The New Narcissism

Every time I think we've reached the lower depths of selfish depravity, we find deeper waters yet:

According to a recent survey of fertility clinics, four of the 190 that responded indicated they've helped families have a baby with a disability or deformity; the clinics sift through embryos, created in a lab dish, to ensure that the one to be implanted in the mother's womb carries the desired defect. The survey will be published in the journal Fertility and Sterility, and it should raise eye-brows -- and, I hope, red flags.

I can understand why some parents might be tempted to "design" their child to be better physically or smarter, but why would anyone want to create, purposely, a deformed or disabled child? As the father of three healthy children (thank God), I find myself deeply troubled. It's not that I wouldn't love a child with defects -- at least I hope I'm not that cold-hearted -- I can't imagine wishing such problems upon a child.

But Jeffrey Kahn, a University of Minnesota bioethicist, can. "It's an ethically challenging question and certainly it will trouble people," he told the Associated Press, "but I think there are good, thoughtful reasons why people who are deaf or...dwarves could say, 'I want a child like me.' ...If people in a shared culture all have the common clinical defect, then it's maybe not a defect in the traditional sense."

There seems no practice perverse or disgusting enough that it can't seek sanction, or exemption from scrutiny, by having the word "culture" invoked. No one is disputing that, in the sense of leading lives in a silent world and possessing their own language, the deaf have a culture. But there is no getting around that not being able to hear is a disability, and it's a disability that takes courage and resourcefulness to overcome.

When deaf parents make sure their children will be deaf, however, they aren't preserving a culture. They aren't teaching cultural practices and beliefs that the children, when grown, can continue to accept or reject. They are sentencing other human beings who have no choice in the matter to a disability.

This is where the culture of life as a parent's choice rather than as a child's right takes us.

Hope the liberals like where we're heading---they drove us here, after all.

Son of Illegal Immigration Roundup

Why family reunification is stupid:

But, hey, no worries. Hillary and Barack have foolproof rationales for their proposed reforms. Introducing an amendment to extend unlimited marriage-based family unification from American citizens to green-card holders, Clinton said, “For those who often speak about family values, this is your opportunity to match your rhetoric with your action.” (Some Christian pro-family groups weren’t sure if Clinton might be right.) For his part, Obama is joining with New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez to offer a series of amendments designed to quickly gut, and eventually eliminate, the merit-based point system supposedly designed to replace family unification as the center of our immigration policy (eight years from now — assuming the already-beseiged point system won’t have to face a Clinton or Obama administration). As Obama puts it: “How many of our forefathers would have measured up under this point system? How many would have been turned back at Ellis Island?”

Here we arrive at one of the central difficulties of America’s immigration debate. Mention immigration and many of us conjure up hallowed memories of our ancestors passing through Ellis Island — and of America’s stirring, centuries-long immigration success story. America’s melting-pot is unquestionably one of this country’s great historic triumphs.

Yet the reality of that achievement too easily blinds us to the fact that not all immigration stories end happily. In an era when the assimilationist ethos has been challenged by multiculturalism, when travel, telephones, and satellite dishes continuously link immigrants with homes half-way round the world, and when the cultural gap between immigrant and host cultures can turn into a chasm, we cannot take immigration success for granted.

Nor can pro-family Christians be properly accused of hypocrisy for thinking twice about promoting Asian or Middle-Eastern family values — if those values are radically different from their own. Polygamy? Cousin marriage? Extended clans held together by transnational arranged marriages? If anything these practices (encouraged by permissive family-reunification policies) are seriously undermining Western family values in Europe. Yet neither the pro-family lobby — nor anyone else in America — seems to understand the cultural disaster family-reunification laws have wrought in Europe. After all, Europeans themselves are only just now waking up to the uncomfortable truth.

It's like inviting yourself over to a stranger's house for dinner, then demanding your brother, sisters, and Uncle Chuey get free grub too. Illegal immigrants sure have one part of assimilation licked: a highly-developed sense of entitlement.

Why the "nativist" ad hominem argument is absurd:

But Gerson’s column is flawed on another front as well: It recycles open-borders bromides that have nothing to do with the truth. In warning against a rejection of amnesty, Gerson states: “If the Republican Party cannot find ways to appeal to natural entrepreneurs, with strong family values, who are focused on education and social mobility, then the GOP is already dead.”

What planet is Gerson living on? Far from being “focused on education,” Hispanics have the highest drop-out rate in the country — 47 percent nationally, and far worse in heavily Hispanic areas. Schools in illegal-immigrant-saturated southern California spend enormous sums trying to persuade Latino students to stay in school and study, without avail. In the Los Angeles Unified School District, just 40 percent of Hispanics graduate, and those students who do finish school come out with abysmal skills. A controversial high school exit exam in California would require seniors to correctly answer just 51 percent of questions testing eighth-grade-level math and ninth-grade-level English in order to receive a diploma. Naturally, immigrant advocates have fiercely opposed this all-too-meager measure for school and student accountability. The California Research Bureau predicts that the exam will result in a Hispanic graduation rate of below 30 percent.

