When the Left writes its own history, the past gets rewritten to suit the needs of the present. This is why I wrote A Conservative History of the American Left, to conserve not only fascinating figures now forgotten but to retrieve from the memory hole all that the Left has tossed down it. What is the history of the American Left that leftists want you to forget?
10. Ayatollah Khomeini, Leftist Hero
Reflexive anti-Americanism initially moved the Left to embrace the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Mother Jones, for instance, in 1979 predicted that “if Khomeini or his followers take power” then “democratic reforms, freedom for political prisoners, an end to the astronomical waste of huge arms purchases, and a constitutional government” would follow. The Nation, Michel Foucault, and other pillars of the Left similarly projected their ideals upon Khomeini and company.
9. Manson Family Values
“I fell in love with Charlie Manson the first time I saw his cherub face and sparkling eyes on TV,” hippie guru Jerry Rubin professed. “His words and courage inspired us.” Weatherman hoisted “Charles Manson Power” banners, adopted a spread-fingered greeting to symbolize the fork with which the Manson murderers impaled a victim’s stomach, and even boasted a cell nicknamed “The Fork.” Weatherman matriarch Bernardine Dohrn infamously proclaimed: “Dig it: first they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, then they even shoved a fork into the victim’s stomach. Wild!”
8. Gay Activists Sue to Block AIDS Test
Today, homosexual activists blame Ronald Reagan and the clergy for the spread of AIDS. But in the mid-1980s, the National Gay Task Force and the Lambda Legal Defense, citing civil-liberties concerns, actually sued the federal government to stop the AIDS test. Thankfully, they lost and scores of lives have been saved as a result.
7. Murder Chic
The easiest way to become a hero on the Left is to kill another human being. John Brown, the Molly Maguires, the Haymarket Square Bombers, Joe Hill, Huey Newton, and Mumia Abu-Jamal—murderers all—have been venerated by the Left in song and on screen. The people they murdered are not even an afterthought.
6. Jonestown Kool-Aid
Before orchestrating the murder/suicides 900+ people in Guyana, Jim Jones was the darling of the San Francisco Left. Huey Newton, Angela Davis, and Willie Brown embraced a man who killed more blacks than the KKK. Democrats Rosalynn Carter, Walter Mondale, and Gerry Brown made campaign visits to the Peoples Temple’s “comrade leader.” The mayor of San Francisco even rewarded Jones for his activism by appointing him chairman of the city’s housing commission. “The temple was as much a left-wing political crusade as a church,” The Nation reported in 1978. Unfortunately, as the years progressed, more Americans gulped down the Left’s Kool-Aid that Jones was of the religious Right and not an atheist leftist.
5. Concentration Camps, American Style
A year before Hitler came to power in Germany, Margaret Sanger called for a vast system of concentration camps for the United States. The Planned Parenthood founder demanded “a stern and rigid policy of segregation or sterilization” for “dysgenic” Americans who “would be taught to work under competent instructors for the period of their entire lives.” The 1932 speech concluded that “fifteen or twenty millions of our population would then be organized into soldiers of defense—defending the unborn against their own disabilities.”
4. Heaven on Earth
American intellectuals looked upon the hell on earth that was post-revolutionary Russia and saw a heaven on earth. The New Republic credited the Russian Revolution with providing “the most democratic franchise yet devised in our world,” while The Nation found that “the franchise is more democratic in Russia than in England or in the United States.” Lincoln Steffens marveled after a visit to the Soviet Union, “The revolution in Russia is to establish the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth.”
3. Eugenics
Even before the progressive era when most states instituted eugenics laws, the American Left had agitated for state controls over procreation. John Humphrey Noyes’ Bible Communists lamented that freedom of marital choice “leaves mating to be determined by a general scramble, without attempt at scientific direction” and devised the first eugenic experiment in the U.S.—“stirpiculture”—that produced dozens of children and prevented hundreds more. In Looking Backward, Edward Bellamy dreamed of “race purification” to “preserve and transmit the better types of the race, and let the inferior types drop out.” Other proponents included Margaret Sanger, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, who famously decreed in Buck v. Bell, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” State governments ultimately sterilized upwards of 60,000.
2. Assassinating Presidents
Three of the four presidential assassins have been left-wing radicals. Bible Communist Charles Guiteau murdered President Garfield, anarcho-communist Leon Czolgosz murdered President McKinley, and Soviet Communist Lee Harvey Oswald murdered John F. Kennedy. Rather than own that history, the Left has invented conspiracy theories that absolve leftists from responsibility.
1. Nazi-Soviet Pact
The Left switched from pacifists to warmongers overnight once the Nazi attack upon the Communists dissolved the Hitler-Stalin Pact. Communist Party USA chief Earl Browder, who had dubbed WWII “the second imperialist war” during the pact, so thoroughly switched course when the Nazis attacked the Communists that he embraced conscription (after his opposition to it led to jail in WWI), endorsed a ‘no-strike’ pledge for labor unions (after encouraging strikes to impede the war effort), and kicked out Japanese Americans from the CP (after ostensibly championing civil rights). The Hollywood Anti-Nazi League ceased operations during the pact. The Communists’ New Masses panned the anti-Nazi Watch on the Rhine when it appeared as a play during the pact only to praise it when it appeared as a movie when Hitler and Stalin were again enemies.
I can understand why Democrats are jazzed about November’s election. The polls combined with the fawning media (”Oh, please, Sen. Obama, let us kiss the hem of your garment!”) are giving them goose bumps such as they have not experienced since “An Inconvenient Truth” debuted in theaters.What I don’t understand is the seeming tepidness of so many Republicans. Yes, the war in Iraq is a long, hard slog. The world is not Topeka, Kansas (would that it were). A journalist pointed out to President Bush at his most recent press conference that the Iraq war has now been going on as long as World War II did for the United States. Well, yes, but we lost 407,316 men in World War II. On Iwo Jima alone, we lost 6,800. This is not to say that the deaths of our people in Iraq should be trivialized. But comparisons with World War II — in terms of sacrifice and terrible price paid — are ridiculous.Republicans have abundant reasons to reserve a spot at their polling places on Election Day:
1) The economy. More than 6.6 million new jobs have been created since August 2003. Our 4.1 annual growth rate is superior to all other major industrialized nations. The Dow has set record highs multiple times in the past several weeks. Productivity is up, and the deficit is down. Real, after-tax income has grown by 15 percent since 2001. Inflation has remained low. As Vice President Cheney summed it up at a recent meeting with journalists, “What more do you want?” The tax cuts proposed by President Bush and passed by a Republican Congress can take a bow.
2) The Patriot Act. Democrats and liberals mourn this law as a gross infringement upon civil liberties. Yet the much-discussed abuses simply haven’t materialized. The law has, on the other hand, permitted the CIA and FBI to cooperate and share information about terrorist threats — at least so long as The New York Times isn’t publishing the details of our counterterrorism efforts on the front page.
3) The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, to which liberals clung with passionate intensity, has been cancelled, permitting us to work on missile defense. In the age of Kim Jong Il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is anyone (except Nancy Pelosi) sorry?
4) Immigration. Republicans in Congress insisted upon and got the first serious immigration restriction in decades. On Oct. 26, the president signed a law that will build a 700-mile fence along our southern border and, what is more important, does not offer amnesty.
5) There has not been another terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11. Who would have predicted that on 9/12?
6) Libya has surrendered its nuclear program.
7) A.Q. Khan’s nuclear smuggling network has been rolled up.
John Roberts and Samuel Alito sit on the U.S. Supreme Court.
9) Those Democrats who do not want to close Guantanamo Bay altogether want to give all of its inmates the full panoply of rights Americans enjoy in criminal procedures.
10) Democrats believe in immediate withdrawal from Iraq. If they succeed in forcing us to leave under these circumstances, the United States will suffer a stinging defeat in the war on terror. The terrorists already believe that they drove the Russians from Afghanistan and Israel from Lebanon and Gaza. They are convinced they chased us out of Lebanon in 1983 and from Somalia in 1993. According to Osama bin Laden and those who share his views, we are militarily strong but psychologically and spiritually weak. Like it or not — and no one likes it — we cannot leave Iraq now without utterly and decisively validating this analysis. We might as well run a white flag up the flagpole at the Capitol.
11) Democrats would like to eliminate the terrorist surveillance program.
12) If Democrats achieve a majority in the House, Barney Frank will chair the Financial Services Committee, Henry Waxman will head the Government Reform Committee, and Alcee Hastings will chair the Intelligence Committee.
13) Democrats believe that the proper response to Kim Jong Il’s nuclear test is “face to face talks.” That’s what the Clinton administration did for years. It worked out well, didn’t it?
2,808 Americans have died in Iraq the past 43 months. Another 282 have met such a fate in and around Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. Likely all are rolling over in their graves as fellow countrymen who sent them to war are threatening to boycott Election Day.
Particularly disheartening to these fallen heroes must be the conservative abstentions, as likely 90 percent of such Americans were in favor of sending soldiers to Iraq in March 2003, while probably 100 percent supported invading Afghanistan after 9/11. It must be unfathomable to these brave souls that the very people who rallied politicians to risk lives for these efforts are now turning their backs on the honored dead, and what they died for.
Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.—Thomas Paine
As amazing as it might seem, due to Republican failures to curtail spending, solve illegal immigration, cure Social Security, and police corruption, many Party members are forgetting the more than a million Americans that have died in battle for the precious right to vote.
Should we forsake that right now because this Congress has failed to address such issues? What does that say to the 3,090 soldiers that have died to give Iraqis and Afghanis such a right, or to the 170,000 Americans still at risk to protect it?
Maybe more importantly, would any of the fallen abstain from voting as result of these other issues if they were still alive today?
If the people fail to vote, a government will be developed which is not their government…. The whole system of American Government rests on the ballot box. Unless citizens perform their duties there, such a system of government is doomed to failure.—Calvin Coolidge
As the elections draw near, I find myself getting angrier and angrier. On a daily basis, I receive e-mail messages from conservative readers explaining why they’re not going to vote on November 7. Fellow conservative bloggers have elucidated their views on this subject supporting the abstainers, and explaining why a Democrat victory in eight days isn’t such a bad thing.
Every morning as I drive to work, I hear callers tell Rush Limbaugh why they’re not going to vote; every afternoon I hear the same on Sean Hannity’s program.
