People, Who Need People...

Monday's call from the Projo editoral page for worldwide population control…

There are just too many people in the world, and there are, of course, more every day — and 80 million more each year. The effects, in declining standards of living in many places, as well as in environmental degradation, are obvious. The increase should be sharply slowed and then halted.

...returns me to Spengler's explanation of global finance in his Asia Times column from yesterday. According to Spengler, the basic division in the world is between an older generation in search of a stable and comfortable retirement and a younger generation seeking growth and opportunity. The system works for everyone when the older generation loans part its wealth, accrued over a lifetime, to the younger generation who combines the borrowed resources and their youthful energy to create new value, a piece of which is then returned to the oldsters, helping to fund their retirement.

But if a new generation is discouraged from ever coming into being, it will not be as easy as the Malthusians on the Projo editorial board and elsewhere assume it will be for current and future retirees to find the resources needed to maintain the standard of living they're expecting to have. Standards of living, as Spengler explained, depend not only on material resources, but also on complex interconnections to a world full of energetic, creative people. To believe that bureaucratic planning can be used to limit the number of people and their associated energies, without major impacts on financial and government systems built on the assumption of dynamic human growth, is sheer folly.

So Many Ways to Go Wrong

Welcome to the small-world reality of gay Westerner commercial baby creation outsourced to the third world:

Yonatan Gher and his partner, who are Israeli, plan eventually to tell their child about being made in India, in the womb of a stranger, with the egg of a Mumbai housewife they picked from an Internet lineup.

The embryo was formed in January in an Indian fertility clinic about 2,500 miles from the couple’s home in Tel Aviv, produced by doctors who have begun specializing in surrogacy services for couples from around the world.

"The child will know early on that he or she is unique, that it came into the world in a very special way," said Mr. Gher, 29, a communications officer for the environmental group Greenpeace.

An enterprise known as reproductive outsourcing is a new but rapidly expanding business in India. Clinics that provide surrogate mothers for foreigners say they have recently been inundated with requests from the United States and Europe, as word spreads of India’s mix of skilled medical professionals, relatively liberal laws and low prices.

Commercial surrogacy, which is banned in some states and some European countries, was legalized in India in 2002. The cost comes to about $25,000, roughly a third of the typical price in the United States. That includes the medical procedures; payment to the surrogate mother, which is often, but not always, done through the clinic; plus air tickets and hotels for two trips to India (one for the fertilization and a second to collect the baby). ...

So far, for the Israeli couple, the experience of having a baby has been strangely virtual. They perused profiles of egg donors that were sent by e-mail ("We picked the one with the highest level of education," Mr. Gher said). From information that followed, they rejected a factory worker in favor of a housewife, who they thought would have a less stressful lifestyle.

Mr. Gher posts updates about the process on Facebook. And soon the clinic will start sending ultrasound images of their developing child by e-mail. Highly pixelated, blown-up passport photos of the egg donor and surrogate mother adorn a wall of their apartment in Israel.

And everybody will act surprised when a dark underbelly emerges. On we lurch.

"Having this baby doesn't make me any less of a man."

So how much of the Brave New World will be purely a matter of semantics?

The man who stunned the world when he announced he was pregnant gave an intimate insight into his personal life in a revealing television interview with Oprah.

Thomas Beatie stripped off for the cameras and bared his baby bump and also revealed pictures from his beauty queen days as a young woman.

However, the 34-year-old transsexual also told chat show host Oprah Winfrey that he feared for his own safety and admitted doctors had warned him his baby could be killed because of the revulsion at her birth.

As a pure example of the mainstreaming of relativism, it appears that Beatie is a man mostly because he/she claims to be so:

Beatie legally became a man after undergoing a sex change operation - but kept her female reproductive organs.

He told People magazine he decided to get pregnant after wife of five years Nancy had a hysterectomy.

He. Her. Small breasts and facial hair. Womb.

Poor child.

The Eye That's Always Open

Tom Shevlin sees Big Brother in the arrival of E-Z Pass:

... a recent ABC survey found that almost three-quarters of Americans support expanding our surveillance apparatus including eighty six percent of Republicans who support Rudy Giuliani and over seventy percent of registered Democrats.

So what's the big deal? Why care? Because America was founded on the premise that the individual must be protected from the intrusion of government and the expansion of the surveillance state strikes directly at the heart of our personal liberty.

Just think about how a not-too-distant future trip to the Providence Place Mall could play out.

My first thought upon hearing the E-Z Pass news was that we'll likely find toll-booths beginning to pepper our highways once the General Assembly decides that an automatic debit system for tolls would sap sufficient aggravation to get away with further bleeding of the public. Tom and my reactions aren't mutually exclusive, of course.

