Charlie Kirk, J.K. Rowling, and the Dark Forces Unleashed

 

I revisited the topic of an article I published yesterday in Italian on Money.it to write a post in English for my English-speaking friends and readers.

How a single act of violence has unleashed cultural, political, and ideological forces now entangling even J.K. Rowling

Charlie Kirk

Like the ancient myth of Pandora’s box, the assassination of Charlie Kirk has set loose a swarm of dark forces—ideological, political, and personal—that now entangle even figures far from the crime itself, among them J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter saga.

Rowling, for her part, has always been careful to emphasize that she supports the right of transgender people to live free from discrimination, harassment, and violence. Yet she has just as firmly insisted on the importance of preserving the reality of biological sex and of acknowledging the differences between men and women as fundamental to safeguarding women’s rights. This dual position—affirming dignity and equality for transgender individuals while rejecting the erasure of sex-based distinctions—has placed her at the very center of one of the most polarizing debates of our time. Unsurprisingly, her stance has drawn fierce accusations of transphobia from activists and significant segments of the media. But it has also earned her the backing of a broader movement—feminists, conservatives, free-speech advocates, and ordinary citizens alike—who argue that the ability to critically examine gender policies without being silenced or branded as hateful is itself a cornerstone of any free society.

J.K. Rowling

The controversy has left an indelible mark on Rowling’s public image. On one side, she has faced intense backlash—even from longtime admirers of the Harry Potter saga and members of the film’s cast—who accuse her of betraying the inclusive spirit they associate with her work. On the other, her refusal to recant has elevated her into a symbolic figure of resistance against what many view as a new ideological orthodoxy surrounding gender identity. To her critics, she has become a cautionary tale of privilege and prejudice; to her supporters, she represents courage, intellectual honesty, and the willingness to endure professional and personal costs for the sake of principle. In this sense, Rowling now embodies a paradox of modern public life: the more she is vilified in certain circles, the more she is venerated in others, a lightning rod not only for debates about gender but for broader questions of free speech, tolerance, and the limits of cultural conformity.

The latest development, reported by Alex Farber in the London Times, has added a disturbing new dimension. On Bluesky—the social media platform embraced by much of the progressive left as a “liberal” alternative to X after Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter—several users celebrated Kirk’s death with grotesque enthusiasm and went so far as to suggest that J.K. Rowling should be “next.” In the fevered rhetoric of these online echo chambers, political opponents are not merely to be silenced but erased altogether. One chilling post read: “I’m glad that guy’s dead, but they’re really overdoing it with the whole ‘Oh, this is a dark day for America’ stuff about someone I’d never even heard of until he got shot. Can we get J.K. Rowling next? The U.K. would be heartbroken, but it’s for the greater good of trans people.” Such words, repellent in any context, reveal not only the brutalization of public discourse but also the extent to which violence has been normalized by the left as a legitimate tool of ideological struggle.

The lists of enemies drawn up in these digital forums are long and telling. Alongside Rowling, they include some of the most prominent figures in American conservatism—Donald J. Trump, Elon Musk, Matt Walsh, Michael Knowles, and Ben Shapiro, a close friend of Kirk, among others. To see such names casually grouped together in what amounts to a virtual proscription list speaks volumes about the climate of political hostility that now pervades sections of the online left. The spectacle is ignoble, yet not surprising: when the language of annihilation becomes commonplace, when opponents are caricatured as existential threats rather than fellow citizens, the step from rhetoric to justification of violence becomes perilously short. Bluesky, to its credit, eventually intervened, cautioning users against “glorifying violence.” But the very fact that such a warning was necessary illustrates how deeply the poison has seeped into the bloodstream of political discourse.

Rowling herself responded forcefully last Thursday on X, condemning the Bluesky commentators as “illiberal,” incapable of tolerating the free speech of their opponents, and warning that political violence is indistinguishable from terrorism. In a post that quickly circulated across platforms, she offered a taxonomy of extremism with characteristic clarity: “If you believe that free speech applies to you but not to your political opponents, you’re illiberal. If no evidence to the contrary can ever change your beliefs, you’re a fundamentalist. If you believe the state should punish people for opposing opinions, you’re a totalitarian. If you believe political opponents should be punished with violence or death, you’re a terrorist.” It was a sharp rebuke, but also a statement of principle: Rowling was reminding her detractors that the real test of liberty lies not in defending speech we welcome, but in tolerating speech we despise. Her intervention thus transformed a personal attack into a broader indictment of a political culture increasingly willing to sacrifice freedom on the altar of ideological purity.

Graham Linehan

Just days earlier, Rowling had already made headlines with a fierce attack on the British government after the arrest of Irish comedian Graham Linehan, accused of posting critical comments about transgender ideology. Linehan was detained at Heathrow Airport by no fewer than five armed officers. He later said he had been treated “like a terrorist,” locked in a cell, and even hospitalized due to stress. Authorities also barred him from using social media. “In a country where paedophiles escape sentencing, where knife crime is out of control, where women are assaulted and harassed every time they gather to speak, the state had mobilised five armed officers to arrest a comedy writer for this tweet (and no, I promise you, I am not making this up),” Linehan wrote on his Substack.

Rowling reacted with outrage: “What the fuck has the UK become? This is totalitarianism. Utterly deplorable,” she posted on X. For his part, Linehan argued the incident shows Britain has become “hostile to free speech and women,” while police “bow to pressure from violent, abusive men pretending to be women.” “I was arrested at an airport like a terrorist, locked in a cell like a criminal, taken to hospital because the stress nearly killed me, and banned from speaking online—all because I made jokes that upset some psychotic crossdressers,” he wrote on his Substack..

