Morning reads *UPDATED*
Bookworm on May 07 2008 at 9:23 am | Filed under: Uncategorized
Michelle Malkin takes on Michelle Obama’s endless flow of whining and bile. It’s not surprising. As I pointed out in my Anger on the Left post, Leftism once seemed logically congruent with anger because Leftism was the politics of the underclass. In recent years, though, Leftism has shifted to become the politics of the affluent class, yet the anger is still there. Mrs. Obama is emblematic of this paradigm shift.
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Speaking of whining, you’ve got to love the opening paragraph in just the most recent Israel bashing article in the New York Times:
As Israel toasts its 60th anniversary in the coming weeks, rejoicing in Jewish national rebirth and democratic values, the Arabs who make up 20 percent of its citizens will not be celebrating. Better off and better integrated than ever in their history, freer than a vast majority of other Arabs, Israel’s 1.3 million Arab citizens are still far less well off than Israeli Jews and feel increasingly unwanted. (Emphasis added.)
I didn’t bother with the rest of the article after that intro. My stomach can stand only so much upset this early in the morning. I will only add this ancient childhood chant for those poor, unappreciated citizens: “Nobody loves me, everybody hates me, think I’ll eat some worms.”
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Arianna Huffington burst on the scene as a biographer who probably plagiarized, then become the quintessential conservative politician’s wife, and is now the proprietor, public face of and spokesperson for the Huffington Post, a major liberal web presence. My sense of her — and I’ve been aware of her longer than most of you because she was already a celebrity when I was living in England — is that she is a bright woman whose only fixed principle is herself. A charming narcissistic, if you will. Because of her HuffPo power, John Stossel interviewed her for 20/20 last week. I don’t watch that show — in fact, I watch very little television at all — so I missed the interview. However, Stossel has been kind enough to provide the highlights, and they’re quite funny. Huffington proudly announces that, no doubt because she’s so brilliant, she ditched conservatism because “One of the problems with the Right is that they don’t believe in facts, and they don’t believe in evidence.” Then, for the rest of the interview, she tries vainly to bat away the actual facts Stossel throws at her, facts completely at odds with her casual pronouncements about how her newly acquired ultra-liberal policies are going to make everyone in America happy — in an angry Leftist kind of way, I suspect.
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I don’t know if I predicted it here, but I certainly predicted it in conversation (as DQ, Mr. Bookworm and my Mom can attest): Obama will be the Democratic nominee. Now my big hope is that, after the big hype, ordinary Americans will step back for a minute and ask themselves a few questions: In times of economic strife and national insecurity, do we want as our leader a young man who spent a few years doing nothing in a State Senate and four years doing less than that in the US Senate? Do we want as president a Senator whose voting record makes Teddy Kennedy and Barbara Boxer looking conservative? Do we want a President who continually lies and, despite the ease with which he’s caught in those lies, keep lying — something that shows either remarkable hubris or lack of judgment? Do we want a President who, for 20 years, cozied up to someone who routinely expresses a visceral hatred for America, Americans and, yes, white people; who claimed that he’d stick by this man to the bitter end; and who then threw him off the cliff (joining granny, already lying at the bottom), when he became a political liability? Do we want a man whose wife is the embodiment of bitterness (I recommend that she get some guns and God, since it might lighten her spirit)? Do we want a man who, whenever the going gets rough, hides from the Press? Do we want a man who strongly believes that Supreme Court justices should be chosen based on their willingness to decide cases on their emotional feelings? Do we want a man who thinks the Second Amendment is a waste of space in the Constitution? Do we want a man who is either stunningly ignorant about history or is willing, Big Brother-like, to twist it to suit his political ends? Do we want a man who blindly promises to pull American troops out of Iraq in 17 months, regardless of the facts on the ground or the (as Michael Yon said) “catastrophic” consequences? Would you like to add some questions voters should ask?
