Last year I invited readers to submit their thoughts as to what grand themes will dominate the 21st century, and I highlighted some of the responses in recent issues. As promised, my own views follow.

As the issues of war and peace and the defeat of totalitarianism were the dominant global themes of the century just past, there is a good chance that the war on terrorism, properly executed, with all of its repercussions, including the transformation of the Middle East, the reformation of radical Islam, and the reconfiguration of America’s role in the world, will be the dominant theme of the next 100 years. Certainly, these issues will dominate the headlines for at least the first decade or two.

There is, however, in my opinion, an issue that will trump even those of worldwide war and peace. It is the looming cultural, philosophical, and religious conflict on the question of the meaning of human nature. The advances in the biosciences and neurosciences have for the first time provided man with the capability to transform his very nature. As a result, we will be forced to return to the questions of who are we? and why are we here? in a way that has been too long absent from public discourse. And, because of the enormous incentives on the so-called “progressive” side of the debate, the implications for it will make the abortion debate of the past thirty years seem mild by comparison. As Eric Cohen of the Ethics and Public Policy Center has noted, this conflict will require new political thinking and a grappling with our dependence on modernity (and its handmaiden, “scientific progress”), its failings, and its presumed superiority.
The silliness of the recent announcement (probably a hoax) of a baby cloned by the clinic founded by the Raelian cult tends to trivialize the discussion while discrediting the pro-cloning argument. Thankfully, there is responsible debate on these questions that is well underway among a number of public intellectuals, such as Francis Fukuyama and Gregory Stock, and the President’s Council on Bioethics, under the leadership of Leon Kass, has published its report, which has been described as reminiscent of The Federalist Papers in its succinct outline of argument and counter-argument.

There will be political decisions on these issues of enormous impact and complexity under deliberation over the next several years. To hope that these decisions can be made in a morally neutral vacuum is a delusion. All due respect and sympathy for Christopher Reeve, but his comment to Barbara Walters that “religion and social conservatives should not even have a seat at the table in the debate…..” is hopelessly utilitarian and totally misguided. To delegate these decisions to the scientists and professional “bioethicists” (or worse, the judiciary) is a dereliction of duty in a democratic republic.

A final thought: For those who place their faith in the rationality of man, I think of Pascal’s “wager”—if you’re agnostic, you’d better hope (and bet) that there is a transcendent Creator. The rationality of man doesn’t have a very good record. One century of mass murder perpetrated by totalitarian regimes driven by the utopian notion of the denial of human nature should have been enough to convince us that just because man can doesn’t necessarily mean he should.

First, let’s get this out of the way: Trent Lott was absolutely correct in resigning as Senate Majority Leader, not because he is a racist, but because he has failed the tests of leadership, of which the Thurman birthday party flap was the latest.

Now, can we quit apologizing and have a serious conversation about race in this country? And about the Civil War, its legacy, and the motives of its protagonists on both sides? And about true empowerment policies for blacks without the knee-jerk reactions of the race-baiters and hustlers? And about the disastrous representation of blacks provided by the Democratic Party in the period since the civil rights revolution of the 1960s?
For all the damage Lott did in depleting the Republican’s moral capital on racial issues and setting himself up as what Thomas Sowell calls a “living red herring”, this episode should be used as a teaching moment as well as an opportunity to advance the policies of empowerment over those of entitlement across a broad front. We should be instructive, for example, in explaining how an agenda of school choice, welfare reform, and faith-based initiatives serves black America better than the tired and failed Great Society agenda. We should explain that race-based preferences in employment, public contracts, and college admissions are discriminatory in a way that violates the Fourteenth Amendment as well as the spirit of Dr. King’s legacy, not to mention harmful to the very people they are designed to help.
I admit that the liberal Democrats captured at least the appearance of the moral high ground on race almost forty years ago during the civil rights battles. For example, many conservatives, for libertarian reasons, opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because of the “public accommodations clause”. As a 22-year old, I shared these views at the time and would like to think my reasons were noble. And it is clear that conservatives were too slow to react to the hijacking by Southern racists of the worthy and honorable principle of states’ rights federalism embedded in the Tenth Amendment. But that moral high ground has been consistently undermined over the ensuing period by the liberals’ paternalistic policies of entitlement guided by what President Bush has called the “soft bigotry of low expectations”.

Some Republicans are so intimidated by the Lott fiasco that they are ready to concede and appease on a number of critical policy issues involving race and ethnicity in the name of harmony and to show “good faith”. To the contrary, the time is now to reach for the true moral high ground of a color-blind agenda. President Bush has the personal moral capital to lead on this. He should do so forcefully.

Contrary to much of the mainstream commentary on the November 2002 election, it was very much about ideas—right ones and wrong ones. Shortly after the election, James Howard Gibbons wrote an editorial in The Houston Chronicle entitled “How a Tiny Tribe Won All the Marbles”, a screed about how the forces of evil, i.e., Republicans, won because of the void in the Democratic message as to persuasive policy alternatives. In a letter, I responded as follows:

“My first reaction to this incredible piece was, ‘are you serious?’ Then, I caught myself. Of course. Such is the arrogance of the left in America, which is disdainful of the voice of mainstream Americans and is condescending and insulting to the intelligence of the very ‘have-nots’ whose cause you purport to champion. It is a great example of the kind of snobbery described in Joseph Epstein’s new book, Snobbery: The American Version, as that of the ‘virtucrats’—those who, according to Epstein, ‘are convinced their views are not only correct but morally righteous, and who are the crème de la crème of political snobs’. Keep it up. You and your fellow-travelers will keep the Republicans in the majority for a generation.”

I’m not naïve. This country is still in the condition of political and cultural “stalemate” in many ways, as described by William Schneider last April (see my May 2002 issue), and the right certainly doesn’t have all the answers, but the political left has some problems, and they were brilliantly outlined in a recent essay by Paul Greenberg, part of which follows:

The trouble with the left is that:
*Its first, instinctive resort is to power rather than persuasion, to government rather than to liberty.
*It has fallen out of love with freedom, and in love with security.
*It has forgotten the power of ideas and thinks emotions, preferably fear and envy, will prove the ticket to success.
*It has come to believe that certain groups need to be privileged on the basis of their race, sex, or class.
*It has a surplus of compassion-often only in the abstract-and a shortage of common sense.
*It is addicted to victimization, and so invites more.
*It has come to prefer spin to principle and sound bites to ideas.
*It has lost touch with its religious roots and imagery.
*It may love the people, but not the individual, who might make choices the government would not approve.”

There is more, but you get the idea.

One election, no matter how decisive, does not constitute realignment. This will come only with a full frontal assault on the premises of the governing paradigm of the left. For this to succeed there should be the recognition that the recent election was decided on ideas, not spin, and that these ideas should now manifest themselves in bold, strategic, and transformational policy initiatives.