So Bush Was Right on Stem Cells

One thing you can say about President Bush.  He makes a decision and then accepts the consequences.  Back in 2001 he decided to restrict the use of federal funds in research on embryonic stem cells.

As we know, Democrats decided that they had an issue.  So they dragged out helpless victims and Ron Reagan to argue that stem cells would help the blind see and the lame walk.  Presidential candidate John Edwards got in on the act, as you would expect.

Obviously the only thing that stood in the way of a medical miracle was the president and his fundamentalist Christian morality and the theocrats who supported him.

But last week the New York Times reported that two scientists. James A. Thomson and Shinya Yamanaka, had found a way of making stem cells equivalent to embryonic stem cells without using embryos.

As Charles Krauthammer puts it:

A decade ago, Thomson was the first to isolate human embryonic stem cells. Last week, he (and Japan’s Shinya Yamanaka) announced one of the great scientific breakthroughs since the discovery of DNA: an embryo-free way to produce genetically matched stem cells.

He highlights a quote of Thomson’s:

If human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough.

Really?  I thought only knuckle-dragging Bible-thumpers had a problem with embryonic stem cell research.

It all points up the fact that President Bush is a serious man who is not afraid to make serious decisions.

When you make serious decisions it helps to have a serious politico-religious world view.  For most people, that means taking a fully worked out politico-religious system—such as, for example, Christianity—and using it as a guide.  President Bush, who had a less than perfect youth like many well-born baby-boomers, became a serious Christian when the time came to grow up.  Obviously this belief system—and we all have one—informs his decisions about government policy.

The reason why this is helpful is that Christianity, like Anglo-Saxon law, is an accumulation of centuries of actual human experience in dealing with serious decisions about life and death.  Over the centuries hundreds of lawyers and judges have worked on our great edifice of law, adapting it slowly in the light of new cases and conflicts that come up for adjudication.  The same thing is true with religion.

In our modern era we have a lot of people who want to throw up all the accumulated wisdom and start from scratch with a new system better adapted to modern times.  Unfortunately—and you may have noticed this—starting over means making all the mistakes of our ancestors all over again and learning from them the hard way.

In the twentieth century the hard way added up to about 200 million human deaths in world wars and terrors.

Anyway, now it turns out that President Bush was right.  We don’t need to use human embryos in stem cell research.  After all the fuss, the president looks like a serious man who thought seriously about an issue, talked to all the experts, and made a serious decision. 

Quite often, more often than you might think, when you do that you get to be right.

What Should Harry Do?

Yes, what should Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) do?  In case you forgot, here is Clifford D. May on Harry Reid. 

Pity poor Harry Reid. Back in April, the Senate Majority Leader proclaimed the war in Iraq “lost.” Two months before General David Petraeus had in place the reinforcements he needed to implement his bold, new strategy — which included a “surge” of operations against al-Qaeda forces in Iraq — Reid also said: “The surge is not accomplishing anything.”

Now, some conservatives take a very dim view of Harry Reid, but you can understand why Nevadans vote for him.  Reid is good at getting Federal land around Las Vegas made available for development: homes, schools, shopping centers, that sort of thing.  And good at getting his percentage out of the deal. Percentage or not, Reid provides Nevadans what they need: homes, schools, etc.

But Harry Reid, along with many of our Democratic friends, is not much of an expert when it comes to judging military operations.  So he kinda jumped the gun on declaring the Iraq war “lost.”

Oh well, nobody really minded except a few crazy right-wing nutcases.

But what should Reid do now?

May kindly offers a few sound bites for Reid to use when he decides that it is time to walk back to reality.

Say that President Bush should have foreseen that toppling Saddam would create a vacuum... Say it took Bush too long to [replace] Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his top generals in Iraq... Say the credit for turning the situation around in Iraq goes to American men and women in uniform.

And so on.  But when should Harry Reid do this?  Here’s a suggestion.  Wait until after the primaries this winter.  Then, when the Democratic presidential nominee has been well and truly chosen and the crazy left doesn’t matter any more, then it will be time to make a principled tack back to the center.

Whaddya think?

Middle Class Benefit Most from Welfare State

We have been banging on for weeks here about the middle-class S-CHIP chiselers, liberal slackers who get to be first in line when there is free government money going for expensive things like health insurance.