Anyway, Jennifer Rubin suggests that, demographically, Americans might not want this man. I hope she’s right. A lot is riding on McCain’s shoulders. He sure isn’t the perfect candidate, not by a long shot, but in politics, as in everything else, the perfect is the enemy of the good. Compared to Obama, McCain is a good candidate, and I sure hope he wins.
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Speaking of John McCain, National Review Online has a nice editorial about his judicial philosophy:
In his speech at Wake Forest University, McCain identified the battle over the proper role of the judiciary as “one of the defining issues of this presidential election.” Defending the Constitution’s separation of powers, he forcefully decried how the decades-long “common and systematic abuse of our federal courts” by judicial activists has usurped the power of the American people to address policy questions through the democratic process.
[snip]
The future direction of the Supreme Court is very much at stake in this November’s presidential election. The two or three justices most likely to depart the Court over the next four years — Justice Stevens, Justice Ginsburg, and possibly Justice Souter — are liberal judicial activists who routinely read their own policy preferences into the Constitution and who selectively regard their own favored precedents as sacrosanct. If a President Obama or a President Clinton names their successors, the slender operating majority on the Court for liberal activist results on most contentious political issues is likely to be preserved for at least another generation.
By contrast, a president committed to nominate, and fight for, justices who will practice judicial restraint offers real hope that the Court may soon be restored to its proper role in our constitutional system. In his speech today, John McCain has provided encouraging evidence that he would be that president.
The editorial acknowledges that a single speech is neither a whole campaign nor a Supreme Court nominating roster. Still it’s better than Obama’s bloviations about Supreme Court justices consulting their liberal navels and the elites in Europe, rather than the Constitution, American legal precedent, and US laws, when deciding cases.
UPDATE: I noted above Obama’s disturbing tendency to rewrite history, both his own and America’s, something that is (as Orwell made clear back in 1948), a distinctly Leftist habit. Two stories from Spiegel online, one about Russian propaganda at the end of WWII, and one about Chinese propaganda now, demonstrate how the Lefties see facts as objects to be manipulated to advance political ideology.
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If I have to listen to people bloviate while saying nothing, I’ll take Huffington over Obama any day.
I enjoy listening to her: when I hear her I think I’m listening to a minor villain in a James Bond movie. Love that accent! (This could be a guy thing… or maybe even just my own personal quirk…)
When I hear Michelle and Barack bloviate about history, world affairs and the economy, it confirms my conclusion that a polished Ivy League degrees go hand-in-hand with profound ignorance of the world around them.
It reminds me of what one colleague described as an Ivy League propensity to be brilliant in one’s chosen field while being totally incapable of lacing one’s own shoe laces.
But, who am I to talk? I don’t want to sound bitter. I guess that I’ll go and reload some ammo and peruse my Bible. See ya!
Here, here, Danny. I like to think The Wild Bunch did not die in vain. Praise the Lord and pass the ammo.
There is another thing about the left that I have noticed. They have a propensity to use circular logic. When countered by facts they circle right back to their original premise, point to it and say, “see.” Huffington did that several times. When the Obama’s say Americans are frustrated and bitter some people counter a little angrily that that is nonsense. What do they do, point to the anger and say, “see I told ya.” If you look carefully you see this happening a lot on the left.
The same is true of Iraq. They see it as being for nothing, discounting Cheney being enriched by Haliburton contracts that is.
And then they say that the US could kick any country’s butt so why are we having trouble in Iraq? Or why did Bush not flatten the country if he was really serious about there being a threat there? And then they point to the number of deaths and wounded as being for nothing.
Thanks, Bookworm, for the link to Stossel’s article. It caught my eye as well, because it’s so rare to see any political pundits actually marshall data and numbers rather than simply bloviate unhindered by facts. But having read the piece, I must say I was rather disappointed with Stossel. In the interest of intellectual integrity, it should be pointed out that his analysis of the “facts” leaves a lot to be desired.
