The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe--the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.

We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans--born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage--and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

This much we pledge--and more.

To those old allies whose cultural and spiritual origins we share, we pledge the loyalty of faithful friends. United there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ventures. Divided there is little we can do--for we dare not meet a powerful challenge at odds and split asunder.

To those new states whom we welcome to the ranks of the free, we pledge our word that one form of colonial control shall not have passed away merely to be replaced by a far more iron tyranny. We shall not always expect to find them supporting our view. But we shall always hope to find them strongly supporting their own freedom--and to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.

To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required--not because the communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

...

To that world assembly of sovereign states, the United Nations, our last best hope in an age where the instruments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace, we renew our pledge of support--to prevent it from becoming merely a forum for invective--to strengthen its shield of the new and the weak--and to enlarge the area in which its writ may run.

Finally, to those nations who would make themselves our adversary, we offer not a pledge but a request: that both sides begin anew the quest for peace, before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction.

We dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed.

...

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility--I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it--and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.
President Kennedy
Inaugural Address
1961

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On Tuesday, the choice is painfully clear. The president understands America's role and responsibility in the world and the danger the we and the world face. I rather suspect America does too.

Twice in my lifetime the long arm of destiny has reached across the oceans and involved the entire life and manhood of the United States in a deadly struggle.

There was no use in saying "We don't want it; we won’t have it; our forebears left Europe to avoid these quarrels; we have founded a new world which has no contact with the old. "There was no use in that. The long arm reaches out remorselessly, and every one's existence, environment, and outlook undergo a swift and irresistible change. What is the explanation, Mr. President, of these strange facts, and what are the deep laws to which they respond? I will offer you one explanation - there are others, but one will suffice.

The price of greatness is responsibility. If the people of the United States had continued in a mediocre station, struggling with the wilderness, absorbed in their own affairs, and a factor of no consequence in the movement of the world, they might have remained forgotten and undisturbed beyond their protecting oceans: but one cannot rise to be in many ways the leading community in the civilised world without being involved in its problems, without being convulsed by its agonies and inspired by its causes.

If this has been proved in the past, as it has been, it will become indisputable in the future. The people of the United States cannot escape world responsibility. Although we live in a period so tumultuous that little can be predicted, we may be quite sure that this process will be intensified with every forward step the United States make in wealth and in power. Not only are the responsibilities of this great Republic growing, but the world over which they range is itself contracting in relation to our powers of locomotion at a positively alarming rate.

Winston Churchill
at Harvard University
1943

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Tuesday will decide the fate of the free world. And history will record that once gain, America rose to her appointed rendezvous with destiny. That shining city on a hill still shines brite. The last best hope of mankind still remains.

Never before since Jamestown and Plymouth Rock has our American civilization been in such danger as now.

For, on September 27, 1940, by an agreement signed in Berlin, three powerful nations, two in Europe and one in Asia, joined themselves together in the threat that if the United States of America interfered with or blocked the expansion program of these three nations- a program aimed at world control—they would unite in ultimate action against the United States.

The Nazi masters of Germany have made it clear that they intend not only to dominate all life and thought in their own country, but also to enslave the whole of Europe, and then to use the resources of Europe to dominate the rest of the world.

It was only three weeks ago their leader stated this: "There are two worlds that stand opposed to each other." And then in defiant reply to his opponents, he said this: "Others are correct when they say: With this world we cannot ever reconcile ourselves. . . . I can beat any other power in the world." So said the leader of the Nazis.

In other words, the Axis not merely admits but proclaims that there can be no ultimate peace between their philosophy of government and our philosophy of government.

In view of the nature of this undeniable threat, it can be asserted, properly and categorically, that the United States has no right or reason to encourage talk of peace, until the day shall come when there is a clear intention on the part of the aggressor nations to abandon all thought of dominating or conquering the world.

At this moment, the forces of the states that are leagued against all peoples who live in freedom, are being held away from our shores. The Germans and the Italians are being blocked on the other side of the Atlantic by the British, and by the Greeks, and by thousands of soldiers and sailors who were able to escape from subjugated countries. In Asia, the Japanese are being engaged by the Chinese nation in another great defense. In the Pacific Ocean is our fleet.

