Here is my response to Peg Tittle's online article:
I smiled as I read your article,"Ethics Without Philosophers (the Appalling State of Affairs in Business." While I am in total agreement that ethics shouldn't be taught be non-philosophers, I disagree with your statement, "(Avoid those who teach Epistemology, Metaphysics, and Aesthetics; and run away as fast as you can from those who teach Kant and Derrida.)"
One's ethics (as well as one's politics and aesthetics) is a product of one's metaphysics. What one thinks is real and true will affect what one thinks is good and right. You call for us to "work together." But how are philosophers going to work together with non-philosophers if we can't even work together with each other?
Finally, there is also more to ethics than what Modernism would have us believe. (See Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry. http://www.amazon.com/Three-Rival-Versions-Moral-Enquiry/dp/0268018774 . You haven't addressed the contributions that Virtue Ethics is able to make to business ethics.
I submit that "this terrible misunderstanding, this doing ethics without philosophers" has come about precisely because modernism has reduced ethics exclusively to dilemmas and principles. When business ethics is reduced to a series of dilemmas, it is just a variation on the business case study. Principles alone are like mathematical formulae--just plug and chug that Principle of Utility or that Categorical Imperative or whatever "Methodology for Ethical Decision Making" you choose, and voila--you've done ethics! A person doesn't have to have a higher degree in mathematics to be able to get the answer to quadratic equation. It seems that we philosophers have allowed ethics to be reduced to a similar state, so no wonder people without philosophy degrees are becoming ethical consultants.
However, there's a bit more to ethics than just principles: there's character and there's telos/goals/ends. Of course logic and critical thinking are necessary, but they are not sufficient. (Hopefully, they are also areas in which non-philosophers will have some expertise and practice.) But philosophers are the peculiar folks who wonder about things like "what is the good life?" "What is a good person?" "what is justice?" Those are questions that non-philosophers don't have time to deal with, or aren't interested in. But in grappling with them, philosophers are stretched into areas of metaphysics, epistemology and the history of philosophy, and are able to bring a unique perspective as well as valuable expertise to business ethics, environmental ethics, medical ethics, etc.
Philosophy flies with two wings: analysis and synthesis, and business depends on its ability to soar.
Showing posts with label ethics and morality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ethics and morality. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Jonathan Sacks on the Tenth Anniversary of 9/11
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sack's response to the tenth anniversary of 9/11: Let's rebuild the West's moral authority
TWO things have haunted me since 9/11. The first is the pain, the grief, the lives lost and families devastated, the sheer barbaric ingenuity of evil. The scar in our humanity is still unhealed.
The second is our failure to understand what Osama bin Laden was saying about the West. We did not hear the message then. I'm not sure we hear it now.
After the shock and grief subsided, two theories began to be heard. Firstly, this was an event of epoch-changing magnitude. The terms of international politics had been transformed. The Cold War was over. Another war had begun. The enemy was not the Soviet Union and communism. It was radical, political Islam.
The second was the opposite: 9/11 was terrifying and terrible but it changed nothing because acts of terror never do. The most important thing is not to overreact. Terror may bring dividends in local conflicts but it never succeeds in its larger political aims.
There is something to be said for both theories. But there is a third: why did al-Qa'ida attack the US? Because it believed it could. Because it thought the US was past its prime, no longer as lean and hungry as it believed it was.
Robert McNamara said the first rule in politics is to understand your enemy's psychology. As I struggled to understand 9/11 I began to suspect the answer lay in the events of 1989. That is when the narratives of the West and the rest began seriously to diverge.
In the West, 1989 was seen as the collapse of communism, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the implosion of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. The Western narrative was triumphalist. It saw those events as heralding the victory of its values without a shot being fired. The free market and liberal democratic politics had won for the simplest of reasons. They delivered, while communism did not. They would now spread across the world. It was, said Francis Fukuyama, the beginning of the end of history.
There was, though, another narrative that said the Soviet Union collapsed not because of the triumph of liberal democracy but because of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan earlier that year. It had invaded in 1979 and was forced to withdraw, not because of superpower politics but because of the determined resistance of a small group of highly motivated religious warriors, the mujaheddin and their helpers. That, historically, is the event that captured the imagination of bin Laden. According to this account, the humiliating retreat of the Soviet Army set in motion a series of internal crises that resulted in the fall of a great power. If one of the world's two superpowers was vulnerable to asymmetric warfare -- the war of the few against the many -- why not the other, America itself? What 1989 represented was not the end of history but the end of a history dominated by the twin superpowers of communist Russia and capitalist America. Both were vulnerable because both were overripe and about to fall from the tree. Much excitement was felt in the West by the failure of communism. Less attention was paid to what Daniel Bell called the cultural contradictions of capitalism.
Throughout this period there were voices that few seemed to be listening to. The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre in his 1981 masterwork After Virtue argued that the moral discourse of the West had broken down.
The "Enlightenment project" of a purely rational ethic had failed -- not because there was no such thing, but because there were too many. They clashed inconclusively and people were left with a sense that morality is whatever you think it is.
His minatory warning was: "The barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time." That was a scary thing to hear from one of the world's great philosophers. I soon began to hear it from other leading intellectuals also, such as Philip Rieff, Christopher Lasch and Robert Bellah.
That is what I heard in the echoes of 9/11: that all great civilisations eventually decline, and when they begin to do so they are vulnerable. That is what bin Laden believed about the West and so did some of the West's own greatest minds.
If so, then 9/11 belongs to a wider series of phenomena affecting the West: the disintegration of the family, the demise of authority, the build-up of personal debt, the collapse of financial institutions, the downgrading of the American economy, the continuing failure of some European economies, the loss of a sense of honour, loyalty and integrity.
These are all signs of the arteriosclerosis of a culture, a civilisation grown old. Whenever Me takes precedence over We, and pleasure today over viability tomorrow, a society is in trouble. If so, then the enemy is not radical Islam, it is us and our, by now unsustainable, self-indulgence.
The West has expended much energy and courage fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq abroad and defeating terror at home. It has spent far less, if any, in renewing its own morality and the institutions -- families, communities, ethical codes, standards in public life -- where it is created and sustained. But if I am right, this is the West's greatest weakness in the eyes of its enemies as well as its friends. The only way to save the world is to begin with ourselves. Our burden after 9/11 is to renew the moral disciplines of freedom. Some say it can't be done. They are wrong: it can and must. Surely we owe the dead no less.
Lord Sacks is the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth.
Friday, April 22, 2011
Why Patients are not Consumers
Patients Are Not Consumers
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: April 21, 2011
Earlier this week, The Times reported on Congressional backlash against the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a key part of efforts to rein in health care costs. This backlash was predictable; it is also profoundly irresponsible, as I’ll explain in a minute.
But something else struck me as I looked at Republican arguments against the board, which hinge on the notion that what we really need to do, as the House budget proposal put it, is to “make government health care programs more responsive to consumer choice.”
Here’s my question: How did it become normal, or for that matter even acceptable, to refer to medical patients as “consumers”? The relationship between patient and doctor used to be considered something special, almost sacred. Now politicians and supposed reformers talk about the act of receiving care as if it were no different from a commercial transaction, like buying a car and their only complaint is that it isn’t commercial enough.
What has gone wrong with us?
About that advisory board: We have to do something about health care costs, which means that we have to find a way to start saying no. In particular, given continuing medical innovation, we can’t maintain a system in which Medicare essentially pays for anything a doctor recommends. And that’s especially true when that blank-check approach is combined with a system that gives doctors and hospitals who aren’t saints a strong financial incentive to engage in excessive care.
Hence the advisory board, whose creation was mandated by last year’s health reform. The board, composed of health-care experts, would be given a target rate of growth in Medicare spending. To keep spending at or below this target, the board would submit “fast-track” recommendations for cost control that would go into effect automatically unless overruled by Congress.
Before you start yelling about “rationing” and “death panels,” bear in mind that we’re not talking about limits on what health care you’re allowed to buy with your own (or your insurance company’s) money. We’re talking only about what will be paid for with taxpayers’ money. And the last time I looked at it, the Declaration of Independence didn’t declare that we had the right to life, liberty, and the all-expenses-paid pursuit of happiness.
And the point is that choices must be made; one way or another, government spending on health care must be limited.
Now, what House Republicans propose is that the government simply push the problem of rising health care costs on to seniors; that is, that we replace Medicare with vouchers that can be applied to private insurance, and that we count on seniors and insurance companies to work it out somehow. This, they claim, would be superior to expert review because it would open health care to the wonders of “consumer choice.”
What’s wrong with this idea (aside from the grossly inadequate value of the proposed vouchers)? One answer is that it wouldn’t work. “Consumer-based” medicine has been a bust everywhere it has been tried. To take the most directly relevant example, Medicare Advantage, which was originally called Medicare + Choice, was supposed to save money; it ended up costing substantially more than traditional Medicare. America has the most “consumer-driven” health care system in the advanced world. It also has by far the highest costs yet provides a quality of care no better than far cheaper systems in other countries.
But the fact that Republicans are demanding that we literally stake our health, even our lives, on an already failed approach is only part of what’s wrong here. As I said earlier, there’s something terribly wrong with the whole notion of patients as “consumers” and health care as simply a financial transaction.
Medical care, after all, is an area in which crucial decisions life and death decisions must be made. Yet making such decisions intelligently requires a vast amount of specialized knowledge. Furthermore, those decisions often must be made under conditions in which the patient is incapacitated, under severe stress, or needs action immediately, with no time for discussion, let alone comparison shopping.
That’s why we have medical ethics. That’s why doctors have traditionally both been viewed as something special and been expected to behave according to higher standards than the average professional. There’s a reason we have TV series about heroic doctors, while we don’t have TV series about heroic middle managers.
The idea that all this can be reduced to money that doctors are just “providers” selling services to health care “consumers” is, well, sickening. And the prevalence of this kind of language is a sign that something has gone very wrong not just with this discussion, but with our society’s values.
A version of this op-ed appeared in print on April 22, 2011, on page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: Patients Are Not Consumers
ADDENDUM: On April 25, 2011, the Economist published a response to Krugman, entitled "Diagnosing Krugman." My further remarks can be seen, above, in an April 28 post, Why Patients are not Consumers, Part 2."