Another item across which I've just stumbled:

Privacy advocates have long viewed red light cameras with the suspicion that the devices were the first step down a path of increased surveillance. Those fears may come true as the city of Oakland, California has revealed that it is working with the state legislature to secure a change in the law that will allow red light cameras to become full-scale surveillance cameras. In a memo from the Oakland Police Department dated June 26, Police Chief Wayne G. Tucker recommended that the city's lobbyist be ordered to advocate a new law in Sacramento.

"The legislation would also allow the use of those (red light camera) images for evidentiary purposes other than the enforcement of red light violations, such as reckless driving, assaults, public nuisance activity, drug dealing, etc."

The easy comfort that all of those people who support additional surveillance likely offer to each other is that those who do no wrong need have no fear. The problem is that those who would abuse power are often masterful in labeling a convenient batch of activities as "wrong" according to the law. Think, for example, political speech.

Sometimes a prudent caution requires a novelist's imagination; toward that end, consider that social surveillance equipment could track the movements of multiple people, helping to determine when meetings have happened. Inchoate opposition groups could be scuttled before they begin even to dream of effecting substantial change, perhaps with a first-class-mailed fine for jaywalking.

A Chip in Our Shoulders

It probably won't be HIV that brings the push for microchip injection in the West, but then again, it probably won't be "right wing" homeland security initiatives, either:

Lawmakers in Indonesia's Papua are mulling the selective use of chip implants in HIV carriers to monitor their behaviour in a bid to keep them from infecting others, a doctor said Tuesday.

John Manangsang, a doctor who is helping to prepare a new healthcare regulation bill for Papua's provincial parliament, said that unusual measures were needed to combat the virus.

"We in the government in Papua have to think hard on ways to provide protection to people from the spread of the disease," Manangsang told AFP.

"Some of the infected people experience a change of behaviour and can turn more aggressive and would not think twice of infecting others," he alleged, saying lawmakers were considering various sanctions for these people.

Drunk on Antiseptics

I was at a loss to choose a category for this curious bit of information — which I originally thought to be typical email-forward spam — but it seems like something worth knowing about:

Just wanted to send you a quick email and warn you about using hand sanitizers wtih your young kids. We have been using that with Sydney in place of hand washing for convience sake. Today she told me she was going up to her room to get a toy, while I was downstairs feeding Griffin, and after taking longer then it should I called for her. When she didn't answer I knew she was up to something and the bathroom door was closed. She got into the hand sanitizer and had ingested some of it. There wasn't a large amount missing from the bottle but I could smell it on her breath.

Within approx. 10 min. she was all glassy eyed and wobbly in her feet. As the minutes passed, she continued to get worse and got to the point where she couldn't even stand up or walk, it was awful!!

I called poison control immediately and they told me to take her to the ER right away due to the alcohol level in hand sanitizers. As we were driving there her speech became slurred and harder to understand and her eyes looked awful. They admitted her and did urine and blood tests and it turns out that her blood alcohol level was .10 — which is legally drunk. It turns out that the hand sanitizers (Purell) have 62% alcohol in them and the dr. compared it to her drinking something that is 120 proof.

And here I thought I'd come up with the worst possible abuse of the stuff when I've used it to clear my sinuses.

Into the Abyss or the Same-but-Different?

There's an attraction, among older folks, to validating what the kids are doing. Nobody wants to become the modern version of that fuddy-duddy whom they mocked as children, but there's a risk of overlooking important considerations as one rushes to be cool about the modern-day Walkman, the latest music, or newfangled manifestations of the recklessness of youth. The case in point is Jason Fry, in his Wall Street Journal Real Time column on the "New Generation's Public Disclosures" (note that "After Net kids" is a generational coinage, not a group of specific young'n's):

What do you do when you realize how public your online life is? You could retreat into anonymity and try to ensure you leave no trace online -- but increasingly there's something odd about a person who seems to leave no Google trace. You could try to scrub your online image, getting rid of the things you'd rather not have people see and/or taking steps to elevate what you do want people to see in search results. But that generally doesn't work.

Or you could say "So what?" and accept that every aspect of your online life is out there for people to find and judge as they will. (Note I'm not talking about personal information like Social Security numbers -- that's a whole nother column.) You could decide that if some people then judge you poorly based on one aspect of that online life, that's their problem -- a decision that will help you develop the thicker skin we all need in a changing world.

That's the strategy the After Net kids have pursued -- not consciously, but because it's the only world they've ever known. Will it cost some of them jobs? Undoubtedly -- but not for much longer. Because it's their worldview that will win the day as they assume the positions of authority vacated by people my age. The ones who'll struggle? Here's betting it'll be Before Netters like me, with our weirdly sterile Google lives that begin in middle age and our old-fashioned skittishness about online embarrassment and criticism.

