Lobbyists Enjoy Access to Obama White House

More than any president before him, Barack Obama pledged to change the political culture that has fueled the influence of lobbyists. But a review of records released by the administration shows that the industry Obama vowed to constrain is a still a regular presence at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

The visitor logs also suggest that lobbyists with personal connections to the White House enjoy the easiest access.

Read more here.

Moral Obligation

Alice C. Linsley


A difficult aspect of ethical thinking is obtaining critical distance from our own beliefs and recognizing the possibility of error. When we take for granted the reasonableness of the beliefs upon which we act, we fail to question our "givens" and are easily moved to accept things that we should probably question and even resist.

Since our ideas of morality are mostly shaped by the influence of parents, friends, spouses and our culture, our confidence in the correctness of our moral views is strongly reinforced. The moral authority of our actions is determined by the consensus of these influences. We feel obliged to go with the dominant views, rarely questioning whether these might be based more on convenience than truth, or promoted by vested interests rather than by prophetic voices.

Law codes are a measure of a culture's moral compass. Consider the Code of Hammurapi. It was engraved on a dark stone stele more than 7 feet high. At the top of this stele appears an image of King Hammurapi standing reverently before the seated Shamash, the god of justice. Shamash is dictating the law to his earthly representative. The Code of Hammurapi closes with this statement: “The righteous laws which Hammurapi, the wise king, has established...” Similarly, Leviticus closes with this: “These are the commandments which YHWH commanded Moses for the children of Israel.” These ancient moral codes appealed to the deity for the authority.

These ancient moral codes did not spring suddenly into existence. They represent centuries of social development and ethical thinking. Similarly, the laws of the United States represent centuries of development and are still developing. One wonders what moral authority the U.S. Supreme Court appeals to when makign decisions? Is the Court's authority constituted on general principles of law, the citation of precedent, and some general idea of fairness? If so, that's not a very secure tether. That boat is sure to drift.

According to Socrates, we have a moral obligation to be good citizens. For Socrates good citizenship requires philosophical contemplation whereby one achieves happiness through virtue. Socrates was very popular in anient Athens. When faced with the choice of being executed or taking his own life, Socrates chose the latter. Everyone knew that Socrates was being set up. His friends had offered to help him escape to safety, but he refused. How could he teach good citizenship and disregard the auhroity of the State? Yet if he allowed the State to take his life, when everyone knew he was innocent of the charges, he would undermine the citizens' confidence in their political system.

According to Plato (427-347 B.C.), evil arises from ignorance, and virtue can be imparted through instruction. For Plato, the highest good consists in the perfect imitation of the Absolute Good, which cannot be fully realized in this life. Virtue enables man to order his conduct according to the dictates of reason, and acting according to reason, he approaches the Absolute Good (which in theological language is God).

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) addressed most of the ethical questions that continue to fret the Western mind. With characteristic keenness he solved, in his ethical and political writings, most of the problems with which ethics concerns itself. Unlike Plato, who began with ideas as the basis of his observation, Aristotle began with experience analysed and traced to ultimate causes.

He asserts that all men tend to happiness as the ultimate object of all their endeavors, and to which all other goods merely serve as means.  The highest pleasure is found in eudaimonism as an activity.  The concept of eudaimonic well-being (from daimon - true nature) stresses that not all desires are worth pursuing as, even though some of them may yield pleasure. Only desires which produce wellness can be considered virtuous, so moral obligation involves right desires. Aristotle's treatment of moral obligation remains a lasting contribution to ethics.

The study of the history of ethics counteracts this problem of perspective. By virtually traveling into other cultures and time periods, we will encounter an endless variety of contrasting, often contradictory, beliefs about morality. We will discover, first and foremost, that many of the most brilliant minds in human history have disagreed about morality and that no philosopher, no matter how confident and talented, has ever expressed an ethical view without encountering opposition, disagreement, and possible error.

Our own moral beliefs which seem obvious, and often receive the agreement of the immediate world around us, are a minority view when placed into the larger history of moral philosophy. They cannot be taken for granted and must be carefully considered and critically examined.



A Good Reason to Study the History of Ethics

Study of the history of ethics counteracts the problem of too-close perspective. By visiting other cultures and time periods, we discover a variety of contrasting and often contradictory moral beliefs that register different moral obligations. We discover that brilliant minds have disagreed about morality and that no philosopher has ever expressed an ethical view without encountering opposition and disagreement.

We have choices as to how we will conduct our lives.  We may decide that traditional authorities are not binding on us and attempt to live as Nietzsche who called himself an “immoralist” and criticized almost all the moral philosophers. He wrote:

“Whether it be hedonism or pessimism or utilitarianism or eudaemonism: all these modes of thought which assess the value of things according to pleasure and suffering, that is to say according to attendant and secondary phenomena, are foreground modes of thought and naïvetés which anyone conscious of creative powers and an artist’s conscience will look down on with derision” (Peoples and Fatherlands, 7:225).

We may decide that Immaneul Kant's deontological ethics is a better path. Kant defines virtue as “the moral strength of a human being's will in fulfilling his duty.” According to Kant the nature of morality is to do one’s duty even when we are not inclined to do it, and not because we are afraid of the consequences of not doing it. The moral person performs his moral obligation regardless of the consequences.

In Kant's view the person who does his duty to appear virtuous, is not moral. The person who does his duty to get it over and done with, is not moral. The person who does his duty to avoid negative consequences, is not moral. Only the person who does his duty because it is his duty, is moral. Kant’s philosophy is an absolutist moral system, that is to say that he regarded some acts always to be wrong, regardless of the situation.

Jeremy Bentham presented another approach to moral obligation. Utilitarianism states that the right action or policy is that which brings “the greatest happiness of the greatest number.” Bentham never actually used this phrase and later dropped the second qualification, embracing what he called "the greatest happiness principle." Bentham's “happiness principle” refers to the extent to which actions promote the general happiness. What is morally obligatory is that which produces the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people, and creates the least amount of pain. He writes, “By the principle of utility is meant that principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever, according to the tendency which it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question: or, what is the same thing in other words, to promote or to oppose that happiness.”

Utilitarian ethics is very popular today. It appeals to those who believe that moral obligation can be boiled down to not hurting others by my actions.  However, this over simplifies Bentham's philosophy. Bentham believed that the primary motivators in human beings are pleasure and pain. He argued that, if pleasure is the good, it is good regardless of whose pleasure it is. This being the case, the pursuit of maximum pleasure has moral force independent of the interests of the individual acting. As with Adam Smith, Bentham held that individuals should seek the general happiness because the interests of others are inextricably bound up with their own.

