E pluribus unum

Two years ago, as part of WORLD Digital’s Saturday Series, we published statements I made in 2008 during a debate with Christopher Hitchens at The University of Texas at Austin (Part 1 and Part 2). Hitchens claimed nothing good came out of Christianity. I showed how factually inaccurate that statement was, and some of our readers said they found my historical approach helpful.

I used a different historical approach in a debate at Princeton with Peter Singer, who is an atheistic professor of bioethics at that university founded by Christians. The debate was the evening before Election Day in November 2004, so you’ll see some political references. Here’s the text of my opening statement. I hope some readers in 2018 will find it helpful.

I appreciate the courteously voiced anger of the kind Professor Singer eloquently presents because it reminds me of my undergraduate years. As a Yale student in the late ’60s and early ’70s, I enjoyed anti-war demonstrations in New Haven and Washington, and anti-war political campaigning in Philadelphia. I went on a five-day hunger strike and had other educational experiences. Ah, the good old days.

One aspect of my education was deficient, though. I took lots of courses in American history but did not understand how a majority of American voters could choose presidents like McKinley or Coolidge. They were plutocrats, reactionaries, so they must have won through corruption or coercion, right? And in 1972, when I voted for president for the first time and voted for George McGovern, who fought for economic redistribution and social liberalism, I did not understand why most working-class Americans, who would have been the prime immediate beneficiaries of his redistributionist program, rejected him.

I just did not get it. But in case tomorrow night you find out that George W. Bush has been reelected, I want you to understand why. It won’t be because of coercion or corruption. It will be because President Bush has explained in a way satisfactory to most voters what he believes the first three words of the preamble to the U.S. constitution—“We the People”—mean.

The key question is: Who gets included in “We the People? That’s a question Americans have long asked. It’s a question Christians have long answered. Throughout human history, many Christians have pushed to expand the definition of neighbor to include often-despised groups: the poor, the sick, the sexually exploited; racial, ethnic, religious minorities; the not-yet-born, the declining but not-yet-dead.

Sure, some Christians over the centuries defended slavery or embraced nativism—views that were common in their days. But the sensational news is that many Christians fought against the conventional wisdom. They took risks to make “We the People” include more and more people.

The sensational news is that many Christians fought against the conventional wisdom. They took risks to make “We the People” include more and more people.

The big U.S. experiment from the 1780s to 1924 was whether the “We” could include millions of Catholic and Jewish immigrants. George Washington advanced America’s religious expansion when he wrote to a synagogue in 1789, “May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants. … [E]veryone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.”

Some Protestants fought the idea, but by the end of the 19th century the consensus was clear: “We the Neighbors” includes Catholics and Jews. Soon came a smattering of Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims. America’s anti-immigration legislation in 1924 was a mistake, but we opened the gates four decades later. That did create some new problems, but it also led to new opportunities.

The big 20th century experiment was whether the “We” could include different racial and ethnic groups. Neither the Civil War nor constitutional amendments had settled that … and African-Americans largely remained poor and disenfranchised. In the mid-20th century, some strong and courageous Christians fought for civil rights, as many of their predecessors had fought for emancipation.

Expanding “We the People,” has not always been easy, but our Christian base has made the difference. In India, Hindu priests lead the opposition to equal rights for generally dark-skinned Dalits, the “untouchables.” Yes, in the United States some Christians were segregationists, but many joined with ministers like Martin Luther King Jr. and others of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. To my knowledge, there is no equivalent Northern Hindu Leadership Conference in India.

America has long been a land of addition, not subtraction. Social Darwinists for almost 150 years tried to subtract the poor from the list of “We the Neighbors.” But compassionate conservatives have insisted that even the homeless are part of the “We” who are capable of working. I’ve written extensively about this and will be glad to recommend some books.

America has long been a land of addition, not subtraction.

Christians have also insisted that unborn children are part of the “We,” despite the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision to the contrary. In the American house are many mansions. Our history shows we have more rooms than we thought.

After having an abortion in 1976, one woman wrote that “there just wasn’t room” in her life for the child growing within her. Later, she realized she could have made room. She wrote, “I have this ghost now. A very little ghost that only appears when I’m seeing something beautiful, like the full moon on the ocean last weekend. And the baby waves at me. And I wave at the baby.”

That should be our continuing goal for this nation. We can make room. Christians should lead the way. I agree with Peter that many among the poor have not been treated as part of the “We.” Government officials sometimes stole from them voting rights and due process of law. Sharecroppers had limited economic opportunity. From the 1930s through the 1960s many government entities made well-meaning attempts to redress those situations.