At this point, the soundest advice for Linehan, Rowling, and all those who refuse to march in lockstep with the orthodoxy broadcast by mainstream media would be to remain vigilant, to measure their public exposure, and, when possible, to avoid unnecessary risks. Such is the paradox of the “free” West—ostensibly the cradle of liberty and civil rights, yet increasingly a place where dissent must be whispered and conviction comes at a cost. Still, one suspects that such counsel will go largely unheeded. People who have already had the courage to alienate their peers, challenge the institutions of the state, and withstand the near-unanimous hostility of the press are not in the habit of retreating. They are, in the truest sense, figures of uncommon moral stature. They are heroes—deeply flawed perhaps, but heroic nonetheless—and as such they deserve to be honored, not posthumously with platitudes, but while they yet stand among us, bearing the weight of their convictions.

Blessed Are the Contrarians

All right, that’s it, I’m done with this job. My new book is out just in time for Christmas. Here is the Preface to Blessed Are the Contrarians: Diary of a Journey Through Interesting Times.

I wish you all 

a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

PREFACE

Blessed are the contrarians, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. But they must be very, very careful in these “Interesting Times,” in the Chinese sense. Unless you think that “May you live in interesting times” after all is a blessing and not a curse, or better still the first of three curses of increasing degrees of severity, the other two being “May the government be aware of you,” and “May you find what you are looking for.” But in this case you had better not read this book—and you can’t say I didn’t warn you!

Let’s start from the beginning, which can only be the title of this book, with the first question: Who or what is a contrarian? Well, that is not an easy question to answer. The fact is that there are many kinds of contrarians. Way too many to come up with a description that fits them all.

Broadly speaking, however, contrarians are those who go against the current (as the dictionary states), who take opposing stands from the majority: in the stock markets they buy when others sell and vice-versa; in religious matters, if they are Christians, they continue to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, in spite of the Zeitgeist, and if they are not they have the utmost respect for what Christianity is all about and for its contribution to civilization. In matters of culture, education and lifestyles, they are “old-fashioned” while the rest of the world seems to be hell bent on transmuting order into chaos.

Philosophically speaking, there are two main types of contrarians: thinkers who are marginal and unconventional during their own life time, but posthumously become very popular and trendy, and those who “thought different” in their lifetime, to quote Steve Jobs, and their works still continue to go against the mainstream in the present time. Friedrich Nietzsche, for instance, belongs to the first category, whilst Montaigne belongs to the second—that of the truest and the most representative contrarians, in my own personal (and perhaps questionable) opinion. And that’s where I shall start from, as you will see.

This book is a kind of diary of a journey through our time—politics, culture, lifestyles, worldviews, etc.—and back home again, where “home” stands for a sense of belonging to something stronger than the spirit of our times. In other words what this book represents is a sort of explanation—though not a systematic one—of why I disagree with certain mainstream views in several domains. And this from a conservative and Christian point of view, that is to say the perspectives that come under severe attack from secular and progressive ideologies, the over-influential schools of thought of our time.

I have selected for this volume some of the articles posted on my blog over the last few years, those most suitable for this traditional mode of communication. The “diary” entries are not arranged in any chronological order, but in accordance to subject pertinence. This was done to make it easier for the reader to surf through the book. After all, as Albert Einstein once said, time is only an illusion—though sometimes an interesting one!

Obama to Change Contraceptive Rule

An announcement from the White House:

The White House said Friday it would address the controversial decision that would require religious-affiliated institutions to provide health insurance that includes coverage for birth control.
At 12:15 p.m. ET, President Barack Obama will deliver a statement from the White House press briefing room.
According to a source who has been briefed on the matter, the White House will announce an "accommodation" to the contraception rule. The announcement will try to ease the concerns of those with religious views by not requiring them to pay for contraception.
This effectively means that insurance companies will pay for the contraception coverage directly.
According to The Associated Press, women will still get guaranteed access to birth control without co-pays or premiums no matter where they work, a provision of Obama's health care law that he insisted must remain.
But religious universities and hospitals that see contraception as an unconscionable violation of their faith can refuse to cover it, and insurance companies will then have to step in to do so.
Following an intense White House debate that led to the original policy, officials said Obama seriously weighed the concerns over religious liberty, leading to the revamped decision.

Obama's Kulturkampf

Kulturkampf  (editorial cartoon),  Kladderadatsch,  May, 1875

Here I am on Obama’s contraception mandate again. But this time I suspect I’m going to surprise you. In fact, this is just an invitation to undertake the reading of this thought-provoking post at Fr. Z’s Blog. Well, actually it’s a Guest entry from Fabrizio, a Roman friend of F. Z, but there is also a comment by the blog’s owner and a reply by Fr. Z’s friend. But then again, it all started from this Hugh Hewitt’s statement:

Massive civil disobedience is the only response for Catholics of conscience. That and an absolute refusal to vote for the anti-Catholic president overseeing this Kulturkampf.

What? Kulturkampf? Yes, you didn’t read it wrong, but don’t worry, even though this is a term that takes us to Otto Von Bismarck and his culture wars against the Catholic Church, you have to bear in mind that Bismarck was also, in some ways, the father of the modern European welfare state and, what is more, of the notion itself of socialized medicine, which is not irrelevant to what we are talking about (and to what is at stake here). By the way, Fabrizio complains about the fact that the founder of modern Germany is considered a “conservative” in history books: the truth is that “[he] only rejected revolutionary socialism to institute it through a top-down process instead of a revolutionary upheaval of society.”

Fabrizio is a fierce opponent to everything that might resemble the idea of a state-run medical care system, and this because “it is inherent to the very idea of socialized medicine that the state gets to tell you what to do and what to pay for and how much.” Which inevitably leads to a conflict between state and religion, as the newly issued HHS contraception mandate clearly shows. The outcome of all of this will be that

Sooner or later, because of the inevitable rationing that comes with centralized healthcare, they won’t even need to mandate that you perform abortions or give away condoms. You’ll simply lose all hospitals and schools because there is no way a large independent health provider can survive in such a system. Why do you think so many Italian hospitals, founded centuries ago, with names of saints and popes, are now in the hands of the Sistema Sanitario Nazionale, directly or indirectly? Why do you think there is hardly a Catholic school that is affordable anymore and which teaches anything different from what kids would hear at the Liceo Statale A. Gramsci or what have you?