The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all. —John F. Kennedy
So I grow angrier, because I’m saddened for the state of the Republican Party, and wonder how we have so fallen from the exhilaration we felt on November 2, 2004, when President Bush was reelected, and we miraculously added to our majorities in both chambers of Congress. We were going to accomplish so much in the next two years. In particular, finally reform Social Security, and extend the president’s tax cuts.
Alas, as 2005 rolled on, such lofty goals were replaced by scandals surrounding former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, the Vice President’s former Chief of Staff I. Lewis Libby, and a terrible hurricane in the Gulf Coast.
The future of this republic is in the hands of the American voter.—Dwight D. Eisenhower
2006 wasn’t any better, as a proposed sale of American ports to an Arabic company hit the front pages, along with illegal immigrant protests, and a disgraceful scandal involving Congressional pages just weeks before Election Day.
Nice two years, folks. Nice job taking advantage of the mandate we gave you on November 2, 2004.
Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote that he is not making a present or a compliment to please an individual—or at least that he ought not so to do; but that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country.—Samuel Adams
Like many of my fellow countrymen, I’m ashamed of the performance of this Congress, and my Party. However, that shame does not extend to ignoring the most sacred right bestowed upon us by our Founding Fathers. Forsaking that right as a form of protest is un-American and unthinkable for a true conservative.
The ballot is stronger than the bullet.—Abraham Lincoln
Folks that are unhappy with what the Republicans have done in the past 22 months should consider voting for the Democrat in their state or district. Or the Independent. Or the Libertarian. Or write in their grandmother Mabel.
But don’t stay home, for that dishonors all that have died to give you this precious right. Such are certainly the sentiments of great Americans past and present:
If the citizens neglect their duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made not for the public good so much as for the selfish or local purposes.—Daniel Webster
That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part. —Thomas Jefferson
Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.—Franklin D. Roosevelt
When you become entitled to exercise the right of voting for public officers, let it be impressed on your mind that God commands you for rulers just men who will rule in the fear of God. The preservation of a republican government depends on the faithful discharge of this duty.— Noah Webster
In a world that might say one vote doesn’t matter…, it does matter because each person is of infinite worth and value to God… Your vote is a declaration of importance as a person and a citizen.—Billy Graham
We have a duty to our country to participate in the political process. See, if you believe in freedom, you have a duty to exercise your right to vote to begin with. I’m [here] to encourage people to do their duty, to go to the polls. I want all people, no matter what their political party is or whether they even like a political party, to exercise their obligation to vote. —George W. Bush
Wise words all. Yet, caution shouldn’t be capriciously thrown to the wind when exercising this right, for the consequence of error is great, especially today. The truly judicious, before demonstrating disappointment with their Party by voting for a member of another, should recall the last time Elephants behaved this way. Or have you forgotten that such protestations in 1992 gave us fourteen years of the Clintons, with possibly many more to follow?
With that in mind, try to imagine what turning over the House of Representatives to a dove like Nancy Pelosi (D-California) would say to those that have given their lives to this war effort, and those still risking so. What a shocking statement that would be to our military to hand over the reigns of power to such an irresponsible appeaser less than five years after we sent our friends and family members to die for their country.
So think long and hard, conservatives, about the value of your vote, those that have died to give you the privilege, and the folly of abstention. And, if you still can’t bring yourself to the polling booth on November 7, send a proxy to my e-mail address, for only death would prevent me from exercising this precious right regardless of how disappointed I was in my Party.
Noel Sheppard is a frequent contributor to American Thinker. He is also contributing editor for the Media Research Center’s NewsBusters.org, and a contributing writer to its Business & Media Institute. Noel welcomes feedback.
Filed under: Culture of Life/Death, Medical, TV/Pop Culture/Music, Election 2006When I was a little girl, I remember a neighbor of ours who spent every Labor Day raging at Jerry Lewis for “parading those poor crippled children around to pull on the heartstrings so that people will send him money…” As though the funds raised by the Muscular Dystrophy Association were going into Lewis’ pocket.Today we’re being treated to this political commercial by Michael J Fox, who suffers from Parkinson’s Disease and is allowing himself to be used by Claire McCaskill’s political campaign to pull on the heartstrings (and create a sense of “moral outrage”) so as to defeat her opponant. McCaskill “shares my hope for a cure,” says Fox, while her (presumably evil) opponant apparently wants Fox to suffer. Booo…Hiss….The video is indeed difficult to watch, and one sincerely wishes there was immediately in place a cure for Fox and his fellow sufferers. Fox believes that his cure lies in the use of Embryonic Stem Cells Research (ESCR) and puts his hope in research currently being done by using precisely those sorts of cells on Parkinson’s patients. So, this story must have been very unwelcome, yesterday.Stem cells might cause brain tumors, study finds Injecting human embryonic stem cells into the brains of Parkinson’s disease patients may cause tumors to form, U.S. researchers reported on Sunday.Steven Goldman and colleagues at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York said human stem cells injected into rat brains turned into cells that looked like early tumors.
[…]
Goldman’s team used human embryonic stem cells. Taken from days-old embryos, these cells can form any kind of cell in the body. This batch had been cultured in substances aimed at making them become brain cells.
