# While others might see it as a kind of pocket veto, I prefer to put it down to “stunned silence” from Instapundit that my 2/21/02 rebuttal on reproductive cloning has not yet met with a reply. A post today, however, relegates concern about reproductive cloning to the “chattering classes.” I’ve heard that one before, actually (re my 1/20/02 post). The point, incidentally, seems belied by the polls Reynolds acknowledges (the Fox one unscientific, but not the Time one): lots of outside-the-beltway types do seem concerned about the issue. Their reasons don’t totally match my own, but I’ll take it on faith, so to speak, that plenty of God-fearing Americans believe God is not in favor of human experimentation, just as they take it on faith — perhaps unwisely — that their society won’t allow it.
# Eve Tushnet e-mailed some nice comments about the same posting, and also mentioned her own essay (”Love in the Time of Cloning”) on the subject. That essay may have predated any of mine, and takes the same position (see her essay’s third point). As Ms. Tushnet’s title implies, she approaches the topic from a different direction than I do. But we arrive at the same conclusion, for the same reason. We’ll just keep chattering about it, I suppose.
# All this is arguably “biting the hand that feeds,” but so what. I agree with Mr. Reynolds on many issues, and disagree on many others such as this one. The “Instapundit” effect (or maybe the “bottom of Instapundit’s link list” effect) continues unabated. I’m too cheap or lazy to switch to a stats engine that would tell me whether some of you folks are returning, but I sincerely hope so. Thanks for visiting! The idea here is to generate some civil discussions; please feel free to leave your comments!
# Patrick Nielsen Hayden (”Electrolite”) commented on the same “Best of the Web” article that got my goat a couple of days ago, citing some of my comments but adding his own well-crafted scorn to the cause:
… I’ll take even the flakiest student antiwar protestor over this kind of braying declaration that might makes right.
# Gary Farber (”Amygdala“) continues to scan every interesting magazine or newspaper article days and weeks before I do. He mentions Joe Klein’s thought-provoking piece on Iran in one of the latest New Yorkers (on which more myself sometime this week, I hope), comments on the “anti-Semitism, redefined” (and whitewashed?) piece by Peter Beaumont in the Guardian, and many others. He also agrees with Chris Patten (EU Foreign Affairs Plenipotentiary, or something like that) that Patten doesn’t “get it” about 9/11, with words more succinct than my own — and how could they not be — on the same general topic a couple of days ago. Patten offers a skilfully blunted apology by “admitting” that Europeans don’t get how the attack shattered our “sense of invulnerability.” As Farber notes, it wasn’t that so much, it was all those hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people incinerated, or crushed, or compelled to jump to their deaths that sort of upset us, blank you very much, Chris. I’m not altogether on the same page with Gary on issues like Iraq, but he’s always well-informed, thoughtful and well-spoken.
# Disappointing drop-off in German hits. May have to rev up another German blogger episode, but that takes a lot of research in search of a point. My hope for German readers isn’t for its own sake, it’s to try to generate some transatlantic exchanges on and relationships about these issues. The “We’re not in the same boat” magnum opus below failed in that respect, it may well have been too long, too vague, and ultimately too critical to make for enjoyable reading, especially by Germans. Left out “too wrong” there, I suppose, I’m open to comments, though.
# Before my work crunch hit, I was indebted to Jim “Unqualified Offerings” Henley for some nice comments about the various Palestinian issue posts; I never got around to saying so. Thanks, Jim. Jim’s point was that while Arafat should have made a counteroffer at Camp David, Barak had probably already promised more than he could deliver. (For a review of the Camp David impasse, see this New York Review of Books article, “Camp David: The Tragedy of Errors,” by negotiators Hussein Agha and Robert Malley, as well as the response by Dennis Ross.)
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UPDATE: Ouch; note to self: must follow all Electrolite links in future. Hey, this was a weekend roundup; get a life, Weekly Standard.