“Time to get the tough going,” says Fabrizio, because the going is getting tough.

To that Fr. Z’s reply is very interesting, because it shows another side of the coin, and perhaps also an unexpected one:

It is probable that our institutions have already given up their identity and become “businesses”. They have given themselves over to business models so completely that they are hardly Catholic anymore in any real sense.
The mission for which Catholic hospitals and colleges were founded seems to be over. Our universities and hospitals are now for the most part businesses. They are being run on a business model.
Is it time for us to get out?

The rest of the argument is worth reading and meditating. To conclude, read Fabrizio’s counter-reply in the comment section.

What to say? It’s basically a brainstorming session, so to speak. If this whole thread is not thought-provoking, I don’t know what is.


P.S. I forgot. Where do I stand on this debate? Well, I’m still thinking about it… However, in my view, the two approaches do not necessarily exclude each other. On the contrary, they might have been conceived by the same person, in a sort of dialogue with himself. Or at least this is what I like to think.

Why the Obama Administration’s Contraceptive Rule Is Twice Wrong

White House spokesman Jay Carney defends
the new HHS rule:"The President concurs in the
decision" (January 31, 2012)

In his column today, David Brooks—a political and cultural commentator for the New York Times who considers himself a moderate, not a conservative, despite what the NYT thinks of him—criticizes the Obama Administration’s Contraceptive Rule (see my previous post). Yet, unlike Conservatives, what he is concerned with are not the limits on government power established by the U.S. Constitution, but rather with more practical aspects.

“Every once in a while,” he writes, “the Obama administration will promulgate a policy that is truly demoralizing.” A willingness to end the District of Columbia school voucher program was such one case. And this is the case of the above mentioned rule, too. “These decisions,” he says, “are demoralizing because they make it harder to conduct a serious antipoverty policy.” Let’s follow his reasoning. There are a million factors that contribute to poverty (economic, historical, familial, social, etc), and they interact in a zillion ways. This “complex system of negative feedback loops” requires “an equally complex and diverse set of positive feedback loops.” In short , we need “to change the whole ecosystem:”

You have to flood the zone with as many good programs as you can find and fund and hope that somehow they will interact and reinforce each other community by community, neighborhood by neighborhood.
The key to this flood-the-zone approach is that you have to allow for maximum possible diversity. Let’s say there is a 14-year-old girl who, for perfectly understandable reasons, wants to experience the love and sense of purpose that go with motherhood, rather than stay in school in the hopes of someday earning a middle-class wage.
You have no idea what factors have caused her to make this decision, and you have no way of knowing what will dissuade her. But you want her, from morning until night, to be enveloped by a thick ecosystem of positive influences. You want lefty social justice groups, righty evangelical groups, Muslim groups, sports clubs, government social workers, Boys and Girls Clubs and a hundred other diverse institutions. If you surround her with a different culture and a web of relationships, maybe she will absorb new habits of thought, find a sense of belonging and change her path.
To build this thick ecosystem, you have to include religious institutions and you have to give them broad leeway. Religious faith is quirky, and doesn’t always conform to contemporary norms. But faith motivates people to serve. Faith turns lives around. You want to do everything possible to give these faithful servants room and support so they can improve the spiritual, economic and social ecology in poor neighborhoods.
The administration’s policies on school vouchers and religious service providers are demoralizing because they weaken this ecology by reducing its diversity. By ending vouchers, the administration reduced the social intercourse between neighborhoods. By coercing the religious charities, it is teaching the faithful to distrust government, to segregate themselves from bureaucratic overreach, to pull inward.
[…]
I wish President Obama would escape from the technocratic rationalism that sometimes infects his administration.

Well, it is also my firm belief that, as Wesley J. Smith argues, “even if this rule helped the hypothetical 14-year-old, it would be wrong,” but the reasoning seems pretty sound to me. Let’s put this way: The decision to force Catholic social service providers to support contraception and other practices that violate their creed is (at least) twice wrong.

Obama Administration's Contraceptive Rule: Much More Than a Gaffe

President Obama and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius

A number of conservative commentators and pundits said that with the healthcare vote in March 2010, President Obama had crossed the Rubicon—a “Socialist Rubicon,” so to speak. He now believes—and acts—as if he is above the law; the Constitution no longer applies to him, they said. Well, now we can officially say that the Obama administration, with the new federal rule requiring religiously affiliated universities, hospitals and charities to provide free coverage for all FDA-approved contraceptives (including the morning after pill and sterilization), has crossed another Rubicon—an anti-religious one—in dealing with the Catholic Church (and other faith communities).

The rule, which was announced on January 20 by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, was defended by the White House last Tuesday. And obviously, Catholics, who regard contraception as a sin, disagree, and see the new rule as a blatant violation of religious freedom—to the point that Roman Catholic officials are mulling a possible legal or legislative challenge. After all, let’s not forget that the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees the free exercise of religion, and that this freedom is transgressed when a religious institution is required to do something that directly violate their religious convictions...

Was it a gaffe? Yes, in a way. As Peggy Noonan put it, his decision on Catholic charities makes Romney’s big gaffe—his interview with CNN’s Soledad O’Brien, in which he said, “I’m not concerned about the very poor”—look trivial:

Every criticism has been true. It was politically inept, playing into stereotypes about Republicans and about his own candidacy. It was Martian-like in its seeming remove from the concerns of everyday citizens. We're in a recession here! It was at odds both with longtime American tradition and with rising conservative concern over the growth and changing nature of what used to be called the underclass.
So: inept.
[...]
But the big political news of the week isn't Mr. Romney's gaffe, or even his victory in Florida. The big story took place in Washington. That's where a bomb went off that not many in the political class heard, or understood.
In other words, the Catholic Church was told this week that its institutions can't be Catholic anymore.
I invite you to imagine the moment we are living in without the church's charities, hospitals and schools. And if you know anything about those organizations, you know it is a fantasy that they can afford millions in fines.
There was no reason to make this ruling—none. Except ideology.