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Roman Polanski and Ethics 101
Anne Farley Rolle alerts me to this article:
'Father Polanski Would Go to Jail' Says Jesuit
This whole affair makes a perfect illustration for my ethics class when we study cultural relativism:
1) abuse is wrong if it occurs within a community for which it is wrong. (i.e., priests in the Catholic church are blameworthy for abusing young boys).
2) Child abuse is permissible if it occurs within a community that has not specifically defined it as wrong. (i.e, it is okay for Roman Polanski to commit statutory rape, because he is an Artist).
It is interesting that this is the same reasoning that passes in some discussions of homosexual activity:
a) homosexual activity is wrong if it is performed by a heterosexual.
b) homosexual activity is permissible if it is performed by a homosexual.
Saturday, July 04, 2009
Greed is NOT Good: The MBA Oath
M.B.A.'s at Harvard and Columbia are now taking an oath "to 'create value responsibly and ethically.'” The meaning of "ethically" is not as clear as I'd like, but at least there's this line:
"I promise... I will manage my enterprise in good faith, guarding against decisions and behavior that advance my own narrow ambitions but harm the enterprise and the societies it serves."
According to the New York Times,
"In the post-Enron and post-Madoff era, the issue of ethics and corporate social responsibility has taken on greater urgency among students about to graduate. While this might easily be dismissed as a passing fancy — or simply a defensive reaction to the current business environment — business school professors say that is not the case. Rather, they say, they are seeing a generational shift away from viewing an M.B.A. as simply an on-ramp to the road to riches.
Those graduating today, they say, are far more concerned about how corporations affect the community, the lives of its workers and the environment. And business schools are responding with more courses, new centers specializing in business ethics and, in the case of Harvard, student-lead efforts to bring about a professional code of conduct for M.B.A.’s, not unlike oaths that are taken by lawyers and doctors."
While no one has any illusions that the oath will make business a more ethical undertaking, it does offer a measure of comfort to know that there is at least a challenge to the famous "Greed is good" philosophy that has ruled for so long, and that has had such disastrous results.
I agree with the YouTube commentator who wrote, "the United States shouldn't be thought of as, or run like, a corporation. It's a country - with people. The moneyed interests are just a slice of the pie, there's more that makes up a nation and a company." Maybe this oath is a step toward acknowledging that.
Michael Douglas, as Gordon Gecko in Oliver Stone's Wall Street.
The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. Thank you very much.
"I promise... I will manage my enterprise in good faith, guarding against decisions and behavior that advance my own narrow ambitions but harm the enterprise and the societies it serves."
According to the New York Times,
"In the post-Enron and post-Madoff era, the issue of ethics and corporate social responsibility has taken on greater urgency among students about to graduate. While this might easily be dismissed as a passing fancy — or simply a defensive reaction to the current business environment — business school professors say that is not the case. Rather, they say, they are seeing a generational shift away from viewing an M.B.A. as simply an on-ramp to the road to riches.
Those graduating today, they say, are far more concerned about how corporations affect the community, the lives of its workers and the environment. And business schools are responding with more courses, new centers specializing in business ethics and, in the case of Harvard, student-lead efforts to bring about a professional code of conduct for M.B.A.’s, not unlike oaths that are taken by lawyers and doctors."
While no one has any illusions that the oath will make business a more ethical undertaking, it does offer a measure of comfort to know that there is at least a challenge to the famous "Greed is good" philosophy that has ruled for so long, and that has had such disastrous results.
I agree with the YouTube commentator who wrote, "the United States shouldn't be thought of as, or run like, a corporation. It's a country - with people. The moneyed interests are just a slice of the pie, there's more that makes up a nation and a company." Maybe this oath is a step toward acknowledging that.
Michael Douglas, as Gordon Gecko in Oliver Stone's Wall Street.
The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. Thank you very much.
Monday, June 01, 2009
QUOTE: John Cardinal O'Connor on killing abortionists
From the Washington Post:
"George R. Tiller, the nation's most prominent provider of controversial late-term abortions, was shot and killed yesterday in the lobby of his Lutheran church in Wichita, where he was serving as an usher..."
If anyone has an urge to kill someone at an abortion clinic, they should shoot me. ... It's madness. It discredits the right-to-life movement. Murder is murder. It's madness. You cannot prevent killing by killing."
"George R. Tiller, the nation's most prominent provider of controversial late-term abortions, was shot and killed yesterday in the lobby of his Lutheran church in Wichita, where he was serving as an usher..."
If anyone has an urge to kill someone at an abortion clinic, they should shoot me. ... It's madness. It discredits the right-to-life movement. Murder is murder. It's madness. You cannot prevent killing by killing."
- John Cardinal O'Connor
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
QUOTES: Ghandi on the roots of violence
via Ann on Facebook:
It's cool when my daughter sends me this link: sixty years ago Gandhi said the roots of all forms of violence are:
It's cool when my daughter sends me this link: sixty years ago Gandhi said the roots of all forms of violence are:
"Wealth without work, Pleasure without conscience, Knowledge without character, Commerce without morality, Science without humanity, Worship without sacrifice."
Here's another favorite Ghandi quote of mine:
“You Christians look after a document containing enough dynamite to blow all civilization to pieces, turn the world upside down, and bring peace to a battle-torn planet. But you treat it as though it is nothing more than a piece of good literature.”