[…]
The animals did get better.But the grafted cells started to show areas that no longer consisted of dopamine-releasing neurons, but of dividing cells that had the potential to give rise to tumors. The researchers killed the animals before they could know for sure, and said any experiments in humans would have to be done very cautiously. Scientists have long feared that human embryonic stem cells could turn into tumors, because of their pliability.This is not the first time ESC research for Parkinson’s sufferers has frightened scientists and halted experimentation. As reported by the New England Journal of Medicine, and – ahem – the New York Times, the injection of ESC’s into the brains of Parkinson’s patients became nightmarish experimentations gone bad. The late development of dystonia and dyskinesia, more than one year after surgery, in five patients who had received transplants deserves comment. Parkinsonism in these patients improved during the first year after transplantation, even with substantial reductions in dosage or the discontinuation of levodopa. The subsequent appearance of dystonia and dyskinesia implies that the continued fiber outgrowth from the transplant has led to a relative excess of dopamine. The simplest response to this outcome would be to transplant less tissue in the future. The distribution of the tissue is also likely to be important.
- NEJM Transplantation of Embryonic Dopamine Neurons for Severe Parkinson’s Disease March 8, 2001
The dystonia and dyskinesia referred to here is more detailed in the report by the NY Times piece: Although the paper depicts the patients with side effect in impassive clinical terms, doctors who have seen them paint a much different picture. Paul. E. Greene, a neurologist at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons and a researcher in the study, [emphasis mine - admin] said the uncontrollable movements some patients suffer are “absolutely devastating.” “They chew constantly, their fingers go up and down, their wrists flex and distend,” he said. And the patients writhe and twist, jerk their heads, fling their arms about.”It was tragic, catastrophic,” Greene said. “It’s a real nightmare. And we can’t selectively turn it off.” One man was so badly affected that he could no longer eat and had to use a feeding tube, Greene said. In another, the condition came and went unpredictably throughout the day, and when it occurred, the man’s speech was unintelligible. For now, Greene said, his position is clear: “No more fetal transplants. We are absolutely and adamantly convinced that this should be considered for research only. And whether it should be research in people is an open question.” In the past when I have cited this article, I have heard from supporters of ESC research that this study used not “embryonic” stem cells, but “fetal stem cells from aborted fetuses.” I know that is what the NY Times piece says, but I don’t see that in the NEJM report. Moreover, we must not forget that before a fetus is a fetus it is an embryo for 8 weeks. If these scientists got their stem cells from aborted pregnancies, they clearly were looking for embryos, and I think might be a safe presumption to say that the words “fetal” and “embryonic” were being used rather interchangably in the Times piece.But the NEJM report clearly uses the world EMBRYONIC both in its title and throughout the study, as we see here: BackgroundTransplantation of human embryonic dopamine neurons into the brains of patients with Parkinson’s disease has proved beneficial in open clinical trials. However, whether this intervention would be more effective than sham surgery in a controlled trial is not known.MethodsWe randomly assigned 40 patients who were 34 to 75 years of age and had severe Parkinson’s disease (mean duration, 14 years) to receive a transplant of nerve cells or undergo sham surgery; all were to be followed in a double-blind manner for one year. In the transplant recipients, cultured mesencephalic tissue from four embryos was implanted into the putamen bilaterally.So, we see that in 2001, ESCR was showing the embryonic stem cells tended to be unmanagable and, actually, too powerful, too malleable. We see in 2006 that labrats treated with the stem cells tended to show some improvement but within a short time tissue growth becomes abnormal – one might assume that the rats, which were killed, might have displayed similiar behavior as was seen in 2001, had they lived. For all the talk we hear about the “great promise” of Embryonic Stem Cells, the research doesn’t support it. Nor, apparently, does private funding. There are, however, wonderful results being seen in various research and testing being done with the use of Adult Stem Cells (ASCR). We don’t hear very much about it, though. Writes Wesley J. Smith in the National Review Online, 2002: Unless you made a point of looking for these stories…you might have missed them. Patients with Parkinson’s disease and multiple sclerosis received significant medical benefit using experimental adult-stem-cell regenerative medical protocols. These are benefits that supporters of embryonic-stem-cell treatments have yet to produce widely in animal experiments. Yet adult stem cells are now beginning to ameliorate suffering in human beings.Stem cells were harvested from the patient’s brain using a routine brain biopsy procedure. They were cultured and expanded to several million cells. About 20 percent of these matured into dopamine-secreting neurons. In March 1999, the cells were injected into the patient’s brain.Three months after the procedure, the man’s motor skills had improved by 37 percent and there was an increase in dopamine production of 55.6 percent. One year after the procedure, the patient’s overall Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale had improved by 83 percent — this at a time when he was not taking any other Parkinson’s medication!That is an astonishing, remarkable success, one that you would have thought would set off blazing headlines and lead stories on the nightly news. Had the treatment been achieved with embryonic stem cells, undoubtedly the newspapers would have screamed loudly enough to be heard. Unfortunately, reportage about the Parkinson’s success story was strangely muted. True, the Washington Post ran an inside-the-paper story and there were some wire service reports. But the all-important New York Times — the one news outlet that drives television and cable news — did not report on it at all. Nor did a search of the Los Angeles Times website yield any stories about the experiment.Please read Smith’s article – it is long and chock-full of information on successful ASCR you never hear about because, for some reason, only the stuff of embryos is fascinating to the press and the left. I wonder why that is, really? Why are they so hot to exploit the embryo – when study after study says don’t do it – and so bored with a safer alternative that does not in any way exploit or destroy human life?Writing on this same subject a while back, I said: That research…made me believe that Embryonic stem cells are like uncut heroin…waaaay, way to powerful to use – they are part of begotten life in its purest form (perhaps still too near to God for our fooling with) – and they are so maleable as to be (so far in research) unpredictable and unusable. And that’s not even getting into the moral and ethical questions of whether or not a human embryo should be exploited in such a way, particularly when Adult Stem Cells are showing remarkable results in everything from helping sufferers of Sickle Cell Anemia and Thallassemias Major and Minor, to spinal injuries, skin regeneration and more. […] And I say that as a woman dealing with a chronic blood illness, and waiting to hear – finally – about a diagnosis that has taken a great deal of time to pinpoint. Both health issues are being looked into with adult stem cells, and that’s good news…I wouldn’t want any treatment derived from embryonic stem cells.I still feel that way…The proponants of ESC research like to say obnoxious things along the lines of “Bush is against science,” and “[Talent] doesn’t want Michael J Fox to stop moving, just like the nazis on the right didn’t want Christopher Reeve to walk again!” And they like to pretend that ESC research and funding have been – or are about to be – criminalized. The truth is and always has been that scientists are free to conduct experiments using ESC, and private investors are free to fund it. All President Bush has ever said was, “the government is not going to fund it, the government is not going to help you create more ESC lines.” Booo…Hisss….I feel badly for Michael J Fox, and for the father of my former neighbor who worked his garden while his Parkinson’s afflicted body flailed and he paced the plantings with a scissor-like walk. I felt badly for Pope John Paul II when he could no longer control his body, and I feel badly for the Rev. Billy Graham, too. I hope with all my heart that a treatment or cure can be found to alleviate such suffering. But let’s stop pretending that to be against government funding of ESCR is to be some mustachio-curling eeeevil entity who revels in human suffering, and let’s also stop pretending that Embryonic Stem Cell Research is a hotbed of medical innovation and staggering success, when precisely the opposite is true.Michael J. Fox’s ad is affecting, I guess. And as it is showing during the World Series in St. Louis, I suppose it’s going to win the day for his candidate, but in the end, it’s not going to do much for him, personally…and it is going to allow millions of people to feel noble and compassionate when they go to the polls and pull a wholly emotional lever while being completely underinformed about the realities of the matter.UPDATE: Not only am I not a scientist, but I’ve never claimed to be one. Those of you who have suffered through my attempts to make sense of technology are quite aware that I am a woman who knows her limitations! I can read, though, and process information, and I can see by what is presented that ESCR has not lived up to the hype. AJ Strata is much smarter than I am, though, and he goes into absorbing and fascinating detail on the issue of this research, and I urge you to read him. Also, he rightly identifies the “disingenuous” ones here. Michael J. Fox is not the bad guy, and I am sorry to see some rightwing sites being nasty about him. He’s just a guy who wants his circumstance to change; you can’t gainsay his desire. But the people telling him he can have his life back if only there was more federal funding for ESCR, and who think misrepresenting the whole issue is the way to go about it…they’re a whole ‘nother subject. They’re right up there with John Edwards saying that if he and John Kerry were elected, Christopher Reeve would walk away from his wheelchair. Over at National Review Online, Kathryn Lopez notes that the whole ESCR matter is more complicated than the left wants to admit and she is disgusted that McCaskill approved this ad: Amendment 2 is not a matter of voting for or against sick people. Claire McCaskill should be ashamed for approving a message that suggests such a thing. But apparently she’s comfortable running as just another snake-oil salesman.Dean Barnett on the other hand calls the ad disingenuous and points out that Fox never once uses the word “EMBRYONIC,” thus making it sound like those evil Republicans are against ALL Stem Cell Research. But of course. Like me, Barnett has a personal stake in the success of ASCR, but is opposed to ESCR.Meanwhile, John Stephenson has video of McCaskille supporters at work.Related articles on Adult Stem Cell Research: ASC 72, ESC 0 A sobering setback in stem-cell research MIT Prof: Embryonic Stem Cell Research Nowhere Close to Helping Patients The Case for Adult Stem Cells Real-World Successes of Adult Stem Cell Treatment Bone Marrow and Cord Blood Stem Cell TransplantAlso writing:Blue Crab Boulevard Pirate’s Cove Wizbang Through the Magnifying GlassOther thoughts:The Dangerous Prayer of Blessing
Captain’s Quarters tracked back with Michael J. Fox on CBS and the goo of victimhood</< a>
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Possible best intentions and sincerity notwithstanding, Michael J. Fox is being used in a crass corruption of science, shrouded in a fleeting compassion by politicians solely for political profit.
There’s a popular and popularized perception of purity surrounding science and its search for ‘truth’. Science is supposed to simply rely on observable fact, and is not swayed by venal and ulterior motives. The political left in particular uses this mythical notion of purity for political ends. When coupled, as in the ESCR (embryonic stem cell research) debate, with an aura of caring and compassion, Democrats and the left assume they have taken the unassailable moral high ground.
‘Follow the money’ is a good rule of thumb for uncovering corruption whether in politics or science.
The pool of ‘qualified’ researchers and facilities, however ‘qualified’ is defined in whatever instance, is always finite. Market forces apply, and the funding needs of researchers and facilities assure that they will migrate to where the funding exists. Likewise, what is committed to research on A is not available for research on B, C or D. If funding for a particular area of research is manipulated by less than noble and even ulterior motives, scientific endeavor will be as prone as any to follow that money.