Except ideology, that’s it. That’s the way things are. “That’s why we call him the socialist president,” said a Catholic blogger. From this point of view, the “incident” was not tactical but strategic, and it was much more than a gaffe.

On the eve of Tuesday’s Florida Republican primary, GOP Senator Marco Rubio, who is Catholic, introduced legislation that would prevent the government from requiring contraceptive coverage if it violated the religious beliefs of the sponsoring individuals or entities. But Catholics are not alone in this. Let’s take just a couple of examples: a) the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of North and Central America “joined their voices with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and all those who adamantly protest the recent decision by the United States Department of Health and Human Services;” b) more than 40 non-Catholic religious organizations including Protestant-affiliated colleges, National Association of Evangelicals, Focus on the Family, Assemblies of God, Northwest Nazarene University, and Eastern Mennonite University, sent a letter (.pdf) to the White House demanding religious protection against the newly issued HHS contraceptive mandate.

And this is probably just the beginning.

Why Transhumanism’s Mission to Create Ubermenchen Children Is Coercive

Ronald Bailey, the science editor for “Reason” magazine, describes himself as a “libertarian transhumanist.” In his 2005 book Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution, he argues that, despite what he considers the vastly exaggerated concerns of opponents of biotechnology and stem cell research, the emerging biotech revolution will improve our lives and the future of our children—far from endangering human dignity, he says, the rapid progress in biotechnology will enable more of us to live flourishing lives free of disease, disability, and the threat of early death. Unfortunately, he argues,

We find ourselves in the remarkable position of having many of our leading intellectuals and policymakers arguing that their fellow citizens should be denied access to technologies they know will enable them and their families to live healthier, saner and longer lives…

Rather, in his opinion, patients should have the freedom to embrace or reject stem cell and biotech benefits based on their own personal or religious values. He recently returned to this topic, polemicizing with political scientist Peter Lawler, a member of President George W. Bush’s Council on Bioethics, who during a debate concerning the ethics of radical life extension at Wheaton College in Massachusetts last week, made the case that using technology to radically extend human life spans, and boost human intellectual, emotional, and physical capacities, will end in coercion. To which Bailey replied as follows:

I advocate a liberal tolerant approach: People who reject enhancements for themselves and their progeny are free to do so, whereas those who want to upgrade their mental and physical capacities are also free to do so.

Now, what can we say in response to this? Well, as for the term “liberal,” especially in the current meaning of the word (a political ideology of reform, often associated with left-leaning movements), I’d prefer not to comment. As for the term “tolerant,” well, there is much to be said about this… Here is how CBC (Center for Bioethics and Culture Network) Wesley J. Smith puts it:

How can I put it in a way that Bailey will understand? Assume scientists find a “religion” gene that expresses for people to experience intense faith. And say, a fundamentalist Christian, decides he wants to ensure his kid will be saved for eternity–and so he transhumanizes the kid to have the “faith” gene, thereby creating a strong propensity in his child to believe. Would Bailey say that child had not been coerced into being religious? I doubt it.

He might say–I don’t know–that engineering for faith should be forbidden. If so, he would be violating transhumanist libertarianism by constraining the “freedom” to post humanize children to only those enhancements with which he–or better stated, the power structure–approves. If not, he accepts the transhumanist core belief that in some sense children are mere sentient products, properly accessorized to please the desires and fulfill the wishes of their purchasers (or not, as in the classicGattaca scene embedded above).

Transhumanism has revived the pernicious idea of the ubermenchen in the hubristic belief that they have the wisdom to intelligently design human life beyond how we evolved, were created, or were designed by a greater force than ourselves. They don’t, and they forget that often our human imperfections bring out the best in people–and indeed help produce greatness. (Would Abraham Lincoln have been Abraham Lincoln without what may have been his congenital melancholia?) In any event, the eugenic implications of transhumanist ideology are more than frightening.

Robert Imbelli : Conflict and Hope at the University of Notre Dame

As everybody knows the degree “honoris causa” given on May 17 to President Barack Obama by the Catholic university of Notre Dame, in South Bend, Indiana, has produced many protests. In particular, the most drastic have been Michael Novak (see here) and George Weigel (see here), namely the standard-bearers of neoconservative Catholic thought.

Yet, amid the storm of controversy, Obama’s speech has been little read and analyzed. With few exceptions, among them, here in Italy, that of Giuliano Ferrara, the editor of Il Foglio newspaper and “a commentator beyond suspicion” (the most “Ratzingerian” of the secular defenders of unborn life), as Vaticanist Sandro Magister puts it. In fact, Ferrara published in his newspaper the full speech in Italian translation, “seeing in it common ground on which the “pro-life” and “pro-choice” can work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortion.”

Even less read and analyzed was another important speech: the one by Judge John T. Noonan, decorated in 1984 with the highest honor of this Catholic university, the medal “Laetare.” To fill this void Robert Imbelli, a priest of the diocese of New York who teaches theology at Boston College, wrote this article, published yesterday by Sandro Magister in his website. It analyzes both speeches, by Obama and Noonan. “It highlights their elements of conflict,” says Magister, “but above all of hope. With incisive, surprising observations.”