Bentham was a lawyer and he proposed that the identification of interests and the bringing together of diverse interests is the responsibility of lawmakers. This is a popular idea among supporters of big government.  The irony of having the government determine the individual's moral obligation appears not to have dawned on the fans of Utilitarianism.

Related reading:  Aristotle's Understanding of the Chief Good; Ancient Moral Codes; Ethics and Binary Oppositions; Scott B. Rae's Moral Choices

Harvard Houseparent Encourages "Ethical" Porn

Erika Christakis, a house parent at Harvard and an academic, thinks there is nothing wrong with pornography so long as one can find an “ethical” source for it? I’m afraid so. Writing in the Huffington Post early this month, the same “educator, public health advocate and Harvard College administrator” put “The Case for Fair Trade Porn”. It’s time, she argued, that we became as selective about “our” porn as about our coffee and pork.

Basically her view of porn is this: the urge to watch it is primitive (universal) but “relatively harmless”, and with the advent of online porn the vast majority of Americans (if not the human race) indulge the urge -- including Evangelical Christians (important to mention that). Calls to regulate the content of pornography must be rejected because they would spoil the “buzz” which is the essence of porn for many people: “One person’s degradation may be another person’s kink…”

Nevertheless, consumers cannot be completely without standards when shopping for porn. Although some porn stars may actually like what they are doing, it appears that some are coerced and subjected to dangerous conditions, and it is important for consumers with ethical sensitivity to know which are which. People should be able to make an informed choice of filth that the actors enjoyed making or at least agreed to freely.

Feminist preoccupations lend a certain subtlety to her argument, in particular the idea that women are not getting their fair share of pornography. A lot of “so-called ‘feminist porn’” is “sanitised” and “a buzz-kill”. “Fair Trade porn”, however, would tend to lift the aesthetic standard “which might, in turn, shift the skewed gender balance of viewership.” Somehow, all this could put us in “a better relationship with the human body.”

It’s a reasonable guess that most parents of the 400 undergraduates for whose wellbeing Mrs Christakis is responsible do not read her blog on the Huffington Post. If they did, they might be thrown off the scent by three recent posts examining the Twilight series in which the Harvard House Master praises the films for exploring “female fantasy life” in a way that the movie industry generally fails to do. Exactly what depths that fantasy life might sink to is not spelled out; one has to read the porn post for that.

Still, it’s out there and word must be getting around. It would be reassuring to think that parents, and students themselves, some of them, are engaging Mrs Christakis or her husband (who, presumably, goes along with her predilection for porn) on the subject of exactly how sexual degradation puts the consumer in a better relationship with the human body, and just what they understand by a “moral journey”.

The Pforzheimer House Master(s) may reply that a moral journey is simply one that faces the “truth” that we are all beasts at heart (“primitive”) and that most of us actually live that way. My guess is that most parents, if not students (who have already heard a lot of this stuff in high school), would vehemently disagree with this philosophy and be appalled at the thought of young people absorbing it within the apparently civilised environs of the leading Ivy League university.

But what does the university itself think of encouraging the use of porn? The authorities must know where its House Master of three years has set her ethical bar -- on this subject, at least. How many other people on the staff agree with her? How would it affect efforts the institution might make to discourage hooking up like beasts, or drinking like beasts?

Mrs Christakis is obviously a talented woman and she no doubt has a genuine interest in young people. Her views on porn are neither unique, nor, in the contemporary moral landscape, uniquely wicked. But they are horrible nonetheless and it is discouraging to think they may influence the next generation of top professionals.

There are more things to consider in choosing a university than most parents have dreamed of.

Carolyn Moynihan is deputy editor of MercatorNet.


Read the full article here.

FBI File on Steve Jobs

The Mercury News website reports that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released a file today (February 9, 2012) that it kept on Apple cofounder Steve Jobs, in which interview subjects -- who were contacted for a background check on Jobs -- discussed his drug use and tendency to "twist the truth and distort reality in order to achieve his goals."

Several of the interview subjects told the FBI agents that Jobs' ethics could bend depending on the situation. One subject described Jobs as "a deceptive individual who is not completely forthright and honest; two former Apple employees said, "Jobs has integrity as long as he gets his way."

In an FBI interview with Jobs, he told agents that he "experimented with marijuana, hashish, and LSD" from 1970 to 1974.

The FBI released its documents on Jobs today because the Freedom of Information Act -- which allows the FBI to make its files public after a person's death -- was used by a reporter to gain access to Jobs' files.

Jobs died October 5, 2011 at the age of 56 as a result of a long battle with cancer.


From Theology and Society

Expect Abuse When You Speak the Truth

MercatorNet has a "creative commons" republication policy - nearly all of our articles may be reproduced so long as the original source is acknowledged. This is what Rebekah Hebbert, the managing editor of a Canadian site based at McGill University, the Prince Arthur Herald, did with a recent article on same-sex adoption by Rick Fitzgibbons. (She is also an occasional contributor.)

Rebekah Hebbert

The outcome was explosive. At least four editors and ten writers resigned from the staff and Rebekah appeared on national television explaining her decision to run what was described by her critics as garbage and bigotry.

I trawled through the comments, mostly abusive. My favourite was "'Adults do not have a right to deprive children of a father or a mother.' This is actually considered an argument by the author of this piece. This is actually a thing that got published. I don't even know where to begin."

I don't know where to begin either. Do Canadian university students regard the normality of homosexual relationships as an article of faith and the need for a mother and a father as a vile heresy? Perhaps so. Rebekah's impression was that her colleagues had resigned because of fears that their careers would be tainted by homophobia.

It looks as though MercatorNet needs to publish more well-researched, temperate, and hard-hitting articles on same-sex marriage. Congratulations to Rebekah for her fearless and controversial stand. If her colleagues are looking for a consensus-friendly working environment, there may be vacancies writing copy for the Korean News in Pyongyang. As another Canadian gadfly, John Kenneth Galbraith, once wrote: "one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong."
 
 
Related reading:  Insidious Push for Gay Rights

US Violation of Human Dignity and Ethics

US researchers violated ethical boundaries when they deliberately infected Guatemalan prisoners, mental health patients and prostitutes with sexually transmitted diseases in a 1940s research project, a presidential commission concluded on Tuesday.

