Ripping on Galloway
Regarding Christopher Hitchens's "Unmitigated Galloway" (May 30): George Galloway is that rare thing in a functioning democracy--a genuinely sinister politician, reminiscent in style, if not political stripe, of Oswald Mosley.
He is manipulative and narcissistic; infinitely plausible and appallingly devoid of self-criticism; and quite prepared to stoop to any stratagem--from a phony proletarianism to a fake populist multiculturalism--to obtain power. His stint as a Glasgow MP will go down as one of the great unexamined scandals of the boundlessly venal Scottish Labour party.
It is always refreshing to see such a mask ripped.
Bob Davis
Glasgow, Scotland
The War on Language
In "Our Uzbek Problem" (May 30), Stephen Schwartz and William Kristol nicely illustrate Thucydides' brilliant observation about the corrosive effect of war on language and vocabulary. "Rendition" should properly be called "abduction" or "kidnapping," since there is not even a pretense of any legal proceeding or due process in the handling of these unfortunates.
Second, the people handed over to the tender mercies of the Uzbek regime are not necessarily "terrorists." The proper term is "suspects." If the Americans already knew all about them and their allegedly illicit activities, there would be no need to obtain thumbscrew and rack services from third parties. Of course, some of these suspects might actually be completely innocent, which is now known to be true in several instances.
There are other nascent weasel words in the so-called war on terror, such as "detainee" for "prisoner"--which ought to offend every defender of plain English. Someone should compile a list.
I wonder if somebody in the Clinton administration chuckled when the term "extraordinary rendition" was first used, because, according to the OED, one meaning of "rendered" is "melt down, extract by melting, clarify." That is a definition of which Stalin might heartily approve, but it is light years from American tradition, self-image, and self-description to the world.
Eric Fern
Comox, Canada
Stephen Schwartz and William Kristol's excellent analysis of "Our Uzbek Problem" is a solid example of why the people of the Middle East are contemptuously distrustful of the Bush administration's rhetoric about democracy.
The sorry record of Uzbekistan and 50 years of Middle Eastern history show how the United States has failed to support democracy. The depressing truth is, starting with the 1953 overthrow of Iran's freely elected constitutional government (that ruled in harmony with Islam), America has backed Mideast client states governed by authoritarian dictators while offering one-sided support for Israel. Indeed, U.S. policy in the Middle East has been contrary to what President Bush's current rhetoric suggests.
As long as this administration does not fully throw substantial, as opposed to mere verbal, support either to imposing a solution or guaranteeing one that provides for a viable homeland for the Palestinians and a secure Israel, then nothing it says or does will matter.
Fariborz S. Fatemi
McLean, VA
Mis-overestimated
Hadley Arkes rarely misses a beat, but his otherwise fine piece ("Sex and the County," May 23) on Judge Alexander Williams's heroic stay of Montgomery County's move to turn sex education into same-sex indoctrination fails adequately to take on the overestimates of homosexuality in the United States.
A national study of more than 3,300 sexually active men, ages 20 to 39, published in Family Planning Perspectives (March-April 1993) suggests that even Arkes's sober estimates of 2 percent may also be misleading.
In this study of actual behavior (not the ambiguous concept of "orientation"), only 2 percent of men reported having engaged in any "same-gendered" sexual activity, and only 1 percent reported being exclusively homosexual, during the previous 10 years.
Given that homosexual behavior is twice as prevalent among men as among women, and that the survey captured only sexually active young men, the evidence suggests that men and women who exclusively engage in homosexual behavior represent significantly less than 1 percent of the population.
Robert W. Patterson
Leesburg, VA
Stem Cell Truths
As Eric Cohen notes ("Go Forth and Replicate," May 30), the news that South Korean scientists have been able to create 11 new stem cell lines from cloned embryos means "we have truly entered the age of human cloning." While many cheer this research, though, the fact that we have made scientific progress toward using stem cells to cure maladies from paralysis to leukemia without creating or destroying human embryos is entirely ignored.
Other South Korean scientists announced last year, to much less fanfare, actual results using adult stem cells. Song Chang-Hoon, a professor at South Korea's Chosun University's medical school, tells the story of Hwang Mi-Soon, a 37-year-old paraplegic, who, after being paralyzed for 20 years, was able to rise from her wheelchair and take a few cautious steps with the aid of a walker six weeks after undergoing a transplant using umbilical cord blood stem cells.
Here at home, at least three young American women, Laura Dominguez, Susan Fajt, and Melissa Holley, who suffered paralysis resulting from spinal cord injuries, have regained muscle control thanks to a procedure using adult stem cells taken from their own nasal tissue.
Americans may not have heard about them, even though on July 14, 2004, Fajt and 19-year-old Dominguez testified before the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space. They are among more than 20 patients successfully treated with their own adult stem cells by Dr. Carlos Lima, a neuropathologist at Egaz-Moniz Hospital in Lisbon, Portugal.
There are almost 80 therapies using adult stem cell--actual treatments, not theory or research. There have been over 250 adult stem cell clinical trials. There are zero treatments using embryonic stem cells, and there have been zero clinical trials.
The simple truth is that most progress in stem cell research is being made using the adult rather than the embryonic variety. The liberal press and the liberal media are largely ignoring that fact, while portraying opponents of embryonic stem cell research as heartless Bible-thumpers prolonging human suffering.
Daniel John Sobieski
Chicago, IL
Conservatives Conserve
William Pedersen rightly identifies missed opportunities for conservative leadership in the national environmental movement ("The Shrinking of the Greens," May 30). In my 21 years on the staff of America's largest membership-based environmental group (and seven years as CEO), I have seen quiet conservative leadership on many issues. For example, fiscal conservatives oppose wasteful federal subsidies of programs that also damage the environment.
Free market entrepreneurs are innovating market-based, cost-effective solutions to environmental problems. Thoughtful pro-life conservatives embrace a comprehensive culture of life that includes nonhuman life. And social conservatives are coming to understand that common caring for the local environment helps build stronger human communities.
Environmental protection is not inextricably linked to a liberal or "progressive" ideology, as some believe. Conservatism and environmentalism are both ready to be transformed by creative conservative approaches to the environmental challenges we face.
Mark Van Putten
President, Stewardship Project
Reston, VA
Keeping the Dead Alive?
In Wesley J. Smith's "The English Patient" (May 30), I notice that Smith never flatly states that the British NHS will, in fact, deny intravenous food and water to Leslie Burke. Instead, the NHS makes the reasonable case that it reserves the right to make a medical decision when the need arises.
What exactly is the alternative that Smith proposes? Does he argue for strict personal autonomy in these decisions? What if my personal decision is to remain on intravenous feeding after those "heartless" doctors have declared me to be dead? Lazarus, as we know, was raised miraculously after three days in the tomb. What if I insist on three years of postmortem care?
Hordes of well-wishers outside Terri Schiavo's hospice were willing to wait for a "miracle" that would keep her alive. What if she had decided that she would be willing to wait three years for a "miracle" that would bring her back from a "temporary" state of death?
I wish this were a preposterous example, but in a country where more people believe in the virgin birth than in evolutionary biology, it is all too real.
Should medical resources be committed without limit based on a patient's dictate with no regard to "medical" opinion?
John Carragee
Wayne, PA
Will We Come Home?
David Gelernter's "Bible Illiteracy in America" (May 23) aptly takes on the ignorance of many of today's youths concerning the Bible.
Having been raised on the Word of God, it sickens my heart today to see secularists trying to eradicate all knowledge of the Word from the public arena. It is their loss, but we lose, too, when we who know what is noble and good watch in disbelief as those truths are desecrated by today's cultural advocates. Gelernter is right when he says if college students hungering for the truth are led to the Bible, they will be filled with "excitement and exhilaration," knowing that they have indeed "come home."
Joanna K. Senters
San Diego,CA