Ross And ESCR
Michael Kinsley misses the point in Ross’ argument on stem-cell policy:
Let’s start with (c). Although it’s rarely put this way, coercion—especially financial coercion—is at the heart of any political system, including democracy. Almost the whole point of politics is to decide what money is spent communally, and how. Obviously the system can’t work if everyone gets to withhold tax dollars from projects they disapprove of. I and many others, for example, would have preferred to not to have our tax dollars go to finance the Iraq war. I’m sure Ross Douthat would have had no problem seeing why that wouldn’t work.
Well, I assume that people who opposed the war, as I did, wouldn’t have wanted their tax dollars supporting an invasion that they opposed, which is why they opposed the invasion. This is not difficult to understand. Ross argued in part that pro-lifers don’t want to pay for ESCR, because they find it morally objectionable, which is why they don’t want there to be any federal funding of ESCR. Unlike the war, which would not be funded only if there was no war, ESCR could go on without needing public support.
This is one reason why some pro-lifers found the Bush administration’s position, in which it permitted some funding of existing lines (i.e., cells derived from already-destroyed embryos), to be unacceptable. For one thing, it was, in effect, taking advantage of previous wrongdoing. This is also why his later veto of a bill on this subject wasn’t quite the great pro-life stand that many of his supporters pretended that it was. Indeed, in response to criticism of that veto (which I believe was the first veto of Mr. Bush’s Presidency), the White House insisted on reminding everyone that Mr. Bush had been the first President to authorize federal funding of this research. Something this controversial ought to be limited to private funding, or at the very least the administration could have retained Bush-era rules limiting funding to research into existing lines, even though pro-lifers also find the latter objectionable.
Actually, I opposed the invasion because it was *wrong*, not because my tax dollars had anything to do with it. And I (knew I) had a moral basis to oppose the invasion by any simple moral basis whatsoever, regardless whether my tax dollars were paying for it.
I.e., my tax dollars had nothing to do with “why I opposed the invasion.” You seem to be drawing a causality that’s total foreign to me, and I expect to a lot of people (of some undetermined number).
On the pro-embryonic-life stuff, of course, we remain perpetually at odds.
Well, it’s obvious that you opposed it, as I did, because it was wrong. That’s taken as a given here. And I assume you don’t like subsidizing what we both regard as an immoral war. Now try to imagine, just for a moment, coming from the perspective that destroying embryos for scientific research is also morally wrong. If you couldn’t ban it outright, wouldn’t you want to have as little to do with such a thing as possible?
The point is that war opponents rejected a certain policy, just as opponents of ESCR reject a policy of government funding of something they regard as abhorrent. Kinsley’s rebuttal on this point is incredibly weak.
I DO get your opposition to stem-cell research. I don’t share it (other than in sort of a vague theoretical way, that to my mind is far far FAR outweighed by the potential benefits), but I do “get it.”
I just don’t share the “sacredness of the embryo” view generally, but since it’s your blog, I’m not inclined to tussle at length over it. (You’re religious, I’m not, end of story?) Rather, I find your reasoning very solid generally, but in that one point that implied a certain causality (about a less contentious issue generally), I thought it bore questioning or clarification. (Otherwise I wouldn’t have spoken up.)
I’m still reviewing Kinsley’s argument. My apprehension at the moment is that it’s not as weak (overall) as you regard it, but I’ll keep pondering. However, your broad view seems internally consistent and understandable.
Kinsley also spoke of the odd reluctance of religious conservatives to address the actual destruction of embryos not implanted. That is the more telling discussion – why is it a problem to use embryos for research but not to simply destroy them? And, if their destruction is in fact a problem, how is it that IVF is not adamantly opposed by said religious conservatives, on the grounds that many, MANY more embryos are created than will ever be implanted?
Yeah, that’s what interests me too.
On one hand, the opponents’ argument could be “stem cell research ‘tempts’ us to create life (that will never come to term) for some other purpose, and therefore we must keep the door firmly shut against that temptation, lest we disrespect the sanctity of life.”
But we’ve already got that door open, and it IS being exploited for IVM, with no prevalent moral objection whatsoever. How can one object to stem-cell research withOUT objecting to IVM practices?
So there’s where I’d like the illumination from an opponent, in my own good faith attempts to understand a position that I don’t share.
Isn’t it just pointlessly redundant to object to spending one’s tax dollars on something one already opposes, for whatever reasons? I mean, if one opposes some government policy, doesn’t that automatically mean one opposes spending tax dollars on it? What is added to the argument, rhetorically, by not just opposing a policy, but by opposing the notion that tax dollars be spent on it? Is there some reason we should afford extra weight to opposition arguments to some government policy by pointing out that it means tax dollars will be used to support something opposed by the same people who already oppose it? What kind of sheer nonsense is this?
For what it’s worth, I’m deeply religious, but I don’t consider the body or its cells to be “sacred”. I consider the soul to be sacred, and I don’t equate the soul with the body, much less with tiny undeveloped cells and embryos. I’m not a spiritual materialist. Spiritual materialists have a right to their views, but not a right to impose those views on either the debate about abortion, or public policy. In my view, they have made a wrong moral calculation about what is sacred, and even about what constitutes a human being, and what the significance is of human biological development (and evolution for that matter).