When the awful experiments came to light in October 2010, President Barack Obama entrusted the President's Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues with investigating the matter. Amy Gutmann, chairwoman of the commission and president of the University of Pennsylvania, says it was no accident that the research was performed in Guatemala. "Some of the people who were involved in this experiment explicitly said, 'We could not do this in our own country'," she said. "It was a foreign population that was seen as ethnically, racially, nationally different."

The work clearly opposed ethical standards of the time, according to Nelson Michael, director of the US Military HIV Research Program. "I'm not aware of any standards that would have said, 'it's ok to go offshore to do this kind of research'," he said. "They did it because they found a doorway that they found darkened and they went through it." STDs, including gonorrhea and syphilis, were among the biggest public health threats at the time. It was estimated that 20% of people living in psychiatric institutions were there because of the neurological effects of late-stage syphilis. The researchers in the Guatemalan study were looking for a way to prevent such diseases from spreading.

The commission has concluded that despite that sense of urgency, the Guatemala studies were poorly designed, poorly executed and entirely unethical. John Arras of the University of Virginia said he initially struggled with the decision over whether the researchers should be blamed for the ethical offenses. However, Arras said the details of the experiments dispelled doubts.

In one case, a patient named Berta in a psychiatric ward was injected with syphilis and not treated until 3 months after her infection. Soon after, lead researcher John Cutler, said she was about to die. The same day, he put gonorrhoeal pus from another patient into both of her eyes, her urethra and her rectum, and reinfected her with syphilis. Days later, her eyes were filled with pus from gonorrhea and she was bleeding from her urethra. She died six months later. "I would submit that this kind of case cannot be waved away by even the most acute awareness of fluctuation in medical ethics standards of the time," Arras said.

The commission discovered evidence of 83 deaths, but could not determine the extent to which the deaths were likely to be related to the experiments. It is still writing up its conclusions, and plans to issue a report on the historical study to Obama in September. Following an inquiry into the adequacy of current policies to protect human research subjects, it will also write a second report by the end of the year. ~ Nature News, Aug 30
 

World Youth Day 2011

Last year at this time the Catholic Church was licking its wounds after its biggest public relations shellacking in many years. Newspaper columnists sneered that the scandal caused by a few priest paedophiles was the beginning of the end. Its followers were so disgusted that they were said to be turning in their membership cards.

But if that pessimistic reading of the tea leaves was true, how do you explain the presence of two million young people in Madrid over the weekend to listen to an 83-year-old German Pope? They were all aware of the vile actions of a handful of rogue priests but these had not shaken their confidence in the Church or its leader.

So, if you are a Catholic sympathiser, World Youth Day 2011 gave abundant reasons for hope. Here are 7 of them.

The younger generation gets the Church

The 2 million young people who attended made an impressive effort to back up their convictions. While most of the pilgrims came from Spain and nearby France and Italy, there were hundreds from countries like Australia and New Zealand. About 150 came from Russia! The sacrifice of paying for a long and trip and uncomfortable accommodation shows that they were firmly committed to being part of the Catholic Church.

Contrast that with the World Youth Summit organised by the United Nations in New York. Admittedly UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has the charisma of a wilted lettuce, but this worthy gathering drew only a few hundred people. Whose ideas are going to be passed on to the next generation?



Benedict XVI is setting the moral agenda

Last week Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron reacted to the riots in London and other big English cities by decrying moral relativism. “What last week has shown is that this moral neutrality, this relativism – it’s not going to cut it any more.” Exactly. A free set of steak knives if you can name the first major world figure to hammer away at the “tyranny of relativism”!

Benedict XVI. The Pope has made it respectable to reject the political correctness which undermines moral striving. Obviously world leaders are listening.

Remember Cameron’s farewell words to the Pope after his state visit to the UK last year? “You have really challenged the whole country to sit up and think,” he said. It looks like Cameron sat up and thought. His response to the riots came straight from Benedict’s playbook.



A one-man think tank works for free

A fascinating essay in last week’s New York Times by film critic Neal Gabler lamented the death of in-depth thinking: “we are living in an increasingly post-idea world — a world in which big, thought-provoking ideas that can’t instantly be monetized are of so little intrinsic value that fewer people are generating them and fewer outlets are disseminating them, the Internet notwithstanding. Bold ideas are almost passé.”

Maybe in New York, but not in Rome. Gabler obviously hasn’t read much of Benedict XVI on morality, philosophy, aesthetics, economics and social responsibility. But many of the Pope’s young fans have. In a world where ideas no longer sparkle, his explode with possibilities. And they’re free. Any bets on what the next generation will be thinking?



A way out of the global financial crisis

Benedict got there first. With the world economy on the verge of meltdown, people are looking for answers. Surely at the root of the crisis is something more than mismanagement of economic levers. Surely economics is about more than statistics and money.

Well, that is exactly what Benedict (and his predecessors) have been saying. As he told journalists in a press conference in the flight from Rome to Madrid: “[We see] confirmed in the present economic crisis what has already been seen in the great preceding crisis: that an ethical dimension is not something exterior to economic problems, but an interior and fundamental dimension. The economy does not function with mercantile self-regulation alone, but it has need of an ethical reason to function for man.”



A thumbs-down to dehumanising sex and consumerism

The greatest question of the last 200 years is: what is true freedom? To do whatever I want? Or to live according to the truth? What our society offers young people is the freedom to consume until their credit cards max out, to have sex whenever they want with whomever they want, to live undisturbed in a solipsistic bubble. But this vision of man degrades him, Benedict says. Happiness comes only from discovering the truth. Many young people are disillusioned with the South Park culture they live in and what the Pope says makes a lot of sense to anyone who wants to build a better world.

“The discovery of the living God inspires young people and opens their eyes to the challenges of the world in which they live, with its possibilities and limitations. They see the prevailing superficiality, consumerism and hedonism, the widespread banalization of sexuality, the lack of solidarity, the corruption. They know that, without God, it would be hard to confront these challenges and to be truly happy, and thus pouring out their enthusiasm in the attainment of an authentic life. But, with God beside them, they will possess light to walk by and reasons to hope, unrestrained before their highest ideals, which will motivate their generous commitment to build a society where human dignity and true brotherhood are respected.”