The problem, though, is that the solutions did not work—and if you spend a lot of time interviewing folks in inner cities, as I have, they’ll be the first to tell you that. The reason, in essence: Government programs did not make poor people part of the “We”—the “We” being responsible people capable of giving, not just taking. No offense to Peter’s animal rights views, but people in the middle and upper classes often treated the poor like animals.

Sometimes the treatment was kind, the way I treat my two dogs at home: Put some food and water in their bowls in the morning, scratch them on their heads, and tell them it’s fine to lie around during the day because we don’t expect anything else. Sometimes the treatment was harsh. In either case, they weren’t part of the “We.”

Conservatives did a lousy job fighting the exclusion of the poor. They argued that federal welfare programs were too expensive. That was nonsense. The real problem is that they are too stingy in what is truly important: treating people as part of the “We”—as human beings made in God’s image, not as animals to be fed, caged, and occasionally petted.

Conservatives did a lousy job of explaining that, even if welfare sometimes succeeded in preserving bodies, it killed the spirit by treating the poor as pets. Conservatives sometimes attacked social workers instead of explaining that welfare killed their dreams as well, because the common social worker lament became, “All we have time to do is move paper.” Conservatives did a lousy job of explaining that welfare killed dreams among poor individuals who gradually become used to dependency—and those who tried to break out were often called chumps rather than champs.

Conservatives did a lousy job of explaining that welfare killed dreams among poor individuals who gradually become used to dependency—and those who tried to break out were often called chumps rather than champs.

So here’s what George Bush has done—and he’s done this not just by issuing proclamations but by going into poor communities consistently over the past 10 years as governor and president, even though he probably wasn’t going to get many votes there. He’s said, “You’re part of the We.” We need more on helping people move from welfare to work, to financial independence. We need to emphasize building marriages and families, not just assuming that kids in inner cities will inevitably grow up without both a mom and a dad.

Americans are responding to that expansion of the “We.” Among people with less than a college education, Bush is beating John Kerry badly. If you want to believe that’s because those folks are stupid, that’s your right as a free thinker. If you want to think they’re being coerced or bribed, you may do so. But I think Bush is doing well among that group for the same reason that McKinley and Coolidge did, the reason I didn’t understand: They’re looking for opportunity for themselves and especially for their children. In the case of George Bush, they understand that he does not consider them political tools to be manipulated, and instead has a genuine respect for them as part of the “We.”

Kerry goes by the label “Democrat,” but his views are autocratic. He prefers rule by courts to rule by voters on social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage. He is a 20th century candidate when it comes to Social Security and healthcare, favoring governmental rather than individual control of everything from choosing investments to choosing doctors. He still wants to rely on the “experts,” like the early 20th century progressives who pushed for regulatory agencies independent of Congress, and for appointed city managers rather than elected mayors.

Kerry, then, is the candidate of status quo autocracy. George W. Bush is a 21st century, small-d democratic candidate. Economically, he wants people to control the expenditure of more of the money they earn. Socially, he wants voters and legislators rather than nine justices in robes to decide what should constitute a governmentally honored marriage.

Lots of discussion recently has centered on the potential of stem cell research, and whether researchers should use embryonic stem cells made available because of abortion—so I’d like to conclude with a few minutes on that. Peter supports John Kerry and opposes President Bush, but Peter does accept Bush’s claim that the early embryo is human life. Peter then asks, “Why does the fact that something is human life mean that it is something precious that we should protect?” Peter further argues that “If human life is more precious than non-human life, it is because humans possess higher mental capacities that nonhuman animals lack. Embryos, however, are utterly lacking in such higher mental capacities.”

Unborn children don’t have those capacities, so they do not necessarily have a right to life, Peter says. Nor do newborns. We are often emotionally attached to them, but logically they are part of a continuum with the earliest embryo. And here is where Peter is so different from a politician, and so helpful. Pro-life people like to throw the spotlight on babies ready to be born. Pro-choice people want to talk about embryos, since they are not visible in the spotlight. But Peter is right to say that size doesn’t matter—there is a logical continuum.

Peter is right to say that size doesn’t matter—there is a logical continuum.

Now you might think I’d want to talk about the readily visible babies here, but that’s too easy—let’s talk about what is nearly invisible, an embryo that could be used for stem cell research, because that has tested out before focus groups as one of John Kerry’s most effective appeals. John Edwards actually put the appeal most succinctly, in Iowa on Oct. 11: “When John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve will get up out of that wheelchair and walk again.” Kerry himself received a lot of favorable publicity when he said [Aug. 7] that a purported Bush “ban” on stem cell research is standing in the way of an Alzheimer’s cure.

