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ONLINE REVIEW: BOOK REVIEW The President of Good & Evil "Bush's religious beliefs are no more based on critically examined evidence than are the religious beliefs of Osama bin Laden." Is there anything more interesting than reading bioethicist Peter Singer's take on the ethics of George W. Bush? Singer is distinguished professor of bioethics at Princeton University and always labeled "controversial" or "provocative" because it's difficult to quote his well-reasoned arguments out of context without triggering heated emotions in the intellectual feeding chain. Peter Singer is
among the most influential moral philosophers
alive. He has helped shape debates worldwide
concerning animal rights and bio-ethical dilemmas
and made significant contributions to debate about
international economic justice. Singer is committed to injecting ethics into contemporary political and cultural irrationalism, and as a result, he is probably the most influential bioethicist in the world. With The President of Good & Evil, he applies ethical thinking into election year politics and provides dozens of thoughtful (and of course controversial) insights in the process. President Bush often uses the rhetoric of the clergy, as if on a holy mission, particularly when he speaks about bio-issues like stem-cell research, abortion or the death penalty. Singer examines Bush's public statements, rationalizations and actions on topics ranging from stem-cell research, tax cuts, the International Crimes Court, to Afghanistan, the invasion of Iraq and the drive for American global preeminence -- and in the process systematically reveals an uncomfortable pattern of irrational thought that demonstrates President Bush's ethical confusion as well as his self-serving and simplistic contradictions. Here's an example of Singer's reasoning: "...Bush's own moral character [has not] stood up well to the test of high office. Handicapped by a naive idea of ethics as conformity to a small number of fixed rules, he has been unable to handle adequately the difficult choices that any chief executive of a major nation must face." Singer concludes later that Bush's ethical decision making process is equal to that of about a thirteen-year old boy. Singer: "A person of good moral character who takes a false step will admit it, seek to understand what went wrong, and try to prevent something similar from happening again. When Bush's use of misleading intelligence about Iraq was exposed, however, he blocked an open investigation into how he and his staff came to mislead the American public . . . Instead, he made further inaccurate statements. . . This may be the kind of behavior we expect from a politician . . .[However] They are not the actions of a person of good moral character." [page 225] Singer reasons, issue by issue, that Mr. Bush is, by his own standards, a "conspicuous failure". It's difficult to argue his conclusions. We'll see what the president's defenders say about this book. Bush's obvious inconsistencies in serious life-ethics matters like limiting stem-cell research, refusing to fund abortion counseling, intruding in the sexuality and reproductive decisions of women, contrasted against his favoring the killing of mentally deficient human beings and limiting progress toward stem-cell treatment for millions of Americans afflicted with Alzheimer's, spinal cord injuries, Parkinson's disease, juvenile diabetes and heart disease, is at the very least an embarrassment for the man. Bush on capital punishment: "I don't think you should support the death penalty to seek revenge. I don't think that's right. I think the reason to support the death penalty is because it saves other people's lives." (p. 47) Bush on limiting stem cell research: "I worry about a culture that devalues life, and I believe as your President I have an important obligation to foster and encourage respect for life in America and though out the world." (p. 34) Singer on Bush's logic: "If Bush supports the death penalty because he believes that it save lives by deterring potential murders, and if mentally retarded people are morally innocent, then in signing the death warrant for Terry Washington, a thirty-three year-old mentally retarded man with the communication skills of a seven-year old, Bush was deliberately causing the death of a morally innocent human being as a means of saving the lives of others. That is, of course, exactly what he refuses to support in the case of human embryos." [p. 49] While governor of Texas, Bush opposed a bill to prohibit the use of the death penalty to kill profoundly retarded people even if convicted of crimes. Despite growing consensus against this use of the death penalty, Bush's explanation for his position favoring the killing of mentally retarded people was simple: "I like the law the way it is right now." He said. The bill passed in the republican dominated Texas Senate, but with Bush's opposition it was defeated in the Texas House. In June 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that executing retarded people is "cruel and unusual punishment," and therefore a violation of the Eight Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In my view Singer's critique of the Bush tax cuts -- skewed to the wealthy while hustled to the nation as "compassionate conservatism" -- is his strongest argument for denying Mr. Bush a second term as president. Bush on his tax cuts: "It's your money. My tax cuts will give you a chance to set your priorities for your family. It says that we in the federal government have a fundamental trust in the people of America, and that's where our faith should be -- in the people. The best government is that which trusts America, and there's no better way to make that trust explicit than to share your money with you." [p. 11] I didn't know before reading Singer's book that our poor are 60% poorer than the poor of Sweden, for example (where the poor have guaranteed health care insurance and financial support), while our rich are 300 times wealthier than the richest in that nation. I didn't know that America's poor are poorer in absolute terms than the poor of Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland. [p. 23] I didn't know that one quarter of America's children live in this level of poverty. No child left behind? Singer's viewpoint: Although the ideal of equal opportunity enjoys wide support among Americans, all the evidence suggests that even by this standard, the nation is a grossly unjust society. After all, a nation with a particularly high percentage of its children living in relative poverty will have great difficulty providing every child with "an equal place at the starting line." Some children have plenty of nutritious food, a warm place to sleep in winter, and air-conditioning in summer. From their early years of schooling, they have their own room, desk and internet-linked computer. Others have none of these advantages. How can children living in such different circumstances have an equal start in life? [p.24] Singer again, on the last year of Bush's tax cuts: "Fifty-two percent of the total tax cuts will go to the richest 1 percent. Of the total reduction of tax revenues -- $234 billion -- the richest 1.4 million tax payers will divide up $121 billion, while the remaining $113 billion will be shared between the rest of the 139 million American income tax payers. This will give the richest taxpayers, on average, more than one hundred times the tax savings that the rest get." [p. 19] Anyway you look at the numbers in Singer's analysis, Bush appears thoughtless and deceptive. The thesis of The President of Good & Evil is directly argued and proven to this reader. By his own standards as a Christian leader, Mr. Bush appears, in Singer's words, "a conspicuous failure." There are three areas of Singer's discussion I disagree with: his "just war" argument against the invasion of Afghanistan is too narrow; his comments on Bush's "bullying" of the United Nations before the invasion of Iraq overlooks the limitations of the UN to deal with global power; and third, I ask why Singer frames his conclusions within an intellectual spectrum of argument to appear moderate when he so clearly condemns the president's ethics? 1. Singer oversimplifies Aquinas's argument number 7 for a just war by ignoring well documented Taliban barbarisms committed in Afghanistan, as well as -- through its influence over Islamic fundamentalism -- terror activities throughout Dar al Islam. It was perfectly clear that had the U.S. entered into quid pro quo negotiation (U.S. proof of bin Laden's involvement in the attacks of 9/11, for example), no purpose would have been served but to submit U.S. democratic process (Bush acted with the full support of U.S.) to the logic and legal processes of theocratic Taliban leadership. This would be like negotiating with Hitler, exhausting all possibilities of argument, all due process under a nazi legal system, etc., while German concentration camp managers improved their lethal efficiency with each passing day. Perhaps bin Laden and the Taliban have a more pressing moral claim to continued life than unwanted infants born with severely debilitating illnesses, or mentally retarded criminals on death row in Texas? I don't think so. 2. I suggest the United Nations is not a "democratic body" rising to stature or moral equity of the U.S. Constitution -- on the contrary, it is a "might makes right" organization dominated by victors of the second world war which admits, under the pretense of equal representation, governments with no legitimate claim to national representation except through the suppression of the governed and the oppression of opposition by brutal fascist force. Why then should President Bush lend ethical legitimacy, for example, to a vote, opinion or plea offered in that body by a representative of Saddam Hussein (Slobodan Milosevic, Augusto Pinochet, or Pol Pot, etc.)? Why would Americans subject the President of the United States to any decision in which such representatives exercised any influence? The United Nations provides valuable international resources in a variety of humane endeavors which should be supported. It could advance global progress for example: the UN could immediately oversee fair elections in Iraq, distribute humanitarian aid in Haiti, work to establish free, non-sectarian education for the children of Iraq and Afghanistan. When will the UN mandate Arab support for a secure Israel, as well as a free state of Palestine for the Palestinian people? Until these issues are resolved, the UN cannot seriously be considered a world governing power. As a forum for global democratic representation, or crafting international law, the UN remains a work in progress and the United States -- more than any other nation -- provides the clearest historic perspective to best determine when this arch of progression has matured sufficiently to claim status as a global governing entity. 3. A third, albeit minor, contention is Mr. Singer's attempt to soften his judgment of the president's ethical shortcomings by positioning his argument as "moderate" within an expanding intellectual discourse against the Bush administration. Singer frames his arguments between those defending the president (Wolfowitz, Shulsky, Kristol, etc., influenced, Singer says, by the obscure elitist philosopher Leo Strauss); and those Singer calls the "cynics" (like NY Times columnist and fellow Princeton economics professor Paul Krugman ) who argue Bush and his administration are self-serving and simply no longer credible. Singer does not choose to connect the dots back to speculation about Bush's motives like Krugman might; nor does he challenge the "circulation of elites" fascist roots implicit in Strauss's nineteenth century thinking. But placing himself in the middle of this spectrum doesn't mean he is a moderate. America is shifting into an unusually tough political season -- not to mention a major global realignment -- and American voters will challenge, scrutinize and eventually elect leadership that shapes the world's future for years to come. The President of Good & Evil is timely and the most thoughtful analysis available of the Bush Administration's ethics and actions during this president's historic first term. It will no doubt receive a wide, and critical reading. (RJP) |