Truth is more powerful than number-cruching

Benedict’s most memorable speech in Spain was to university lecturers at that jewel of Spanish architecture, El Escorial. As a professor himself, he spoke with passionate conviction about the need to offer students more than training in the nuts and bolts of professional work. “As Plato said: ‘Seek truth while you are young, for if you do not, it will later escape your grasp’. This lofty aspiration is the most precious gift which you can give to your students, personally and by example. It is more important than mere technical know-how, or cold and purely functional data.”

Universities, he said, should be a sanctuary from ideology or “a purely utilitarian and economic conception which would view man solely as a consumer”. What could be more attractive to young people than seeking the ultimate meaning in the universe and striving to understand what it means to be authentically human? If there is one bold passé idea, it’s utilitarianism. And Benedict offers an alternative.



World Youth Day is still the world’s best-kept secret

A journalist friend of mine wrote an op-ed piece for a newspaper in Sydney. But the editor wasn’t interested. “We had one of those in Sydney three years ago. That just about filled our quota,” he was told. The New York Times – the touchstone of elite opinion in the US – barely reported World Youth Day.

Really, this is peculiar -- a gathering of 2 million young people is not news, especially after a few hundred in the same age bracket trashed London? Isn’t anyone out there connecting the dots?

But why kvetch? The media and the intelligentsia are good at froth and bubble, but abysmal at deep undercurrents. Did they predict the rise of militant Islam, the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the fizzing of the Population Bomb or the Global Financial Crisis?

The biggest stories are the hidden stories. Benedict XVI knows this. As he told journalists, “God's sowing is always silent; it does not appear in the statistics, and the seed that the Lord sows with World Youth Day is like the seed of which the Gospel speaks: part falls on the road and is lost; part falls on stone and is lost; part falls on thorns and is lost; but a part falls on good earth and gives much fruit.”

Unnoticed by the media, 2 million young people have embarked upon a journey which will lead many of them to infuse their home countries with their deeply held Christian beliefs. Slowly the world is going to change. Thirty years from now, the media is going to have one hell of a surprise.

Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet, which is where this article first appeared.

UK Riots Reveal Loss of Moral Compass

London burns after riots

Why should anyone be surprised at the rioters when we've been saying for decades there is no right or wrong?

Rebekah Hebbert

As London burned, pundits rushed to provide rationales for the destruction, and answers to the problem. Some blame poverty, some blame government cuts to services, others blame the breakdown of the family, or the fact that “bankers aren’t moral, why should the youths of Tottenham be?”
But to blame it on these last is to diagnose a symptom as a cause. Why are the bankers immoral? Why has the family broken down? Why are millionaires’ children looting the streets? Why is anyone looting the streets?

A common answer seems to be, “Because they can”. It may shock those who believe in the innate goodness of man -- who have no basis for believing that those who come from good environments could behave like beasts -- that this attitude could be so widespread. We see this shock writ large across many of the reactions; the surprise, the confusion, the scrambling for an answer, any answer, which might fit this strange reality but, in the end just, doesn’t.

What surprises me is that there is any surprise. People act out of their philosophy, their way of viewing the world. For many years, decades even, a philosophy has taken hold of the popular imagination which was virtually guaranteed to lead to such an end. Yet for so long we held to the strange belief that what we believe doesn’t matter that much, that we can eliminate objective morality and objective truth without eliminating certain objective standards of behavior.

The catchphrases have been: No objective right and wrong. We can’t know truth. No one has a right to judge anyone else. What’s wrong for you might be right for me. You can do whatever you want, as long as you’re not hurting anybody else. In other words, relativism -- of an increasingly fundamentalist stamp.

The “do no harm” bit was always slipped in by the back door, as a caveat to assure people that moral relativism is safe. The injunction was meant to ensure that the cultivated elite who propagated the philosophy could indulge in their favourite recreations, which tend towards the self destructive rather than outwardly destructive, without having to worry about being mugged by their less cultured students.

It took the stern rationality of the common people to realize that there was no justification for the caveat. If all morality is subjective, why should I adhere to your arbitrary morality of doing no harm?
Why indeed?

The powers that be are roundly condemning the rioters, but with little visible effect on the remorseless hooligans. Hardly surprising, given the sanctimonious hypocrisy of the pronouncements. In a country where so much is permitted, or at most lightly punished, it will no doubt fuel the cynicism of the rioters to learn that the one step too far is the widespread destruction and theft of mere property; the murders and assaults appear to be only secondary issues, even to the press.

Less hypocritical, but even less helpful if possible, are those who portray the arsonists, thieves, and murderers as victims of poverty and -- this is slightly rich -- too great a police presence in their neighbourhoods (because they are so peaceful, and only the most power hungry of cops could suspect them of even thinking of wanting to break the law).

Yet, it is not as if we can properly characterize the events as protests. The images of the riots have not revolved around protesters marching in the streets with signs and slogans, demanding specific changes (except for those who are marching, and cleaning, in protest against the riots). It has been the anarchist’s version of a street party, complete with bleeding cops for additional decor and with party favours that give a literalist twist to the phrase “loot bags”.

Prime Minister Cameron was right when he said the events were a failure of culture, but it is unlikely that he will dare to address the root of the problem. He is speaking of a failure of culture to a world which has no way to analyze the differences between cultures, no conception that one culture could be better than another. And why should the rioters go for PM Cameron’s version anyway? It is sure to be less fun.

Postmodernism seemed the easy way out. Why grapple with difficult questions of who is right and who is wrong when you can dismiss the whole debate with a glib slogan? But it is a classic example of shortcuts making for long trips. As morality fades, we see a rise in the culture of surveillance and suspicion which is taking root in England. Thousands of CCTV cameras blanket the city, posters urge citizens to keep watch on each other (Or to combine the two as one police poster did, captioning a picture of neighbours chatting with children, “A bomb won’t go off here because weeks before a shopper spotted someone studying the CCTV cameras.”). External control is supplanting internal control, because self-control has lost its compass.

We have been so careful not to offend, not to be so arrogant as to claim that there is a truth, one truth, an objective truth, and one that comes along with an objective standard of behavior. Schools must be non-judgmental. The Ten Commandments are passé. We believed that those of differing opinions would respect and like us more if we told them that their opinions were just as valid as ours.

Then they had to watch their shops and homes go up in flames, the victims of our breakdown. Who knows? Maybe they would have preferred a more principled society, even one which believed them wrong, but which respected their right to life, to property, to hold a view with which others disagreed. There is only one alternative to objective morality, and that is external control. Control that must become ever more invasive, ever more rigid, and ever more detailed, as it replaces the flexibility and sensibility of that invaluable commodity - a conscience. Because, as the events in London and elsewhere prove, reasonable external control only works if the majority of people are peaceful and law-abiding. Past that, we must descend either into anarchy or repression.


