After studying this issue for several weeks, it’s clear to me that we will not resolve it or other issues involving genetic research, not to mention abortion, until we resolve as a society what is meant by being human and at what point human life begins, with its automatically attached and inalienable rights. This is obviously a moral question, but the answer can be grounded philosophically. Until we answer it, the debate will be pointless. When we do, we should return to the time-honored principle that human beings are never to be considered as means, only as ends. I’m sorry, folks, but it’s either a life or it’s not a life, and the argument that an embryo is going to die anyway won’t wash. Whose principle is that?

I suppose President Bush made the right decision on federally funded research, and the only feasible one under the circumstances. And he provided significant leadership as the “teacher-in-chief” in his TV address announcing the decision. But much more will be needed, for the larger question now is, what happens next, particularly in an age in which, as Tom Wolfe has suggested, science and the inexorable march of “progress” are courts from which there seem to be no appeals. The debate has really just begun.

One of the oft-repeated quotes of the Clinton era is the “vast right-wing conspiracy” allegation made by Hillary Clinton on the Today show in January 1998, as the “Monica” case was exploding onto the scene. Well, surprise, surprise, if you look closely, there have been several recent sightings of evidence of left-wing collusion (a lighter c-word): the joint funding efforts of the National Education Association and the Democratic Party in the 2000 elections; the cooperative legislative strategy meetings among radical environmental, civil rights, and women’s groups; the exit report by John DiIulio, “Unlevel Playing Field”, disclosing widespread agency bias against faith-based social service organizations in Federal grants; and the coalition of the usual left-leaning suspects arrayed against privatizing any portion of Social Security. Wherever there is an effort to roll back progressivism and one-size-fits-all big government, the same familiar faces show up, almost always in alliance with the far left of the Democratic Party. It’s all of a piece and it’s just the tip of the iceberg. I’m sure the mainstream media will provide in-depth coverage any deadline now.

Guest Essay

(The following essay was published in FrontPage Magazine by my friend and political philosophy group colleague, Jeff Crow, an ex-fire department paramedic and writer in Houston. It is entitled “Gun Rights and Compassion: Apples and Oranges”)

Jamie was in “one of his moods” again. When Doris Fleener’s troubled teenaged son felt depressed he would shut himself in his room and play that awful heavy metal music so loud that it made the windows rattle. This time, when she knocked on his bedroom door he didn’t answer, and when she poked her head inside to ask him to please turn down that racket, she found Jamie with a shotgun, holding its barrel to his temple with one hand and his thumb on the trigger with the other. Suppressing panic, Doris switched off the stereo and approaching her son with soothing words, reached out for the shotgun. Her hand had barely grasped the barrel and begun to pull it forward when Jamie pulled the trigger. A twelve-gauge load of buckshot blasted through and blew away both of her son’s eyes and most of his frontal lobe—blinding and lobotomizing him instantly. Jamie Fleener survives to this day, sightless and insane, in a nursing home where Doris visits daily.

Some years ago, I was the paramedic who transported Jamie (not his real name) to the hospital. I saw first hand the son’s catastrophe and the mother’s grief, as I have seen hundreds of bloody victims of gun violence. Gun control advocates might ask how, having seen all this, I could support freedom of gun ownership. Look Doris Fleener in the eye, they’d say, and sell her on the right to keep and bear arms. Convince her that gun control is mistaken public policy. Tough cases test political philosophy. So what exactly would I say to Mrs. Fleener?

Well, if she would listen, I’d tell Mrs. Fleener that despite her personal tragedy a nation where law-abiding citizens have the right to own firearms is, on the whole, safer than a nation that denies that right. “If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns,” read the bumper sticker seen on many Texas pickup trucks. This may sound like a simplistic redneck slogan, but it is logically unassailable and backed by solid evidence. “Analyzing 18 years of data for more than 3,000 counties,” writes John Lott, author of More Guns, Less Crime, “found that violent crime drops significantly” when states permit law abiding citizens to keep and carry guns. Criminals fear armed citizens. The National Institute of Justice interviewed convicted violent felons in prison and found that more than a third had been “scared off, shot at, wounded or captured by an armed victim…. and about two-thirds had at least one acquaintance who had this experience.” More than half, “agreed that ‘most criminals are more worried about meeting an armed victim than they are about running into the police.’”

I’d remind Mrs. Fleener that far more people are harmed in automobile accidents than with firearm mishaps. Yes, she might say, but unlike automobiles, guns serve no “utilitarian purpose” such as transportation; they are only used to kill. So why don’t gun control advocates propose disarming the police? The answer is that, although only a tiny fraction of police officers ever fire their weapons, they carry guns for their own self-defense. Self-defense is a utilitarian purpose, perhaps the most fundamental one of all. It should be the right of every law-abiding citizen, not just those who work for the government.

If all else failed, I’d cite the Constitution. If Mrs. Fleener had read the Second Amendment, she might object that it was intended to restrict gun ownership to the equivalent of today’s National Guard. But, as Randy Barnett of the Cato Institute explains, far from intending restriction of gun use to a militia, “The Founders’ attitude towards firearms and the desirability of an armed citizenry would put even the most ardent modern gun extremist to shame.” Whether we consult the writings of Thomas Jefferson (“No freeman shall be debarred from the use of arms in his own lands or tenements”), John Adams (supporting “arms in the hands of citizens, to be used at individual discretion…in private self-defense”), or Patrick Henry (“The great object is that every man be armed…Everyone who is able may have a gun.”), we find that the Framers and their contemporaries spoke with one voice on this issue.

I could say all these things to Mrs. Fleener, but she probably wouldn’t be persuaded. And while she may bear her grief in silence, many others like her don’t. Many people whose lives have been affected by firearm tragedies channel their despair into political activism. These are the Grief Stricken Activists—the Sarah Bradys, the Yoko Onos of the world. We hear the GSA’s poignant stories on the news, see them lobby Congress, demanding “responsible legislation” to prevent such tragedies from ever happening to others. Who could be so hard-hearted as to ignore their pleas? Why, anyone would do and say the same things, if they were in their shoes. But that’s just the point. The GSA perspective is understandably one-dimensional. Public policy must not be dictated by anguished survivors of personal tragedy striving to assuage their grief, but by clear-headed citizens, grasping the broader implications of their actions—exactly the kind of citizens who framed our Constitution.

With the recent appeals court decision ruling against the race-based admissions policies of the University of Georgia and conflicting decisions in Michigan, Texas, and Washington, the stage is now set for the Supreme Court to resolve the issue once and for all and hopefully, restore the spirit of the 14th Amendment and Dr. King’s dream by ending racial preferences in hiring, admissions, and contracting across the board. It would help if the Bush administration would provide more aggressive leadership from the Justice Department and the President’s own “bully pulpit”. It would be even better if the problem could be resolved by Congress, outside the judicial arena, but that’s too much courage to expect.