[T]hough on one level the President appeared primarily focused on respectful dialogue and “fair-minded words;” on a deeper level he seemed to be in search of binding principles that were, perhaps, at variance with his own stated positions. Indeed, these principles, if given full scope, might even lead the President (not without personal cost) to reconsider some of the practices he currently endorses.
[...]
Significantly, Noonan chose a striking example as illustration: the dispute between President Abraham Lincoln and the former slave, Frederick Douglass. It was Douglass’ moral clarity and conviction that helped guide Lincoln’s own moral compass to the point where he issued the “Emancipation Proclamation,” freeing the slaves in the secessionist states. The implication, subtly but unmistakably put forward, was that, like Lincoln, whom he reveres, President Obama may also come to greater clarity regarding the pressing moral issue of abortion.

More Americans pro-life than pro-choice

There is a good news for pro-life people: according to the new Gallup’s annual Values and Beliefs survey, conducted May 7-10, 51% of Americans declare themselves “pro-life” on the issue of abortion and 42% “pro-choice.” This is the first time a majority of U.S. adults have identified themselves as pro-life since Gallup began asking this question in 1995. The new results represent a significant shift from a year ago, when 50% were pro-choice and 44% pro-life.

The shift toward the pro-life position is confirmed in two other surveys, says Gallup:

The same three abortion questions asked on the Gallup Values and Beliefs survey were included in Gallup Poll Daily tracking from May 12-13, with nearly identical results, including a 50% to 43% pro-life versus pro-choice split on the self-identification question.
Additionally, a recent national survey by the Pew Research Center recorded an eight percentage-point decline since last August in those saying abortion should be legal in all or most cases, from 54% to 46%. The percentage saying abortion should be legal in only a few or no cases increased from 41% to 44% over the same period.

It’s also interesting that the percentage of Republicans (or independents who lean Republican) calling themselves pro-life rose by 10 points over the past year, from 60% to 70%, while there has been essentially no change in the views of Democrats (including Democratic leaners). Via All American Blogger.

Hand of Hope: ten years later

Samuel Armas is a child who had the singular privilege of gaining worldwide notoriety before being born, on December 2, 1999. In fact he was shown in a famous photo taken on August 19 of the same year by Michael Clancy during a very delicate surgical procedure aimed to fix Samuel’s spina bifida lesion. In that picture he seemed to grasp his surgeon’s hand from a hole in his mother’s uterus. As a result of the operation, Samuel was blessed to be born healthy. Now he is nine years-old, and is a good swimmer who enjoys competing—last weekend he came first in a 25-yard backstroke event!

As Fox News reports, he now says the photo—which has been celebrated as the “Hand of Hope”—likely gave countless “babies their right to live” and forced many others to debate their beliefs on abortion. It’s something he’s very grateful for :

‘When I see that picture, the first thing I think of is how special and lucky I am to have God use me that way. I feel very thankful that I was in that picture. […] It’s very important to me, a lot of babies would’ve lost their lives if that didn’t happen.’

As for Michael Clancy, who was a freelancer for USA Today when he took the photo, he now works as a motivational speaker at pro-life events. Prior to the picture, he was pro-choice.

‘And that’s what I’m going to do, keep telling this story. It can change people’s hearts. What started off as an assignment turned into a responsibility to keep telling the story behind it.’

This seems a very good idea. Keep up the good work, Michael!
(Via Gateway Pundit)

For a better understanding of Obama’s policy on human cloning

There has been considerable discussion over the last week in the media and the blogosphere about President Obama’s decision to reverse George W Bush’s policy of denying federal funding to stem-cell research that requires killing human embryos. Expectedly, Obama has been praised and criticized in equal measure, mostly depending on whether the “judges” were Republicans (especially religious right-wing conservatives) or Democrats (especially left-wing liberals). This is actually perfectly normal. Yet, what was surprising to me was to discover that some harsh critics of Obama criticized him for both right and wrong reasons—I mean, they criticized him both for what is wrong and for what is right with what he did and said, thus exposing themselves, in my view, to the risk of falling into blatant contradiction.

Such is the case, for instance, of this post, which, after some righteous critical remarks, accuses Obama, who also declared in the same occasion that he would never open the door to the “use of cloning for human reproduction”—because, in Obama’s own words, “it is dangerous, profoundly wrong, and has no place in our society, or any society”—of having decided that while scientists may form cellular clones on which to experiment, “citizens may not use the same technology to create a human life.” Which implies that, according to Melissa Clouthier (and Katherine Jean Lopez), the use of cloning for human reproduction is in itself a good thing. In fact, she continues,

[i]f a family loses a child and can create a clone, who is President Barack Obama to impose his morality on that family? There may well be good scientific research that shows human cloning to be “safe” when “responsibly done.”

Interesting observations, and a fairly liberal attitude towards the whole matter …, or am I missing something? And if so, wouldn’t it be better to be a bit more straightforward?

This “might” also seem to be the case of Charles Krauthammer, in a must-read piece on Townhall.com (also here). He besides had long argued, during his five years on the President’s Council on Bioethics, that, “contrary to the Bush policy, federal funding should be extended to research on embryonic stem cell lines derived from discarded embryos in fertility clinics,” as he himself recalls. Which is, to me, an arguable opinion, but not devoid of common sense. But, he continues,

Bush had restricted federal funding for embryonic stem cell research to cells derived from embryos that had already been destroyed (as of his speech of Aug. 9, 2001). While I favor moving that moral line to additionally permit the use of spare fertility clinic embryos, Obama replaced it with no line at all. He pointedly left open the creation of cloned -- and noncloned sperm-and-egg-derived -- human embryos solely for the purpose of dismemberment and use for parts.