Rebekah Hebbert is the opinions editor of The Prince Arthur Herald, a centre-right student newspaper that circulates throughout Canada. A student of economics, she lives in Eastern Canada. This piece appeared at MercatorNet.

Natural Law and the "Political Animal"

Matthew O'Brien and Robert C. Koons



A notion of “social practice” should guide the way we think about morality and politics. The first in a three-part series.

Whenever philosophy seems abstruse, hairsplitting, or frivolous, it’s worth meditating on G. K. Chesterton’s definition of what philosophy is all about:

Philosophy is merely thought that has been thought out. It is often a great bore. But man has no alternative, except between being influenced by thought that has been thought out and being influenced by thought that has not been thought out.

In the interest of thinking through our thoughts—specifically, our thoughts about how we ought to live—this article is the first in a series of three about natural law ethics. In this first installment, we give a general account of some problems about ‘social reality’ for ethics. In the next article, we apply the account sketched here to the issue of abortion as well as other difficult moral problems, and show how to apply the principle of double effect. In the final piece in the series, we address some of the main big-picture objections to the project of natural law ethics.

Natural law ethics is perhaps unique among competing contemporary moral theories in the degree to which it attempts to respect the distinctiveness of moral experience while, at the same time, fitting its account of that experience into a general picture of the world. To be committed to the project of natural law ethics is to be committed, at least to some extent, to the thesis that ethical principles draw their content from natural facts, facts about the essential constitution or ‘natures’ of things, especially human things. These natural facts include, first, the facts about the nature of human beings as individuals—that is, as rational animals comprised of body and soul—and second, the facts about the relationship between individual human beings and the societies in which they participate. Natural law theorists and their sympathizers have recently revisited the first of these issues in an impressive number of important books. Indeed, Philippa Foot, Kevin Flannery, J. Budziszewski, Rosalind Hursthouse, Anthony Lisska, Timothy Chappell, David Oderberg, Robert George, Christopher Tollefsen, Patrick Lee, Mark Murphy, and Alasdair MacIntyre have all written books in the last few years that examine individual human nature and the moral goods which perfect it.

Read it all here.

Hey, Public Figures, Ethics Matter!

Nobody is perfect. Anybody can be weak when the opportunity presents itself. Even habitual offenders against prevailing mores can be treated with indulgence; after all, they are only human and besides, they happen to be amusing or admirable in other ways, or they have a difficult background to contend with, or... Some people feel like that about the temperamentally and ethically unstable Mel Gibson; enough Californians voted for Arnold Schwarznegger to make him Governor, knowing his Hollywood approach to love and marriage; and Dominique Strauss-Kahn seems to have been notorious for his womanising long before European bigwigs made him head of the IMF.

So why do the moral lapses of the Gibsons, Schwarzneggers and DSKs continue to make front-page headlines and cause public conniptions, high-level investigations and -- often -- resignations? Are these public figures doing worse than countless ordinary citizens do? Than one might have expected them to do? Partly, it’s titillation, because editors know full well that, no matter how much above such hypocrisy they themselves (ahem) might be, there is an insatiable appetite amongst the public for scandal about the high and mighty.

It is also a political game. With elections coming up next year, hardly a day goes by in the United States that some contender or rising star does not have his sins rehearsed in public; this week it is Democrat Anthony Weiner; last month (Christian) Republican Senator John Ensign was forced to resign as investigations relating to an earlier extra-marital affair proceeded. Strauss-Kahn’s friends allege that political opponents were out to get him by setting him up with a hotel maid -- even though his sexual behaviour seems like the last thing that would lose him popularity in France itself. And the current criminal proceedings against Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi for under-age sex have the look of a last-ditch attempt to pin something that sticks on the extraordinarily powerful and unaccountably popular politician.

It would be foolish, though, to see all such exposures as cynical political manoeuvres. Sometimes people just get fed up with the unfairness and arrogance of certain powerful figures. This seems to be the case with the FIFA bribing scandal that came to a head this week. You don’t have to know a lot about soccer to grasp how much power the president of the World Cup body holds and to understand the temptation to hang onto the job -- by fair means or foul.

Again, while there may be a certain amount of envy and political schadenfreude behind reports exposing lavish spending by politicians and officials, extravagance is an injustice -- at least when one is using other people’s money, and especially when dealing with a cash-strapped citizenry or with poor and struggling people in developing countries. While the ink is barely dry on stories about the IMF boss’s swanky hotel suite in New York, the British are fuming over the profligate spending of the European Commission on jets, parties, resorts and all the rest of the trimmings -- £8 million over the last few years -- and its demand for a budget increase.

The message of this moral indignation is that -- celebrities aside -- we do expect more of our public representatives and officials than if they were characters in the sitcoms on television or in movies about power-crazed dictators; we expect them to measure up to an ethical standard. But what is that standard?

Well, it seems to include virtues like moderation in the use of funds, sexual restraint and honesty. As we know from the scandal over Catholic priests who sexually abused minors, if there is one thing on which there is a public consensus it is the inherent wrongness of molesting children. The offenders knew that already, of course, because the Catholic Church is the world expert on moral rules which, based on the Decalogue and the Catechism, leave no-one in doubt. But since there is little consensus on sexual ethics in secular society, other organisations really have to spell out the rules themselves, and not only about sexual behaviour.

Politicians usually have their boundaries well-defined, at least in countries like the US and Britain, but things are not so transparent when one gets into the corporate world or international agencies, and the further up the hierarchy the more obscure the ethical accountability seems to become.

The IMF, for example, has a two-tier system, with one set of ethics guidelines for the rank-and-file staff and another for the 24 executive members who oversee the organisation. Under the staff code of conduct, complaints about sexual harassment, intimidation or aggressive behaviour can be investigated, detailed in annual reports and lead to dismissal. At board level, however, as a 2007 study found, the rules are vague, and although an ethics committee was established in 1998, by 2007 it had “never met to consider any issues other than its own procedures”.

Strauss-Kahn’s contract has the staff code written into it but he seems to have been answerable only to the board. As the New York Times reports: “In 2008, not long after Mr. Strauss-Kahn assumed the top post, the fund was compelled to investigate him for having an affair with a staff subordinate. In that case, the fund hired an outside law firm to handle the inquiry because the ethics officer was not authorized to investigate at that high level. Although Mr. Strauss-Kahn was found not to have abused his position, he was publicly reprimanded by the board for showing poor judgment, and he apologized.” It seems he did not learn much from that slap on the wrist.