Behind Hispanic educational failure rate lies an apathy towards learning, as the Manhattan Institute’s Herman Badillo argues in One Nation, One Standard. Hostility towards academic achievement is higher among Hispanics than among blacks. Factor in gang involvement and teenage pregnancy, and the Hispanic drop-out rate looks almost inevitable. The Department of Homeland Security estimates that a whopping 15 percent to 20 percent of illegal immigrants may not qualify for the proposed amnesty because of their criminal records, according to the Wall Street Journal. Gerson’s claim of a culture “focused on education” is pure delusion.

Gerson’s hackneyed invocation of Hispanic “family values” is equally laughable. Nearly 50 percent of all Hispanic children are born out of wedlock, compared to 24 percent of white children and 15 percent of Asian children. Black out-of-wedlock births are higher — 68 percent — but the black population is not growing rapidly. And the fertility rate among unmarried Hispanic women is the highest in the country — over three times that of whites and Asians, and nearly one and a half times that of black women. The Hispanic teen-fertility rate also far outstrips other groups. Among Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, the teen birthrate is 93 births per every 1,000 girls, compared with 27 births for every 1,000 white girls, 17 births for every 1,000 Asian girls, and 65 births for every 1,000 black girls. As conservative policymakers such as Gerson should know, there is no better predictor of future social pathologies than out-of-wedlock childrearing.

Low levels of education and high levels of illegitimacy help explain why, contrary to Gerson’s myths, Hispanics are not showing the “social mobility” of other immigrant groups past and present, as Harvard’s George Borjas has documented and City Journal’s Steve Malanga has reported.

I suppose the "nativists" of the WWII generation ought to have sat by until Uncle Adolf got good and ready to goosestep down Broadway. After all, what made American culture superior to good ol' Teutonic Germany? Nazis worked hard. They believed in education. Who were those Germanophobes to slaughter thousands of Americans on behalf of some outmoded abstract ideology and jingoism? How dare we criticize the Huns when we were oppressing the Tuskegee Airmen? Was it really that hard to learn a little German and maybe celebrate Hitler's birthday?

Our illegal immigrants aren't Nazis, but they aren't Americans. Why must Americans learn their language? Why must Americans celebrate Cinco de Mayo and their other holidays? Why must Americans assimilate into and accommodate their culture? Why should we willingly do what we fought WWII and other wars NOT to do?

Instead, we just toss out American citizenship as though it were gutter-bound garbage:

This is not some tiny asterisk in immigration policy; hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens have benefited from TPS and its antecedents, most of them Central American, but with smaller groups of people from all over the world also getting in on the act. Although the formal mechanism for granting Temporary Protected Status was created by the 1990 Immigration Act, that was really just an example of Congress “bowing to reality,” in Michael Chertoff’s evocative phrase — the executive branch had been inventing ways of not enforcing immigration law for decades, using Orwellian formulations like “Extended Voluntary Departure” or “Deferred Enforced Departure.” (Several years ago I traced the development of this insidious practice; see here.)

The government’s site says “TPS does not lead to permanent resident status,” and strictly speaking, that is correct; the attorney general can terminate it, at which point the people in question revert to their original status — i.e., in most cases go back to being illegal aliens. But in practice, TPS is renewed as many times as necessary to ensure that no one is deported. Only in the smallest of cases, involving a few dozen or at most a few hundred people, has this “temporary” status actually been ended without everyone getting a green card, and as far as I know, no one has ever been made to leave because they lost TPS.

Earlier this month, the “temporary” status of 230,000 Salvadorans, 78,000 Hondurans and 4,000 Nicaraguans was extended by another 18 months — the Salvadorans have had this “temporary” status for six years, and the Hondurans and Nicaraguans for eight years. The explanation for the extension offered by Emilio Gonzalez, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, is a gem: “Although Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador have made significant progress in their recovery and rebuilding efforts, each country continues to face social and economic challenges in their efforts to restore their nations to normalcy. This 18-month extension reflects the United States’ commitment to continue assisting our Central American neighbors on their road to recovery.” It’s not obvious what “normalcy” is supposed to mean in this context, since all three countries remain in their normal state of being hapless third-world kleptocracies, but the point is clear — the Bush administration will not make these illegal aliens go home, no matter what.

The most extreme case is that of several thousand Liberians, who received “temporary” status in 1991 and had it renewed regularly ever since. Their TPS is set to expire in October — definitely, for sure, this time, though that’s what Janet Reno said nearly ten years ago.

