatives. As we’ve noted before, some conservatives chalk this up to the judicialization of American political life, and Roe v. Wade in particular.

They argue that Democrat’s have imposed a religious test to discriminate against religious conservatives.

This is the argument of Winfield Myers at the Democracy Project (and here) and Professor Bainbridge, as well as a few others.

No Democrat has come out and said that he or she opposes nominees on the basis of their religion. Rather, they point to their positions on various hot button issues like abortion.

For Bainbridge, this amounts to discrimination on the basis of “disparate impact.” This means that enough religous people happen to agree with the nominee’s opinion on abortion, so discrimination against pro-lifers implies discrimination against religious people (who happen to be pro-life). Discrimination exists, but it is unintentional.

For Myers and some people he cites, opposing a nominee pro-life position is simply a ruse for an unstated intentional discrimination.

These two modes of argument are commonly used in the US, but moreso by leftists over things like affirmative action and wealth redistribution.

On the “disparate impact” side, the argument’s been used against various free market policy positions because, though not intentionally discriminatory against African-Americans, have adverse impact on them because such policies adversely effect the poor, and many African-Americans are poor.

The “ruse” argument is often slapped against those who oppose affirmative action. Some leftists regard opposition to affirmative action as a genteel form of intentional discrimination against African-Americans.

I suspect Democrats oppose Bush’s nominees not because some are religious or even conservative, but rather that they’re religious conservatives. For example, you wouldn’t see them discriminate against Martin Luther King, Jr., because his religiously informed political views would dovetail with their political views.

It’s unfortunate to see supporters of these nominees make these types of arguments because both fail to address the issues of the nominees’ actual records, and they don’t address the merits (and faults) of Democrats’ complaints against the nominees.

The Trauma of Ideology

Karl Marx famously stated, “philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.”

Leo Strauss less famously used to refer to the “permanent problems” of political life. Life for him is a permanent question, requiring persistent questioning of all aspects.

Marx, on the other hand, sought to prohibit questioning. In his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, he has this response to someone who persists in asking about human nature: “Give up your abstraction and you will give up your question along with it.”

The contrast between Strauss and Marx shows the contrast between political philosophy and ideology. The ideologue wants to change the world, will prohibit questioning when the world resists, and will refuse to apply his ideology to himself. The political philosopher leaves no rock unturned.

The difference between political philosophy and ideology comes to mind when watching the documentary, “Nightmares,” on the CBC over the past couple of nights (posts here, here, and here). A comment on one of my previous posts suggested that Strauss and Qutb are equivalent because both exerted a lot of influence on people. But influence is not the distinguishing mark between a political philosopher and an ideologue. The mode of thinking (or not thinking) is the better distinction.

The 20th century has witnessed a lot of examples of philosophers turning to an ideological mode of thinking, and ending up beguiled by totalitarians. Mark Lilla provides a useful summary of thinkers including Kojeve, Michel Foucault, Carl Schmitt, Martin Heidegger, and Jacques Derrida. All of them darlings of the left and some of the right. What unites these thinkers is not only an activist bent, but also a kind of messianic hope that the world will change, just as Marx hopes for in the statement I quoted above.

Another less noticed feature is one that I see more and more these days. Ideologues have always been willing to ignore the bad press of their favorite totalitarians because of a blind hope that the totalitarian will fulfil their messianic hope for a new world order. Moreover, their political opposition to the (usually) “right wing press” drives them to becoming apologists for those totalitarians.

A prime example of Pierre Trudeau. Kevin Steel over at the Shotgun reproduces some juicy examples of Trudeau’s defense of China’s Cultural Revolution that left 20 to 50 million dead:

‘Hold on a minute, please! Isn’t famine raging in China a this very moment?’

Do you mean the famine in which the conservative press of the West takes so much delight?

…

‘But still, it’s a totalitarian regime–a dictatorship!’

Of course. Chiang Kai-shek and the emperors were also dictators, but their power was not directly founded on the people, and they were not so well organized for giving thought to the people’s problems. The present regime, in contrast, since it attacks the feudal lords, the capitalists, and the superstructures of the old days, is bound to be as little alienated as possible from the Chinese masses. And it takes the trouble to convince them of its good faith, to convert them to its teaching. By every means.

These passages show how Trudeau’s disdain for the “conservative” press led him to justify Chinese totalitarianism because 1) it fed the poor better than its older “feudal” rulers (despite its outright slaughter of millions of them), and 2) it promised a utopian future.

One sees a similar process today, among many of the left who justify Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Assad’s Syria, and numerous other tyrants, because they oppose George Bush and the Republicans. Bush is seen as worse than these guys. And they only hate the tyrants of Saudi Arabia because they’re friends of the Bushes, not because they’re tyrants.

And so a documentary like “Nightmares” is part of that leftist narrative because it creates and sustains the myth of the neocon cabal that allegedly runs the US government, and exerts influence over US culture including its media. This cabal has the function of preventing the leftist utopian vision of fulfilling itself. Instead of understanding the incoherence of their own utopian visions, they blame a cabal of frustrating the march of history. Sometimes this leads them to impute near omnipotence to the cabal. Consider how Karl Rove often gets blamed for nearly everything. Consider too how the US gets blamed for everything.

The cabal (and the US in general in the case of anti-Americanism) plays the role of the dark angel in the Gnostic myth of liberation. The Gnostic noble soul believes that the force of darkness is preventing him from escaping into a perfect world in the beyond (or here and now). Thus the force of darkness, be it the American neocon cabal (for anti-Americans), the bourgeois (for Marxists), the Jew (for Nazis and anti-Americans). I’ve even heard conservative teenage attitudes toward sex and marriage explained away by as the result of Focus On the Family’s alleged intervention in schools. Again, this overlooks whether teenagers, as children of the “me first” generation, might have good reason to hold more conservative views on the family than their parents, who habitually regarded them as their “choice.”

Attributing such a high providential power to a designated cabal constitutes a kind of primitive religiosity – much the same as the kind that documentaries like “Nightmares” impute to the neocons. Takes one to know one, I guess.

By proceeding in this manner, the ideological left contributes to a nasty identity politics where simply labeling someone as neocon or simply as conservative constitutes a way of preventing them from having a legitimate place in public discourse. Conservatives in the US did that during the 1990s when they used “liberal” as a smear against their opponents, and it helped get Clinton re-elected. Democrats are finding the same thing’s happening to them.

The ideological mode of thinking among many leftists drives them into justifying the unjustifiable. This intellectual swindle has its roots in the kind of Promethean revolt expressed in Marx’s desire to change the world instead of understanding it.

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