The board’s code speaks in generalities like maintaining “the highest standards of integrity” and treating colleagues and staff “with courtesy and respect, without harassment, physical or verbal abuse”, but clearly, people like Strauss-Kahn require more detailed instructions about the meaning of “courtesy” and “harassment”.

The rest of society, however, will have to give outfits like the IMF a hand. Organisations (democratic ones, anyway) are only as good, ethically, as the people they represent. There is only so much mischief that one person can do by himself, so it’s the people who elect the Schwarzneggers and Berlusconis, the governments that promote the Strauss-Kahns, that we should worry about. And on that ethical front there is a lot of work to do.

A new Gallup poll on moral issues shows that, while large majorities of Americans are opposed to extra-marital affairs (the harm is too personal to ignore), there is considerable tolerance of behaviour which harms marriage and the family -- including pornography and unmarried sex and parenthood. Moreover the tolerance for these things is greater among young adults than in older age groups. It is doubtful that things are much different in the other rich countries.

It is also difficult to see how we can have leaders with high ethical standards when the ground on which they are standing is crumbling away.

Carolyn Moynihan is deputy editor of MercatorNet. This article is published by Carolyn Moynihan, and MercatorNet.com under a Creative Commons licence.

Disconnect Between Piety and True Discipleship

Rollen Frederick Stewart in many ways personifies the disconnect between religious piety and true Christian discipleship.  His may be an extreme case, but American society is full of less extreme examples. Here's something to ponder!

After a born-again experience, Stewart set about to proclaim the message.  He was called the John 3:16 man. He was a fixture in American sports culture best known for wearing a rainbow colored afro-style wig and, holding up signs reading "John 3:16" at sporting events around the United States and overseas in the 1970s and 1980s.

Stewart was briefly jailed by Moscow police at the 1980 Olympic Games. In the late 1980s, he was responsible for stink bomb attacks and his targets included Robert Schuller's Crystal Cathderal, Trinity Christian Broadcasting, and a Christian bookstore.
 
Rollen Frederick Stewart is currently serving three consecutive life sentences on kidnapping charges.  Read more about him here.

The Teachers' Union and Moral Regression

"Schools need to teach about orgasms" says NEA to UN

By Lauren Funk

NEW YORK, March 3 (C-FAM) Graphic sex education for youth is the new battleground at the UN, as evidenced by side events during the past week at the Commission on the Status of Women.
The theme of this year’s CSW is the “access and participation of women and girls to education, training, science and technology.” While delegates are busy negotiating resolutions and outcome documents, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and UN organizations campaign for the installation of socially radical curriculums in Africa and America alike.

“Oral sex, masturbation, and orgasms need to be taught in education,” Diane Schneider told the audience at a panel on combating homophobia and transphobia. Schneider, representing the National Education Association (NEA), the largest teachers union in the US, advocated for more “inclusive” sex education in US schools, with curricula based on liberal hetero and homosexual expression. She claimed that the idea of sex education remains an oxymoron if it is abstinence-based, or if students are still able to opt-out.

Comprehensive sex education is “the only way to combat heterosexism and gender conformity,” Schneider proclaimed, “and we must make these issues a part of every middle and high-school student’s agenda.” “Gender identity expression and sexual orientation are a spectrum,” she explained, and said that those opposed to homosexuality “are stuck in a binary box that religion and family create.”

A Belgian panelist at the same event explained how necessary it was to have government support when educating about anti-discrimination issues. He claimed that the “positive, pro-LGBT policies in Belgian schools are a direct consequence of liberal and open-minded legislation in Belgium,” and went on to stress the importance of states in providing relevant materials for students and schoolteachers. He also held up Belgium’s “gender in the blender” programs, which are discussion-based programs for Belgian teachers who want to discuss gender and transgender issues in their courses, as a model for other nations who wished to encourage their teachers to address these topics.

The UN system was also advocating for the sexualization of youth at this year’s CSW. A panel sponsored in part by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) advocated for “comprehensive sex education” not only as a tool to combat “gender oppression,” but also as the key to achieving all of the Millennium Development Goals. The panelists presented the highly controversial UNESCO guidelines on Sex Education, as well as a new IPPF-sponsored curriculum as the gold standard for comprehensive sex education. Both curriculums promote a liberal approach to sex, approve of masturbation, and expose children to graphic content in their youngest years. The panelists also insisted that these programs be implemented in schools in order to reach as many students as possible, and they also recommended they start as soon as possible, given the fact that many girls in developing countries leave school before the age of sixteen.

Although most of the side events during CSW are not sponsored by governments and attract few delegates, the NGOs who produce the events are UN lobbyists – which means that the agendas on display during this year’s CSW will influence UN policy in the near future.

From here.

Why We Can't Legislate Morality

“You can’t legislate morality” has become a common turn of phrase. The truth, however, is that every law and regulation that is proposed, passed, and enforced has inherent in it some idea of the good that it seeks to promote or preserve. Indeed, no governing authority can in any way be understood to be morally neutral. Those who think such a chimerical understanding is possible could hardly be more wrong. For, in fact, the opposite is true: You cannot not legislate morality.

It is of course true that some laws will be better conceived than others, and many may fail entirely to achieve their purpose. But that they have a purpose, and that the purpose includes at least an implicit moral element, is incontrovertible. One need only ask of any law or action of government, “What is the law for?” The answer at some point will include a conception of what is good for the community in which the law holds. The inversion of the question makes the point even more clearly. What would provide a rationale for a law or governmental action apart from a moral purpose?

Read it all here.

When Charities Stumble Ethically

Ron Robins

It is strange that many Western charities still invest their funds in companies whose activities create the very difficulties they are trying to alleviate. But such problems can be minimised if charities create well designed ethical investment policies.

In a 2009 UK survey, the Charity Project and the Charity Finance Directors Group (CFDG) found that of its 164 member charities with investments over £1 million, 60 per cent had an ethical investment policy, while just 25 per cent of smaller charities with investments under £1million had one.

A prime example of the dilemma charities face without a strong ethical investment policy was exposed in a Los Angeles Times January 2007 article. It detailed an absurd situation that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation found itself in. This foundation is probably the largest in the world and was founded by Microsoft co-founder multi-billionaire, Bill Gates, and his wife Belinda.