Our experience with TPS leads to only one possible conclusion: Once an illegal alien gets legal status, no matter how “temporary,” he’s here for good. Sponsors of the Senate’s amnesty bill know this full well.

Better that than be called a "nativist", I guess.

How do you say that in Spanish? Guess we'll find out.

Bill Kristol, Lizard King of the GOP

The Smirk smirks on:

It was an unattractive few weeks. In the rush to damn McCain, the movement paid obeisance to some dubious advisers. It listened to the pronouncements of Tom DeLay, who had previously done so much to convince his countrymen that conservatives could not be trusted to govern. It hearkened to the political counsel of Rick Santorum, who lost his Senate seat in the swing state of Pennsylvania two years ago by 17 percentage points. It took seriously the aspersions of James Dobson, whose "conscience" does not permit him to vote for John McCain.

Well, movements are .  .  . movements after all. They tend to march to the beat of the loudest drums. Still, it does seem that many self-proclaimed movement leaders have managed the impressive feat of sounding at once hysterical and tedious. But odds are most will soon reconcile themselves to McCain. The fact is, ordinary American conservatives already are reconciled. Some are enthusiastic. And movement leaders are good at racing to the head of a parade when they see their "followers" marching by.

Here's the good news--and it's really quite good. A reasonably conservative presidential candidate, leading a reasonably conservative party, has a good chance to win the general election. With a difficult task ahead of it--holding on to the White House for a third term, and in this case for the sixth out of the last eight--the GOP has lucked into having as its nominee John McCain, one of the most popular politicians in America.

What's more, conservatism as a set of ideas is in pretty good shape. "Neoconservative" thinking on America's place in the world has beaten back attempts to revive the crabbed "realism" of some congressional Republicans in the 1990s as a plausible approach for dealing with the world of the 21st century. And there is a resurgence of creative thinking on domestic policy, reminiscent of the neoconservatism of an earlier generation. Younger conservatives are displaying a welcome heterodoxy in their approach to health care, taxes, and family policy issues. (To toot our own horn, and to mention just a few examples from these pages: See Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, "The Party of Sam's Club," November 14, 2005; Yuval Levin, "Putting Parents First," December 4, 2006; James C. Capretta's "Gunnar Myrdal Was Right: Social Security's Fertility Problem," May 7, 2007; and "Conservative Populism: Rightly Understood," by Ramesh Ponnuru and Yuval Levin, January 28, 2008.)

Conservatives, in short, are adjusting to the times. This is a good thing, and is one of the neglected lessons of Ronald Reagan's success: Reagan's 1980 platform differed from Barry Goldwater's in 1964. Consider further that 2008 is as far removed from 1980, as 1960 was from 1932. Movement liberalism in 1960 yearned for a purer, more orthodox FDR-style liberal than John F. Kennedy. Eleanor Roosevelt was appalled that the old guard had to give way. But it was surely better for liberals and liberalism that JFK called for a New Frontier rather than an extension of the New Deal.

Defenders of conservative orthodoxy often speak of their movement as, so to speak, seated on a three-legged stool of social, economic, and foreign policy conservatism. Of course most conservatives don't think of themselves as belonging to just one of these categories. The metaphor implicitly accepts a kind of balkanization of conservatism that does an injustice to the richness of the conservative idea. Furthermore the "stool" image is static--and therefore a poor guide to thinking about real, ongoing democratic politics.

The good news is that real, existing American conservatives aren't so reactive. They seem to be possessed of a healthy love of our country and a sensibly cautious optimism about its future. The 9/11 generation shows great promise at doing better than its boomer elders in coming to grips with how to shape a viable conservative future in the modern world. The crotchets of the conservative movement notwithstanding, 2008 is a moment of conservative opportunity.

Kristol, of course, sits on a one-legged stool. No wonder the smirk so often appears to be a grimace.

The Number 23

A fertility update from my Little Garden.

On Fertility

Girls, if you ever have to undergo an HSG, take someone with you. It's kind of major: hospital bracelet; lots of questions about whether or not you have a living will or have delegated power of attorney; cramping -- major cramping; some nausea; showing your girl parts to people you just met; you know, FUN!

Get up slowly from the radiopathy table, ladies. The nervous system may not have been anticipating quite the level of trauma iodine being injected into your lady-parts might bring... so it might make you pass out or faint. And by all means, relax for a few hours after. You've just had to haul your butt up onto a cold table in front of staff who are bound all the way up to their necks in lead vestments.

Payoff? You get to see your insides on the tee-vee... So you got that goin' for you... which is nice...