Thursday, March 05, 2009
Build a Better Baby
Kyrie Eleison.
Gilbert Meilaender warned about this long ago in
his Bioethics: A Primer for Christians. Life is not a commodity; children are not art projects. Time to go watch Gattaca again; and especially take note of the alternative ending.
Fertility Doctor Will Let Parents Build Their Own Baby
Clinic's Service to Custom-Design Baby's Hair and Eye Color Sparks Controversy
By GIGI STONE
March 3, 2009
Imagine if you could choose your baby the same way you pick out a new outfit from a catalogue. Perhaps some blue eyes, a bit of curly hair, and why not make her tall, lean and smart? One fertility doctor now says that he may be able to deliver....continued here
Friday, January 23, 2009
Contradictions are always signs of error
In my philosophy classes, my students learn that while paradox is part and parcel of Christian thought, contradiction is not. This blog is based on the idea that contradictions are signs of error, and that both meaningful speech and action are impossible if contradictions are permitted.
Scot McKnight has written a fine piece for his Beliefnet blog urging President Obama to avoid a commiting a nasty contradiction. "Abortion is also torture," he reminds us.
Obama and Abortion
Friday January 23, 2009
Categories: Public Issues
Barack Obama, as far as I'm concerned, is not off to a good start when it comes to "change" and ending the "politics as usual" he claimed in his campaign. First, on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade he has announced what amounts a contradiction: reduce abortions by supporting and funding abortions. This makes no sense to me. What really makes it difficult morally is that such support is offered on the day he was also announcing -- rightly -- to close down GTMO and speak against the evils of torture. Abortion is also torture. Women have the right to choose what to do with their own bodies, but once there's a pregnancy, that woman is now carrying someone else's body -- that body is no longer simply her own. Support of abortion and opposition to torture is a moral contradiction, and I call on the Obama Administration to re-think their position of their stance on abortion.
Second, our President has postponed announcing that he will support the Mexico City Policy decision. Reagan withdrew support for international clinics that supported abortion, Clinton reinstated support, G.W. Bush withdrew the support, and it appears Obama will reinstate support again. We expected to hear his reinstatement yesterday, but it didn't happen. Everything I hear is that it will happen. This, my friends, is politics as usual. Here's what change could mean: there are plenty of clinics to support that don't do abortions; support those. To choose to reinstate support is to make a choice to support clinics that specifically provide abortions. There is here neither change nor is there a politics that is not usual.
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- President Barack Obama used the occasion of the thirty-sixth anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision to issue a contradictory statement. The new president called for reducing abortions but honored the radical decision that ushered in an era of 50 million abortions and virtually no limits.
Obama praised the Supreme Court for issuing what has been one of the most condemned rulings in its history.
"[T]his decision not only protects women's health and reproductive freedom, but stands for a broader principle: That government should not intrude on our most private family matters," Obama said in a statement.
And he reaffirmed his official position supporting abortion.
"I remain committed to protecting a woman's right to choose," he said.
The president also issued a call for an expansion of access to birth control and contraception, even though studies and actual abortion data have shown they do nothing to reduce the numbers of abortions.
"While this is a sensitive and often divisive issue, no matter what our views, we are united in our determination to prevent unintended pregnancies, reduce the need for abortion, and support women and families in the choices they make," he said. "To accomplish these goals, we must work to find common ground to expand access to affordable contraception, accurate health information, and preventative services."
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- In a move to downplay his pro-abortion agenda, President Barack Obama has decided to wait a little longer to reverse a Bush policy preventing taxpayer funding of abortions overseas. The Mexico City Policy prevents sending public funds to groups that perform or promote abortions in other countries.
The new president could either issue an order tomorrow or in the near future to reverse the policy or allow Congress to do it.
Obama was expected to overturn the pro-life policy on his first or second full days in office and to possibly do so today, on the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision.
However, a CBN News report indicates Obama will not overturn the policy on a day that pro-life advocates mourn the Supreme Court allowing virtually unlimited abortions.
While Obama is still expected to fund foreign abortions at some point, CBN News indicates Obama is attempting to camouflage his pro-abortion agenda by issuing a statement calling for efforts to reduce abortions.
"It is unclear whether Obama intends to reverse the Mexico City Policy at some point in the future but this reliable source tells me that this move signals that Obama will stress the need for reducing abortions in this country rather than focus on the divisive tit for tat policy reversals of the past," writes David Brody a senior correspondent for the network.
The move may infuriate pro-abortion groups, which campaigned relentlessly for Obama and expected him to immediately reverse the policy upon taking over the White House.
At the same time, Obama could approach overturning the Mexico City Policy in the same manner as he is apparently approaching reversing Bush's limits on funding embryonic stem cell research.
Obama appears to want Congress to do the heavy lifting to pass legislation reversing the protections and he can both get credit for signing the bill and deflect criticism by not becoming the sole decision-maker changing the rules.
Such a move would also make it much tougher for pro-life advocates to undo the decision -- and Obama could also rely on Congress to reverse the Mexico City Policy.
In September, 2007, Sen. Barbara Boxer introduced an amendment to a spending bill that would have reversed the policy and the Senate approved it by a 53-41 percentage point margin.
