STEM CELLS AND LIBERALS

Firstly, we might thank the South Koreans for stem cells since they seem to be leading the way. If a loved one is saved from a slow horrible death by stem cells you might also thank conservatives since they saw fit to invade South Korea and save it from the Liberal Communists. Instead of starving to death under big government, the freedom loving South Koreans are now inventing stem cells to save your life. Oh how it must kill the cowardly liberals to see it.

As for the slippery slope objections raised regarding stem cells, one has to wonder, since every slope is slippery and everything is on a slippery slope. We have a well respected Constitution that has kept everything nicely balanced on the slippery slope for 200 years. We have a huge military, 1000's of local police forces as well as about 22 Federal police forces, The Social Security Administration, an ever growing Federal Budget, the Supreme Court, labor unions, Congress, a one man Executive Branch who can take us to war with the phony Gulf of Tonkin Resolution or a phony search for weapons of mass destruction, but through it all our remarkable Constitution has kept power sufficiently divided so that our country has not fallen prey to many of the evils that had afflicted every society before it, throughout all of human history. And, as if that has not been enough, we have even created and preserved the freedom that much of the rest of the world enjoys.

In comparison to all the evil that might have afflicted us, stem cells seem like a trivial threat, but an incredibly huge potential benefit. The threat is that one day we'll take stem cells from older and older embryos or even full grown human beings who are raised for spare parts or even as alter egos. The benefit is that stem cells might cure every sickness on earth. It might save billions of lives from death and excruciatingly painful illness! That this is a good thing ought to be the most painfully obvious thing in the world. If it isn't obvious, it will be when you or a loved one is dying, at least to about 99% of those in that position.

Interestingly, Billy Graham's wife has three loved ones, one of whom is her husband, all critically ill, but would not have any one of them saved by stem cells from an aborted embryo. She said it would be like, "thumbing our nose at God." Call me crazy, but standing idly by while 30,000 full grown children are aborted daily by hunger seems like an infinitely worse offense

Perhaps stem cells feel like such a threat to many because they are too good to be true; they are a threat to normalcy because eternal life removes too much of the normal burden of everyday life? Indeed, life would be totally redefined. Everything could be put off till tomorrow, but every goal could eventually be reached too. It scares the religious right to death given that their religion was conceived of at a time when science was not. Or, could it be that science, with its nuclear bombs, global warming, genetic technology, and abortions is merely the weapon with which we will finally manage to destroy ourselves as per biblical prophecy?

In any case we face an inevitable brave new world. The immediate problem in which is that you have to kill the embryo to get the stem cells. Never mind that the embryo was scheduled to be killed anyway, or that nature aborts most pregnancies spontaneously, or that we let 30,000 kids per day be aborted by starvation, or that we kill 40 million dogs from neglect every year or kill 100 million cows each year, all of whom seem far more human than a few embryonic cells, in the shape of a deformed golf ball, too small to even be seen. Yet to abortion opponents harvesting these stem cells is close to an abortion since there is an embryo or embryo like thing dying in each case.

In reality though it is not an embryo since it has been especially prepared by removing genetic material from the mother (egg donor) to be replaced by genetic material exclusively from the patient who wishes to be cloned, or to merely harvest stem cells that eventually can replace damaged cells in his or her own body. The embryo is not put in a human womb or incubator where it might develop into a human being, although one assumes that it will be possible to do so in the very near future. Moreover, if God or nature aborts and kills forever most embryos due to a genetic deficiency why can't we alter an embryo for the express purpose of saving and preserving life? And, if there was a God who cares about this stuff why doesn't he just give us the answer anyway?

Personally, seeing an embryo meet its end at the hand of a stem cell scientist, not even considering the incredible potential benefits, is less troubling than seeing a live lobster being dropped into a pot of boiling water, or a puppy dog being tossed into an incinerator, which we do and happily manage to ignore millions of times each year.

But, in 100 years when each of us can whip up a nuclear device, weaponized anthrax, and a clone of ourselves that will live forever, sophisticated liberals might well wish quaint religious little old Georgie Bush and the ancient Jewish wisdom he subscribes to had been taken far more seriously. This seems especially true given that today's liberals don't have the brains or the guts to go to the Axis of Evil to take away from them the very deadly, but still very rudimentary, technology that they are manifestly far too immature to handle. Today's liberals are failing brave new world kindergarten very badly.

My own view is that the brave new technological world is inevitable, probably very beneficial, but catastrophically dangerous as long as cowardly and dumb liberals are involved in the management of it.