Some of our people like to believe that wars in Europe and in Asia are of no concern to us. But it is a matter of most vital concern to us that European and Asiatic war-makers should not gain control of the oceans which lead to this hemisphere.

One hundred and seventeen years ago the Monroe Doctrine was conceived by our Government as a measure of defense in the face of a threat against this hemisphere by an alliance in Continental Europe. Thereafter, we stood on guard in the Atlantic, with the British as neighbors. There was no treaty. There was no "unwritten agreement."

And yet, there was the feeling, proven correct by history, that we as neighbors could settle any disputes in peaceful fashion. The fact is that during the whole of this time the Western Hemisphere has remained free from aggression from Europe or from Asia.

Does anyone seriously believe that we need to fear attack anywhere in the Americas while a free Britain remains our most powerful naval neighbor in the Atlantic? Does anyone seriously believe, on the other hand, that we could rest easy if the Axis powers were our neighbors there?

If Great Britain goes down, the Axis powers will control the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa, Australasia, and the high seas—and they will be in a position to bring enormous military and naval resources against this hemisphere. It is no exaggeration to say that all of us, in all the Americas, would be living at the point of a gun—a gun loaded with explosive bullets, economic as well as military.

We should enter upon a new and terrible era in which the whole world, our hemisphere included, would be run by threats of brute force. To survive in such a world, we would have to convert ourselves permanently into a militaristic power on the basis of war economy.

Some of us like to believe that even if Great Britain falls, we are still safe, because of the broad expanse of the Atlantic and of the Pacific.

But the width of those oceans is not what it was in the days of clipper ships. At one point between Africa and Brazil the distance is less than from Washington to Denver, Colorado five hours for the latest type of bomber. And at the North end of the Pacific Ocean America and Asia almost touch each other.

Even today we have planes that could fly from the British Isles to New England and back again without refueling. And remember that the range of the modern bomber is ever being increased.

During the past week many people in all parts of the nation have told me what they wanted me to say tonight. Almost all of them expressed a courageous desire to hear the plain truth about the gravity of the situation. One telegram, however, expressed the attitude of the small minority who want to see no evil and hear no evil, even though they know in their hearts that evil exists. That telegram begged me not to tell again of the ease with which our American cities could be bombed by any hostile power which had gained bases in this Western Hemisphere. The gist of that telegram was: "Please, Mr. President, don't frighten us by telling us the facts."

Frankly and definitely there is danger ahead—danger against which we must prepare. But we well know that we cannot escape danger, or the fear of danger, by crawling into bed and pulling the covers over our heads.

Some nations of Europe were bound by solemn non-intervention pacts with Germany. Other nations were assured by Germany that they need never fear invasion. Non-intervention pact or not, the fact remains that they were attacked, overrun and thrown into the modern form of slavery at an hour's notice, or even without any notice at all. As an exiled leader of one of these nations said to me the other day—"The notice was a minus quantity. It was given to my Government two hours after German troops had poured into my country in a hundred places."

The fate of these nations tells us what it means to live at the point of a Nazi gun.

The Nazis have justified such actions by various pious frauds. One of these frauds is the claim that they are occupying a nation for the purpose of "restoring order." Another is that they are occupying or controlling a nation on the excuse that they are "protecting it" against the aggression of somebody else.

For example, Germany has said that she was occupying Belgium to save the Belgians from the British. Would she then hesitate to say to any South American country, "We are occupying you to protect you from aggression by the United States"?

Belgium today is being used as an invasion base against Britain, now fighting for its life. Any South American country, in Nazi hands, would always constitute a jumping-off place for German attack on any one of the other Republics of this hemisphere.

Analyze for yourselves the future of two other places even nearer to Germany if the Nazis won. Could Ireland hold out? Would Irish freedom be permitted as an amazing pet exception in an unfree world? Or the Islands of the Azores which still fly the flag of Portugal after five centuries? You and I think of Hawaii as an outpost of defense in the Pacific. And yet, the Azores are closer to our shores in the Atlantic than Hawaii is on the other side.

There are those who say that the Axis powers would never have any desire to attack the Western Hemisphere. That is the same dangerous form of wishful thinking which has destroyed the powers of resistance of so many conquered peoples. The plain facts are that the Nazis have proclaimed, time and again, that all other races are their inferiors and therefore subject to their orders. And most important of all, the vast resources and wealth of this American Hemisphere constitute the most tempting loot in all the round world.

Let us no longer blind ourselves to the undeniable fact that the evil forces which have crushed and undermined and corrupted so many others are already within our own gates. Your Government knows much about them and every day is ferreting them out.

Their secret emissaries are active in our own and in neighboring countries. They seek to stir up suspicion and dissension to cause internal strife. They try to turn capital against labor, and vice versa. They try to reawaken long slumbering racial and religious enmities which should have no place in this country. They are active in every group that promotes intolerance. They exploit for their own ends our natural abhorrence of war. These trouble-breeders have but one purpose. It is to divide our people into hostile groups and to destroy our unity and shatter our will to defend ourselves.

There are also American citizens, many of them in high places, who, unwittingly in most cases, are aiding and abetting the work of these agents. I do not charge these American citizens with being foreign agents. But I do charge them with doing exactly the kind of work that the dictators want done in the United States.

These people not only believe that we can save our own skins by shutting our eyes to the fate of other nations. Some of them go much further than that. They say that we can and should become the friends and even the partners of the Axis powers. Some of them even suggest that we should imitate the methods of the dictatorships. Americans never can and never will do that.

The experience of the past two years has proven beyond doubt that no nation can appease the Nazis. No man can tame a tiger into a kitten by stroking it. There can be no appeasement with ruthlessness. There can be no reasoning with an incendiary bomb. We know now that a nation can have peace with the Nazis only at the price of total surrender.

Even the people of Italy have been forced to become accomplices of the Nazis; but at this moment they do not know how soon they will be embraced to death by their allies.

The American appeasers ignore the warning to be found in the fate of Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, and France. They tell you that the Axis powers are going to win anyway; that all this bloodshed in the world could be saved; that the United States might just as well throw its influence into the scale of a dictated peace, and get the best out of it that we can.

They call it a "negotiated peace." Nonsense! Is it a negotiated peace if a gang of outlaws surrounds your community and on threat of extermination makes you pay tribute to save your own skins?

Such a dictated peace would be no peace at all. It would be only another armistice, leading to the most gigantic armament race and the most devastating trade wars in all history. And in these contests the Americas would offer the only real resistance to the Axis powers.

With all their vaunted efficiency, with all their parade of pious purpose in this war, there are still in their background the concentration camp and the servants of God in chains.

The history of recent years proves that shootings and chains and concentration camps are not simply the transient tools but the very altars of modern dictatorships. They may talk of a "new order" in the world, but what they have in mind is only a revival of the oldest and the worst tyranny. In that there is no liberty, no religion, no hope.

The proposed "new order" is the very opposite of a United States of Europe or a United States of Asia. It is not a Government based upon the consent of the governed. It is not a union of ordinary, self-respecting men and women to protect themselves and their freedom and their dignity from oppression. It is an unholy alliance of power and pelf to dominate and enslave the human race.

The British people and their allies today are conducting an active war against this unholy alliance. Our own future security is greatly dependent on the outcome of that fight. Our ability to "keep out of war" is going to be affected by that outcome.

Thinking in terms of today and tomorrow, I make the direct statement to the American people that there is far less chance of the United States getting into war, if we do all we can now to support the nations defending themselves against attack by the Axis than if we acquiesce in their defeat, submit tamely to an Axis victory, and wait our turn to be the object of attack in another war later on.

If we are to be completely honest with ourselves, we must admit that there is risk in any course we may take. But I deeply believe that the great majority of our people agree that the course that I advocate involves the least risk now and the greatest hope for world peace in the future.

The people of Europe who are defending themselves do not ask us to do their fighting. They ask us for the implements of war, the planes, the tanks, the guns, the freighters which will enable them to fight for their liberty and for our security. Emphatically we must get these weapons to them in sufficient volume and quickly enough, so that we and our children will be saved the agony and suffering of war which others have had to endure.

Let not the defeatists tell us that it is too late. It will never be earlier. Tomorrow will be later than today. Certain facts are self-evident.

In a military sense Great Britain and the British Empire are today the spearhead of resistance to world conquest. They are putting up a fight which will live forever in the story of human gallantry.

There is no demand for sending an American Expeditionary Force outside our own borders. There is no intention by any member of your Government to send such a force. You can, therefore, nail any talk about sending armies to Europe as deliberate untruth.