The move didn't take effect only because President Bush threatened to veto any spending bill that removed the Mexico City Policy -- something Obama would unlikely do.
Let us pray that reason prevails. Meanwhile I rest in this paradox: while hopeful, I'm not optimistic that it will.
Scot McKnight has written a fine piece for his Beliefnet blog urging President Obama to avoid a commiting a nasty contradiction. "Abortion is also torture," he reminds us.
Obama and Abortion
Friday January 23, 2009
Categories: Public Issues
Barack Obama, as far as I'm concerned, is not off to a good start when it comes to "change" and ending the "politics as usual" he claimed in his campaign. First, on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade he has announced what amounts a contradiction: reduce abortions by supporting and funding abortions. This makes no sense to me. What really makes it difficult morally is that such support is offered on the day he was also announcing -- rightly -- to close down GTMO and speak against the evils of torture. Abortion is also torture. Women have the right to choose what to do with their own bodies, but once there's a pregnancy, that woman is now carrying someone else's body -- that body is no longer simply her own. Support of abortion and opposition to torture is a moral contradiction, and I call on the Obama Administration to re-think their position of their stance on abortion.
Second, our President has postponed announcing that he will support the Mexico City Policy decision. Reagan withdrew support for international clinics that supported abortion, Clinton reinstated support, G.W. Bush withdrew the support, and it appears Obama will reinstate support again. We expected to hear his reinstatement yesterday, but it didn't happen. Everything I hear is that it will happen. This, my friends, is politics as usual. Here's what change could mean: there are plenty of clinics to support that don't do abortions; support those. To choose to reinstate support is to make a choice to support clinics that specifically provide abortions. There is here neither change nor is there a politics that is not usual.
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- President Barack Obama used the occasion of the thirty-sixth anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision to issue a contradictory statement. The new president called for reducing abortions but honored the radical decision that ushered in an era of 50 million abortions and virtually no limits.
Obama praised the Supreme Court for issuing what has been one of the most condemned rulings in its history.
"[T]his decision not only protects women's health and reproductive freedom, but stands for a broader principle: That government should not intrude on our most private family matters," Obama said in a statement.
And he reaffirmed his official position supporting abortion.
"I remain committed to protecting a woman's right to choose," he said.
The president also issued a call for an expansion of access to birth control and contraception, even though studies and actual abortion data have shown they do nothing to reduce the numbers of abortions.
"While this is a sensitive and often divisive issue, no matter what our views, we are united in our determination to prevent unintended pregnancies, reduce the need for abortion, and support women and families in the choices they make," he said. "To accomplish these goals, we must work to find common ground to expand access to affordable contraception, accurate health information, and preventative services."
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- In a move to downplay his pro-abortion agenda, President Barack Obama has decided to wait a little longer to reverse a Bush policy preventing taxpayer funding of abortions overseas. The Mexico City Policy prevents sending public funds to groups that perform or promote abortions in other countries.
The new president could either issue an order tomorrow or in the near future to reverse the policy or allow Congress to do it.
Obama was expected to overturn the pro-life policy on his first or second full days in office and to possibly do so today, on the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision.
However, a CBN News report indicates Obama will not overturn the policy on a day that pro-life advocates mourn the Supreme Court allowing virtually unlimited abortions.
While Obama is still expected to fund foreign abortions at some point, CBN News indicates Obama is attempting to camouflage his pro-abortion agenda by issuing a statement calling for efforts to reduce abortions.
"It is unclear whether Obama intends to reverse the Mexico City Policy at some point in the future but this reliable source tells me that this move signals that Obama will stress the need for reducing abortions in this country rather than focus on the divisive tit for tat policy reversals of the past," writes David Brody a senior correspondent for the network.
The move may infuriate pro-abortion groups, which campaigned relentlessly for Obama and expected him to immediately reverse the policy upon taking over the White House.
At the same time, Obama could approach overturning the Mexico City Policy in the same manner as he is apparently approaching reversing Bush's limits on funding embryonic stem cell research.
Obama appears to want Congress to do the heavy lifting to pass legislation reversing the protections and he can both get credit for signing the bill and deflect criticism by not becoming the sole decision-maker changing the rules.
Such a move would also make it much tougher for pro-life advocates to undo the decision -- and Obama could also rely on Congress to reverse the Mexico City Policy.
In September, 2007, Sen. Barbara Boxer introduced an amendment to a spending bill that would have reversed the policy and the Senate approved it by a 53-41 percentage point margin.
The move didn't take effect only because President Bush threatened to veto any spending bill that removed the Mexico City Policy -- something Obama would unlikely do.
Let us pray that reason prevails. Meanwhile I rest in this paradox: while hopeful, I'm not optimistic that it will.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Reinventing Capitalism and being Reinvented Ourselves
©2007-2008 =lassekongo83
Tyler Watson has a great post today entitled "Greenspan's Assumptions on Self Interest." He agrees with Samuel Gregg who writes:
If the current financial upheaval teaches us anything, it should be how much market capitalism depends upon most people developing and adhering to some rather uncontroversial moral virtues.
Watson then writes, “I wish he would say more about what those virtues should be or from where they should originate.”