This week in Britain the Civitas think tank issued a report on how the middle class in Britain get first in line in the British National Health Service (NHS). 

In Quite Like Heaven? Nick Sedden writes about the advantages that the middle class has in navigating a big bureaucracy for things like hip replacements.

Higher socio-economic groups are more likely to have family or friends who work in the health services, and even if these contacts are not directly used to gain access to services they act as an important source of advice on how to work the system … at least one study-of hip replacement utilisation has found evidence of the effectiveness of the "sharp elbows" of the middle class in the welfare state.

Exactly.  I had a friend in Britain whose 80-ish mother needed a hip replacement.  No deal, they said; we’ll put you on a waiting list.  Getting the procedure done in a private hospital would have cost a bundle, so my friend complained to her Member of Parliament.  One thing led to another, and her mother got her hip replacement.

It is well said that when you can’t compete on price then the only thing left is footwork and connections.  As the Daily Telegraph puts it:

[T]he fault lies in a system in which the purchasing power of money is absent, leaving social know-how as the only currency.

When the middle class pays their own way then it makes sense to put the squeeze on them to be generous and help the poor with charity and know-how.  But when there’s a government system then you get the middle class using its skills selfishly to get to the head of the line.

And as we know from Arthur C. Brooks in Who Really Cares? secular, liberal people give less to charity than conservative, religious people.

Mendacity, the Mark of Decline

Remember the good old days when Tennessee Williams wrote about the mendacity of the white South?  In Cat on a Hot Tin Roof the corrupted South had to lie.  They lied about the shameful homosexuality of Brick, the star college athlete and heir.  They had to lie about Big Daddy’s cancer.  And they made a virtue of it.  As Big Daddy tells Brick:

Boy, I’ve lived with mendacity. Now why can’t you live with it? You’ve got to live with it. There’s nothin’ to live with but mendacity. Is there?

That was back in the high noon of American liberalism when the idealistic New Dealers could sneer at the corrupt racists and bigots all around them.  Liberals were idealistic and ethical; they would never lie.  They would never need to.

But now the vortex of mendacity centers around a corrupt liberalism in terminal decline, and nowhere more so than in the university, writes Michael Barone.

Barone fingers the lie about race for starting the rot.  Colleges started admitting minorities to campus who didn’t “meet ordinary standards.”  Of course, the colleges couldn’t admit that.  And to compound the lie, they decided that nobody else on campus could tell the truth either.  Hence the speech codes t“which prohibit speech deemed hurtful by others.”

They were instituted, it seems, to prevent [the minority] students from feeling insulted and to free administrators from criticism for preferential treatment.

But it was still a lie, and the lie deepens and corrupts all the more as it gets entangled in Supreme Court jurisprudence.

Then there’s the cheap mendacity of partisan attack dogs like Media Matters.  Never mind about whether they are fair and honest when they ruthlessly take comments out of context.  They can’t even be straightforward about their very identity. 

Is Media Matters an “avowedly political institution,” as Byron York suggests?  Or is it “a nonpartisan, progressive nonprofit that is unaffiliated with any political party or candidate” as Media Matters insists?

And is it worth insisting on the distinction just for the sake of a stinking non-profit designation?

It really is beside the point to take pleasure in the decline of liberalism or even to mourn it.  Everything in this world begins with soaring hope and high ideals and ends in shame and rotting cancer.

But for those of us who yearn for the moderation of a Burkean world of ordinary life and modest reform, the decline of liberalism does come as a relief.

Revived Libertarians

Since the shock of 9/11 we haven’t heard much from libertarians, not until Ron Paul ran for president.  Ron Paul will lose, of course, writes Patrick Ruffini.  But he might win by losing.  That’s what Pat Robertson did in 1988.

Pat Robertson’s 1988 campaign signaled that Christian Conservatives had arrived in the GOP. Ron Paul is doing the same for libertarians.

So, on Ruffini’s view, Ron Paul could be a positive force for Republicans rather than splitting the libertarians off into a third party.

That would be good, because the GOP needs a consistent libertarian force, a third corner tugging in the direction of smaller government while the social conservatives tug in the direction of virtue and the national security conservatives tug in the direction of a strong nation state.