I wouldn't say that this is a trend that requires those who are concerned about it to do something, but to declare that we oughtn't warn the After Netters about the dangers of their public personae is to lead them away from a sober assessment of the world in which they live. Perhaps there is nothing that can be done to stop the technological advances in question — even if there were reasons to make the attempt — but it is odd that a man who" ould argue such a thing doesn't seem to realize that human nature and diversity of behavior will persist, as well.

One can easily sketch a mental image of the rebellious youth who lets it all hang out — prudent public image be damned. One can also easily sketch the overly primped and primed youth whose public image is so clearly concocted that one suspects an underlying truth that he or she feels a need to hide. But most kids will fall between these extremes. In other words, integral to his conclusion that "Before Net guy running HR" (turning away applicants associated with beer bong photos) will one day be replaced by "an After Netter with an old MySpace page of her own" (ensuring that reckless use of the Internet will cost kids jobs "not for much longer") is the flawed assumption that the former's lack of MySpace translates into a lack of sympathy and that the latter will not only have her own MySpace page, but one broadcasting keg stands or the like.

I rather expect middle-of-the-spectrum kids to grow into adults who use reasonable judgment in categorizing applicants, who will continue to be judged in keeping with the quality of their own apparent judgment. Therefore, kids in proximity to digital video cameras ought to be prepared to ensure that their behavior is such that they are confident in saying "so what" to those who might point it out in the future.

That all said, I'm more concerned about a possibility that Fry misses altogether. The article that he cites reports that one "fourth of human resources decision makers said they had rejected candidates based on personal information found online," but MySpace drunkenness is only an example. Although it isn't mentioned, another example of online personal information could be opinions on political, cultural, or religious issues. One HR respondent admitted to rejecting an applicant based on activities that "did not fit ethically" with the company. Who knows to what that refers, in this instance, but it could just as easily be participating in pro-life marches as biting the heads off squirrels. In other words, judgment could be passed based not on what you did, but on what you believe.

Over years of office evolution, random ideological challenges at the water cooler could become a thing of the past. Opportunities could diminish to meet people who have different cultural personae through related employment personae. The Internet's primary function is to accelerate our access to information, and that includes qualities of personality as well as facts and figures. Whether or not fretting over the consequences makes me a fuddy-duddy, I worry that we haven't reached a sufficient level of general respect and capacity for intellectual distance in order to avoid self-stratification as the collection of personal information outpaces the development of personal empathy.

I humbly suggest that encouraging everybody to post multimedia clips of their youthful indiscretions as Internet-speed first impressions would be a foolish way to remedy discrepancies between the pacing of relationship formation and the aggregation of biographical data.

Fatherland, Socialism or Death

In honor of today’s worldwide May Day celebrations, I present to you the slogan of the Western Hemisphere’s leading socialists, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Cuban Leader Fidel Castro…

"We will triumph. Fatherland, socialism or death."

Humanity in a Brave New World

At the risk of confirming suspicions of conservatives' reactionary squeamishness, I have to admit to huge, visceral aversion to this sort of thing:

Women might soon be able to produce sperm in a development that could allow lesbian couples to have their own biological daughters, according to a pioneering study published today.

Scientists are seeking ethical permission to produce synthetic sperm cells from a woman's bone marrow tissue after showing that it possible to produce rudimentary sperm cells from male bone-marrow tissue.

The researchers said they had already produced early sperm cells from bone-marrow tissue taken from men. They believe the findings show that it may be possible to restore fertility to men who cannot naturally produce their own sperm.

But the results also raise the prospect of being able to take bone-marrow tissue from women and coaxing the stem cells within the female tissue to develop into sperm cells, said Professor Karim Nayernia of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.

Creating sperm from women would mean they would only be able to produce daughters because the Y chromosome of male sperm would still be needed to produce sons. The latest research brings the prospect of female-only conception a step closer.

On first look, it would seem that neither the standard pro-life nor the standard secular community objections apply, but where does that leave one's sense that we are on the cusp of changing human society in irrevocable ways and with barely a thought of the consequences. Of course, Christians believe, in the words of Mel Gibson's character in Signs, "that whatever's going to happen, there will be someone there to help them." The optimistic pragmatist, with whom I often feel a certain intellectual sympathy, might feel that nothing that is fundamental in humanity will change. And there are certainly liberals who, in their variously motivated advocacy on behalf of homosexuals, will throw themselves behind any "advancement" that allows those folks to more closely simulate normal lives.

