Friends,
--- Anders Sandberg <asa@nada.kth.se> wrote:
"While this is a good point, it should be noted that
this is not the core reason they are against cloning.
They are against cloning, IVF and abortion because
they are sides of the same big concept: humans
controlling human reproduction. To the religious, this
throws out God from the circuit, to the green it
throws out the wisdom of nature and to the general
romantic it suggests that we put our reason and
planning above the natural.
<snip>
...the furor and political strength of this movement
is worth noticing. Make no mistake, we are setting
ourselves up as champions of *everything* they are
against."
*****************
The events beginning with Sept 11th have given George
Bush an undeserved degree of importance and
self-importance. On almost every conceivable front
this is an incredibly dangerous development. The
instant he declared in his Sept. 20th speech that "the
war against terrorism" would go on for a long
time--on that very instant I suspected that he and his
team had found the solution to the presidential
legitimacy problem brought on by his feeble electoral
experience and his subsequent supreme court
presidential installation. His open-ended, seemingly
semi-permanent war seemed, in a stroke, to turn
Orwell's "1984" from fiction to chilling prophecy.
Until now I'd felt the concern over the neo-luddite
movement (such as expressed by Greg Burch) to be
overblown. But the artificial amplification of George
Bush from presidential place-holder to global
warrior-king has shaken my optimism. It is said that
the US system of government--the constitution, the
separation of powers, the bill of rights, the nation
of immigrants, etc--is resilient, and resistant to the
carnage wrought across the historical landscape by the
witch's brew of ambition-plus-power-plus-enraptured
sycophancy. Well, buckle up, folks, cause that
resiliency is about to be put to the test.
Bush's declaration of the "immorality" of cloning is
the shrieking call to jihad of the American Taliban.
How bitterly ironic if the better angels of the
American spirit should mobilize the rescue, halfway
around the world, of islamic victims of islamic
fundamentalist psychopathology, only to empower and
then be set upon by homegrown demons of fundamentalist
atavism.
Enough of this "support the president" crap. Of his
father it was said--ok, it's a cheap shot, but it's
damn funny just the same--that "he was born on third
base and thinks he scored a triple". For Dubya we
need an update; I suggest, "he was born on second base
and thinks he scored a triple." I'm willing to
believe that Bush is a man of good character, and that
he can competently lead--which is to say
cheerlead--the war against terrorism, but the evidence
of his limitations suggests that beyond that,
confidence and support should be replaced by caution
and serious criticism.
I would add that, to whatever extent the extremist
right and extremist left are a threat to progress in
this world, that a perfect and memetically timely
opportunity exists to attack and severely curtail
their political influence by comparing them to the
Taliban and Al Queda.
Christian fundamentalists with their biblical law and
abortion-clinic assassins are the American equivalent
of the Taliban with their Shari-a and
throwers-of-acid-in-the-face-of-un-burquaed-women, and
the anti-tech eco-terrorists and power-addicted PC
ideologues of the extreme left are the American
equivalent to the hate-filled, dogma-driven,
anti-west, anti-modern, jihad psycho-killers of Al
Queda. I would do everything possible to spread,
promote, suggest, convey, and in short, hammer home
that analogy, apt as it is. Rinse and repeat.
Then we might just get out of this with our freedoms
intact.
Enough's enough.
Best, Jeff Davis
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat May 11 2002 - 17:44:22 MDT