It will be interesting to see if the response to the current crisis will go that far, penetrating the very character of the persons and the economic community, or if it will settle for merely dealing with external constraints in the form of increased market regulation. One will result in lasting reform; the other will only inspire circumvention.
If the current financial upheaval teaches us anything, it should be how much market capitalism depends upon most people developing and adhering to some rather uncontroversial moral virtues.
Watson then writes, “I wish he would say more about what those virtues should be or from where they should originate.”
It will be interesting to see if the response to the current crisis will go that far, penetrating the very character of the persons and the economic community, or if it will settle for merely dealing with external constraints in the form of increased market regulation. One will result in lasting reform; the other will only inspire circumvention.
This blog has written previously about the virtues in question, and their sources:
here: Rabbi Jonathan Saks suggests those virtues originate in the following places:
1) Sabbath
2) Marriage and Family [but Christians can understand this also more broadly as Body of Christ]
3) Education
4) the concept of Property
5) tradition/Law [Christians can also understand this more broadly as Church and Scripture]
and here: Ken Myers, from Mars Hill Audio agrees with Saks, pointing to family and community as sources for virtues like "trust, goodwill, forbearance, self-restraint, compassion, and forgiveness."
Watson makes an important observation:
There is a feedback loop between our character and the systems we create. Yes, our values shape the market; we would do well to remember that the market returns the favor.”
Free market capitalism is a modernist phenomenon, and we ignore its metaphysical foundations at our peril. The challenge in the coming days will be to see if we can create a capitalist system founded not on individualism, autonomy and novelty, but on persons, relationships and respect for the traditions and practices that sustain us in our relationships with God, each other, and the earth.
However, the only way to do that is to acknowledge our fallenness, and find forgiveness and new life in Jesus Christ. But then-- ironically-- we will no longer be living for the sake of any economic or political system, but for the King and His Kingdom.
Luke 9:24-25
For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. What good is it for you to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit your very self?
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
So when does the Embryo Tax take effect?
I'm from St. Louis, where every school child makes a field trip at one time or another to the Old Courthouse, overlooking the Mississippi River, under the shadow of the Gateway Arch.
"On these steps slaves were sold," our teachers told us. "And inside is where the two Dred Scott cases were decided, which eventually resulted in the Supreme court ruling that negroes--even free negroes--are 'beings of an inferior order' and thus not able to be citizens of the United States. In other words, slaves were not considered persons, but private property."
The Dred Scott decision marks one of the nadirs of our history. Now here's another, the latest step in America's continuing compulsion for commodification. Today the Oregon Court of Appeals declared embryos to be private property. So, does this mean that someday they'll be taxable? Kyrie eleison.
"On these steps slaves were sold," our teachers told us. "And inside is where the two Dred Scott cases were decided, which eventually resulted in the Supreme court ruling that negroes--even free negroes--are 'beings of an inferior order' and thus not able to be citizens of the United States. In other words, slaves were not considered persons, but private property."
The Dred Scott decision marks one of the nadirs of our history. Now here's another, the latest step in America's continuing compulsion for commodification. Today the Oregon Court of Appeals declared embryos to be private property. So, does this mean that someday they'll be taxable? Kyrie eleison.
---------------------------------------------------------
from the Seattle Post Intelligencer website:
Oregon court rules frozen embryos can be destroyed
The Oregon Court of Appeals has ordered six frozen embryos destroyed after ruling they can be treated as personal property in a divorce.
The court ruled unanimously on Wednesday that an agreement leaving the final decision up to the former wife must be followed.
Dr. Laura Dahl, a pediatrician, and her former husband, Dr. Darrell Angle, an orthodontist, had attempted to conceive through a process called in vitro fertilization.
After several failed attempts, the couple gave up and left the embryos with Oregon Health & Science University under an agreement that spelled out how they would be stored.
Dahl decided to have the embryos destroyed, but Angle had argued they should be donated to other couples trying to conceive.
In an opinion by Presiding Judge Rex Armstrong, the court ruled there is a contractual right to determine the fate of the embryos as personal property.
But Armstrong noted there is little guidance on who gets to make that decision in a divorce, so the court relied on a 1998 New York state case that held agreements on what to do with embryos after in vitro fertilization are binding.
Armstrong noted the ruling in New York said that it should be the parents, "not the state and not the courts, who by their prior directive make this deeply personal life choice."
Angle denied that he had read the OHSU agreement he signed with Dahl, and opposed the destruction of the embryos or their donation to science because "there's no pain greater than having participated in the demise of your own child."
But Dahl said she opposed her ex-husband's recommendation that the embryos be donated to another woman for implantation because she did not want anybody else to raise her child.
Dahl was also concerned that any child born as a result of implantation might later wish to contact the son who she and Angle had previously conceived naturally.
The court noted that Angle "does not argue that the agreement itself is ambiguous or invalid for public policy reasons" and affirmed a Clackamas County Circuit Court ruling that he agreed his ex-wife would make the final decision.
"You are not your own. You were bought for a price."
The Oregon Court of Appeals has ordered six frozen embryos destroyed after ruling they can be treated as personal property in a divorce.
The court ruled unanimously on Wednesday that an agreement leaving the final decision up to the former wife must be followed.
Dr. Laura Dahl, a pediatrician, and her former husband, Dr. Darrell Angle, an orthodontist, had attempted to conceive through a process called in vitro fertilization.
