Quick Hitt: The First Bush Veto
The first Bush veto is a momentous occasion. As a fiscal conservative I wish Bush would have pulled out his veto pen years ago to help stem the tide of runaway government spending, but Bush never campaigned as a small government conservative concerned with ballooning budget deficits, so I can't say he pulled a "gotcha". He's just been a disappointment on that front. However, vetoing what many (myself included) believe to be murder in the form of destroying human embryos to harvest embryonic stem cells was a moral stand for which I am proud to have George W. Bush as our president today. I can't always say that. Bush is a very confusing president. His strength on moral issues like this one should be a source of national pride for everyone, but his failings in securing the border and helping shovel unimaginable debt on our children and grandchildren with government-financed entitlement programs like the prescription drug bill serve only to make many of us scratch our heads. Regardless of that, today is a day that stands tall on the presidential record of George W. Bush. He is the first president to ever even allow federal funding of any kind on embryonic stem cell research (those that existed before he took office, essentially), but his moral clarity in drawing the ethical line where he did today is something for which I am extremely grateful.
I would encourage everyone to read President Bush's full, eloquent remarks to understand today's veto: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ODVlZWQwYzViMWVhMTRkODhiOTI4NmU1YzJlNmVlNmU
I would encourage everyone to read President Bush's full, eloquent remarks to understand today's veto: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ODVlZWQwYzViMWVhMTRkODhiOTI4NmU1YzJlNmVlNmU
posted by The Rock | 4:29 PM
1 Comments:
Well, once again, progress has been stalled by religious conviction. The fact that President Bush would use his first veto ever on something that could save millions of lives and end suffering in millions more shows us that the moral structure of our President is actually the exact opposite of what The Rock proclaims it to be. And here’s why.
President Bush’s veto of this bill shows us that he would rather protect “Snowflake Babies”, a fertilized egg, than the millions of people suffering and dying due to diseases that could be cured by developing the cells to cure them from embryonic stem cells. The fear is coined in the phrase “science run amuck”, which is usually chanted when the person has no idea what the science actually is. The fact of the matter is that there are no plans to put sperm in eggs, grow them, then kill them for their stem cells. In fact, most stem cell researchers want to use fertilized eggs that would be discarded anyway from fertility clinics. Why not use these “Snowflake Babies” to help cure people?
All this comes from the “life begins at conception” idea, that we are murdering humans by taking cells from them at the earliest stages of life. But if that were actually murder, then why not fight for the government to recognize that two-celled zygote as a human being? Give it a name, social security number, and a conception certificate and US citizenship? If you are conceived in the US, by American parents, and then born in Canada when your parents take a vacation, then you become a Canadian citizen, even though the first nine months of your life were lived in the US. Pregnant mothers should be able to claim that two-celled zygote as a dependant on their taxes as well. If it’s a human life, then give it all the rights and legal recognition that any human life receives under the Constitution. But this won’t happen because people on both sides of this debate just want to win the part of the fight they want, and scientific progress gets stuck in the middle.
Now this is not to say that the government is outlawing stem cell research, just deciding not to spend tax payer money on it. So this means that it will continue, but in other countries like China, who have already started research in this area. Is it really a good idea to halt scientific progress and let other nations steam ahead of us? Would we be having this debate if this happened during the cold war and the Soviet Union was curing its people using stem cells? No, it would not, and it’s foolish to believe that we could remain the superpower we are by just throwing more money at our military than any other nation on the planet. We have to be the leaders in every front, especially science, and not let theocratic ideas force us to the level of Iran.
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