Capricious Morals

Up at Slate, Bill Saletan has a good article detailing Bush's hypocrisy on the stem cell debate. He presents a chart with quotes from our leader concerning his opposition to stem cell research in one column and quotes in which Bush justifies his approval of the death penalty. The death penalty, according to Dubya, saves the lives of innocent folks who would be murdered by the savages who would be put to death. On the other hand, his "culture of life" abhors the termination of a group of a hundred or so cells.

Here's Bush on stem cells:

"Yet the ethics of medicine are not infinitely adaptable. There is at least one bright line: We do not end some lives for the medical benefit of others."

Now here's Bush opining about the death penalty:

"During the course of the campaign in 1994 I was asked, 'Do you support the death penalty?' I said I did, if administered fairly and justly. Because I believe it saves lives."

So, the death penalty saves lives and so will stem cell research. And so how is it consistent to be for one and not the other? But such a view shouldn't be surprising. Let's not forget that Bush's god talks to him - the same deity that directed Moses to commit genocide, ordered Abraham to commit filicide, and punished his children by making them eat their own fecal matter - so it seems unreasonable to expect consistency from Bush as his directives come down to him from a vengeful, spiteful old man up in the firmament blue.

Another bit of hypocrisy which irks me these days comes from people who favor our Iraqi incursion but turn around with shock and dismay at sight of the goings on at Abu Ghraib. It is implicit in the concept of war that there will be civilian casualties. If you are in favor of sending your country's military across the oceans to invade another country and topple its government, then you are giving your tacit consent to the deaths of non-combatants. It's part of the package deal that is war. The deaths of innocent men, women, and children are inseparable from war. So I find it hypocritical to praise what we've done in Iraq and then turn around and heap opprobrium on the congeries of humiliation and torture at Abu Ghraib. How is it morally consistent and acceptable to give consent to the maiming and killing of children yet denounce torture?