Let me quote Charles Krauthammer, the Washington Post columnist who is paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair. He wrote, “In my 25 years in Washington, I have never seen a more loathsome display of demagoguery. Hope is good. False hope is bad. Deliberately raising for personal gain false hope in the catastrophically afflicted is despicable.” Regarding Kerry’s claim of an Alzheimer’s cure, Krauthammer wrote, “This is an outright lie. … Ronald D.G. McKay, a stem cell researcher at NIH [National Institutes of Health], has admitted publicly that stem cells as an Alzheimer’s cure are a fiction, but that ‘people need a fairy tale.’ Kerry and Edwards certainly do. They are shamelessly exploiting this fairy tale, having no doubt been told by their pollsters that stem cells play well politically for them.”

Many of you are Princeton students. You’re bright. You should not believe in fairy tales. You should also know that three approaches using stem cells are underway, and no one knows which will be successful, or whether any will be successful. Scientists are experimenting with adult stem cells, not just embryonic ones. They are using adult stem cells to treat immune-deficient diseases.

Scientists are also experimenting with stem cells in umbilical cord tissue. In 1996 NIH and the National Heart, Blood and Lung Institute started a five-year, $30 million study that funded cord blood collection, banking and research at hospitals and at three centers. Dr. Joanne Kurtzberg and others at Duke University successfully used cord blood to treat leukemia, sickle cell anemia, and other diseases. Kansas researcher Kathy Mitchell discovered in 2000 that stem cells in umbilical cord tissue had the same clean-slate properties as those from embryos but could turn themselves off like adult stem cells.

Despite all the gains made in the five years, and despite researchers’ pleas to continue the study, by 2001 the hot topic was embryonic stem cell research. Scientists are not disembodied brains. They also respond to public pressure. Because of the hype about the “promise” of embryonic stem cells, NIH threw its resources into that and cut off funding for supporting umbilical cord blood banks. Since then, doctors working on doing such treatments have relied on private funding from sources such as the American Red Cross to keep up the cord blood stockpile.

One of our WORLD reporters talked with Kathy Mitchell, the researcher in Kansas. Her discovery of cells that have all the properties of embryonic stem cells, but know when to stop multiplying, is potentially very important. She wants a full “R-1” grant from the NIH to continue her research. But the NIH has told her that it already has a good source of stem cells (meaning embryonic stem cells), so research is not needed on another. The real problem, in other words, may be that embryonic stem cell lines are getting too much attention, not too little, and that the politically oriented hype is working to the detriment of other research approaches.

I could go into this some more, but there’s more detail than we can probably absorb in one sitting—besides, I’m already getting in over my head. I admire Peter’s ability in one book to deal with complicated questions of economics, medicine, science, technology, politics, Afghanistan, Iraq, and everything else. But my sense is that Peter’s approach shows a lack of vision: He does not think those tiny unborn children and small babies are as significant like big gorillas.

As human beings we can plan for the future, and if we are wise as families or as teams or as a nation, we extend the “We.”

I believe those little ones should be part of “We the People,” for their own sake, since they’re made in God’s image, but also because the whole country needs them—and we’ll miss them badly in 20 years if we kill them now. We sit in classrooms on wooden chairs and most of us live in wooden houses—they did not just appear by magic. Peter’s logic would have us destroy acorns, because they are utterly lacking in material for chairs or houses.

In the recent American League Championship Series, Dave Roberts stole a base for the Red Sox in the ninth inning of their turning-point game against the New York Yankees. He was there only because the Red Sox had added him to the team at the end of July, thinking that it would be useful to have a fast runner on the bench. As human beings we can plan for the future, and if we are wise as families or as teams or as a nation, we extend the “We.”

Several years ago I was a Little League assistant coach, rising to the utmost level of my coaching abilities. If I were to think Singer-style, I would not spend time with children who don’t throw or catch all that well. They lack higher baseball capacities. Peter excludes unborn babies and thinks killing some babies up to 2 years old is OK, but he wants animals to be part of “We the People.” That may sound logically silly, but he is asking profound questions from his seat in the Center for Human Values. There’s an overwhelming confidence expressed in such sweeping names, but we should be wary of it.

There’s another question: Should people of strong religious faith still be part of the “We,” as they have been in previous centuries? Or, to protect the freedom of those with weak beliefs, is it necessary to restrict the freedom of those with strong beliefs? Maybe we can get to that later.