Not sure how I missed Yuval Levin's Washington Post article on Obama's stem cell research announcement the other day. Levin was the Executive Director of the President's Council on Bioethics, and this piece is well worth your time.
And speaking of time well spent, I have been meaning to tout Levin's book, "Imagining the Future - Science and American Democracy", since I finished it a couple of weeks ago. It's a quick read at just about 135 pages, and I found it to be one of the most illuminating and sensible things I have read in years.
Levin examines the back and forth between the political left and right in this country where science is concerned, and the very different perspectives we bring to our thinking about the future. He touches on some contemporary issues, and stem cell research is among them, but this is not a book about specific policies.
It's more of a big picture look at the role of modern science in our society....how science raises profound political, moral and ethical dilemmas for our system of self-government, and how our political debates often do more to confuse and obscure those questions than they do to resolve them. It is timely and beautifully written, with admonitions for both the political left and right, and with neither side spared an airing of their contradictions and rhetorical excesses. I cannot recommend it highly enough, and am hoping to spend more time on it in this space soon.
There, that's pretty much the way we rehearsed it, isn't it, Yuval?
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Also new and worthwhile as updates to our previous post on the SCR issue are this WaPo op-ed, (which talks about the "moral stand" that Obama has yet to take on the SCR issue), a good piece by Steve Chapman, and this report from Fox News, showing how the recent spending bill seems to indicate even less contrast between the Bush and Obama administration positions than appeared to exist just last Monday.
UPDATE 3/16: Don't miss P.J. O'Rourke
Posted by dan at March 15, 2009 5:05 PM