Still, I can't shake the sense that all of these modern permutations to society will fall on us all at once in their aggregate magnitude and our society will jerk and sputter in a new, disassociated direction — perhaps under constant attack from true reactionaries from foreign cultures. We who believe that humanity has long had all that it needed, really, no matter the comforts that progress might provide may find ourselves unable to avoid the tremendous questions that the next couple of centuries will pose. Properly seen, it seems to me that such a predicament is more a blessing than a curse.

The Fairness of New Media, or The Power of Jim Hummel's Pinky

Not too long ago, public figures — beleaguered school superintendents, for example — could leverage print media and law enforcement procedures in order to manipulate public understanding of confrontations, much as North Kingstown Superintendent James M. Halley is doing in this Projo report:

Halley filed a complaint with the police Thursday alleging that Hummel, a senior reporter with ABC’s local affiliate, WLNE, struck him in the chest and tried to block him from entering the high school auditorium. The report was forwarded to Town Solicitor Terrence Simpson, who is expected to decide early next week what criminal charges, if any, grew out of the confrontation, Capt. Charles Brennan said. ...

In the complaint, Halley claims Hummel "jumped in front of him, bumping him and blocking his access to the door." He says the newsman "put up his left forearm and pushed against him, striking his chest and arm area" while holding his foot to the bottom of the door to block his entrance.

In the report, Halley also tells the police that he "advised [Hummel] that he was not authorized to be on stage." He said he wished to press charges, though he was not injured.

In the world of new media, also provided by the Projo, Internet-connected citizens can observe for themselves why it is an injustice even to deem it necessary to note that Superintendent Halley "was not injured." At most, Hummel's pinky lightly brushed Halley's jacket, a moment after Halley had attempted to push past the reporter, who asked, "you gonna knock me over?"

In the not too distant future, it won't only be reporters who wield the power of the archive, but any citizen with a video-capturing cell phone.

Look on Their Works and Despair

Yeah, yeah, I know I'm a superstitious flatearther afraid of science and willing to impose my fear-based morality on others, but I'm beginning to wonder if our culture will be able to muster the fortitude to object to any scientific "advances." The latest:

Scientists have created the world's first human-sheep chimera - which has the body of a sheep and half-human organs.

The sheep have 15 per cent human cells and 85 per cent animal cells - and their evolution brings the prospect of animal organs being transplanted into humans one step closer. ...

The process would involve extracting stem cells from the donor's bone marrow and injecting them into the peritoneum of a sheep's foetus. When the lamb is born, two months later, it would have a liver, heart, lungs and brain that are partly human and available for transplant.

Are we just numb to this sort of thing at this point? Or do we live in a state of disbelief, as if the news were fiction? Or do we lack the imagination to envision the ways in which these trends can go horribly wrong, or the self-awareness to understand how the lines in the sand of our tolerance drift away with every gust of scientific presumption?

Mitt Romney on Social Issues

I know. I’m not supposed to be posting anything on the 2008 Presidential campaign before June. However, I’m adding a codicil to my New Year’s resolution: I can make an exception when able to present primary-source material about a Presidential candidate (or someone with a Presidential exploratory committee) that adds to a discussion area already active here at Anchor Rising.

At the National Review Institute’s (direct quote from NRO-Editor-at-Large Jonah Goldberg: "Whatever that is") Conservative Summit held this past weekend in Washington D.C., Presidential Candidate and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney gave a substantive address on his philosophy concerning the major issues in American politics -- limited and fiscally conservative government, healthcare, foreign policy, and social and life issues. Here's what Governor Romney had to say about gay marriage, abortion and stem-cell research...

Governor Mitt Romney: When I ran [for Governor of Massachusetts], there were a couple of social issues that were part of that debate. You probably know what some of them were.

One was gay marriage. I opposed then and do now oppose gay marriage and civil unions.

One was related to abortion. My opponent was in favor of lowering the age where a young woman could get an abortion without parental consent from 18 to 16…I, of course, opposed changing the law in that regard.

Another issue was the death penalty, I was for, [my opponent] was against.

Another was English immersion. For a long time, our state had bilingual education, where the schools or the parents get to choose what language their child is taught in. I said that’s just not right. If kids want to be successful in America, they have to learn the language of America. We fought for that, and by the way, I won that one, my opponent did not.

Now, as you know, after I got elected, Massachusetts became sort of the center stage for a number of very important social issues, one of them being gay marriage. I am proud of the fact that I and my team did everything within our power and within the law to stand up for traditional marriage. This is not, in my view and the view of my team, a matter of adult rights. We respect the rights of gay citizens to live as they wish and to have tolerance and respect and not be discriminated against. I feel that very deeply. At the same time, we believe that marriage is not primarily about adults. In a society, marriage is primarily about the development and nurturing of children. A child’s development, I believe, is enhanced by access to a mom and a dad. I believe in every child’s right to a mom and a dad.