He says that Huffington’s contention that the AFDC and similar programs helped the poor is incorrect, and to prove it, he points to data showing the following: 1. since welfare reform, 8M people have left the dole, found jobs they like, and earn more than welfare paid; and 2. since welfare refore, incomes of poorer people are higher and the number below the poverty line has decreased.
The problem is that his data does not support his claims. The data he cites for the first contention is from the Dept. of HHS and shows the 8M decline in quarterly welfare claims, but it shows no information on whether they like the jobs they found or whether they earn more than they received on the dole. He offers no additional data in support of those latter claims.
On the second contention, that the lower income people are better off, he references a Census Bureau report on the poor. This report is limited to income changes in ‘05/’06, but the data doesn’t support his claim of rising incomes even in that single year-over-year comparison. The report actually shows the bottom two quintiles (poorest) making no income gains in ‘06, while the next two actually decline; only the richest 20% have income growth in ‘06. While he doesn’t offer it (unsurprisingly), most data has shown only modest real growth in incomes over the last 40 years, with below average families actually seeing declines while the top 10% have seen big gains.
The other data he cites for the second contention is also from the Census Bureau. The data does indeed show a higher poverty rate and greater number of poor families in ‘06 (the year of welfare reform) and ‘06 (the last year available), with 7.71M families and an 11.0% poverty rate in ‘96 versus 7.67M families and a 9.8% poverty rate in ‘06. The problem is that an examination of the entirety of data lends supports the opposite conclusion about government programs than the one he is trying to make. The AFDC Huffington referenced was strengthened by Johnson’s War on Poverty in 1964, which included formation of the OEO (Office of Economic Opportunity), a program that was eliminated by Nixon in 1974. According the same Census data that Stossel cites, poverty counts and rates fell from ‘64 (7.16M and 15%) to ‘73 (4.83M and 8.8%) when the government program was in place. Interestingly, it then rises after Nixon (to 5.31M and 9.4%), is level under Carter, and then rises again under Reagan and Bush I. After peaking in 1993 at 12.3M and 12.3%, it begins to decline even before Welfare Reform is enacted in ‘96. While the coincidence of rising poverty and Republican administrations is no proof of causality, it is striking nonetheless. Also, if Stossel’s comment that government policies have not worked, he’ll need better data to prove it than what he’s marshalled here. Finally, if it is true that a government program cannot claim credit for continuing a trend found in prior history (and I can’t find a link to his OSHA data before 1996 to check his numbers, so I’ll just take his word for it), then I would ask him why ending a government program should be given that very benefit of the doubt.
The reality is that economic growth probably has more to do with the fluctuations in poverty rates and income growth than government programs. And Huffington is as clueless as Stossel about what really has caused poverty to fluctuate and what the government’s optimal role should be in all of this. But the bottom line is that the conservative as well as the liberal was wrong in this case.
Moreover, I have to say that I find it hypocritical of Stossel, who claims on faith and without logic or facts that a Huffington’s argument is wrong, while trying to make the concurrent claim that she, like all liberals, has placed too much faith in government without any factual or logical basis for it.
As an aside, I also must suggest that those lauding John Stossel’s “facts” ought to actually read his data before accepting his conclusions merely because they accord with their preconceived notions. To cite my favorite quote, once again, “those who refuse to do arithmetic are doomed to talk nonsense.” As much as I agree with people on this site that liberals often talk nonsense, I find an equal dose of ignorance from those on the right…
Finally, I would ask those attacking the shiny ivy league degrees why they launch those attacks exclusively on liberal ivy grads and not the conservative ones–including the very John Stossel who authored the weak rebuttal to Huffington. (He graduated from Princeton in 1969…look it up.) I would agree with Danny Lemieux’s observation of profound ignorance in the case of Stossel, however, as it would appear that his Psychology department didn’t teach him much about economics or statistics or math or proper evidentiary support. Then again, he used to be a liberal before he became a conservative, so maybe that was the problem in his case…
Echeccone, you might want to revisit those poverty figures, again. The definition of “poverty” was changed during that period. See the following articles: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,953457,00.html
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE2D81F30F933A05757C0A963958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
Poverty statistics in the U.S. are nonsense - they only look at taxable income, not net worth, capital gains or government benefits. Many people classified as “poor” in this country would qualify as solidly middle class in much of the rest of the developed world.
Hi echeccone,
Excellent comment, but it misses one reality. Liberals like Huffington are completely unwilling to have their theories seriously tested against the evidence. Conservatives like Stossel, however weakly they make their case, are willing, indeed eager, to have their theories tested against the evidence.
See, I just don’t know whether that “reality” is true. I mean, how to do you prove that assertion? I can say that from my personal experience, your statement is suspect. I lean to the left, but I am more than willing to have my theories tested everyday. I am an investor, and I have a market response to tell me whether I am right or wrong. And I lose a ton of money if I am wrong more often than right. And I can tell you that all investors are wrong a lot, event if they are right more often than not. This job makes me aware just how hard it is to know something, and how unlikely it is that one monolithic group of people (liberals or conservatives) have a monopoly on rightness. I have posted in a few other places on this blog, and most conservatives on the site have simply ignored my post rather than challenging it on the basis of facts; they’ve done exactly what you complain Huffington does. Nobody likes to be contradicted. And I find it to be as true when I call out conservatives, as it is when I call out liberals.
Now, if you can show me an objective way of measuring it, I’d be delighted to see it. The only evidence I have seen are psychographic studies which say the opposite: that conservatives shun uncertainty and ambiguity and tend to only watch programming or read material that confirms what they already believe, whereas liberals are open to uncertainty and new experiences that lead them to media where their ideas are more likely to be challenged. I don’t know how valid these studies are, but they are easy to find if you look on the web. I’d be interested in your take on them should you read them, given your response to my post.
Echecconne - “The only evidence I have seen are psychographic studies which say the opposite: that conservatives shun uncertainty and ambiguity and tend to only watch programming or read material that confirms what they already believe, whereas liberals are open to uncertainty and new experiences that lead them to media where their ideas are more likely to be challenged.
Hmmm….that explains “the debate about Global Warming is over”. Thanks.
This is off the top of my head, but my understanding of the most recent of the stream of studies showing that conservatives are happier explains that, while they have a sound grasp of the facts, they are more able to put a positive spin on things. Conservatives see the lemons, but they also recognize the lemonade. Liberals tend to the Chicken Little viewpoint, where they acknowledge a single factual experience (a bonk on the head, perhaps), and extrapolate to the most dire scenario. But that’s just my morning, pre-breakfast rumination, so don’t take it too seriously.
That’s interesting. I’d love to see those studies, if you have a reference. It could very well be true that conservatives are generally happier. I have heard that, but don’t know if that is well documented. I have also read, however, that conservatives tend to test more poorly on empathy tests, which may be why they put positive spins on things while liberals are always fretting over the plight of the underclass–something you noted at the top of this page. Wouldn’t it be interesting if the viewpoints expressed here are less motivated by differing logic than by different chemical balances in the brain. If that were true, would conservatives ask liberals to take a pill to “cure” their malady?
One question, why is a liberal’s take on everything negative, in your view? I mean, you characterize the left viewpoint as “Chicken Little” and the right viewpoint as “happier” and the making-lemonade-out-of-lemons? One could as easily call conservatives callous and cold, and liberals socially responsible? When can the bias end so we can start to examine facts and cases objectively?
Danny, I think your point about Global Warming is excellent. I am one lefty who argues frequently with environmentalists over this issue. My position is that perhaps the environmentalists should remember that debate is never over when it comes to scientific inquiry. My own view is that we should only take the remedial steps that make sense even if global warming turns out not be occuring, and then as more confidence builds, we should do more. Afterall, there are other good reasons to limit fossil fuel consumption besides climate change.
To your point, I do see similarities between liberals and conservatives’ treatment of scientific uncertainties and other problems of insufficient information. For example, how the left approaches issues over the environment and how conservatives view, say, embryonic stem cell research, which is to say that there is a lot of data massaging and shoddy analysis going on. The one difference, however, is that for some reason conservatives seem to be on the opposite side as the majority of scientists more often than not. And I don’t have a good explanation for this. I mean, there are a lot of credentialled scientists concluding that man has impacted the climate, and now asking the question how much; whereas, there are few scientists arguing that embryonic stem cell research does not hold unique benefits. Also, I hope you will agree that the Bush Administration’s blacking out of inconvenient scientific conclusions was reprehensible, regardless of your ideological bent or view of the climate issue. Suppression of scientific data should always be a no no. Thoughts?
Conservatives have lower expectations in life. They know that human beings are fallible and evil often times, so they don’t expect charity. This also means that when good people do good things, conservatives feel light hearted.
Fake liberals have high expectations of perfection, utopia, and a strongman coming in and making the trains run on time, no fuss, no muss. When bad things happen and setbacks occur, fake liberals tend to want to blame other people and feel bitter about things. You know how if you make a mistake, you don’t feel bitter about it, you just go and correct it? But when you see another person make a mistake that you knew you could have avoided, but now you have to clean up someone else’s mistake, now you are bitter and angry. Given such, why wouldn’t the Left be unhappy, bitter, and angry in life when they see people like you, Book, and Don sabotaging their hard work for a socialist paradise?
When folks object to the EU and to Democrat slave policies, this disrupts the work of fake liberals. When folks object to the fake liberal treatment of Afghans and Iraqis, this disrupts the Democrat 5 year plan of buying votes from Americans because now billions are flowing into nations that aren’t ever going to vote Democrat.
Liberals tend to the Chicken Little viewpoint, where they acknowledge a single factual experience (a bonk on the head, perhaps), and extrapolate to the most dire scenario.
Perfectionists value the work, they don’t value the end goal of perfection itself since perfection, by definition, does not have an end goal that can be created in this lifetime. “Utopia” as Thomas Moore wrote it, meant no place since perfection and paradise does not exist except in our imaginations. We can try to create it, yes, but those trying to do so must recognize that their work will take their entire life and the entire life of every other generation of human being. So for a perfectionist, Book, the work is paramount, not the end goal.
This means that fake liberals focus on means and methodology, such as talking, over the consequences of their actions. After all, since utopia and paradise will take great sacrifice in this lifetime and won’t even be created in this generation, why should fake liberals care about who gets sacrificed in the short term? The fake liberals are on a 5 year plan, which is on a 50 year plan, which is on a 50 generation plan.
And when those 50 generations are up? What will fake liberals do then? They’ll take a look at their work on the 7th day and still be displeased that utopia and paradise has not yet been achieved.
But that’s just my morning, pre-breakfast rumination, so don’t take it too seriously.
Classical liberals also value perfectible human nature and human rights. Except classical liberals accept that no amount of sacrifice in this life will net us perfection for the next generation. This is either because of Jesus Christ, other religions, or just basic Aristotelian logic and philosophy.
We value improving human nature and offsetting some of the gross grievances that the savage human mind has brought about. To us, the consequences of our work and the end goal of our work is very achievable. Thus we must obey ethics, Book. We cannot sacrifice in the short term hoping for some figment of our imagination in the future. We must logically parse each step, take the consequences, and work hard to achieve the goal in the end.
Take war for example. War isn’t about eliminating tyranny or sadists or war or violence forever. War is about ending it now, temporarily, in the present. An achievable goal instead of a figment of our imagination.
That is the difference, Book, between fake liberals and conservatives (and classical liberals too).