Research on adult and umbilical cord blood stem cells has already provided beneficial medical treatments, something ESCR has yet to do. However, ESCR is a cause celebre, and as such, even states like California and New Jersey are throwing large sums of tax revenue in that direction. Is that because that research holds great promise of bearing fruit, or because it serves a political purpose to do so, even if such targeted funding decreases resources that might otherwise be engaged in more fruitful pursuits?
It would be naïve to expect a situation where medical research funding would always go in the optimized proportions whereby its results would provide the greatest good. Years ago it was noted that while the number of men who died from prostate cancer was comparable to the number of women who died of breast cancer, funding for breast cancer research was multiples of that for prostate cancer research. There was nothing sinister in that. The women’s movement most certainly led to a focus on what were perceived as women’s issues, including and appropriately breast cancer.
That this resulted in unequal funding regarding an issue of life and death for women as opposed to one for men is neither wrong nor unwarranted. Men didn’t complain, the lot of them after all having a mother, and a likely mix of sisters, wives and daughters. But at base, it was not wrong because the focus on and response to breast cancer was driven by genuine caring, not for political ends. Societies, like families and individuals, set priorities for a variety of reasons that are not ignoble simply because they are not equitable.
However, if imbalances or misdirection occur due to a politically driven desire to exploit for political gain, it is reprehensible.
It is not a secret that the ESCR brouhaha is really about abortion, something easily confirmed by a check of the ‘Who’s Who’ of the protagonists on both sides. For decades the pro-abortion side has struggled for some kind of morally compelling and compassionate support for the taking of pre-born human life. Once they had fired off ‘rape, incest and life of the mother’ their quiver was empty, and even NARAL admitted years ago that those causes account for under 2% of abortions.
The destruction of embryonic life in ESCR however, can be presented as a kind of compassion-driven and Star Trekian scientifically noble sacrifice of the needs of the one (if it is actually a one at all!) for the needs of the many. It sets up a mental picture of those Talibanesque-fundamentalist Republicans wanting to defend the supposedly sacred life of some unrecognizable glob of cells for superstitious reason, whereas the loving folks who want simple scientific truth to prevail merely want us all to have, once again, our beloved Marty McFly winging by on his skateboard.
If that seems a bit overly judgmental, simply recall John Edwards in 2004 speaking of ESCR in terms as that a Kerry-Edwards victory would mean that we would do the things that would make folks such as the then just departed paralytic Chris Reeve walk again.
If down the road, it becomes inescapably clear that ESCR has been an overall bust, in that it provides no significant benefit or no benefit not also attained by adult and umbilical blood stem cell usage, will it matter to the political drivers behind the pro-ESCR crusade that resources that might have benefited thousands or millions were squandered?
It will matter not one whit. It is about politics and political power, and not about truth or love of one’s fellow man.
Too harsh? Some illustrations:
When the Reagan economic boom became impossible to ignore (but not for lack of media trying), its dark underside was revealed in exposing the plight of countless but supposedly vast numbers of homeless persons, many freezing to death, and Reagan and his folks cared not! This critique continued through Bush Sr.’s kindler-gentler Republican administration.
However, anyone who based his world view on the MSM could reasonably have concluded that something like a quasi-‘needs based’-Rapture occurred about noon on January 20, 1993, when Bill Clinton took the oath of office and every homeless man, woman and child in the country seemed to disappear.
Reagan was also charged with not caring about AIDs victims because they were gay. The only reason a ‘cure’ for AIDs had not been found during the Reagan years was that Reaganites did not have the will to find it and therefore did not expend the resources that would surely have found it, in spite of billions spent on AIDs research under Reagan. Bush Sr. increased that spending, but that his administration didn’t find a cure proved again Republicans didn’t really care.
Then shortly into the Clinton administration, it was accepted that a cure just might not be in the cards at all, something many scientists and researchers had been saying for years. Treatment became the focus, not cure, and AIDs, no longer a political cudgel, went on the back burner as a domestic political issue.
There was little to nothing in the way of soul searching that went on in the nineties by those who had fed the political charge for a decade about their enemies not having the will to find that inevitable ‘cure’, and how that might have filled thousands with a false hope or encouraged, even subliminally, dangerous behavior by many who were led to believe, perhaps until the moment they died, that the cure was coming, was just around the corner, would be theirs with little more than a change to the political landscape.
There was the Clinton Health Care initiative. There were, so we were told over and over for months by Democrats and their echo chamber MSM, thirty to forty million Americans without health care. The image projected was of the desperate mother cradling the convulsing infant with the fever of one hundred and four being bum-rushed out of the ER by the hospital orderlies into the cold uncaring street because we didn’t have HillaryCare! Then the initiative failed in Congress and with the public at large. There was no move to a Plan B, because there are millions in crisis and we must help some at least. When it became clear that the power ploy had failed, those supposed forty or so million Americans in imminent and desperate danger of untreated disease and death simply became immaterial and of no political use.
Again and again the real or merely presumed sufferers and victims were and are treated in the same manner as the Kleenex was for the tears their stories brought about: used and discarded.
As this is about corruption of science and not just faux caring, there is the global warming scheme. Funding is made available for studies of the effects of global warming, not for whether it is happening or not. Funding is made available for study of how mankind is causing that warming, not for whether or not man is having a noticeable or significant effect on that warming. Funding is made available for study of the negative impact on the environment of that man-caused global warming, not for whether such warming will be negative here but offset by a positive there, as flora and fauna adjust and adapt, as they have through the ages. As such, and getting what is paid for, a large body of scientific research seems to support the fact of man’s greenhouse gas emissions as the primary cause of the very real and inarguably catastrophic global warming trend.
What if it was actually determined that while a global warming trend is real, man’s greenhouse gas emission contribution to that effect is negligible, and it is overwhelmingly a natural phenomenon related to solar phenomena or some other uncontrollable factor? What would the politicos like Al Gore do?
Having painted, as Gore did in An Inconvenient Truth, the impending warming of the globe as a real and present imminent threat to human life itself, surely that would not cause ‘the cause’ to be abandoned! But that is exactly what would happen, and why even the hint of such denials of human action as the primary cause leads some on the enviro-left to hysterically speak of Nuremberg type trials for global warming deniers.
First, the political leaders of the left actually know better than to try to convince people, and then be responsible for demonstrating, that the same types of folks, politicians and bureaucrats, who have given the world socialist paradises and DMV offices, ended poverty by declaring a war on it that cost trillions and made generations to be educated by the simple device of reducing the meaning of “educated” to something like barely literate, are capable of controlling the climate of the world to something like eternal stability. Second, it is about power and influence, and global warming-responsive regulatory control over peoples, industries and whole economies is just that. Take that away, and the global warming hype will be given the old SNL Rosanne Rosanadana ‘Nevermind!’. Could that be done when we have been told that the catastrophe on the horizon threatens human life itself? Ask the millions without health care.
Put another way, was it merely by chance that when the old Soviet Union and the dreams of central planning statists everywhere collapsed in the late eighties, so much of the far left of Europe and the US simply migrated in lockstep right into the green/environmental movement, with nary a pause? Did the lost love of central planning foster a newfound love of endangered amphibians? Even Gorbachev soon found himself at home in such environs.
Science is a wondrous and beneficial field of endeavor that has been of inestimable benefit to man. Yet science has also been invoked as the basis for much of Leninist and Hitlerian social policy, including eugenics, with scientists on board for that and more, like the infamous Tuskeegee Syphilis Study.
Pilate asked ‘Quid est veritas?’ What is truth? Science doesn’t have the answer.
Science can present us with fact, not truth. It can inform us how to do things, but not whether we should or should not do them. Facts are facts. The New York City telephone directory contains millions of ‘facts’, but lay them all end to end and they will not arrive at a single truth. Truth is more, and of a higher order, than that.
How can it be that science, seen by so many for so long as the incorruptible search for the objectively true, can be corrupted for political purposes? Perhaps another type of study, one that acknowledges that scientists are human and science is conducted by humans, and that man seems to have this universally demonstrated nature that is prone to falling away from the good and true, may have answers for that.
We all of us want to see, truly, beloved Marty McFly back on his skateboard. Yet, to symbolically hold out such an image based on a corruption of what is scientifically sound while claiming a caring and compassion that is false, convenient and fleeting, is to be in service not to what is true, but to untruth. This supposed moral high ground is, in truth, an amoral swamp.
Denis Keohane is an occasional contributor to American Thinker.
The National Council of Churches (NCC) suffered a stinging rebuke last month when the North American Archdiocese of the Antiochian Orthodox Church decided to sever all ties to the organization. “It got to be too much,” said Antiochian spokesman Rev. Thomas Zain. “They have an almost politicized agenda…that opposes conservative Christianity.”
Zain was being generous. The NCC plays a duplicitous game. Its public statements are laced with the language of Christian benevolence but its policies read like a laundry list of hard-Left causes. It’s a pattern that took a while for the Orthodox to see.
Disguising a Marxist past
NCC cooperation with the far-Left began in the last century. In the 1950’s and 1960’s, the NCC was one of the leading contributors to the Program to Combat Racism (PCR) created in 1939 by the World Council of Churches (WCC), an NCC affiliate.PCR subsidized revolutionary Communists governments in the Third World, shuffling more than $5 million to 130 organizations in 30 countries – all under the guise of Christian charity.
When Reader’s Digest exposed the ruse in 1982, they reported more than half of the money that went to the PCR wound up in the hands of Communist guerillas. In the 1970’s alone: in excess of $78,000 went to the Cuban sponsored MPLA fomenting Communist revolution in Angola; $832,000 to Nambia’s Communist regime; and $108,000 to the Patriotic Front in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) to support a Communist guerilla force responsible for a campaign of terror that killed 207 white civilians, 1,721 blacks, and nine missionaries including their children.
NCC contributions toward the PRC were collected from member churches and funneled through the NCC treasury. When the Reader’s Digest report was published, the WCC frantically tried to cover the paper trail and to this day refuses to release the names of contributors and beneficiaries.
The fall of the Soviet Union and subsequent exposure of the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of Marxism caused donations to dry up. Throughout the 1990’s the NCC teetered on the edge of bankruptcy. A last minute cash infusion by a wealthy benefactor saved it from ruin.