Now, there’s one key social issue where I did not run as a social conservative, at least one. That was with regards to abortion. I said I would protect a woman’s right to choose an abortion. I’ve changed my view on that, as you probably know.

Let me tell you the history about that. Some years ago, when I was at the Olympics, I met a guy named Mark Lewis. He was head of our marketing there. He told me that he was a finalist for a Rhodes scholarship. I don’t know how far he got. His final interview was with a German interviewer and the interviewer said to him “Mr. Lewis, who is one of your political heroes?” and he said Ronald Reagan. The German had the predictable response -- *GASP*. He said how in the world can you square that statement with what Churchill said, which is that “a young person who is not a liberal has no heart?” Mark responded by repeating the last portion of that Churchillian comment, that “an older person who was not a conservative had no brain” and adding “I, Herr Doctor, simply matured early”.

On abortion, I wasn’t always a Ronald Reagan conservative. Neither was Ronald Regan, by the way. But like him, I learned with experience.

In my case, the point where that experience came most to bear was with regards to learning about stem-cell research. Let me tell you, there are so many different ways of getting stem cells. I was delving into that because my legislature was proposing new legislation that re-defined when life began. I think it’s interesting that the legislature thinks it has the capacity to make that determination. Our state had always said that life began at conception, but they were going to re-define when life began, so I spent some time learning (with, by the way, a number of people in this room who helped) about all of the different types and sources of stem-cells, not only adult stem cells and umbilical stem cells and stem cells from existing lines, but also surplus embryos from in-vitro fertilization. I supported all of those.

But for me, there was a bright-line when you started creating new life for the purposes of destruction and experimentation. That was somatic-cell nuclear transfer (or cloning) and also what’s known as embryo farming. At one point, I was sitting down with the head of the stem-cell research department at Harvard and the provost of Harvard University, and they were explaining these techniques to me. I imagined in my mind this embryo farming. Embryo farming is taking donor sperm and donor eggs and putting them together in the laboratory and creating a new embryo. If that’s not creating new life, then I don’t know what is. I imagined row after row after row of racks of these, created either by the cloning process or the farming process. At that point, one of the two gentleman said, “Governor, there’s really not a moral issue at stake here, because we destroy the embryos at 14 days”. I have to tell you, that comment and that perspective hit me very hard. As he left the room with his colleague, I turned to Beth Myers, my chief of staff, and said I want to make it real clear: we have so cheapened the value and sanctity of human life in our society that someone can think there’s not a moral issue because we kill embryos at 14 days.

Shortly thereafter, I announced I was firmly pro-life.

Now, you don’t have to take my word for it, by the way. The nice thing about being able to watch governors is you don’t have to look just at what they say, you can look at what they’ve done. Over my term, I had 4 or 5 different measures that came to my desk [concerning life issues] and on every single one I came down on the side of respecting human life. That didn’t make me real popular in the state. Remember, in Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy is considered a moderate….

In the next few days, I’ll have more from Mitt Romney on other issues, excerpts from Newt Gingrich and Jeb Bush on the meaning and future direction of conservatism and from Tony Snow on the Iraq Surge and the President’s new healthcare proposal, plus a whole lot of insights and opinions that I heard discussed at the conference that will bring you up-to-date on the state of conservatism…

Needed: A Eugenics Program for Public Policies

You've likely come across the notion that a society that rejects a governing morality will require laws to fill the void. Well, have you noticed that those whose societal aspirations run against the grain of traditional morality are often quick to treat all objections — even mere expressions of concern — as if they are arguments for government restrictions? Two nights ago, for example, I posted a response to John Derbyshire's thoughts on eugenics in which I did not presume to suggest how the tricky circumstances of the future ought to be handled, and somehow I've apparently taken a leadership role in a movement to ban "genetic-intervention procedures."

As much as I'm kindly inclined toward some of those who make such arguments, it seems to me that there's a petulantly played rhetorical trick involved. Paraphrasing: "You have moral objections to eugenics? You're going to be isolated on this one. Good luck making it illegal! And if you do, good luck hunting down those who seek treatments in other countries! I'll choose freedom, you autocratic moralist!"

There's some irony in the fact that my leading concern was that government involvement in eugenics is inevitable to the extent that the technology is successful. It's mighty big of Mr. Derbyshire to accept "a permanent underclass [as] the price of liberty" — as if he'll be the one paying it — but there are surely not enough voters of similar mind to make Derbyshire's acceptance more than just symbolic. The post of his to which I initially responded treated "***STATE-SPONSORED*** eugenics programs" as a legitimate concern, and my point has been that such programs will have too much moral and practical gravity for state sponsorship to remain in distant orbit.