Lower expectations that can actually be achieved vs high expectations that can never be achieved. How can you ever be happy when you are forever falling short of your expectations? When your fellow brothers and sisters are forever falling short of your high expectations of their behavior? Wouldn’t that make you cynical? Wouldn’t that make you manipulative and hard of heart when it comes to “sacrificing the few” for your perfect goal in life? After all, the few who are in your way is holding you back from perfection, an achievable goal in your view if only people sacrifice enough of themselves. Why shouldn’t the few who get in the way, whether they be Kurds or South Vietnamese, be accorded human rights if it means sacrificing the perfect utopia?
People may believe that the peace between Europe, America, Japan, and Australia will last forever. They are wrong. While democracies don’t make war on other human rights abiding peeps, that doesn’t mean misunderstandings don’t occur and it doesn’t mean the Islamic Caliphate can’t take over Europe and use their nukes on us.
WWII solved the question of Germany and Japan temporarily. 1 to 10 generations can be said to be “temporary” if we are speaking of eternity. Perfection and utopia are, after all, belonging to eternity. That is what forever is and war simply does not produce peace forever.
When the Left and their mass murder enabling cohorts talk about the “end goal”, they are almost always speaking of perfection and Total Equality now, in the here and present. They are talking about redistributing income to make everyone equal and rich, NOW, in the present. They don’t recognize that utopia and perfection belong to eternity.
They do not even recognize that they are mortal and do not have the power of a god to change time and space, people. Their arrogance is born of conceit and delusions. How could such folks ever be happy, Book?
Any study or statistical scientific report that EC uses will always be vulnerable to market manipulation. Except the market in this case is scientific data, which is just as easily manipulated as stocks and currency values.
In the end, the only objective way to determine which side has the better position is through warfare. War tests factions and sees whether you have made the right decisions or not. Not the right decisions in the greater scheme of things concerning ideology and politics, but the right decisions in the little things. In the things that matter, that when accumulated, can shift the destiny of entire nations.
Echeccone - Sorry, but am in a hurry to leave town on business, hence the short reply. Conservative opposition to stem cell research was based on moral arguments, not scientific arguments. Recent developments in non-stem cell research have rendered this argument moot.
With regard to the Bush Administration “blacking out” inconvenient scientific conclusions - do you have specific examples?
As far as “empathy” - you might want to consider this research, authored by a professed Liberal professor at Syracuse U. http://philanthropy.com/free/articles/v19/i04/04001101.htm. You might also want to compare and contrast the charitable giving of Bush and Cheney with that of Kerry, Gore, and Clinton during their presidential terms (Google it).
Gotta run!
Danny, To the extent that stem cell opponents have argued on moral grounds, then I have no problem, although I would disagree with them; the problem is that they have mischaracterized the science, as you have done here. The argument is not moot because a great many scientists have argued that pluripotent non-embryonic stem cells is not as effective as omnipotent embryonic stem cells in their research. Further, most conservatives I read or spoke with also highly discounted the concerns about mice gene taint in the embryonic lines that Bush has approved. Finally, no conservative that I have read or spoken with has ever explained why the GOP and related groups have not gone after IVF and other fertility procedures even though they nearly always result in multiple “abortions” in the petri dish. These are serious scientific issues that are papered over because they don’t fit the ideology. And I know these scientific claims are valid because my wife is an MD and has seen the IVF procedure first-hand, and because a friend who heads up research at MIT’s Whitehead Institute, a leader in stem cell research, has spoken publicly about the problems associated with mouse-tainted approved lines and non-omnipotent lines. Look, the scientists should not make the decisions, but the politicians shouldn’t silence the experts either.