Here his criticism is exactly on target:

I am not religious. I do not believe that personhood is conferred upon conception. But I also do not believe that a human embryo is the moral equivalent of a hangnail and deserves no more respect than an appendix. Moreover, given the protean power of embryonic manipulation, the temptation it presents to science, and the well-recorded human propensity for evil even in the pursuit of good, lines must be drawn. I suggested the bright line prohibiting the deliberate creation of human embryos solely for the instrumental purpose of research -- a clear violation of the categorical imperative not to make a human life (even if only a potential human life) a means rather than an end.
On this, Obama has nothing to say. He leaves it entirely to the scientists. This is more than moral abdication. It is acquiescence to the mystique of "science" and its inherent moral benevolence.
How anyone as sophisticated as Obama can believe this within living memory of Mengele and Tuskegee and the fake (and coercive) South Korean stem cell research is hard to fathom.
That part of the ceremony, watched from the safe distance of my office, made me uneasy. The other part -- the ostentatious issuance of a memorandum on "restoring scientific integrity to government decision-making" -- would have made me walk out.
Restoring? The implication, of course, is that while Obama is guided solely by science, Bush was driven by dogma, ideology and politics.
What an outrage. George Bush's nationally televised stem cell speech was the most morally serious address on medical ethics ever given by an American president. It was so scrupulous in presenting the best case for both his view and the contrary view that until the last few minutes, the listener had no idea where Bush would come out.

More than moral abdication … I cannot but agree with Charles Krauthammer. Furthermore, he continues,

Obama's address was morally unserious in the extreme. It was populated, as his didactic discourses always are, with a forest of straw men. Such as his admonition that we must resist the "false choice between sound science and moral values."

But here is what might seem to be a turning point of Krauthammer’s argument:

Yet, exactly 2 minutes and 12 seconds later he went on to declare that he would never open the door to the "use of cloning for human reproduction."

By the way, please note that Obama did not close the door to human cloning, he simply closed the door to “the use” of human cloning for one purpose, but left the door open to “the use” of human cloning for other purposes, as Terence Jeffrey points out in another must-read post.

Well, says Krauthammer,

Does he [President Obama] not think that a cloned human would be of extraordinary scientific interest? And yet he banned it.

Does this mean that Krauthammer thinks that cloning for human reproduction is in itself a good thing? Well, no, actually, even though his formulation is somewhat (unintentionally) ambiguous. He basically wants to point out that Obama is contradicting himself:

Is he so obtuse not to see that he had just made a choice of ethics over science? Yet, unlike President Bush, who painstakingly explained the balance of ethical and scientific goods he was trying to achieve, Obama did not even pretend to make the case why some practices are morally permissible and others not.
This is not just intellectual laziness. It is the moral arrogance of a man who continuously dismisses his critics as ideological while he is guided exclusively by pragmatism (in economics, social policy, foreign policy) and science in medical ethics.
Science has everything to say about what is possible. Science has nothing to say about what is permissible. Obama's pretense that he will "restore science to its rightful place" and make science, not ideology, dispositive in moral debates is yet more rhetorical sleight of hand -- this time to abdicate decision-making and color his own ideological preferences as authentically "scientific."

In other words, it is not that Obama is doing wrong when he bans the use of cloning for human reproduction purposes, but the ban should be far more extensive. Quite a different story.

However, what is now certain is that it’s time for Obama’s pro-life supporters to face the facts: despite superficial and misleading appearances, Obama supports human cloning for embryo-destructive research.


To conclude, for those who might still have doubts, here is what Ian Wilmut, famed for creating Dolly the cloned sheep, had to say about reproductive cloning in an August 2008 interview to Scientific American:

S.A.  Why do you think a ban on reproductive cloning is important?
W.  Quite apart from anything else, I think it would be entirely appropriate to get a ban at the present time because there is a very significant risk of dead babies or of children with severe abnormalities. The list of abnormalities which we've seen in livestock and in mice is very long and quite horrifying if you think of it in terms of children. In one lamb, it panted all of its life, even when it rested, because of restricted blood flow through the lungs. After two weeks we decided that it was kinder to end its life because we could not correct the abnormality. And, of course, it wouldn't be without risk to the woman who was giving birth to the child because there are often difficulties. And so, on those grounds alone, I would have thought that there would be pretty well a unanimous wish to prevent that sort of thing happening.

My own view has not changed at all that there are other reasons why reproductive cloning should be prohibited, which are essentially because of the psychological effects of being a clone. We do tend to anticipate and expect that children will be like their parents. And I think that would be even stronger if the child were a clone. And so that's the reason why I would be concerned about it.

Embryonic stem cell research and therapeutic cloning

Melissa Clouthier has some important clarifications on President Barack Obama reversing of Bush Administration’s restrictions on embryonic stem cell research. Yet, there must be something in that piece I wasn’t able to understand. It’s when she quotes Katherine Jean Lopez :

[A]s Katherine Jean Lopez notes, “Notice the qualifier. Cloning is fine for research — ‘therapeutic cloning.’ In other words, you can create life as long as you’ll destroy it and not raise it as your child. That is an assault on human dignity. How many Americans realize the import of what Obama said today?”

“She is right,” Melissa Clouthier says after a moment. “Scientists may form cellular clones on which to experiment, but citizens may not use the same technology to create a human life.”

Since Katherine Jean Lopez is a conservative, pro-life and Catholic columnist, I guess I must have missed something. Let’s just say that “therapeutic cloning” is intrinsically evil—if not an affront to basic human values—because it creates life only in order to destroy it for research purposes.

Those rose-colored glasses of embryonic stem cell dogma

President Obama, they say, is determined to insulate scientific decisions across the federal government from political influence, and “to use sound scientific practice, responsible practice of science and evidence, instead of dogma in developing federal policy.” But what about if, for instance, among the “dogmas”—or “principles,” as someone might prefer to call them—there is one, called respect for human life, that has governed medical and scientific practice since Hippocrates’ day, and, in the United States, is at the heart of the Declaration of Independence’s guarantee of the “unalienable” rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” for each individual?

There is a post on that very thing at Townhall.com which is worth reading (thanks: Sandra Kennedy Schimmelpfennig).