I'd also note that I don't use "underclass" as a marker of moral stain on a society (as do liberals), but as an actual and threatening category within that society. I would, in fact, concede that we would have a moral responsibility to help those whose families are under threat of perpetual deficiency, but there would also be a strong public interest case to be made for doing so. Arguably, those unable to afford, or comprehend the benefit of, eugenic technology are precisely those whose children require it most — and with respect to whose children society would benefit from it most. More extremely, would Derbyshire be willing to pay the price of liberty if it were the underclass's violent rejection of a system that is rapidly and inexorably locking them out? And once the public interest is ceded in such a matter, we've opened the door to creeping micromanagement.

That is not to say that I believe invidious government involvement to be the only peril of eugenics; as a society, we ought to fully vet various other aspects before advancing, or choosing not to do so (a process that is not well served by quick resort to heated anti-theocrat rhetoric). Consider an argument of which Derbyshire and others seem fond: that "the ordinary kind of mate selection we humans have been engaging in for the past 100,000 years" is not substantially different from eugenics. One needn't delve into the various ways of differentiating between the two to unearth a difficulty: Characterizing mating (for most intents and purposes, marriage) in these terms, it's possible to see divorce as the remedy for errors in judgment. What would be the remedy when parents feel they've erred in concocting their children's qualities? If we're in the realm of consumer freedoms, how do we translate the well-understood concepts of returns, exchanges, and customer service? Would government involvement be justifiable — even necessary — in that area?

As is observable in the comments to my previous post, proponents of science's march into the realm of science fiction aren't shy about acknowledging the possibility of unintended consequences... and passing them right by. Morality serves a purpose, however, and through discussion of its implications, we can address unpleasant complexities before we rush headlong into the brier patch.

ADDENDUM:
In his own follow-up to John Derbyshire, Ramesh Ponnuru writes:

It is nice to see Derbyshire setting aside his admonitions against attempting to apply logic to human affairs, even if he is only setting them aside selectively. (That’s why he’s in a stand-off with Justin Katz. Derbyshire suggests that it’s pointless for Katz to raise objections to eugenics, since people are going to practice it whatever he says. When Katz points out that people are going to practice it collectively, too, Derbyshire falls back on . . . the force of the arguments he will make when that day comes.)

Here's the relevant paragraph from Derbyshire:

Speaking as a small-government conservative, I'd like to think that we—we, the people—are able, through our democratic process, to deny the invention of bogus "rights" and new kinds of government transfer payments. I would certainly agree we have not been very successful at such denying in recent years. That, however, is a negative phenomenon that I deplore. To premiss public policy on the worst expectations of our political processes is to abandon all hope. If some technological advance leads to demands for new "rights," let's resist those demands, as conservatives should. That's what we're here for. That's one of the fights we fight.

Perhaps I'm stabbing at subtleties, but I'm not so sure that Derbyshire believes that his future arguments will have much practical force. If memory serves, he sees these battles more as categorical necessities for conservatives than as strategies for optimal outcomes. In short, unless I'm misreading him, all he's really pledged is his intention to voice futile opposition.

Children of "Murphy Browns" Paying the Price

Dan Quayle was taken to task many years ago for his "Murphy Brown" speech, in which he said:

Ultimately however, marriage is a moral issue that requires cultural consensus, and the use of social sanctions. Bearing babies irresponsibly is, simply, wrong. Failing to support children one has fathered is wrong. We must be unequivocal about this.

It doesn't help matters when prime time TV has Murphy Brown - a character who supposedly epitomizes today's intelligent, highly paid, professional woman - mocking the importance of fathers, by bearing a child alone, and calling it just another "lifestyle choice."

I know it is not fashionable to talk about moral values, but we need to do it. Even though our cultural leaders in Hollywood; network TV, the national newspapers routinely jeer at them, I think that most of us in , this room know that some things are good, and other things are wrong...It's time to talk again about family, hard work, integrity and personal responsibility. We cannot be embarrassed out of our belief that two parents, married to each other, are better in most cases for children than one.

As Quayle said, we social conservative are often pooh-poohed as moralizing busy-bodies. But there's a reason why we care about such things as promoting traditional families. No matter that we can all point to specific, acute examples of imperfect "traditional" families--and there is no "perfect" family--conservatives believe that the basis for a sound family is having a parent of either sex. Dan Quayle voiced those beliefs 14 years ago and since then, many people--both liberal and conservative--have conceded that Quayle was right:

Ten years later, most anyone involved in child development agrees that two parents are preferable. He beamed while pointing out a recent New York Times headline that read "The Controversial Truth: Two-Parent Families Are Better."

In 1992, discussing illegitimacy was taboo. Most politicians had steered clear of the subject since 1965, when a then-obscure assistant secretary of labor by the name of Daniel Patrick Moynihan released a report linking poverty among black children to the prevalence of out-of-wedlock births. The report was denounced, and Moynihan was labeled a racist.

