Musing's musings

On the public...and options

Apologies for my long absence. To make a long story short, too much to do, too much to think about, too much that makes me angry, and not a lot of energy for blogging.

Several of the things that have been making me angry and giving me food for thought are coming together in this post. I was flabbergasted this past weekend to see that more than forty so-called Democrats cast their votes for the Stupak amendment to the health insurance reform bill (to give it its proper name: it isn't reforming health care, it's reforming health insurance--and that just barely). Among the more common rationalizations and excuses offered for those votes is the notion that people shouldn't be asked to support, through their tax dollars, things which they personally do not approve of.

The thing that burns my onion is that the only time anyone ever seems to think that's a good or an important idea is when the matter in question is allowing men to control what a woman does with her body (i.e., abortion). It's not an altogether unreasonable idea, but before I could get behind it as a principle of government, it would have to apply to everything that our taxes fund.

For example, earlier this evening the Commonwealth of Virginia executed judicially murdered John Allen Muhammad, who was one of the two snipers who terrorized the Washington, D.C. area seven years ago last month. That's certainly something I don't support, and that I don't like to think about funding with my taxes. Another thing that was boosting my blood pressure was the tenor of some of the comments on Muhammad's pending execution that I encountered on allegedly progressive web sites: comments to the effect that he deserved what he was going to get, that he was worthless, and similar drivel that I would have expected from a right-wing site, but not at places where I spend time online.

One of those comments argued that unless one had been part of the community that Muhammad and his accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo terrorized through random violence, one was somehow not entitled to have or to express an opinion about what would, or would not, bring closure to the families of the victims. As I pointed out in response to that comment, this is precisely why we have a justice system. We do not allow the victims of crimes (or their relatives) to determine the fates of those charged with committing crimes against them, because they lack the necessary objectivity.

Bishops 1, Media (and most of Left Blogistan) 0

At the end of the public portion of its annual meeting this past Wednesday, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops released what is widely being described as a voter guide (PDF link), just as it has done ahead of every presidential election for the last 30 years. A long version of the bulletin insert is also available (PDF link).

Virtually without exception, the major media outlets, and most people I've seen discussing this statement in Left Blogistan, have seriously mischaracterized both its intent and its content. Take this story from the AP, which has been widely used as the starting point for a lot of online verbiage. It is headlined "Catholic bishops instruct voters," and here's how it starts:

BALTIMORE - Roman Catholic voters and lawmakers must heed church teaching on issues ranging from racism to abortion or risk their eternal salvation, U.S. bishops said Wednesday.

The bishops didn't recommend specific policies or candidates in the 2008 election, and emphasized that "principled debate" is needed to decide what bests promotes the common good. But they warned Catholics that their votes for politicians and laws affect more than just civic life.

"Political choices faced by citizens have an impact on general peace and prosperity and also may affect the individual's salvation," the bishops said. "Similarly, the kinds of laws and policies supported by public officials affect their spiritual well-being."

I'll give the AP credit for at least getting the fact that the document endorses neither any specific candidate nor either political party both correct and in the second paragraph. But that's about the only good thing I can say about the AP's reportage. The bulletin insert that will be all most Catholics are likely to see of this document (and not even all Catholics will see it, much less pay attention to it) contains none of the language found in the third paragraph I quoted above from the AP story.

Predictably, discussion of this document in Left Blogistan has frequently devolved into a bathetic orgy of Catholic-bashing. Judging by some of the comments I've seen--and we're not talking fringe sites, either--the Catholic Church and its leaders (some even go so far as to include all Catholics, clergy or lay) is the fount of all evil, the chief source of everything that is wrong or bad or out-of-whack in modern society. Religious belief itself, we are confidently (stridently, even) told, is a pathetic crutch suitable (and necessary) only for those too dumb or too frightened to face "reality." (Whatever that is supposed to entail.)

Looking at the ensuing hoo-ha, it's not hard to see why we on the left are often described as being, not just irreligious, but anti-religious. And that's just a load of bull--as is most of what has thus far passed for commentary on the U.S. Catholic bishops' statement.

Predictably obtuse

For the third time during the reign of the Boy Who Would Be King, the pretzelnit got out his veto pen yesterday and said no for the second time to a bill that would have loosened restrictions on the use of federal funds for research involving human stem cells. The snippet I heard on NPR a couple of days ago quoted Bush as saying he was (then) planning to veto the bill on ethical grounds, out of his concern for human life.