She has gone

She has gone, but she will not be forgotten, nor will those whose acts, conduct and omissions cut short her life.

Eluana: a race against time

This time, I wrote last Tuesday, nothing, but a miracle, will stop Eluana Englaro’s “execution.” Now only one of two things is possible: either I was wrong or a miracle is happening. In fact, the Cabinet of ministers on Friday unanimously approved an emergency decree, which was drafted Thursday, to stop doctors carrying out the Supreme Court ruling authorizing the death by starvation and dehydration of Eluana.

This, despite open opposition—on the ground that the decree was unconstitutional—from President (and Head of State) Giorgio Napolitano, who according to the Italian Constitution must approve the decree before it becomes effective.

”We can’t allow responsibility for Eluana’s death to fall on us,” said Prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. Eluana, he added, “is not brain dead but breathes in an autonomous way. Her brain cells are alive and send electrical signals and she is a person who could in theory have a child, […] she is in a vegetative state that could change, as has been seen several times.”

But Napolitano’s refusal, as clearly explained in this LifeSiteNews.com article, “has ‘frozen’ the measure and although there is a procedure in place in Parliament to override his decision, it will take 20 days to implement, by which time Eluana will have been successfully dehydrated to death.”

In turn, the Englaro family lawyer, Vittorio Angiolini, said ”There’s no discussion: we’re going ahead,” that is to say that doctors will proceed as planned with the progressive reduction of Eluana’s feeding and hydrating, which they began Friday morning.

Practically, it will be a race against time for the Parliament to try to save the life of Eluana Englaro, and perhaps a further miracle is what is needed to succeed. Pope Benedict, though without referring directly to the case of Eluana, reaffirmed yesterday “the absolute and supreme dignity of every human being,” and asked the faithful to pray “for those who are gravely ill but cannot in any way provide for themselves and are totally dependent on the care of others.”

As it is well known the Englaro case has drawn comparisons with that of Terri Schiavo. Now it seems that even the latest events in the Eluana case have many similarities to the last days of the American woman whose feeding tube was removed in March 2005: the US Congress passed a bill to allow a federal court to review the case, and George W. Bush returned from his Texas ranch to sign the bill into law, but a federal judge refused to order the tube reinserted, a decision upheld by a federal appeals court and the Supreme Court.

The decree provoked shrill, even hysterical reactions by the opposition. Antonio Di Pietro, for instance, described the decree as ”an extremely serious danger for democracy,” which is frankly a bit silly. They often seem to have not the slightest idea of what they’re talking about, or rather they are attempting to make people forget the real issue … But I don’t want to spend too many words on the subject here. Rather, I would draw the attention to what Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, referring to the case of Eluana Englaro, said in his homily given on February 1, 2009, at the cathedral in Bologna:

The spiritual event of the West has come to the end of the line: If the life of man does not belong to man but to God, no one has control over it for any reason, [but] if the life of man belongs to man, it is consistent to hypothesize circumstances in which everyone can do what he wants with his life or ask others to put an end to it.

The bishop of Bologna also said that

the illusion of building a human home ‘as if God did not exist’ must at some moment bring us to this point. […] In the body of this woman, and in her fate, there is an image of the fate of the West.

Those very thoughtful and inspired words immediately reminded me of the famous statement contained in the tale of The Grand Inquisitor, told by Ivan to Alyosha in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel, The Brothers Karamazov: “If God doesn’t exist, then everything is permitted.”

Are we witnessing the fulfilment of what was predicted by Dostoevsky, if not by someone else ... long before him?

Eluana is just one step from the end

About two months ago the Corte di Cassazione, Italy’s top appeals court, authorized the father of 37-year-old Eluana Englaro to remove the feeding tube which had kept his comatose daughter alive for nearly seventeen years. It was then that the last legal obstacle in a landmark “right-to-die” case, which has been also called “Italy’s Terri Schiavo case,” was removed once and for all : Eluana would be sentenced to die an atrocious death by being deprived of water and nutrition, thus paving the way for legalized euthanasia in Italy.

Eventually the transfer was temporarily halted by Italy’s health minister Maurizio Sacconi, who issued an official guideline stating that the suspension of treatment for patients in a vegetative state in public health institutions would be “illegal.” But that last-minute attempt to bypass Supreme Court ruling was overruled in turn by a court in Milan on January 21. As a result last night Eluana Englaro was transferred by ambulance to a clinic in the northern city of Udine, where she will be allowed to die. And this time nothing, but a miracle, will stop her “execution” (I know, it’s a terrible word, but I don’t have a better one).

What is upsetting, apart from the two rulings in themselves, is that the nuns of the Misericordine Order, under whose care Eluana has been surviving for 14 years, had repeatedly declared their availability, “today and into the future, to continue to serve Eluana,” and in a letter published in the November 15 2008 Avvenire, the daily newspaper of the Italian Bishops Conference, they launched a moving appeal :

If there are those who consider her dead, let Eluana remain with us who feel she is alive. We don’t ask anything but the silence and the liberty to love and to devote ourselves to those who are weak, poor and little in return.

The Vatican’s “health minister,” Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, described the decision to move Eluana as “abominable.” “Stop this murder!” he told La Repubblica daily newspaper two days after Pope Benedict XVI rejected euthanasia as a “false” answer to suffering. The bishop of Udine, Msgr. Pietro Brollo, has called on Catholics in the area to gather outside the clinic to stage a prayer vigil in favor of keeping Eluana alive. Yet, as I said before, this time … well, miracles sometimes happen.

Italy's Terri Schiavo case - 2

When one month ago the Corte di Cassazione, Italy's top appeals court, authorized the father of 37-year-old Eluana Englaro to remove the feeding tube which had kept his comatose daughter alive for nearly seventeen years, the last legal obstacle in a landmark “right-to-die” case—it has been also called ‘Italy’s Terri Schiavo case’—seemed to have been removed once and for all. Not only had a step on the road to legal euthanasia been taken, Eluana would also have died an atrocious death by being deprived of water and nutrition.