After several failed attempts, the couple gave up and left the embryos with Oregon Health & Science University under an agreement that spelled out how they would be stored.
Dahl decided to have the embryos destroyed, but Angle had argued they should be donated to other couples trying to conceive.
In an opinion by Presiding Judge Rex Armstrong, the court ruled there is a contractual right to determine the fate of the embryos as personal property.
But Armstrong noted there is little guidance on who gets to make that decision in a divorce, so the court relied on a 1998 New York state case that held agreements on what to do with embryos after in vitro fertilization are binding.
Armstrong noted the ruling in New York said that it should be the parents, "not the state and not the courts, who by their prior directive make this deeply personal life choice."
Angle denied that he had read the OHSU agreement he signed with Dahl, and opposed the destruction of the embryos or their donation to science because "there's no pain greater than having participated in the demise of your own child."
But Dahl said she opposed her ex-husband's recommendation that the embryos be donated to another woman for implantation because she did not want anybody else to raise her child.
Dahl was also concerned that any child born as a result of implantation might later wish to contact the son who she and Angle had previously conceived naturally.
The court noted that Angle "does not argue that the agreement itself is ambiguous or invalid for public policy reasons" and affirmed a Clackamas County Circuit Court ruling that he agreed his ex-wife would make the final decision.
"You are not your own. You were bought for a price."
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Breaking Silence, Breaking Free
Jason Byassee, assistant editor of Christian Century and an adjunct at North Park, has written an essay entitled, "Not your Father's Pornography" in the January, 2008 issue of First Things. In it he mentions the Covenant's 2007 resolution on Pornography. In another month the journal will allow internet access to the article. It's worth a look.
I was privileged to be part of the commission that wrote that resolution, and I can't help but be proud that it is being recognized nationally through Byassee's essay. May it be a means of mobilizing Christians to confront this epidemic, so that our resolution will not be merely "a wail in the wilderness."
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
SICKO
Steve and I finally watched Michael Moore's Sicko. While it's a typical Moore film, playing fast and loose with representative samplings, it is worthwhile, sobering, and even sickening. NPR's Bob Mondello and Joanne Silberner rate it as entertainment and expose here where you can also find this "Snapshot of America's Uninsured" by Joanne Silberner:
— Nearly 47 million Americans, or 16 percent of the population, were without health insurance at some point in 2005.
— The number of uninsured rose 1.3 million between 2004 and 2005 and has increased by almost 7 million people since 2000.
— In 2005, nearly 15 percent of employees had no employer-sponsored health coverage available to them, either through their own job or through a family member.
— Young adults (18 to 24 years old) remained the least likely of any age group to have health insurance in 2005 – 30.6 percent of this group did not have health insurance.
— Nearly 40 percent of the uninsured population reside in households that earn $50,000 or more. A growing number of middle-income families cannot afford health insurance payments even when coverage is offered by their employers.
Source: National Coalition Health Care
Snapshot of America's Insured
Sicko focuses on people who do have insurance, but insurance that doesn't serve them well. Statistics show that health insurance is becoming more expensive and fewer insurers are offering it.
— Fewer employers are offering coverage to workers, down from 69 percent of employers in 2000 to 60 percent in 2005. The drop stems almost entirely from fewer small businesses offering health benefits.
— Insurance premiums increased an average of 9.2 percent in 2005.
— Annual premiums for family coverage reached $10,880 in 2005, eclipsing the gross earnings for a full-time minimum-wage worker ($10,712).
— 61 percent of all employees with health coverage in 2005 were enrolled in a PPO (up from 55 percent in 2004). Enrollment in HMOs, which generally cost less than PPOs, fell to 21 percent of people with insurance in 2005.
Source: 2006 Kaiser Family Foundation Survey of Employer Health Benefits
Where the U.S. Ranks in the World
After painting a bleak picture of American health care, Moore looks at the health care systems of the United Kingdom, France and Cuba. The World Health Organization did an international survey back in 2000, with some surprising results.
The survey looked at the health care systems of 191 countries based on factors such as the general level of population health, patient satisfaction, equality of access, and health care financing.
And while the U.S. health system spends a higher portion of its gross domestic product than any other country, it ranked 37. The United Kingdom, which spends just 6 percent of GDP on health services, ranked 18. France ranked first. And Cuba, which Moore describes as a great place to get health care, ranked 39.
Other findings:
— A key recommendation from the report is for countries to extend health insurance to as large a percentage of the population as possible, whether in the form of insurance or taxes.
— The United States ranked highest on patient satisfaction, followed by Switzerland, Luxembourg, Denmark, Germany, Japan, Canada, Norway, Netherlands and Sweden.
— On the consumer affordability of health care, Colombia ranked No. 1, followed by Luxembourg, Belgium, Djibouti, Denmark, Ireland, Germany, Norway, Japan and Finland. The United States ranked 54.
— Nearly 47 million Americans, or 16 percent of the population, were without health insurance at some point in 2005.
— The number of uninsured rose 1.3 million between 2004 and 2005 and has increased by almost 7 million people since 2000.
— In 2005, nearly 15 percent of employees had no employer-sponsored health coverage available to them, either through their own job or through a family member.