Why I Don't Trust Scientists

Another compelling example of greed and ethics lapses among the white coat set, this time regarding "therapeutic" cloning:

All this, and especially that comment about the willing egg donors, blew up in Hwang’s face on November 12. Gerald Schatten, a University of Pittsburgh stem-cell expert who coauthored Hwang’s more recent paper, pulled out of the worldwide coalition, citing disturbing evidence that Hwang’s team had misrepresented how they obtained Korean women’s eggs. Further investigation by news media uncovered the truth, admitted by Hwang himself at a jam-packed press conference on November 24. Although Hwang’s article in Science insisted that “no financial reimbursement in any form,” not even reimbursement of expenses, had been paid to egg donors, in fact the fertility doctor accepting these donations had made cash payments (the equivalent of U.S. $1,430) to each woman; and while Hwang had insisted that no donations were accepted from female members of his research team, the donors did include junior researchers (including at least one graduate student under Hwang’s supervision).

So Hwang’s team lied about these facts, and even encouraged the egg donors to lie, by having them sign consent forms declaring that their egg donations were “free of element of any financial reward or conflict-of-interest.”

It is said that these lapses were not illegal under Korean regulations in force at the time. (A Korean ban on paying egg donors in research went into effect later.) But they raised serious ethical issues in terms of the incentives (direct financial incentives, or implied professional incentives) given to women to encourage them to endanger their own health in the name of research. And as so many politicians have learned, all this was made much worse by the denials and cover-up afterward.

Dr. Hwang has apologized for not paying closer attention to these issues and has resigned as director of the proposed Worldwide Stem Cell Hub; but he will undoubtedly continue his research. He is also receiving a great deal of public support in his home country, where he continues to be seen as a national hero.

In reality, however, this scandal is only the tip of the iceberg. The South Korean experiments, indeed the research cloning agenda in general, have long ignored legitimate concerns about women’s rights and have long been promoted by ignoring or subverting the facts.

What is most troubling, of course, is that these researchers clearly felt the ends justified the means.

This is of course EXACTLY what bioethicists have been afraid of---that the pursuit of grant money and the hucksterism of scientists and their fan club in the media will lead to monstrous violations of human dignity and freedom.

Before you cluck-cluck at my Chicken Littleism, reach back in your memory to that commercial a few years ago where Christopher Reeve was digitally made to walk again, on the basis of some "promising" new therapy for spinal trauma.

Hasn't quite panned out, has it? Certainly not for Mr. Reeve, who is beyond recovery of the temporal sort routinely promised by people who beg for grant money on the basis of false hopes and, in this case, outright lies.

Let the buyer beware.

Girl Talk: Fertility Update

*NOTE TO STINKY BOYS: This is the girls' treehouse. No boys allowed. Unless you want to be dressed up like a pretty, pretty princess and have your hair styled with glitter hairspray.*

Allllrighty!

So we've been trying for a bebe for over a year. And my body is non-compliant. So we've had to have all sorts of tests run... Which is a grrrreat hobby to pass the time. (Knitting? Why no, I think I'll take blood-letting and exhibitionism, thanks!)

So yesterday was the followup after all the inn-spectin', inn-jectin', ne-glectin' and seee-lectin'. My doc, Dr. F, put me on a five-day (non-contraceptive) progesterone pill to start my period. Since today is day 53 without one. On day five of my impending period I start taking Clomid for five more days.

Days 10-16 should be a riot... Or a parched and weary death march with obligatory I.V. drip.

On day 21 of my cycle, I go in for more bloodwork to see where my progesterone levels are. "15" is the optimum. My past bloodwork revealed mine to be at 0.08 (which, incidentally, is the same level Dr. F.'s wife's was before she got pregnant with their second son). If it's "15" or higher, then Dr. F. will keep me on the same Clomid strength I'm on and we'll just see what pans out. If it's not, he'll start raising the strength of the Clomid to get me there. There are three strengths of Clomid, but most people usually see results without having to go all the way up to the maximum. But should we max out, there is also another medication that works like Clomid, but is stronger and uses a different "stimulator" to achieve ovulation.

The progesterone pills and the Clomid have been known to make women woozy and light-headed. All the side effects on the bottle are similar to what you'd have if you came down with a case of RAGING PMS. Fun, right? So I'm going to try to take it easy this week. (And, um, say a prayer for Tef.)

One of my friends had to do this exact same thing. And it worked. She has a beautiful one-and-a-half year old daughter to show for it. And she has had two surprise pregnancies since then without the use of Clomid (the latter of which is a boy, due in July). Her story, along with several others, leads me to think that Clomid might just be the little kick in the pants some women's bodies need to get them on track and that it picks up the slack after the birth of the first child. At least that's what I hope.


Last Friday I was shopping with my BFF and her Mom, