President Straw Man

Is he the brilliant inquiring mind that our liberal friends want to see? Is he an empty suit, a front man for an ambitious cabal of Clinton-era Washington hands, as conservatives would prefer? Is he just a corrupt Chicago pol who’s learned how to play politics the old-fashioned way, by stealing votes?

Now that we’ve seen a month or so of the president’s governing style we can begin to make judgments. From a conservative point of view, the outlook is encouraging.

President Obama doesn’t seem to have the native cunning of President Clinton. That’s what was so infuriating about Slick Willie. He was a natural politician and could think several moves ahead of the opposition. But you get the feeling, when you see Obama’s budget and stimulus package rolled out that the Obamunists haven’t really thought about what their program will look like in 3 or 4 years.

President Obama doesn’t have the seriousness of President Bush. Say what you like about President Bush, he always seemed to have thought through everything he did. He tried to negotiate a compromise with Ted Kennedy on his No Child Left Behind Act, letting the Dems have their programs, in return for progress on school choice. But Sir Ted refused to deal. President Bush thought long and hard about the strategic conseqence of 9-11, and that’s why President Obama is continuing his policies even as he pretends he isn’t.

So we come to the stem-cell decision.

The stem cell research issue arrived on the national political radar in the mid-1990s, and the Republican Congress immediately began to write restrictions on federally-funded research on embryonic stem cells. In 2001 President Bush established a policy that restricted federally-funded research on embryonic stem cells to existing “lines.” This ignited a controversy.

As presented in the mainstream media and by Democratic politicians, the Bush policy meant that the Republicans were against stem cell research, against helping people, and against science. Thus in 2004 President Reagan’s son Ron Reagan gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention. He said:

I am here tonight to talk about the issue of research into what may be the greatest medical breakthrough in our or in any lifetime: the use of embryonic stem cells — cells created using the material of our own bodies — to cure a wide range of fatal and debilitating illnesses: Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, lymphoma, spinal cord injuries, and much more.

Of course, anyone can predict that anything can be the greatest medical breakthrough in any lifetime. But the point of Reagan’s speech was clear. It was a question of relgion against science. The opponents of federal funding of embryonic stem cell research were religiously motivated.

But it does not follow that the theology of a few should be allowed to forestall the health and well-being of the many.

That is why President Obama reversed the Bush decision this week. In his remarks he said:

In recent years, when it comes to stem cell research, rather than furthering discovery, our government has forced what I believe is a false choice between sound science and moral values. In this case, I believe the two are not inconsistent.

What’s not to like. Well, this. If you are a conservative you have been fuming for years that Democrats have consistently misled the public on research into stem cells. They want us to believe that President Bush banned all stem cell research. He didn’t. All he did was restrict federal funding of certain embryonic stem cells. And embryonic stem cells, so far, have not proved anything like as useful in medical breakthroughs as adult stem cells. In fact, as Charles Krauthammer writes, President Bush’s 2001 address on embryonic stem cell research was a deeply serious analysis.

Bush’s nationally televised stem cell speech was the most morally serious address on medical ethics ever given by an American president. It was so scrupulous in presenting the best case for both his view and the contrary view that until the last few minutes, the listener had no idea where Bush would come out.

And that’s why Republicans are encouraged. President Obama is demonstrating that he is just a partisan politician, out to make partisan political points. Krauthammer continues:

Obama’s address was morally unserious in the extreme. It was populated, as his didactic discourses always are, with a forest of straw men. Such as his admonition that we must resist the "false choice between sound science and moral values." Yet, exactly 2 minutes and 12 seconds later he went on to declare that he would never open the door to the "use of cloning for human reproduction."

But wait, Mr President. Are you saying that we should interfere with scientific research and stop the scientists from cloning human life? Isn’t that a “false choice?”

But, it must be admitted that conservative encouragement is based on faith, not science. It is based on the faith that, in the end, serious people win the day against unserious people.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

TAGS

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches� they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Drang nach Osten

There was nothing new about the Frankish drive to the east... [let] us recall that the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.
Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

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