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The Weblog at The View from the Core - Tue. 11/30/04 06:03:49 PM
   
   

"Talking the Talk"

An insightful and forthright article by George Weigel at EPPC, yesterday:

.... What Kerry’s secularist supporters can’t seem to understand is that the evangelicals, the John Paul II Catholics, and the observant Jews don’t need explaining; what needs explaining is the Harvard faculty club, Michael Moore, and most of the op-ed regulars at the New York Times – people who’ve persuaded themselves that a profound belief in the God of the Bible, expressed in a commitment to live by the Ten Commandments, is the fast track to fascism. They’re the anomaly, not the believers. If they’d ever take a field trip out of their secularist bunkers to meet the rest of America, they might find we’re not so scary after all.
The secularists did have one triumph on November 2: Proposition 71 in California, which embroils the state in scientifically dubious and morally reprehensible stem-cell research. Prop 71's success – in an election cycle that saw proponents of traditional marriage bat eleven-for-eleven and pro-life candidates do very, very well – suggests that the "values people," as we’re now labeled, haven’t yet learned to talk the talk on issues posed by the new biotechnologies. We can make the arguments – scientific, moral, philosophical; the arguments are rationally persuasive. Then Michael J. Fox comes into the hearing room and the debate is over.
What’s the language that meets the challenge posed by misconstrued compassion ("Did you want Chris Reeve to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair?") and utilitarianism ("If it works, it must be right.")? We don’t have it, yet. We need it. Soon.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 11/30/04 06:03:49 PM
Categorized as Social/Cultural.

   

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