Our national policy is not directed toward war. Its sole purpose is to keep war away from our country and our people. Democracy's fight against world conquest is being greatly aided, and must be more greatly aided, by the rearmament of the United States and by sending every ounce and every ton of munitions and supplies that we can possibly spare to help the defenders who are in the front lines. It is no more unneutral for us to do that than it is for Sweden, Russia and other nations near Germany, to send steel and ore and oil and other war materials into Germany every day in the week.

We are planning our own defense with the utmost urgency; and in its vast scale we must integrate the war needs of Britain and the other free nations which are resisting aggression.

This is not a matter of sentiment or of controversial personal opinion. It is a matter of realistic, practical military policy, based on the advice of our military experts who are in close touch with existing warfare. These military and naval experts and the members of the Congress and the Administration have a single-minded purpose—the defense of the United States.

This nation is making a great effort to produce everything that is necessary in this emergency—and with all possible speed. This great effort requires great sacrifice.

I would ask no one to defend a democracy which in turn would not defend everyone in the nation against want and privation. The strength of this nation shall not be diluted by the failure of the Government to protect the economic well-being of its citizens.

If our capacity to produce is limited by machines, it must ever be remembered that these machines are operated by the skill and the stamina of the workers. As the Government is determined to protect the rights of the workers, so the nation has a right to expect that the men who man the machines will discharge their full responsibilities to the urgent needs of defense.

The worker possesses the same human dignity and is entitled to the same security of position as the engineer or the manager or the owner. For the workers provide the human power that turns out the destroyers, the airplanes and the tanks.

The nation expects our defense industries to continue operation without interruption by strikes or lock-outs. It expects and insists that management and workers will reconcile their differences by voluntary or legal means, to continue to produce the supplies that are so sorely needed.

And on the economic side of our great defense program, we are, as you know, bending every effort to maintain stability of prices and with that the stability of the cost of living.

Nine days ago I announced the setting up of a more effective organization to direct our gigantic efforts to increase the production of munitions. The appropriation of vast sums of money and a well coordinated executive direction of our defense efforts are not in themselves enough. Guns, planes, ships and many other things have to be built in the factories and arsenals of America. They have to be produced by workers and managers and engineers with the aid of machines which in turn have to be built by hundreds of thousands of workers throughout the land.

In this great work there has been splendid cooperation between the Government and industry and labor; and I am very thankful.

American industrial genius, unmatched throughout the world in the solution of production problems, has been called upon to bring its resources and its talents into action. Manufacturers of watches, farm implements, linotypes, cash registers, automobiles, sewing machines, lawn mowers and locomotives are now making fuses, bomb packing crates, telescope mounts, shells, pistols and tanks.

But all our present efforts are not enough. We must have more ships, more guns, more planes—more of everything. This can only be accomplished if we discard the notion of "business as usual." This job cannot be done merely by superimposing on the existing productive facilities the added requirements of the nation for defense.

Our defense efforts must not be blocked by those who fear the future consequences of surplus plant capacity. The possible consequences of failure of our defense efforts now are much more to be feared.

After the present needs of our defenses are past, a proper handling of the country's peace-time needs will require all the new productive capacity—if not more.

No pessimistic policy about the future of America shall delay the immediate expansion of those industries essential to defense. We need them.

I want to make it clear that it is the purpose of the nation to build now with all possible speed every machine, every arsenal, every factory that we need to manufacture our defense material. We have the men- the skill- the wealth- and above all, the will.

I am confident that if and when production of consumer or luxury goods in certain industries requires the use of machines and raw materials that are essential for defense purposes, then such production must yield, and will gladly yield, to our primary and compelling purpose.

I appeal to the owners of plants—to the managers—to the workers—to our own Government employees—to put every ounce of effort into producing these munitions swiftly and without stint. With this appeal I give you the pledge that all of us who are officers of your Government will devote ourselves to the same whole-hearted extent to the great task that lies ahead.

As planes and ships and guns and shells are produced, your Government, with its defense experts, can then determine how best to use them to defend this hemisphere. The decision as to how much shall be sent abroad and how much shall remain at home must be made on the basis of our over-all military necessities.