Archbishop Salvatore Fisichella, head of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life, described allowing Eluana Englaro to die as an “immense crime” and a “civil and moral defeat.” And he was absolutely right, according to both Catholics and pro-life lay politicians and opinion leaders.

At that point, what remained to be done was to find a hospital or a clinic willing to grant Eluana Englaro its “help.” And that’s what happened a few days ago, when a public-funded Udine clinic offered to help end Eluana’s life. A team of 20-25 professionals from outside the clinic, said Director Claudio Riccobon, were willing to look after Eluana on an unpaid voluntary basis.

But that was not going to be the last word: the transfer was halted at the last minute a couple of days ago, after Health Minister Maurizio Sacconi issued an official guideline stating that the suspension of treatment for patients in a vegetative state in public health institutions is “illegal.” It was actually a courageous move on his part, which was hailed with satisfaction by Catholics and pro-life citizens, but provoked immediate and indignant protests by the counterpart. In turn, the president emeritus of Italy’s Constitutional Court, Antonio Baldassare, told newspaper Corriere della Sera that Sacconi’s guideline ”is valid for everyone except Eluana” because the Cassation Court had issued a specific ruling on Eluana Englaro’s case.

So it seems that we are still facing a controversial juridical issue. But that of Eluana Englaro is not just a purely juridical case. It’s a matter of life or death for Eluana, and, I would add, for civilization itself. That is why I think Maurizio Sacconi is doing a great job.

[Previous posts on Eluana Englaro's case: 'Let Eluana Englaro live!' and Italy's Terri Schiavo case]

'Let Eluana Englaro live!'

After the ruling by Italy's top appeals court allowing Eluana Englaro’s family to halt the treatment that is keeping her alive, the nuns of the Misericordine Order, under whose care Eluana has been surviving for 14 years, have launched a moving appeal to save her life. In a letter published in yesterday’s Avvenire, the daily newspaper of the Italian Bishops Conference, they said:

Our hope, and that of many like us, is that the death by hunger and thirst of Eluana, and others in her condition, will not be carried out. That is why, once again, we maintain our availability, today and into the future, to continue to serve Eluana. If there are those who consider her dead, let Eluana remain with us who feel she is alive. We don’t ask anything but the silence and the liberty to love and to devote ourselves to those who are weak, poor and little in return.

A crystal clear example, in my view, of what Catholic faith and, I dare to say, Catholic moral theology are all about. [See also here]

As for the Catholic hierarchy, Archbishop Salvatore Fisichella, head of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life, described allowing Eluana Englaro to die as an “immense crime” and a “civil and moral defeat.” Eluana, he said, would die an “atrocious death” by being deprived of water and nutrition. A step on the road to legal euthanasia, in his view. But he added that he had “profound respect” for Eluana’s father (“I pray for him”), and that “no one who has not had a similar experience can possibly judge her family, or indeed other families dealing with similar cases.”

Another example, but this time of a comprehensive, well-balanced approach to this kind of case. Both the nuns and Archbishop Fisichella, in my own humble opinion, have been equal to their task.

Italy's Terri Schiavo case

The Corte di Cassazione, Italy's top appeals court, removed today the last legal obstacle in a landmark “right-to-die” case which has fiercely divided opinion in Italy, by authorizing the father of 37-year-old Eluana Englaro to remove the feeding tube which has kept his comatose daughter alive for nearly seventeen years.

The Englaro case has been compared to that of Terri Schiavo, the American woman who spent 15 years in a vegetative state and was allowed to die in March 2006 against the wishes of her parents after a long court battle.

In fact, Terri Schiavo’s brother, Bobby Schindler, told LifeNews.com he strongly disagrees with the court. “Today’s ruling,” he said, “will clear the way for Eluana to experience a barbaric and inhumane death by starvation and dehydration.” He is also worried that the kind of “bioethics” that prompted courts in the United States to allow his sister’s former husband to kill her is making its way across the globe. “This court’s ruling seems to indicate that American ‘medical ethics’ are spreading like a virus among the international community, threatening countless numbers of elderly, ailing and disabled persons in an increasing and alarming way,” Schindler noted.

Perhaps Schindler undervalues the high “progressive” standards achieved in some European countries. Nevertheless I think he is basically right.

Embryos are human life

At what point does the life of an individual human being begin? This is the central and most significant question raised by the issue of abortion. Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen address this and other related ethical questions in their just-published Embryo: A Defense of Human Life [Hat tip: Camillo].

According to the authors the embryonic stage is, like the fetal stage, the infant stage, and the adolescent stage, one stage in the development of a single human being who begins his or her existence from the instant of conception. As George and Tollefsen explain:

Human embryos are not […] some other type of animal organism, like a dog or cat. Neither are they a part of an organism, like a heart, a kidney, or a skin cell. Nor again are they a disorganized aggregate, a mere clump of cells awaiting some magical transformation. Rather, a human embryo is a whole living member of the species Homo sapiens in the earliest stage of his or her natural development. [p. 3]

Based on this, the authors argue that the human embryo is a human person worthy of full moral respect and that it is “morally wrong and unjust to kill that embryo, even if the goal of the embryo killing is the advancement of science or the development of therapeutic products or treatments.” [p. 17]

It is also to be pointed out that while typically, right-to-life arguments have been based explicitly on moral and religious grounds, in this book the authors eschewed religious arguments and used a rigorous scientific and philosophical approach.

Robert George is a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics and is a professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University. He is the author of several books including Making Men Moral and In Defense of Natural Law. Christopher Tollefsen is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of South Carolina. He is the author of the forthcoming book Biomedical Research and Beyond.

See Keith Mathison’s review to learn more about the book.