Powered By Blogger

The principles that rule this blog

Principles that will govern my thoughts as I express them here (from my opening statement):


  • Freedom of the individual should be as total as possible, limited only by the fact that nobody should be free to cause physical injury to another, or to deprive another person of his freedoms.
  • Government is necessary primarily to provide those services that private enterprise won't, or won't at a price that people can afford.
  • No person has a right to have his own beliefs on religious, moral, political, or other controversial issues imposed on others who do not share those beliefs.

I believe that Abraham Lincoln expressed it very well:

“The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but cannot do, at all, or cannot
so well do, for themselves — in their separate, individual capacities.”


Comments will be invited, and I will attempt to reply to any comments that are offered in a serious and non-abusive manner. However, I will not tolerate abusive or profane language (my reasoning is that this is my blog, and so I can control it; I wouldn't interfere with your using such language on your own!)

If anyone finds an opinion that I express to be contrary to my principles, they are welcome to point this out. I hope that I can make a rational case for my comments. Because, in fact, one label I'll happily accept is rationalist.

Thursday, July 20, 2006

The stem cell veto

While I'm ordinarily favorably inclined toward Pres. George W. Bush, his alignment with the religious right causes me problems. He seems actually to believe in their positions, so one cannot consider it "kowtowing to the religious right," but it is unfortunate that a President who has been so good on a lot of issues has to be so bad on this one.

Certainly the stem cell veto has nothing to do with "conservatism" vs. "liberalism": Nancy Reagan, certainly one of the most conservative people in recent politics (it is she who turned Ronald Reagan into a conservative, after all! He'd been a pro-FDR union leader in the forties, if you don't know it), supported the bill strongly, as she was aware of the technological gains that could derive from stem cell research. No, what it does have to do with is the religious right's attempt to conform all of us to their ideas of what is moral and what isn't. And that is the way of the Taliban.

If you go back to the very first post on this blog, I said I believed that "[n]o person has a right to have his own beliefs on religious, moral, political, or other controversial issues imposed on others who do not share those beliefs." And I believe this firmly. One thing that needs to be done is to reclaim the Republican Party from the religious right. It can't be done by voting for Democrats, who have their own agenda which is even more harmful to the nation. But it needs to be done by moving within the Republican Party to support those who are willing to take on the religious right.

No comments: