Just some thoughts About my Birthday
I’ve been away for a short while and life got in the way of writing. Yes, I do have a life outside of blogging.
On Saturday I had my birthday. My wife made me a nice party with a PowerPoint presentation to boot. if you go to www.e-tactics.com/sba60.pps you can see it. She did the whole thing without consulting me, but it seems to capture us.
Anyway, the one thing that I appreciated was all the people who showed up for the party and all the people who told me that they wished that they could come but could not due to other obligations. This is not to mention all the good wishes that I received from my “Facebook Friends”
I am really humbled by it all.
I know that this is a short post that is all I have to say right now. Just thank you to all the good people that sent me birthday greetings.
The Yankees
I ama New York Yankees fan.
One of the things that I like about the Yankees is that they have an appearance code. A Yankee has to be clean shaven and have his hair neatly cut. The reason for this is that the management of the Yankees feel that the Yankees represent the best that there is in baseball. That they are roll models for many young people.
I bring this up due to an interestint conversation I had in Bermuda with a Left wing professor and his wife.
His wife stated that due to the appearance code of the Yankees she felt that they looked like Nazis. I was stuned to say the least. To her the fact that the management of demands that the players look decent seemed to her to be Nazi like.
That is like saying that any business that makes these demands on their employees must be fascist. This is the usual Left wing drivel.
It was not enough to say that she was a Red Sox fan. She had to demonize the Yankees with the worst possible epithat that she could think of.
This brings us to the recent reporting of the very successful gathering of Glenn Beck in Washington, DC. The main fact is that Mr Beck managed to gather over 300,000 pople to his rally. The fact that these people were well behaved is well known. The fact that there was a demonstration led by Al Sharpton a block or two away that could have been held in a telephone booh and it was ignored by the Beck people.
(Sharpton screamed about the “racism” of Beck but, as is usually the case, did not give any real proof.)
The Mainstream Media denounced Beck as a racist and pointed out that most of the people there were white. I’ve got news for the MSM. Most of the American people are whie. The fact is that there were many African Americans at the Beck rally. There were no reports of racial incidents.
But Beck is pictured as a fascist or worse. Sharpton, whose history is full of lies, he was convicted of libel, is praised. Why? Let’s just say that the MSM is against anyone who does not think like theydo.
To the MSM we have to think alike but we are not entitled to have different opinions.
This explains why the only reason that the MSM thinks that people oppose President Obama’s program are guided by racism. It could not be because people have logical reasons. Or that the only reason that anyone is opposed to the GZM is that they are Islamaphobic.
Again, we learn that the real haters are on the Left.
Thinking about Embryonic Stem Cells
The hardest questions that we have today concern the junction of science and morality. Should there be a limit on experiments due to moral or religious considerations. If so, then what should the limits be.
What about the goals of the scientific inquiry? If the goal is to save as many lives as possible then can we do whatever we want to that end?
As you can see these are not very easy issues. Anyone who thinks so has a real problem.
When President Obama decided to lift the ban on embryonic stem cell research he gave the impression that he had not really thought of these issues but based his conclusions on science only. Here is the problem with such shallow thinking. Scientific experimentation without moral guidelines usually leads to the most horrendous experiments.
Note that neither the Nazis or the Communists were bothered by moral considerations. They only wanted to “advance” science. And that is the problem when we do not allow our moral or religious commitments to interfere with our quest for knowledge.
With that introduction we can begin to look at the current debate concerning embryonic stem cell research.
I hope that you noticed the adjective that I put into the title of this post. The reason for this is that there is no debate about adult stem cell research. I do not know of any religious or moral authority that opposes it. And we know that the research into adult stem cells is the most promising. The reason that most researchers say is that adult stem cells are not as volatile as embryonic stem cells.
The real problem is embryonic stem cells. These are taken from an aborted fetus. What that means is that there was a form of death in getting these stem cells.
Now let’s look at the situation. One of the things that the “pro choice” people would like to avoid is the issue that an abortion means that a potential human is killed (or destroyed).
The real danger of this is that there are some unscrupulous people who would be willing to offer a woman money for the fetus. And there are some women who would not only accept such an offer but would actually go out of their way to get pregnant in order to be paid.
This is the real issue involved, the sanctity of human life, and the sanctity of potential human life. This is the reason that those who are pushing hard for embryonic stem cell research do not use the word “embryonic”. They wish to confuse the issue. They do not want us to think about the damage that they wish to do.
This is not to say that abortion should be banned in all cases. Abortion is one of the worst possible decisions that someone can make, and is only recommended when all the other choices are worse. It is not a “right”. There is no such thing as “an abortion right any more than there is a right to amputate a limb, or even to have plastic surgery. Like most opponents to “abortion on demand” I could see choosing to have one under certain conditions.
Anyway, back to the issue at hand. If people paid attention to the “ban” that President Bush put on stem cell research it was not a ban at all. The government did not step in to stop all embryonic stem cell research. The “ban” was on the government financing of such research. That is to say that if a private concern wished to pay for it then the research could proceed. Again it is interesting that the proponents of this research said that he banned it. Another misstatement by the “enlightened”.
I know that there are many people who would benefit from the research. This goes without saying. I feel for such people. One of whom is Charles Krauthammer. In a Time essay he wrote:
“When I was 22 and a first-year medical student, I suffered a spinal-cord injury. I have not walked in 32 years. I would be delighted to do so again. But not at any price. I think it is more important to bequeath to my son a world that retains a moral compass, a world that when unleashing the most powerful human discovery since Alamogordo — something as protean, elemental, powerful and potentially dangerous as the manipulation and re-formation of the human embryo — recognizes that lines must be drawn and fences erected. ”
One last thing. The real issue is not between ignorance and science, as President Obama would have us believe, but between true compassion and mere ideology.
About the Author: Shlomo Bar-Ayal is an Israeli-American, or an American-Israeli (I could never get that right) who is unabashedly pro-Israel, pro-US and a great guy.
He has an open mind to opinions that he agrees with.
As you can see from the picture he is also a rather handsome fellow. If he can ever get his picture on the blog!
Besides blogging on whatever he feels like blogging about on any given day he enjoys learning Talmud, davening, being the candyman in his synagogue, smoking his tobacco pipe, and partaking in an adult beverage every now and then