By the way, the current administration’s censoring of climate research was well-publicized. This NYT article was the first that came up on a Google search:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0DE1D71338F93BA35755C0A9639C8B63
Thanks for the empathy research you referenced. As I said before, I wasn’t sure about the validity of these psychographic studies. I don’t even know how scientific they are. Perhaps this is an area where it’s best to simply judge individuals as individuals on the basis of their actions rather than trying to categorize broad groups of people. But I’m sure your link will be fun reading nonetheless.
I understand the moral argument. Don’t agree, but respect it. I don’t agree that the scientific argument is now moot. A friend heads the stem cell research at the Whitehead Institute (MIT) and he has publicly pointed out the differences between omnipotent embryonic stem cells and pluripotent adult stem cells, which have serious implications for their research and delivery of medicines. Many conservatives have papered over these differences, to the detriment of medical research. Similarly, many conservatives appear to have discounted (IMO) the problems with the mouse-DNA-tainted lines approved by the Bush administration, as well as the time needed to develop adult stem cell alternatives (which remain unproven). Finally, I wonder why nearly all conservatives have made the moral arguments on stem cells but not on IVF, the treatment for fertility that nearly always involves multiple “abortions” in the petri dish–far more than stem cell research. My wife, an MD, has seen this first-hand. Look, I don’t think that scientists should be making the decisions, but conservatives shouldn’t be silencing or ignoring the experts because of inconvenient scientific findings. This debate is far from moot. By the way, how many conservatives will still buy the drugs made from embryonic stem cells, produced in Singapore or the UK, when their child needs a cancer treatment or their parent needs an Alzheimer’s cure? I bet a lot of them.
On the climate study, there were many articles on the Bush censor. Here is the first one I found on Google: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0DE1D71338F93BA35755C0A9639C8B63
Thanks for the empathy research. As I said before, I don’t know about the validity of it or how scientific it really is. perhaps it is best to judge individuals rather than large groups of people. I’m sure it’ll be a fun read nonetheless…
I understand the moral argument. Don’t agree, but respect it. I don’t agree that the scientific argument is now moot. A friend heads the stem cell research at the Whitehead Institute (MIT) and he has pointed out the differences between omnipotent embryonic stem cells and pluripotent adult stem cells, which have serious implications for their research and delivery of medicines. Conservatives have papered over these differences. Similarly, conservatives appear to have discounted (IMO) the problems with the mouse-DNA-tainted lines approved by the Bush administration, as well as the time needed to develop adult stem cell alternatives (which remain unproven). Finally, I wonder why conservatives have made the moral arguments on stem cells but not on IVF, the treatment for fertility that nearly always involves multiple “abortions” in the petri dish. My wife, an MD, has seen this first-hand. Look, I don’t think that scientists should be making the decisions, but conservatives shouldn’t be silencing or ignoring the experts because of inconvenient scientific findings. This debate is far from moot.
On the climate study, there were many articles on the Bush censor. Here is the first one i found on Google: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0DE1D71338F93BA35755C0A9639C8B63
Thanks for the empathy research. As I said before, I don’t know about the validity of it or how scientific it really is. perhaps it is best to judge individuals rather than large groups of people. I’m sure it’ll be a fun read nonetheless…
sorry for the double post. there was a computer glitch.
>>…the politicians shouldn’t silence the experts either.>>
And they have not done so. They have simply refused to finance their work. If ECT was so promising, why has it not been pursued commercially?
Bush’s administration has blacked out scientific findings on climate change. Conservatives posing as a scientific foundation have systematically sought to remove evolution from public school curricula or, alternatively, to teach a non-scientific theory alongside it as if there were a debate. The EPA has shifted procedures to report on air quality, over the objection of atmospheric scientists, and stone walled making it public–and Whitman had some interesting things to say about the Bush Administrations commitment to scientific integrity in her book. And that’s just the conservatives. Liberals protested the Bell Curve’s non-PC conclusions, although they were scientifically robust. These are all clear examples of politicians silencing experts or trying to. And, as to the funding issue, given that the government is the only supplier of funding for basic research, witholding funding is essentially silencing scientists. If you disagree, then I would ask you whether conservatives would not be crying bloody murder if Democrats removed all defense spending by arguing that private enterprise could pick up the tab; I’m sure no member of the GOP would say that Democrats were hurting the military…
>>given that the government is the only supplier of funding for basic research>>
Cites please. What is the function of the drug companies? Are you stating that they have nothing to do with medical research?
>>If you disagree, then I would ask you whether conservatives would not be crying bloody murder if Democrats removed all defense spending by arguing that private enterprise could pick up the tab>>
I disagree. The primary function of government according to the Constitution is the defense of the country. Research for medical benefits is _not_ one of the authorized functions of the government. If _you_ disagree, please point out where in the Constitution research is a legitimate governmental function.
And by the way, there _is_ still some debate on evolution. I’d be happy if someone - anyone - could explain to me how speciation occurs. Or give me proof of even one occurrence of same. Just one. Varieties of species does not qualify as mutation of one species to another. And of course, given that within the definition of species is the inability to breed and produce fertile offspring, how does a single mutation reoccur with sufficient frequency within a population so that a separate species can establish itself? In other words and to keep it simple, how many mules have been produced in the world in recorded time, and when has a mule bred to another mule ever produced a mule?
I’m sure no member of the GOP would say that Democrats were hurting the military…
In case you hadn’t noticed, hurting the government’s ability to make citizens into slaves is a good thing. Hurting the US military that protects those same citizens from oppression, foreign and domestic, is a bad thing.
suek, thanks for the questions. you are correct that the Constitution sets the Congress as the funder of forces for a common defense, as well as the body to declare war and set regulations for armed forces; meanwhile the President is the leader of these forces. I was not suggesting otherwise. My point was that certain functions cannot be delivered effectively by a private market, and the military is one of these. Basic scientific research is another one. Drug companies do some basic research, but the vast majority of their work is dedicated to finding compounds that will lead to effective therapeutic treatments that generate a lot of profits (applied research). Hence, a lot of technological breakthroughs occur in government labs and then move into the private sector. The internet is one famous example of this, but not the only one. Software-defined radios are being developed by the military, but will be in your childrens’ or grandkids’ phones some day. NASA has amazing solar powered satellites and rovers, and that technology might become commercially viable and worked on by tech companies in the next decade, but not yet. So to say that a government not funding science is not silencing is a little naiive. The funding will occur outside the US, this is true, but then we will not benefit from that research as we would have otherwise. This is why we Californians opted to ignore Bush and fund at the state level. Hopefully, this decision will withstand judicial scrutiny…
suek, thanks for the question on speciation. It is important to understand that observing the formation of a species under recorded time (i.e., the last 5-10k years) is tough because these changes are occuring over hundreds of thousands or millions of years. Only over long periods of time will genetic material between two populations cease to mix, thereby allowing sterility in offspring to occur. That it is hard to observe is why evolution detractors like to take this tact in rebutting the theory, which is great. A robust theory should be able to handle all comers. The problem with the persistent criticism along these lines is that confirmed observations, although not enormous in number for the reason mentioned earlier, have been made. I would refer you to the following website for a summary of some of the literature:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/speciation.html
I believe the critique du jour amongst anti-Darwins is no longer speciation but rather irreducible complexity; however, this rebuttal of evolution has many problems also. I can send a link if you are interested.
You are correct that there is still debate on evolution. More than a little, actually. However, it is at the level of working out details of the theory rather than questioning its overall validity. Any theory to displace it will likely uphold most of its tenets and observations but in a novel manner, much like Einstein’s theory of general relativity explained Newtonian physics even as it transcended it. You see, the formation of scientific theories is itself very much an evolutionary process… And any legitimate criticisms of the theory will come out of peer-reviewed journals rather than fake scientific foundations that are funded by religious or political groups committed to an ideology rather than scientific integrity.