The fact is that you can’t have a state with lots of freedom unless the people are self-regulating.  Until the millennium, that will mean religious people.

So if libertarians want a government that doesn’t write a new law to regulate every problem, they need a populace that is self-regulating and doesn’t need constant supervision.  Goes together like ham and cheese. 

Then the only thing needful would be for libertarians and national security conservatives to find common ground.  How about reciprocity in foreign policy?

The key principle is one of reciprocity. If you behave peacefully and embrace the norms of a libertarian society, we leave you alone. If you seek to destroy a free society, we will destroy you.

Ron Paul has attracted a lot of young voters.  That’s worth its weight in gold.

Income tax in the United States

The chaps at Wikipedia have a nice article on the US Income tax: Income tax in the United States, and very good one it is.

But the article only had a partial table of income tax rates.  Until now.  Yes now you can go and look at the history of income tax rates over at Wikipedia, courtesy of the tax research experts here at Road to the Middle Class.  Here’s a sneak preview. If you’d like.

Partial History of U.S. Federal Income Tax Rates Since 1913
Applicable Year	Income brackets	First bracket	Top bracket	Source
1913-1915	-	1%	7%	Census
1916	-	2%	15%	Census
1917	-	2%	67%	Census
1918	-	6%	73%	Census
1919-1920	-	4%	73%	Census
1921	-	4%	73%	Census
1922	-	4%	56%	Census
1923	-	3%	56%	Census
1924	-	1.5%	46%	Census
1925-1928	-	1.5%	25%	Census
1929	-	0.375%	24%	Census
1930-1931	-	1.125%	25%	Census
1932-1933	-	4%	63%	Census
1934-1935	-	4%	63%	Census
1936-1939	-	4%	79%	Census
1940	-	4.4%	81.1%	Census
1941	-	10%	81%	Census
1942-1943	-	19%	88%	Census
1944-1945	-	23%	94%	Census
1946-1947	-	19%	86.45%	Census
1948-1949	-	16.6%	82.13%	Census
1950	-	17.4%	84.36%	Census
1951	-	20.4%	91%	Census
1952-1953	-	22.2%	92%	Census
1954-1963	-	20%	91%	Census
1964	-	16%	77%	Census
1965-1967	-	14%	70%	Census
1968	-	14%	75.25%	Census
1969	-	14%	77%	Census
1970	-	14%	71.75%	Census
1979	15 brackets	14%	70%	IRS
1982	12 brackets	12%	50%	IRS
1987	5 brackets	11%	38.5%	IRS
1988	3 brackets	15%	33%	IRS
1991	3 brackets	15%	31%	IRS
1993	5 brackets	15%	39.6%	IRS
2001	5 brackets	15%	39.1%	IRS
2002	6 brackets	10%	38.6%	IRS
2003-2006	6 brackets	10%	35%	IRS

What a tale of woe!  And what a lot of tinkering.  Why can’t our Solons just set the tax rates low and leave them alone!

In Guatemala Today

In the highlands of Guatemala it’s one volcano after another.  Of course, they are all extinct.  For now.  And the tourist hotels are conveniently located to give a good view of the nearby volcano.  Volcanoes do look cute—until it rains an they let loose a mudslide.

Since Guatemala has been a pawn in US politics over recent decades, with poster girl Rigoberta Menchu as a victim of US imperialism, you have to go there to get a decent picture of what it’s really like.

And what it’s really like is a country in the middle of the flight from the land.  Guatemala City is growing like mad, up to 3.5 million in a country of 14 million, and the “chicken buses” (converted US school buses) race up and down the Panamerican Highway at top speed from Chichicastenanga in the rural Mayan heartland to Guatemala City and back and for less than a buck a ride.

It’s like any third world country.  Part rural, with women wearing traditional clothes, and part urban with restless young men driving around like maniacs.

And it’s ten years since the government and the rebels signed a peace treaty ending 30 years of civil war.  Which is about par for the course.  They say that your average serious civil war takes about thirty years, enough to consume two generations of hot-heads in the refiner’s fire of war.

Today there are horrific tales of armed robberies in Guatemala City, and stern warnings from guides about pickpockets in the market.  But people are building and working and going to school in Guatemala.  It’s the restless energy of humankind that cannot be denied for long.