That sentiment, of course, pushed quite a number of my buttons, and I began sputtering in the car about how it was a great pity that the Dear Leader's rigorous ethical standards and devotion to human life did not extend to the young men and women he and his best buds in the 101st Fighting Keyboarders so blithely send off to meet death or destruction in the deserts of Iraq, all in pursuit of better approval ratings for the Shrubbery. Nor to the more than 200 people Mr. Bush allowed to be executed on his watch as governor of Texas, to say nothing of the hundreds of prisoners on death rows, whether state or federal, all over the United States. Nor to the millions of people who go "home" every night to homeless shelters or cardboard boxes or subway gratings. Nor to the additional millions of people, including children, who go to bed hungry every night, or who can't afford to see a doctor, or who can't find work.

Because in my book, you don't get to call yourself "pro-life" unless you mean more than being opposed to abortion and cloning. Being "pro-life" to me implies at the very least not thinking it's OK to kill any human being. I would personally argue it also implies being at least as concerned about creating a world wherein every life that comes into that world is wanted and cared for and will not wind up abandoned, an orphan, in poverty, slavery, or worse situations, as about wanting to end abortion. What good is it, I'd like to know, to want to end abortion if the fetuses you save from destruction before they are born are only going to die shortly after being born, because their parents can't or won't take care of them, and the society into which they are born doesn't care enough about them to see that they get a chance at something even approximating a normal life?

For that matter, the position expressed by the pretzelnit through his veto is not even self-referentially coherent. As many of the supporters of the legislation he vetoed yesterday noted (including many Republicans), the embryos from which stem cells would have been allowed to be harvested had the legislation become law were slated for destruction anyway: they were left over at fertility clinics after in vitro fertilization procedures. This seems, to me at least, self-evidently an instance of the principle of double effect, whereby an act that has both good and bad consequences can be allowable if the good results outweigh the bad.

One possible counterargument to such a position might be the discovery, earlier this month, that stem cells can be created from normal adult cells under some circumstances. As that research is quite recent, I'd rather not put all our eggs into that one basket, so to speak, until we have a little more data to go on. Moreover, it is indisputable that destroying frozen embryos left over in fertility clinics has absolutely no good effects--just the destruction of what the Shrubbery and others believe to be human lives. At the very least, by allowing stem cells to be harvested before those embryos are destroyed, some good results from what would otherwise, by Bush's peculiar lights, be an unmitigated evil.

Not surprisingly, I call bullshit. If he's against the destruction of embryos through the harvesting of stem cells, he should also oppose the destruction of embryos by any means--which would, of course, mean that fertility clinics and other laboratories where such things are kept would have to find perpetual storage for them or else implant them all in host mothers. Somehow I don't see the Shrubbery being eager to fund either of those options. And I find it hard to praise the man for standing up for what he believes in when he also knows that by doing so he is condemning literally thousands of what he considers to be human lives to death for no good reason and without any possible good deriving from that action. Of course, given his quixotic stance on the Iraq war, I'm not sure why I find that self-referential inconsistency puzzling.

The One beast is dead

I would venture to guess that there is great rejoicing in Freeperville and throughout Right Wingnuttistan today, following the execution last night of Saddam Hussein for war crimes. (Hell, no, I'm not going to go over there and peek to verify my suspicion. First of all, I don't have the time or the supplies necessary to perform the required full exorcism on my computer after surfing to any of those places, and second, I haven't had anything to drink today in the way of adult beverages, and that's the only way I could slog through Freeperville without blowing a gasket or two.)

As another story at Auntie Beeb put it, Hussein was "Hated by many, mourned by few." I think it is equally important, however, to remember who some of Hussein's relatively few friends in the world were:

They don't speak for me

The United States Supreme Court rejected an appeal for a stay of execution from Clarence Ray Allen today. That means that at a minute after midnight tonight, a minute after the end of his birthday, in fact, the blind 76-year-old who is confined to a wheelchair will be rolled into the death chamber, lifted onto a gurney, strapped down, and judicially murdered by an injection of poison into his veins.

It is impossible to read those words, or any of the others that have been written about this impending execution, and not see in them at least a touch of the farcical. I want to be very clear about something, though. When I say this execution is "farcical," I do not mean to imply that it is funny in any way, shape, or form. I think Pastor Dan's Street Prophets diary got it exactly right when he titled it "Grand Guignol."

For those of you not familiar with French theatre, the Grand Guignol was a theater in Paris that specialized, for the better part of a century (1897-1962), in what one site described (link is in French) as "kitsch and gore," and what Wikipedia calls "the violently gruesome and gory." The other thing that springs to mind--for me at least, being of a certain age--is the "Officer of the Day" episode of M*A*S*H. It's the one from the third season where Colonel Flagg wants Hawkeye to patch up a wounded North Korean captured by the "intelligence" boys so they can take the prisoner down to Seoul and shoot him.