— Young adults (18 to 24 years old) remained the least likely of any age group to have health insurance in 2005 – 30.6 percent of this group did not have health insurance.
— Nearly 40 percent of the uninsured population reside in households that earn $50,000 or more. A growing number of middle-income families cannot afford health insurance payments even when coverage is offered by their employers.
Source: National Coalition Health Care
Snapshot of America's Insured
Sicko focuses on people who do have insurance, but insurance that doesn't serve them well. Statistics show that health insurance is becoming more expensive and fewer insurers are offering it.
— Fewer employers are offering coverage to workers, down from 69 percent of employers in 2000 to 60 percent in 2005. The drop stems almost entirely from fewer small businesses offering health benefits.
— Insurance premiums increased an average of 9.2 percent in 2005.
— Annual premiums for family coverage reached $10,880 in 2005, eclipsing the gross earnings for a full-time minimum-wage worker ($10,712).
— 61 percent of all employees with health coverage in 2005 were enrolled in a PPO (up from 55 percent in 2004). Enrollment in HMOs, which generally cost less than PPOs, fell to 21 percent of people with insurance in 2005.
Source: 2006 Kaiser Family Foundation Survey of Employer Health Benefits
Where the U.S. Ranks in the World
After painting a bleak picture of American health care, Moore looks at the health care systems of the United Kingdom, France and Cuba. The World Health Organization did an international survey back in 2000, with some surprising results.
The survey looked at the health care systems of 191 countries based on factors such as the general level of population health, patient satisfaction, equality of access, and health care financing.
And while the U.S. health system spends a higher portion of its gross domestic product than any other country, it ranked 37. The United Kingdom, which spends just 6 percent of GDP on health services, ranked 18. France ranked first. And Cuba, which Moore describes as a great place to get health care, ranked 39.
Other findings:
— A key recommendation from the report is for countries to extend health insurance to as large a percentage of the population as possible, whether in the form of insurance or taxes.
— The United States ranked highest on patient satisfaction, followed by Switzerland, Luxembourg, Denmark, Germany, Japan, Canada, Norway, Netherlands and Sweden.
— On the consumer affordability of health care, Colombia ranked No. 1, followed by Luxembourg, Belgium, Djibouti, Denmark, Ireland, Germany, Norway, Japan and Finland. The United States ranked 54.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Even babies know right from wrong...
So maybe there is something to natural law, and Romans 2. and oh, that "evangelical saying"
(AGI) - London, 22 Nov. - Long before being able to speak, babies understand the reasons underlying the choices of those around them and are able to distinguish altruists from those counter to them or just simply ignoring them. This was shown in a study carried out in the US by a team from Yale University (Connecticut), which found that infants between 6 and 10 months have a sort of innate ethical morality which causes them to act in accordance with the well-known evangelical saying "do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
This ability is clear well before babies are able to socialize, which suggests that it is an innate instinct rather than behaviour learnt from parents or adults in general. In the study, published in Nature, the team of researchers used a group of toys to evaluate the reaction of babies between 6 and 10 months old.
In the first experiment the little ones watched a large-eyed wooden toy trying with difficulty to climb a hill. The "climber" interacted with other toys in different ways: a puppet, in the shape of a triangle, tried to help him and pushed him up the hill, while another, in the square of a square, tried to hinder his progress in any way possible or even pushed him down.
After having shown the little ones the scene, the scientists observed their reactions, giving the babies puppets in the shape of triangles and square. All the 6-month-old babies choose the triangle-altruistic ones, as did 14 of the 16 10-month-old ones.
The second experiment inverted the scenario, with the "climber" wanting to get down the hill (to exclude the possibility that the young ones were influenced solely by the direction of the movement).
In a third test the young ones of both age groups preferred a neutral puppet over the one that hampered the "climber's progress, and an altruistic puppet over a neutral one.
(AGI) - London, 22 Nov. - Long before being able to speak, babies understand the reasons underlying the choices of those around them and are able to distinguish altruists from those counter to them or just simply ignoring them. This was shown in a study carried out in the US by a team from Yale University (Connecticut), which found that infants between 6 and 10 months have a sort of innate ethical morality which causes them to act in accordance with the well-known evangelical saying "do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
This ability is clear well before babies are able to socialize, which suggests that it is an innate instinct rather than behaviour learnt from parents or adults in general. In the study, published in Nature, the team of researchers used a group of toys to evaluate the reaction of babies between 6 and 10 months old.
In the first experiment the little ones watched a large-eyed wooden toy trying with difficulty to climb a hill. The "climber" interacted with other toys in different ways: a puppet, in the shape of a triangle, tried to help him and pushed him up the hill, while another, in the square of a square, tried to hinder his progress in any way possible or even pushed him down.
After having shown the little ones the scene, the scientists observed their reactions, giving the babies puppets in the shape of triangles and square. All the 6-month-old babies choose the triangle-altruistic ones, as did 14 of the 16 10-month-old ones.
The second experiment inverted the scenario, with the "climber" wanting to get down the hill (to exclude the possibility that the young ones were influenced solely by the direction of the movement).
In a third test the young ones of both age groups preferred a neutral puppet over the one that hampered the "climber's progress, and an altruistic puppet over a neutral one.
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