During the 1990s, the climate changed.

Due to a push by conservatives -- and some liberals -- and to a growing body of research, the subject of illegitimacy became legitimate.

Press coverage of the topic grew. And, as welfare reform emerged as a major policy priority in Congress, Democrats and Republicans agreed that the government needed to take concrete steps to reduce out-of-wedlock births. A 1993 Atlantic magazine cover story was titled "Dan Quayle Was Right." And later that year, Clinton declared, "I believe the country would be a lot better off if children were born to married couples."

"We finally removed the gag," says Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation. Rector has helped draft many family-formation provisions of Republican welfare reform bills in Congress. In the 1996 federal welfare reform law, Congress approved federal funding for sexual-abstinence programs and a bonus to states that reduce their ratios of out-of-wedlock births

Now, all of this expert opinion is fine and dandy, but a new set of voices is making themselves heard. The kids who have lived through the experience. Katrina Clark was one of those kids:

When she was 32, my mother -- single, and worried that she might never marry and have a family -- allowed a doctor wearing rubber gloves to inject a syringe of sperm from an unknown man into her uterus so that she could have a baby. I am the result: a donor-conceived child.

And for a while, I was pretty angry about it.

I was angry at the idea that where donor conception is concerned, everyone focuses on the "parents" -- the adults who can make choices about their own lives. The recipient gets sympathy for wanting to have a child. The donor gets a guarantee of anonymity and absolution from any responsibility for the offspring of his "donation." As long as these adults are happy, then donor conception is a success, right?

Not so. The children born of these transactions are people, too. Those of us in the first documented generation of donor babies -- conceived in the late 1980s and early '90s, when sperm banks became more common and donor insemination began to flourish -- are coming of age, and we have something to say.

I'm here to tell you that emotionally, many of us are not keeping up. We didn't ask to be born into this situation, with its limitations and confusion. It's hypocritical of parents and medical professionals to assume that biological roots won't matter to the "products" of the cryobanks' service, when the longing for a biological relationship is what brings customers to the banks in the first place.

We offspring are recognizing the right that was stripped from us at birth -- the right to know who both our parents are. {Emphasis mine.}

Clark continues, explaining the void left in her life by not having a father, even to the extent that, while her friends could get mad at their fathers for leaving them through divorce or infidelity, she didn't even have that option. Then:

When my mother eventually got married, I didn't get along with her husband. For so long, it had been just the two of us, my mom and I, and now I felt like the odd girl out. When she and I quarreled, this new man in our lives took to interjecting his opinion, and I didn't like that. One day, I lost my composure and screamed that he had no authority over me, that he wasn't my father -- because I didn't have one.

That was when the emptiness came over me. I realized that I am, in a sense, a freak. I really, truly would never have a dad. I finally understood what it meant to be donor-conceived, and I hated it.

Eventually, largely because she was afraid of not knowing valuable medical history, she went looking for her donor and was quickly rewarded by finding him. This quick match of her to her donor is rare, as she found out while discussing her situation with other sperm bank kids. She imparts to us what she has learned of the experiences of these other offspring:

My heart went out to those others, especially after I participated in a couple of online groups. When I read some of the mothers' thoughts about their choice for conception, it made me feel degraded to nothing more than a vial of frozen sperm. It seemed to me that most of the mothers and donors give little thought to the feelings of the children who would result from their actions. It's not so much that they're coldhearted as that they don't consider what the children might think once they grow up.

Those of us created with donated sperm won't stay bubbly babies forever. We're all going to grow into adults and form opinions about the decision to bring us into the world in a way that deprives us of the basic right to know where we came from, what our history is and who both our parents are...

The conclusion to her piece is heartwrenching.

As relief about my own situation has come to me, I've talked freely and regularly about being donor-conceived, in public and in private. In the beginning, I also talked about it a lot with my biological father. After a bit, though, I noticed that his enthusiasm for our developing relationship seemed to be waning. When I told him of my suspicion, he confirmed that he was tired of "this whole sperm-donor thing." The irony stings me more each time I think of him saying that. The very thing that brought us together was pushing us in opposite directions.

Even though I've only recently come into contact with him, I wouldn't be able to just suck it up if he stopped communicating with me. There's still so much I want to know. I want to know him. I want to know his family. I'm certain he has no idea how big a role he has played in my life despite his absence -- or because of his absence. If I can't be too attached to him as my father, I'll still always be attached to the feeling I now have of having a father.

I feel more whole now than I ever have. I love our conversations, even the most trivial ones. I don't love him, and I don't know if I ever will, but I care about him a lot.

Now that he knows I exist, I'm okay if he doesn't care for me in the same way. But I hope he at least thinks of me sometimes.

Me too.

It's Frighteningly Telling...

... that Brown University professor emeritus of psychology, medical science, and human development Lewis Lipsitt doesn't offer one single example of what he means by "learning processes and socialization on a grand scale [that] will ensure human survival."

The same intelligence that brought us here must now be used to reverse aggressive assaults and promote opportunities for collaborative peace-making. ...

FDR's emphasis on science suggests that had he lived there might have been another Manhattan Project, addressing human relationships and the learning processes required to control international aggression. We have the choice to use, or not use, behavior science benevolently. ...

Such an effort is now required, even more than in FDR's time, to study how to abort and abate the violent behavior so prevalent in the modern world. Today, only a full-throttle commitment and large-scale investment in the study of the behavior of aggression will provide a level playing field for the terrorized people of the world.

So what rights will society claim when it comes to handling those who don't consent to this benevolent socialization? And why do I get the feeling that Lipsitt intends a very broad meaning of "terrorized people"? I'm sure the category of terroristic behavior will not drift toward a secular liberal fantasy of social engineering one bit. Yeah, right.

Why Who Maintains the Internet Matters

Here�s a little something to think about while the UN makes the case for greater international control of the internet this week. From the Financial Times (via Drudge)�

Beijing has halted plans to allow foreign newspapers to print in China because of concerns raised by recent �colour revolutions� against authoritarian governments in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, according to a senior media regulator.

Shi Zongyuan, head of the General Administration of Press and Publication, said the role of the international media in such popular revolts had prompted the suspension of what had been an cautious, but significant easing of China�s curbs on foreign news publications.

�The �colour revolutions� were a reminder not to let saboteurs into the house and that the door must be closed, so we have closed it temporarily,� Mr Shi said in an interview with the FT.

If the government of China considers mainstream media newspapers to be saboteurs, what do they consider blogs to be? And what would they do to them if they had a share of control of the internet?

The United Nations and the Internet

What do they mean, exactly, when they say the United Nations is trying to take over the internet? Bascially, they mean that at the next meeting of the WSIS, the WGIG may recommend replacing ICANN with a more direct authority over the 13 root name servers.

I explain in a bit more detail in my latest TechCentralStation column.

A Matter of Competing Values

Part of what makes a danger of modern approaches to addressing public policies that bear on "progress" is that we tend to view them on an individual basis, and when we do realize that they are tangential to each other, we hesitate to follow the implications but so deeply. (Sometimes the hesitance results from the complexity, sometimes from the sense that we'll be proven wrong in what we want to believe.)

My latest column for TheFactIs.org dwells on the intersection of embryonic stem cell research, "right to die" trends, socialist healthcare schemes, and radical life extension. Ultimately, I don't think any of these issues can be fully appreciated without consideration of the others. (And many others, but one can only do so much in fewer than 1,000 words.)

Where Humanitarianism Meets Nihilism

Cynthia Weisboro, a member of the South Kingstown Library Board of Trustees, doesn't apparently believe that self government extends to determination of the principles by which we ought to govern ourselves:

[David] O'Connell bases his opposition to such research on the very questionable theological concept of the "soul," a concept unproven and unprovable. Speculation on the existence of the soul is intellectually stimulating, but should not be the basis for public policy in our pluralistic society. Rather, policy should be rooted in rationality and humanitarianism.

Unfortunately, I can't find Mr. O'Connell's full letter online (without paying for it), but it's adequate to note that he was explaining to pro-life U.S. Congressman Jim Langevin (D-RI) that an honest "search for foundational, objective truths regarding the presence of the spirit, human identity, and universal justice" would ultimately invalidate support for embryonic stem cell research. To Ms. Weisboro, that search — honest or not — is irrelevant. Religious citizens are not allowed strive for a government that designs policy in accordance with the area of their lives that they consider most important. Her preferred doctrine — rationalism — is the exclusive guide of our "pluralistic society."

It isn't even the fact that soul is "unproven and unprovable" that disqualifies the religious view. (One wonders by what mechanism Ms. Weisboro achieved the revelation that soul is unprovable.)

Putting the well-being of a cluster of cells, with or without souls, over the interests of our suffering loved ones is not rational, nor is it humane.

So, even if human beings in the early stages of development have souls, even if they are in that sense "persons," it would still be the "humane" choice to kill thousands of them based on speculation that doing so will lead to treatment for human beings with more cells. Frankly, I suspect — rather, I hope — that Cynthia didn't quite mean what her language states, because I've never heard its like. Or, to be more accurate, I've never heard its like in modern discussions about the rights of the unborn; the general idea has been promoted before in different contexts, and we should all tremble if it has found a new entrance to our culture.