We must be the great arsenal of democracy. For us this is an emergency as serious as war itself. We must apply ourselves to our task with the same resolution, the same sense of urgency, the same spirit of patriotism and sacrifice as we would show were we at war.

We have furnished the British great material support and we will furnish far more in the future.

There will be no "bottlenecks" in our determination to aid Great Britain. No dictator, no combination of dictators, will weaken that determination by threats of how they will construe that determination.

The British have received invaluable military support from the heroic Greek army, and from the forces of all the governments in exile. Their strength is growing. It is the strength of men and women who value their freedom more highly than they value their lives.

I believe that the Axis powers are not going to win this war. I base that belief on the latest and best information.

We have no excuse for defeatism. We have every good reason for hope—hope for peace, hope for the defense of our civilization and for the building of a better civilization in the future.

I have the profound conviction that the American people are now determined to put forth a mightier effort than they have ever yet made to increase our production of all the implements ofdefense, to meet the threat to our democratic faith.

As President of the United States I call for that national effort. I call for it in the name of this nation which we love and honor and which we are privileged and proud to serve. I call upon our people with absolute confidence that our common cause will greatly succeeds.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt
December 29, 1940

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On tuesday, more than cheaper prescription drugs are at stake.

UPDATE: Not an hour after I post, do I read that UBL has crawled out from his cave and released a tape. We should thank him for reminding us what this election is all about.

Update 2: Hear speech (mp3)

He that makes war without many mistakes has not made war very long.
-Napoleon

It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.
-General Douglas MacArthur

War is a series of catastrophes that results in a victory.
-Georges Clemenceau

Radical Islam has been at war with the United States for three decades. I would argue that it began with the 1973 embargo, but more specifically it began in 1979 in Tehran. It continued in Beirut in 1983, over Lockerbie in 1988, New York in 1993. It escalated in Yemen in 2000, and became magnified in September, 2001. We however have only been at war since 9/11.

The world collectively stood by in the 1930's while Germany and Japan rearmed. Europe stood idle while Bismark was "retired" and the Kaiser submitted to the restive Junkers. Europe watched as Jacobin thuggery ebbed to the tide of Napoleonic empiricism. Standing armies became the rule and military economies became national salvation.

Westphalia, Aix-la-Chapelle, Vienna, and Versailles. All they accomplished was more grandiose killing, wars without finality. Mistakes compunded by lack of will. Lessons learned that only took the West 5 centuries and half a billion dead to comprehend. In a few days America will take a history final exam of sorts. There is only one question, multiple choice, with only two possible answers; one right, the other wrong.

I assume that the German leaders are not deeply concerned, tonight or any other time, by what we Americans or the American Government say or publish about them. We cannot bring about the downfall of Nazi-ism by the use of long-range invective. But when you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him.
-FDR September 11, 1942

We have a leader who understands this running against a Senator who doesn't. Senator Kerry has said he wants a return the days when we were not at war. He wants to return to the days when terrorism was a nuisance, and wants to secure our safety through treaties and alliances.

War is hell. It is a series of mistakes that finally lead to victory. Our troops used to call the M3 Sherman tank a "Ronson", because like the lighters, it always lit the first time. Our troops froze in the Ardennes due to lack of planning and poor distribution of supplies. The Navy suffered horrific losses off Okinawa as the unforseen assault of kamikaze penetrated ill-suited defenses.

And yet today, our mistakes pale in comparison to the successes. The enemy is reduced to terrorizing innocent women and children, beheading non-combatants and issuing threats. He is confined to a well defined area, the recipient of ever more combined arms assaults. His safe houses are bombed at night, his homes raided by day. His desperate attempts at starting ethnic and religious civil war rejected by both sides. Now, he only survives because the locals are unsure who'll win in november and they don't want to risk their lives on a political weather vane.

What is the enemy we face in Iraq? Is he a well-financed, trained, and supported soldier? Or is he a man without a country, a dead man walking, hoping to delay the inevitable? Would that he was truly an insurgent, he'd have support from the masses and not need to impose a reign of terror on the residents of Ramadi and Fallujah.

Make no mistake about the enemy we face in Iraq. He is armed, deadly, and willing to die. He is dangerous in a most non-Western way, someone for whom death is a reward. But we should make no pretenses about him. He would not be operating a falafel stand if the infidel was gone, he would just the same be training and preparing for his rendezvous with 72 virgins. That he dies in Fallujah assures that he will die in Fallujah, in vain, accomplishing nothing more than providing invaluable experience for US forces.

In war, the side that learns best wins. After a century, Rome finally learned how to defeat Carthage and finihsed her off in 3 years. It took Britain 5 centuries of failed continental aspirations to resign herself to vistory at sea. It has taken us all of three years to learn how to fight the terrorist on his soil, on our terms.

Saddam was preparing for this for a very long time. Hundreds of thousands of tons of ordinance were stored in every mosque, school, and playground. It is impossible to imagine the result had his vision become reality. War detractors only see what they choose to, ignoring how much was truly unknown nor how much has been learned.

There are two options that Bush's critics can take. One, the war was right and necessary but done poorly, or two, the war was a mistake from the outset. As for the latter, the Duelfer report should have put that idiocy to rest. As for the former, one cannot jump into a book halfway. In either case, Kerry has played both positions, and poorly at that. He has called for winning the war, yet made withdrawal his centerpiece. He has called Saddam a threat, but his removal, the "wrong war".

His recent pronouncements about missing weapons caches is evidence only of his desire to use anyone or anything to advance his own personal ambitions. His reluctance to admit war is fraught with mistakes only displays his complete ignorance, willful or otherwise. His judgement, sorely lacking in the Mary Cheney remark, is exposed to be pitiful after this.

The Iraqi war has hopefully returned to America something we forgot in the post-Vietnam era. War is hell and mistakes happen. What matters is that you never lose the will to fight. Our enemy doesn't have the capacity to win, only endure. That was a game the South played as well, one Lincoln was able to win.

I would much prefer a president who makes mistakes fighting terrorism than one who doesn't make mistakes not fighting terrorism. I rather think the electorate feels the same.

I have great sympathy for Michael Kinsley and any sufferer of degenerative diseases. I can't imagine the anguish to watch daily as your mental faculties remain, while your body steadily declines. That there might be a miracle cure in the near future, based upon speculative science and questionable ethics, will cause anyone to put judgement aside.

Mr. Kinsley's writes a compelling argument in TNR, HOW STEM CELLS CHANGE ABORTION. I wholeheartedly sympathize with his plight, but he misses the central issue.

He begins by offering back-handed praise to the pro-life movement, which is, as he argues wholly selfless. As he puts it:

The one unavoidably admirable thing about the Right to Life movement is the selflessness of its cause...for all the misery it would create if it got its way, for all the thuggishness of its rhetoric and sometimes its actions...the organized movement against abortion rights must be given this tip of the hat: Almost uniquely among powerful interest groups, it is dedicated to the interests of someone else. Or, rather, something it believes to be someone else.

Could not the same be said of those pesky abolitionists a century and a half ago?

Kinsley argues that unlike abortion, "What makes the sale easier, though, is that abortion doesn't fully test the premise that human life and moral equality with every other human life begin at conception." In other words, abortion is simply a balance between a potential life versus a woman's "right to choose".

Here is the crux of his argument: "This time, human life is at stake on the other side. And not just a single human life, but potentially many if stem-cell research realizes its potential."

So, in other words, the calculus is one "potential life" versus the actual real lives on hundreds, thousands, or more. Kinsley is clearly falling on the side of the many versus the one, or the potential one. If it were only so simple.

Especially when you include the fact that stem-cell research uses embryos that are produced but not used in the booming business of in vitro fertilization.

These embryos were created to produce a pregnancy. Most will never be implanted and thus will be destroyed. Kinsley fails to address the multitude of ethical problems that this has already created including cloning, sex selection, and genetic engineering. Recent years have seen a trend towards "designer babies". At one time it was called eugenics, now it's called progress.

Kinsley frames the debate as the "selflessness required to say, 'OK, I'll suffer and die prematurely so that this dot can stay frozen for the next thousand years'." But it is much more complicated than that. Doesn't he recognize the selfishness required to say in essence, "my desires outweigh any possible moral or ethical dilemma."

Mr. Kinsley would have us believe that there is a ban on stem-cell research. This simply isn't the truth. Did Mr. Kinsley miss civics class? The president does not rule by fiat or edict. The president could no more ban stem-cell research than he could ban abortion or guns. And Mr. Kinsley knows this.

