This is one of those much talked about microscopic stem cell "babies": This photo was published in the Feb 2, 2007 issue of Science. What are stem cells? Embryonic stem cells are undifferentiated cells that are unlike any specific adult cell. However, they have the ability to form any…
Teen pregnancy is down. Is it because of those abstinence pledges? As indicated in this article from the BBC News, "88% of those who make the pledge break the pledge, so it must be down to condoms and safe sex education." The Guttmacher Institute recently released its own survey showing…
The Missouri legislature will soon consider Senate Bill 285 to protect the right of pharmacists who refuse to dispense birth control pills. Here’s the text of the bill: This act protects the conscience rights of pharmaceutical professionals. Such pharmaceutical professionals shall not be required to perform, assist, recommend, refer for,…
President Bush is going to send more than 20,000 more troops into Iraq and spend billions of more dollars to carry on a hideous war. Why? To protect Americans from terrorists, he tells us. Bush convinced Americans to invade Iraq by accusing Iraq of being responsible for the 9/11 attacks that killed 3,000 Americans. This argument suggests that the deaths of 3,000 people is a horrible thing.
Whenever 3,000 people die, it is a horrible thing. It might justify hundreds of billions of dollars, though certainly not the diversion of money from programs that save equal numbers of lives. 3,000 deaths justifies the deaths of more than 3,000 soldiers, we are told. I don’t agree with this. The political party that argues that there are clear moral rules (the Republicans) isn’t convincing me.
Does it make a difference that 3,000 innocent Americans die on the same day rather than over the course of a year? I wouldn’t think so. A death is a death, in my opinion. And 3,000 deaths are 3,000 deaths.
Therefore, shouldn’t the 16,000 murders that occur every year in the US require a response five times bigger than the invasion of Iraq? That’s 3,000 every ten weeks. Shouldn’t it require focused efforts to protect these victims? Shouldn’t it require a revamping of our entire criminal justice system, especially our prison system, which so often trains criminals to be even more vicious, rather than preparing them for ready for release? Where is our war on criminal violence? …
Dangerous idea, that.
If you were in charge–if you were King–what would do? What would fix? What would you ignore?
The Socratic ideal is the philosopher king, whose first act upon accession to the throne is to abdicate. The idea being that a truly ethical thinker would refuse to accept the responsibility to rule a nation.
Pity the world doesn’t work that way.
The problem with such systems–and there are many, including those proposed by certain self-proclaimed Libertarians–is that human nature refuses to cooperate. There’s a kind of Malthusian coefficient involved–population growth always outstrips the potential for ideal behavior. All such utopian systems are based on one fallacy that keeps gumming up all the works of any system anyone cares to name.
The fallacy is that We’re All Alike.
It’s a widely touted formula–the things that we have in common outnumber those that divide us; underneath we’re all the same; people are people. The Libertarians believe as an article of faith that if government got out of everybody’s way, we’d all be fine because people basically know what’s best for themselves and their immediate circle of intimates. Socialists believe (mostly) that without class structures, everyone would get along quite nicely. Communists like to assume avarice is an aberration that can somehow be bred out of the species.
If only.
It’s not so much that we’re so very different–but that we’re alike in such individualized ways.
The fact is, we come in all shapes, sizes, talents, capacities, points of view, …