The Los Angeles Times stated that, “the [Bill & Melinda] Gates Foundation has poured $218m into polio and measles immunization and research worldwide, including in the Niger Delta. At the same time that the foundation is funding inoculations to protect health, The Times found, it has invested $423m in Eni, Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil Corp, Chevron Corp and Total of France — the companies responsible for most of the flares blanketing the delta with pollution.”
Read it all here.
 
For more on non-profits and ethics, go here.

The Loss of Wisdom

Alice C. Linsley

"As in the Heavens, so on Earth": that is something that tribal peoples understand, but it is lost wisdom to the empirically-minded West. There is still the Christian prayer that God’s will “be done on earth as it is in heaven", which represents the ancient concern that the celestial pattern, which was regarded as perfect and eternal, should be replicated on earth. In the Judeo-Christian view, Heaven is the archetype for ideal life on earth.

Plato conceived of archetypes as the pattern of real things. He didn't invent this idea. He borrowed it from the ancient Egyptians, who asserted that the pattern is the real thing and the earthly shadow, but a reflection. In this view, the material world resembles, participates in and aspires to the transcendent Forms. To understand the ancient world, we must begin from this assumption, which is contrary to the prevailing materialism of western society.

The Romanian social anthropologist, Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) observed that for archaic man, “real” objects and events are those that imitate, repeat or are patterned upon a celestial archetype. Since the pattern that was to be followed was found in the heavens, ancient civilizations had skilled observers of the heavens. These were usually priests, shamans or sages. There was considerable pressure for these men to make accurate calculations. Those who failed to predict the date of celestial events might be executed, as happened to the Chinese astronomers who failed to predict the solar eclipse of 2134 B.C.

The need for accuracy in observing the heavens led to the development of sidereal astronomy. The sidereal day is the time required for the earth’s rotation to be synchronized with fixed stars. It is about four minutes shorter than the solar day. Solar time is the measurement of time according to the earth’s rotation around the sun, whereas sidereal time is the measurement relative to a distant star. It is used to predict when a star will be overhead and it works because the stars and constellations move relative to one another in a clock like fashion. Sidereal astronomy was the beginning of the science of astronomy. Unlike popular astrology, which is based on culturally-determined symbolism, sidereal astronomy is based on the actual observed location of stars and constellations.

Ancient astronomers observed that the positions of the stars and constellations relative to one another reveal a fixed pattern of movement and fixed boundaries. This suggested that there is also a fixed pattern and fixed boundaries on earth. Observation of patterns on earth points to a binary order in creation. The binary order is evident in binary opposites: heaven-earth, male-female, night-day, Sun-Moon, life-death and good-evil. Between the two there appears to be a boundary. The earliest ethical considerations were concerned with honoring the boundaries between Creator-creature, male-female, life-death and good-evil.

In western societies, the pattern seen by the ancients is rarely discerned and the boundaries are for the most part ignored or denied. Thus the controversial issues touch on life and death: abortion and euthanasia; on gender distinctions: homosex and feminism; and on the relativity of moral good.

More Americans Poor but still Honest

More Americans are poor, but fewer of them are suffering the effects of crime, an intriguing fact for social scientists.

The US Census Bureau reported this week that the poverty rate (the US has had an official measure since 1960) hit 14.3 per cent last year. That represents 4.8 million more people who fell below the threshold based on $22,000 annual income for a family of four. Among working Americans the rate was also the highest it has been -- 12.9 per cent -- since 1965, reports the Christian Science Monitor.

There is no mystery about that, of course; the recession and job loss would account for it. In fact, some economists say that the climbing unemployment rate should have produced even higher poverty figures.

The real mystery -- given the long assumed link between poverty and crime -- is that both violent crime and property crime continued to drop last year. (As we noted recently, child abuse has also, counter-intuitively, declined.) The FBI reports that it was the third straight year of falling crime rates in a row. Even with California unemployment higher than 12 percent, car thefts declined in Los Angeles by 20 percent last year over 2008.

At the least, the trends show that America, for all its Hollywood violence fantasies and its occasional mass murders, remains at heart an orderly republic, where police, judicial jurisdictions, and even vigilant neighbors keep a reasonable check on society's darker inclinations – even when the society itself is strained.

Explanations for the trend include “smarter policing” in cities such as New York and Los Angeles, and high incarceration rates, which together have targeted specific lawbreakers and high crime areas; government safety nets; less mobility among Americans and so more stable communities. With more people out of work and at home they can keep a better eye on their property -- and on the young people.

Perhaps, too, there is something about a general recession that teaches us that decent people can be poor, and poor people can be decent.

From here.

Glen Beck Rally

The massive rally on the mall of Washington over the weekend has the media in a tangle. It was larger and more peaceful and more positive and less political than they expected, and this is all territory largely foreign to them. How to account for what they’re all calling ‘Glenn Beck’s rally’?

Though it was more about recovering personal virtue than replacing political parties, the CS Monitor suggests some politicians may have cause for concern.

Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally in Washington Saturday could not have been an encouraging sign for Democrats and the Obama administration.

The crowd was huge by any count – likely at least a couple hundred thousand people judging by aerial photos and the reported comments of some police officers – stretching from the Lincoln Memorial back to the Washington Monument.

And far from being a gathering of self-proclaimed rabble rousers carrying offensive signs insulting of President Obama, as has often been the case with “tea party” rallies spurred on by Mr. Beck, it was mostly a heartfelt and largely nonpartisan expression of civic concern, patriotism, and religious faith.

In other words, there may have been some Democrats in the crowd, but even they are likely not happy with the direction the country’s taking, according to recent polls – including the policies and programs pushed by the majority party in Congress and the White House.

And yet, this was a new Beck on a new mission, calling out Americans to change what’s wrong with the country by changing what’s wrong with themselves.

“We must get the poison of hatred out of us,” he told the crowd. “We must look to God and look to love. We must defend those we disagree with.”

This from a man who has called Obama “a racist” and likened Al Gore’s campaign against global climate change to “what Hitler did” in having scientists use eugenics to justify the Holocaust.

Which drives Beck’s critics nuts.

It’s driving them nuts partly because Beck is doing exactly what Obama did in 2007-2008, and doing it nearly as well. Most media don’t seem to be getting that, but in this NPR review of differing viewpoints on the rally, someone does.

