Social Issues – Additional news and reports (July 2009)
The following are important articles on recent social issues which, for lack of space, could not be included in the July 2009 issue (issue 11) of Affinity’s social issues publication, The Bulletin.
CONTENTS
Orwell, statistics and the democratic deficit
Future of Dignitas under threat
The Obama months
Barak Hussein Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States on 20 January 2009 and he has now been in office for about six months. Like all new heads of state and other democratic leaders, he will inevitably disappoint. The hype and hope that surround elections can never be sustained (remember that of Tony Blair in 1997?).
Yet Obama seems such a nice guy – sharp dresser, warm smile, GSH, pleasant voice, good rhetorician with a sweet family. Already, however, he is proving to be a bioethical disaster.
On the third day of his presidency, he rescinded the so-called Mexico City Policy, which barred US aid to foreign organisations that perform or promote abortion. Then he reversed Bush’s restrictive policy on destructive human embryonic stem cell research.
The honeymoon is apparently over and a rocky road lies ahead. For example, at the annual Southern Baptist Convention held during June at Louisville, Kentucky, some 8,600 delegates commended Obama for ‘his evident love for his family.’ However, they also expressed strong disagreement with the president on some of his policies, including his decisions to expand federal funding for human embryo research, increase funding for pro-abortion groups, and reduce funding for abstinence education. Yet rightly, they also urged Christians to pray for Obama that he will promote liberty and justice for all people, including the unborn.
He has also upset the Roman Catholics. In May, one of the USA’s leading Catholic centres of learning, Notre Dame University, invited President Obama to receive an honorary degree and address the student body. It was a controversial move. There were vigils and protests (and arrests) by those opposed both to the president’s pro-choice stance on abortion and embryos as well as to the university authority’s betrayal of Catholic principles. During his speech, the president made this plea, ‘Let’s work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies, and making adoption more available, and providing care and support for women who do carry their child to term.’ Fine words indeed, but already he is aggressively promoting policies which deny the basic equality and dignity of every human being. This should upset evangelicals as well as Roman Catholics.
Then again he has nominated Sonia Sotomayor to serve on the country’s Supreme Court to replace Justice David Souter, who recently announced his retirement from the top US court. Souter has been no great friend of the pro-life cause, and the liberal Sotomayer (who, at just 54, will serve on the Court for many years) already has a record of abortion activism. Of the present nine incumbents, four are regarded as liberals, four as conservatives and one as unaligned. Disappointingly, she will maintain the status quo in this finely-balanced Court, which on bioethical issues has often voted 5-4.
In yet another early and unprecedented move, President Obama has promptly dismissed all the current members of the President’s Council on Bioethics. This grouping was inherited from the Bush years and typically held a strong conservative line on matters of bioethics. According to Reid Cherlin, a White House press officer, the Council was designed by the Bush administration to be, ‘a philosophically-leaning advisory group’ that favoured discussion rather than the development of a shared consensus. Apparently, President Obama will appoint a new bioethics commission with a new mandate and, in the words of Mr Cherlin, one that ‘offers practical policy options.’ Hmmm!
Finally, in yet another reversal of George W Bush’s policies, 30 June 2009 marked the end of most federal funding for abstinence-only sex education. The new president has instead called for at least $164 million to fund contraceptive-only education in schools, which will be organised by pro-abortion groups like Planned Parenthood. It is often said that Britain follows America – this looks like a bit of role reversal.
Dr John R Ling
Orwell, statistics and the democratic deficit
(this should be read in conjunction with the review of Nineteen Eighty-Four published in The Bulletin for July 2009)
Another tool of State to which Orwell gives perhaps surprising and disproportionate attention in Nineteen Eighty-Four is the use of statistics.
In the London of Nineteen Eighty-Four there is a Ministry of Plenty which has a department whose remit is to “re-adjust figures” – an enterprise which Orwell scathingly describes as “the substitution of one piece of nonsense with another.”
“The Ministry of Plenty’s forecast had estimated the output for the quarter at 145 million pairs (of boots). The actual output was given as 62 millions. Winston, however, in rewriting the forecast, marked the figure down to 57 millions, so as to allow for the usual claim that the quota had been over-fulfilled. In any case 62 millions was no nearer the truth than 57 millions, or than 145 millions. Very likely no boots had been produced at all. Likelier still, nobody knew how many had been produced, much less cared. All one knew was that every quarter astronomical numbers of boots were produced on paper, while perhaps half the population went barefoot. And so it was with every class of recorded fact, great or small. Everything faded away into a shadow-world.”
In 2009, statistics abound in connection with predictions and projections, targets and achievements in the realm of crime, health, finance, employment, and a host of other departments of life. There are few areas left which haven’t become subject to statistics and research projects. Statistics are frequently brazenly manipulated to suit the interests of whoever is making use of them.
Statistics are only of use when presented impartially and objectively. In the political world this is never the case. The Catch-22 irony therefore is that statistics lose meaning to the same degree as they are subject to manipulation. Since most sets of figures can be presented in a choice of 30 different ways, the effect is that most figures put out by government are as meaningless as the Orwellian boots calculations.
Orwell’s scepticism was such that any reference to “democratic deficit” would be an under-statement. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, he painted a picture of a political world where only the influential and the needed matter, describing 85% of the population, whom Orwell classes as proles, as the “swarming, disregarded masses.” They are entirely overlooked, since the novel is not about them, having little to say about goals and ideologies, and less still about the provision of public services. Under a totalitarian regime, the chief purpose of the State is not to provide, or achieve, or even to do anything, but to preserve the ruling party in power, by any means.
The scene set in Nineteen-eighty-four, therefore, is a classic example of democratic deficit. The people have no say and no relevance, and the State marches on relentlessly in spite of them.
This is very different from Britain in 2009, where it is not in doubt that:
(a) those in power can only attain that position by a national democratic vote
(b) the policies given effect by the State are based generally on a manifesto published prior to a General Election
(c) Elected members of Parliament control the country’s laws and can hassle the machinery of State, and influence hundreds of its actions every week, in a variety of ways
(d) A large part of the State’s agenda is to provide public services
Since none of the above is true of the society depicted in Nineteen-eighty-four, one might imagine that there were no lessons to be drawn and no comparisons to be made. We need to be cautious before coming to that conclusion.
In the period between 1984 and 2009, there has appeared to have been an increase in the power of the Executive, at the expense of the power of Parliament. It is the Executive, rather than Parliament, which controls all the engines of State, including the quangos, the regulators and the intelligence services. Parliament seems to have less and less to do, and less and less time to do it. It provides the Executive with the mantle of credibility, rather than being itself the focus of accountability and the source of governance. It would be an over-statement to describe Parliament as the poodle of the Executive, but it is more so than it used to be.
Not many decades ago, the hustings in Britain had as their theme the conflict between the philosophies and ideologies of political party dogma. Now it is much more about management strategies and styles, all of the main parties being weaker on identifying any consistent strands of principle than they used to be. In these circumstances, it will be less clear to the electorate what the effects will be of the way they vote. This is a disincentive to their voting at all, in a period in which there is already great concern that at recent General Elections, turn-out has been in decline.
To prove that they are not on the slippery Orwellian slope, political parties should have three things in mind:
(a) increasing the importance and effectiveness of Parliament, including giving more time for debates;
(b) constantly have the electorate in mind as beneficiaries of everything for which the State exists;
(c) concentrate more on the provision of public services and less on passing restrictive legislation which controls the conduct and freedoms of individuals.
Rod Badams
Future of Dignitas under threat
While most attention in the UK has been on our own legislation, over in Switzerland there have been new legal moves which have put the present activities of Dignitas under threat.
A new agreement has been reached between prosecutors in the Canton of Zurich and Exit, the country’s second largest assisted suicide group, which threatens to restrict the activities of Dignitas.
If this passes into law, patients would have to undergo a longer period of counselling at the clinic, stretching over several months, to ensure that they are certain they want to end their lives.
Furthermore the Swiss doctors who prescribe the deadly anaesthetic must have met the person on at least two separate occasions, in order to be sure of their wishes.
This would force Britons seeking to end their lives to fund a longer stay in the country and is aimed at banning so -called “quickie” suicides.
Announcing the agreement, which is set to become law throughout the Zurich area in the Autumn, Zurich Justice Minister Markus Notter said: “Suicide trips to Switzerland are not going to be banned but there are going to be stricter controls; so called ‘quick suicides’ for foreign patients are set to be outlawed.
“It is essential that people decide by their own free will. They also need to be informed about alternatives such as palliative care,” he added.
In an attempt to prevent individuals from profiting by helping people to take their own lives, the new rules stipulate a maximum fee of 500 Swiss francs ($461) per assisted suicide, in contrast to the 6,000 euros usually charged by Dignitas.
Dignitas will be forced either to abide by the new rules or to move its activities outside the Zurich area, to an area in which they do not currently apply.
However, the Swiss national government is now considering introducing tighter regulations throughout Switzerland, or even an outright ban on suicide clinics, including Dignitas, nationwide.
Justice Minister Eveline Wildmer Schlumpf is reported as saying (Daily Telegraph, 19 July 2009): “Two variations of the legislation are going to be considered in Autumn - one a complete ban on assisted suicide and the other the introduction of stricter, clearer legislation”
Rod Badams
The Bulletin (and Additional News and Reports) is published by the Social Issues Team of Affinity,
PO Box 246, Bridgend CF31 9FD and edited by Rod Badams
(Tel. 01858 411554; Email: )
