Mansfield Fox

Law student. Yankees fan. Massive fraggle. Just living the American dream.

Tuesday, July 13, 2004

Ron Reagan to Speak at Democratic Convention

In keeping with the proud tradition of Reagan children embarrassing their late father, the former president's son and namesake will be speaking at the Democratic National Convention in Boston, attacking the Bush Administration's restrictions on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.

As best I can tell, Reagan is qualified to speak on this subject because he's the semi-famous son of a former president who suffered from a disease that embryonic stem cells couldn't have treated. I can see why the Democrats, being the more adult and serious of our two political parties, leapt at the chance to have him speak.

The whole business is a little ridiculous, it's obviously not going to impact the election. I am a little worried, though, because I have a strong sense that the pro-embryonic stem cell side (i.e., the Molochians) is winning the debate. I understand how this is: opposition to research on embryonic stem cells has all of the pro-life cause, magnified many-fold. The victim is small, invisible to the eye, its humanity hard to grasp. The suffering of the other party - a woman with Parkinsons or a man with a severed spinal cord - is obvious and immediate. It's easy to sympathize with Michael J. Fox; it requires an act of the will to sympathize with a blastocyst, even for someone like me who's instinctively pro-life. And when one considers the quasi-miraculous promises made by advocates of embryonic stem cell research... well, it's not so hard to see why even stalwart foes of abortion like Orrin Hatch have been seduced. If people start thinking, inaccurately in my view, that "Reagan would have favored this research", it's only going to make the fight quite a bit harder. sigh... Oh well, the Carthaginians practiced child-sacrifice out of a belief that the polis would prosper and be well, and everything worked out fine for them. wait.

Meanwhile, over at the Corner, Jonah Goldberg posts a reader email pointing out that by having Reagan speak at the convention the Democrats are doing what they accused the Republicans of doing last month - exploiting the former president's death for political gain.