At the widely read conservative webste HotAir.com, blogger “Allahpundit” thinks that “in a way, the rally … mirrored rallies held for then-candidate Barack Obama in 2007 and leading up to the election of 2008. Both this rally and many of Obama’s featured mesmerizing speakers, who chose to inspire audiences by rhetorically empowering them to take matters into their own hands.” But, Allahpundit adds, “while Beck’s rally emphasized belief in God, Obama’s generally emphasized himself as a savior of the American people.”

The comparison is both valid and important to understand. Obama was a masterful community organizer. The country has learned that skill from him and learned it well, and it’s working to galvanize individuals into a communal force for change.

That they rallied on this particular occasion where they did posed a problem, some say a huge offense.

The rally took place on the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s historic “I Have a Dream” speech.

Beck is asking for a return to traditional American values, but the Reverend Al Sharpton accused him of trying to hijack King’s legacy.

“They want to disgrace this day. This is our day and we’re not giving it up,” said Sharpton.

With all due respect, I take issue with this claim. Dr. King’s niece, Dr. Alveda King, took a prominent and active role in “Beck’s rally” at the site where her uncle delivered his impassioned rallying cry for the nation to ennoble itself and its citizens by recognizing the dignity of all humans. She has worked for years within the pro-life movement to promote King’s ideals and goals of realizing universal human rights across the spectrum, without exception. Her participation in Beck’s rally dignified it. Attacks like this disgrace the cause of unity King embodied.

“This is our day and we’re not giving it up”? What does this say? Dr. Martin Luther King said, passionately, that his dream is for a country that judges a person not by the color of their skin but the content of their character. It was an address about race as a highlight of the fundamental issue of human dignity. It dishonors Dr. King to narrowly and angrily claim that his rally belonged to one race and not the entire nation it sought to free from hatred and fear and rancor and division.

In Dr. King’s speech, just after he says

I have a dream that one day…right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

…he goes on to say what has far less been quoted:

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; “and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”

He was a Christian preacher. He quoted the Gospel, and called on the nation to recall and embrace the meaning of ‘My Country ‘Tis of Thee.‘

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

Many people are trying to do that still…and again.

From here.

Gold and Ethical Standards

By Ron Robins, Founder & Analyst - Investing for the Soul

The rising price of gold stands as the ethical barometer of the mismanagement of our fiscal, monetary, and currency systems. Gold is in the early stages of re-asserting its historic role of helping to bring order to monetary and currency chaos. Its price has risen more than fourfold over the past ten years as a result of investors anticipating the predictable financial and currency chaos we have today—and what is likely yet to come.

The central banks and government treasuries, particularly those of the US, Europe, and Japan, have been weakened and our trust in them eroded. For decades they assured us that only they and their paper currencies and fractional reserve banking systems can keep our economies growing forever. They are now failing for all to see. And before the ships of state sink and economies further submerge they bail out their banking friends.

The monetary and currency systems and organisations responsible for them are deteriorating because they essentially lack an ethical standard. That is not to say that most individuals in these organisations are unethical. It is that as organizations they implemented policies over the past several decades that knowingly—or they should have known—would eventually lead to great financial and economic hardship.

One such policy was the encouragement of debt creation way beyond income or economic growth. When this policy failed, it led to tens of millions of people losing their jobs globally, millions losing their homes, and retirees in developed countries losing their savings as interest rates were reduced to near zero. It is in this sense that these organizations were, and are, without an ethical standard.

To rise to the top among many of these banking and financial organizations, requires not only brilliance, but usually subservience to base instinctual values of status and greed.

According to Dr Paul Ray’s research on Americans’ values, close to half the American population’s primary values include those of status and greed. It could be argued that even Timothy Geithner, the US Secretary of the Treasury, exhibited these values. Before his appointment it was divulged that he owed taxes that went back several years. He then hurriedly paid them to smooth his appointment to head the US treasury, the most powerful treasury on earth. About those taxes—he says he just ‘forgot’ to pay them.

Read it all here.

Duped by Unethical Statistics?

By Ron Robins, MBA

How did the developed world economies come to be in such a mess? It seems that revisions to key US statistics over the past three decades may have played a significant role in fashioning an illusion of unbounded prosperity. Inflation and unemployment rates were lowered and a brighter spin on the gross domestic product (GDP) fashioned. Unaware of the subtleties of many statistical changes, the media, investors, and the general public believed in a new golden era of an ever increasing GDP.

This golden economic era even had a name: the ‘Cinderella economy.’ Believing in the illusory Cinderella economy, people made financial and economic decisions that many subsequently regretted as they saw their homes and stocks plunge in value. They were uneducated about, and duped by statistics that helped lead them astray. These statistics are thus, ‘unethical statistics.’

Chief among these revisionist statistics is the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Most people believe it is the measure of inflation. But the way it is now constructed makes it a ‘cost-of-living-index.’ The two are very different from each other. Inflation, technically, usually means inflation of the money supply and might be evidenced by rising prices. And rising prices are observed by monitoring the same products and services from period to period to period!

Read it all here.

French Want Ethics to Rule Science

A national review of bioethics laws in France still has not reached a resolution. The current law dates back to 2004 and the government conducted an extensive review in 2009. The President, Nicolas Sarkozy, did not want the debate to be highjacked by "experts" so hundreds of meeting were held throughout the country - a kind of "Etats généraux de la bioéthique" after the Estates-General which inaugurated the French Revolution.

At the same time, a committee of parliamentary deputies conducted more than a hundred hearings with the experts -- lawyers, doctors, scientists, psychologists, and the religious leaders.
 
The upshot of this gigantic talk-fest was a 561 page report with 95 proposals for the National Assembly. The most significant of these are:

* the primacy of ethics over scientific and economic criteria

* The "interests of the unborn child" must be taken into account in making decisions about reproductive technology.

* bolstering research on genetic diseases, especially trisomy 21 (Down syndrome).

* better integration of disabled persons.

* preserving the ban on surrogate motherhood

* an extension of pre-implantation diagnosis to trisomy 21

* authorization of human embryonic stem cell research

It is likely that France will continue to be more restrictive than other countries in Europe. The raporteur for the report to the National Assembly, Jean Leonetti, told the French magazine Le Point earlier this year, "So what if surrogacy is permitted by our neighbours? If the law is determined by what everybody else does, what's the good of the law? How far are we prepared to manipulate bioethics to respond to our every whim? It's odd that we apply the precautionary principle to the environment and not to human beings."
 
From here.