The fall also forced the NCC to account for past sins and it fell to Rev. Joan Campbell, NCC president during the early 1990’s, to offer the mea culpa. “We did not understand the depth of the sufferings under Communism,” Campbell said. “And we failed to really cry out under the Communist oppression.”
Social(ist) Justice
Like many of its left-wing counterparts, the NCC displayed a slavish devotion to Marxist ideas and anti-American cant. It strove to become the official dispenser of religious respectability to those who adopted either. Dispensing respectability made NCC bureaucrats feel important and offered the rationale that justified the NCC’s existence.
“Liberation Theology” was the dominant fad in the late 1960’s and 1970’s – a patchwork of ideas that claimed that the Christian obligation to care for the poor was synonymous with Marxist social dogma. Liberation Theology dressed Marxist ideas in the Christian moral lexicon convincing gullible activists that Christ was really a crypto-Marxist. The ideology swept through the religious left like wildfire. The NCC was front and center.
Pope John Paul II fought Liberation Theology tooth and nail in Catholic circles (his first public rebuke being the scolding of an El Salvadoran priest). “Christian” Marxists would have none of it. Substituting Marx’s secular millennialism for the Gospel, these religious Marxists did what all Marxists do: they refused to take any responsibility for the suffering their ideas generated. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.
Campbell was no exception. Her apology was a lie. The NCC not only understood the suffering caused by Communist oppression, it funded and gave religious cover to the oppressors. The NCC wants us to believe that when it crawled into bed with Marx the affair was not consummated, when in fact it adulterated the Christian Gospel and thereby joined the ranks of those who foster evil in the name of religion.
The NCC continues the affair even today, mostly with Fidel Castro, revealing that the utopian delusion is as strong as ever. Castro’s seduction of the NCC goes back decades.
The NCC wrote educational tracts for American children that praised Cuban totalitarianism. It lauded Cuban health care. It was front man for the deportation of Elian Gonzalez. It condemns the American economic embargo on Castro’s behalf.
Several years ago, NCC operatives exploited a visit to Cuba by Greek Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I by protesting American policy at Guantanamo, but refused the pleas of an Orthodox delegate to protest Castro’s human rights abuses at a Cuban prison. The list goes on and on. It is impossible to find any substantive criticism of Castro’s brutal regime in nearly three decades of NCC documentation.
Orthodox participation
Given this history, why did the traditional and conservative Orthodox Church sign on with the NCC in the first place? The Orthodox Church, the second largest church in the world, with 216 million adherents, was long divided in North America along ethnic lines. Only three American jursidictions — the Antiochian Orthodox, which is primarily composed of Arab Christians; the Orthodox Church in America, which is of Russian heritage; and the Greek Orthodox — have belonged to the NCC. The answer is that most Orthodox in these jurisdictions were unaware of the NCC’s activist past. Despite having a presence on American soil for more than 200 years (through Russian missionary work in Alaska that spread to California, then New York), the American Orthodox are only now coming into their own. The majority of Orthodox Christians came to America during the great waves of immigration early in the last century and it took several generations for assimilation to take place. Only recently have American converts joined the ranks.
The fall of Communism prompted an NCC makeover that obscured their leftist orientation. Brown’s mea culpa was part of this effort, as was the toning down of radical language and the relative silence on divisive moral issues that threatened to alienate a more conservative constituency. The NCC went shopping for social respectability at the same time that the Orthodox sought a venue to make their faith more visible in American society. Each found the other and decided to give union a shot.
It was an uneven marriage from the star, with the NCC acting as hen-pecked suitor. The Orthodox contribute no funding to the NCC; a problem the NCC overlooks because Orthodox history and tradition lend an air of moral legitimacy and authority that the NCC could never muster on its own. Clearly the NCC needs the Orthodox a lot more than the reverse.
Most informed Orthodox have always been uneasy of the relationship with the NCC but reasoned that an imperfect relationship might be better than none at all. However, when word got out that NCC President Rev. Bob Edgar was actively courting George Soros and other like-minded benefactors, the Antiochian Orthodox Church took notice and began to ask questions.
Then Edgar signed a declaration against gay marriage along with the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Southern Baptist Convention, and the National Association of Evangelicals, causing outrage in his Lesbian, Gay, and Transgender delegation. They demanded he change his tune, and Edgar dutifully complied. He apologized, removed his signature, and assured the delegation that the NCC stands behind gay marriage. The proved the last straw for the Antiochian Orthodox.
The dustbin of history
The Antiochian withdrawal may be a sign of things to come. Within the Orthodox communion, only the Orthodox Church in America (OCA – formerly Russian Orthodox Church) and the Greek Orthodox remain NCC members. The OCA is debating the issue behind closed doors, with some rancor if reports are correct. A parliamentary maneuver narrowly avoided a vote at their national assembly earlier this summer that observers say would have resulted in an NCC ouster. Given that many OCA families have first hand experience with Communist oppression, the exposure of the NCC as a Communist fellow traveler should help close the question.
Complete Orthodox withdrawal leaves the NCC beholden to the declining mainstream of American Protestantism. (Catholics and Evangelical Protestants refuse to join.) NCC member churches comprise about a quarter of American Christians and their numbers decline every year. Only the conservative churches are growing. The Antiochian Orthodox decision pushes the NCC one step closer to the dustbin of history – where it belongs.
John Roberts and Samuel Alito sit on the U.S. Supreme Court.
