In this article the question relates to which President is more serious and honest about stem cell research... Not only is Obama less serious, but he is dishonest and a far greater ideologue...
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/03/using_embryoswithout_limit.html >>> That part of the ceremony, watched from the safe distance of my office, >>> made me uneasy. The other part -- the ostentatious issuance of a memorandum >>> on "restoring scientific integrity to government decision-making" -- would >>> have made me walk out. Restoring? The implication, of course, is that while Obama is guided solely by science, Bush was driven by dogma, ideology and politics. What an outrage. George 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. 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." Does he not think that a cloned human would be of extraordinary scientific interest? And yet he banned it. Is he so obtuse not to see that he had just made a choice of ethics over science? Yet, unlike President Bush, who painstakingly explained the balance of ethical and scientific goods he was trying to achieve, Obama did not even pretend to make the case why some practices are morally permissible and others not. This is not just intellectual laziness. It is the moral arrogance of a man who continuously dismisses his critics as ideological while he is guided exclusively by pragmatism (in economics, social policy, foreign policy) and science in medical ethics. Science has everything to say about what is possible. Science has nothing to say about what is permissible. Obama's pretense that he will "restore science to its rightful place" and make science, not ideology, dispositive in moral debates is yet more rhetorical sleight of hand -- this time to abdicate decision-making and color his own ideological preferences as authentically "scientific." Dr. James Thomson, the discoverer of embryonic stem cells, said "if human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough." Obama clearly has not. On Mar 13, 10:37 am, jgg1000a <[email protected]> wrote: > and Intellectual they both are NOT > > http://the-undercurrent.com/paper/obama-the-intellectual/ > > >>> In action, Obama is clearly not an intellectual. He, like Bush and other > >>> politicians, is a pragmatist—the exact opposite of an intellectual. Issue > >>> after issue, including taxes, the Iraq war, and the environment, reveals > >>> that Obama has made decisions, not with reference to firm principles > >>> derived from a careful and scholarly investigation of the facts, but by > >>> trying to find some middle ground in a landscape of competing opinions. > > What is different about Obama is that he self-consciously knows and > proclaims his approach. But what’s so significant about that, if the > approach itself is anti-intellectual? Obama openly embraces the view > that it is impossible to use the intellect to ascertain the right way > to handle the war or deal with the economy, and so he adopts the tack > of just trying things and seeing what happens. Consider Obama’s claim > that his “core economic theory is pragmatism, figuring out what > works” (“Obamanomics,” NYT, 8/20/08). How is this any different from > prior, allegedly non-intellectual politicians, other than that those > politicians didn’t happen to be explicit about their methodology? > > However much Obama seems to sport the trappings of an intellectual—and > clearly he does—in practice, his policy consists in shooting from the > hip, making short-range decisions without adherence to any firm set of > guiding convictions. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more. -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