Scientists overwhelmingly believe that embryonic stem cells are more promising, and they rail against Bush's restrictions on research.

No sir, what they really want is federal funding. Should a private firm decide to pursue stem-cell research, they are free to do so.

it is the research opponents who have let politics cloud their judgment, or simply make them liars, about a question of science. This way, they don't have to ask people point-blank to give up their lives or their hopes of good health for a microscopic dot.

Nobody is being asked to give up their life for a microscopic dot. What they are asking for is some clear and rational thinking.

Once you decide that a five-day-old embryo maybe isn't as human as you or me, the tempting logical clarity of the absolutist right-to-life position disappears. The slippery slope suddenly slopes the other way.

No, the slope simple becomes more slippery. Where do we stop? What if scientists need four cells? Or eight? Or more? Who sir will draw the line?

What if scientists say that we need more developed cells? Or we need tissue? Would you allow for cells to be implanted and developed? Is a cure worth the harvesting of fetal tissue?

Kinsley clearly supports aboriton, and thus would ostensibly support aboriton for any reason. What would be his response if someone was paid grow a fetus for medical research? What if fetal organs would yield a cure? We simply don't know the possibilities of fetal tissue or organs. Should they too be used?


Stem-cells do offer potential at possible cures. There are also many if's, hopefully's, maybe's, and one day's, in the argument in favor of research. If the promised cure was just around the corner, there would be a rush of drug companies to research, market, and capitalize on the research. But the truth is there isn't.

Mr. Kinsley offers up the slippery slope argument. But the slope is much slipperier. If society doesn't draw the line, who will? Doesn't society have the right, the responsibility, to act with caution and deliberation? Where do we stop? Or do we? That is the slope we must not descend?

A NY Times article Secret Weapon for Bush suggests that Bush is slightly more intelligent than Kerry, a situation that would astound most people. So the question than becomes, why is this so? Why does a man of high intelligence sound far less so? Well, I think the answer is simple.

President Bush most likely has a learning disability. In my nine years as a junior high and high school teacher, I have seen many kids that have similar disorders. One day some investigative reporter is going to make his career exposing the sham that special education is. However, many students do "suffer" from what we call processing disorders. As every aspiring teacher in learns in their education classes, teachers are supposed to allow plenty of "wait time", the time between the asking of the question and the calling of the students. This is to allow time for processing.

Bush most likely suffers from a audio processing disorder. In other words, what he hears and what we hear are actually different. So, most of us would hear a question, process the question, than formulate an answer. He would hear a question, but it won't immedately make sense. So he'll need to first process the actual words and make sense of them, then process the question, then formulate a response. For a student sitting in class, the extra time is a godsend. For the President of the United States, in front of millions of people, it is a lifetime.

That deer in the headlights look that liberals are too fond of mocking is not cluelessness but gears turning. I see it all the time. He obviously learned at an early age or was taught along the way, to stop and process information, formulate a response, then respond. It is a simple strategy that helps students with processing disorders. And as a teacher, I am to encourage this process with plenty of wait time.

I hear many of my colleagues, who are all too quick to call for testing for a student, deride and mock the president for the very same observable problems. The president went to school long before the massive growth in special education and the IDEA, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act was passed. I had many friends in school who were very smart but did poorly in school, even though they tried hard. Yes, these disorders exist and yes, smart kids appear less so. Most just learned to work harder and overcome whatever they needed to, not even realizing that they had a disorder.

Of course the one institution that would understand this so hates the president that they will remain silent. I don't think that if Bush had a learning disorder people would vote against him. Nor do I think his opponents would take advantage of it. The democrats have really boxed themselves in on that one.

What made me think of this was a comment I used to describe Bush right after the first debate. Frustrated, I remarked that "Here's a man who understands the world and the threat we face like a Churchill or Reagan, yet speaks like a fourth grader." And then it dawned on me.

Mark Steyn write in his column No time for Kerry's Europhile delusions:

These are serious times and the senator is not a serious man...

On 9/10, I wrote in Serious Debate, unserious candidate:

Honest and in depth discourse needs to take place about Iraq and more importantly, future operations against, among others, Iran...
This debate will not take place because John Kerry is so inept, so vapid, so vacuous a candidate.