Let's Pass Up The Chance To Buy Some Killer Stem Cell Research

by Kevin O'Brien - March 12th, 2009 - Cleveland Plain Dealer

There is every expectation that the National Institutes of Health will decide, as it did in 1994, the last time it was asked, that it should have the authority and the federal funding to create human embryos expressly for purposes of research.

Bill Clinton -- hardly a rabid pro-lifer -- said no to that, after an overwhelmingly negative public response. Obama hopes to short-circuit that public response so he can answer, "Whatever." His strategy is to pretend that this is a purely scientific issue, devoid of moral and political content, when in fact, it's freighted with both.

Last night I experienced an incredibly frustrating argument with a reader on "The Rule of Law" web site. I posted an article making the point that our court has corruptly decided to determine what citizens with special interests are allowed to take from other citizens who have not wronged them, on the premise that someone of a different ethnicity at some point in history wronged others of their ethnicity. The plaintiffs weren't wronged by our society but their ancestors are claimed to have been wronged, by people who under some argument could be related to the government at that time.

The presumed wrong happened before they were born. Since then members of their ethnicity voted to join America as citizens. Their children, now citizens as well, want to claim special rights which will be denied to other citizens on the basis of ethnicity alone. To those who have not heard of the issue, I am talking about the Native Hawaiian issue of land ownership. Native Hawaiians want public lands granted to them alone on the premise that they were taken form their ancestors and white citizens of today should not share their use.

In the view of many, all white American citizens alive today are guilty of every historical wrong that every non-white ethnic group can find in the history books. That is really the argument I find difficult to accept. The entire focus is on grievances that happened 100 years ago, or more, being the responsibility of people alive today based solely on their ethnicity. Haggling about specific sets of facts of what happened back then cannot be allowed to distract us from the simple question, "When did equal treatment under the law allow one citizen to be viewed differently than another when it beneifts him to have ethnicity considered but not when it does not?" If ethnicity can be viewed as the basis for a right, why can't whites claim the same right?

Isn't it just as logical to argue that Native Hawaiian failure to succeed is their own fault and they owe whites alive today extra taxes for the failure of their ancestors to prosper within our society? Would that seem rational? Hitler used logic similar to the logic of these Native Hawaiians to hold Jews accountable for hypothetical crimes of an earlier day. We dismissed that argument without question.

I am not responsible, and will not tolerate, paying for the special privileges of ANY ethnic group who are citizens of our land - for what some other arguably Caucasian did 150 years ago to ancestors of these citizens. Do not try and argue about the historical details because it is simply not reasonable to ask anyone to tolerate such abuse.

The argument over issues such as these becomes exhausting because bias on the part of each side is rejected by the other side. The same applies to the issue in this article on abortion.

This is an issue where two sides argue about totally different issues and the passion on both sides is weighted with bias. No one listens. America is caught in the middle.

The people on the pro-choice side do not believe in the sanctity of human life, for whatever reason. They see this as an issue where the embryo-fetus-child is dependent on the mother totally, holding her hostage. They therefore want a legal definition that says until that dependence is ended, the mother and the mother alone shall have sole god-like determination of what happens to the child.

The people on the pro-life side oppose pre-marital sex, and believe that if the woman has sex, she should have no further say if that sex results in the starting the creation of a child. She should be denied help from any medical personnel who agree with her choice to end any pregnancy. Both she and the medical personnel should be made criminals.

The pro-life side has been enraged by our court's adoption of a nearly indefensible legal interpretation that the pro-choice side gets its way under a bizarre twisting of legal precedent. The process of determining the outcome by a democratic process has been sabotaged. Rage is the result. Thus any political determination of any related issue is fraught with suppressed rage as well.

That is where the stem cell research issue comes in. Permitting the creation of embryos for the purpose of research, simply reminds pro-life supporters of the fact that their views are held in contempt by both their opponents and the court system. Rubbing their faces in this situation is not going to increase the chances for a rational solution.

Obama is playing with fire. Actually our entire society is playing with fire for allowing our courts to interfere with the basic premise of our society. Suppressed rage is not conducive to the effective working of any democracy based republic. Ours is no exception.