In Which I Agree With Yuval Levin

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Hey, it was bound to happen sometime.  And of course, I only agree with him halfway.  But he’s right when he says this about President Obama’s decision to allow much broader federal funding of embryonic stem cell research:

What you think of his policy depends on what you think of the moral status of embryos….That legitimate dispute underlies the stem cell debate. But that is not the ground on which the president made his case yesterday. He argued that to deny free rein to stem cell science is to ignore and reject the promise of science as such. In a barely concealed swipe at his predecessor, he pledged that his administration would “make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology.”

The executive order Obama signed omits any mention of ethical debate….The issue, he suggested, is a matter of science, not politics.

Politics is politics, and presidents always frame their decisions in ways they think will be the most acceptable to the most people.  But this annoyed me when I read Obama’s statement yesterday, and I don’t blame Levin for being annoyed either.  If you think an embryo is a human life — and lots of people do — then you’re going to be opposed to embryo research.  If, like me, you don’t, then you’re not likely to have any objection.  But although science can inform that debate, it can’t resolve it.  Ethics and ideology will always be front and center.

I guess I wouldn’t care too much about this except that Obama also issued a memo yesterday about eliminating political interference with science.  That’s important, and it applies to important subjects like global warming, habitat protection, GM foods, Plan B, and other things.  But its impact is diluted if we pretend that everything is a scientific issue.  There’s nothing wrong with admitting that both Bush’s stem cell decision and Obama’s have strong moral and ideological dimensions, and denying it tends to reduce our credibility when we insist on the underlying science of other issues that really are mostly scientific.  In this case, honesty really is the best policy.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate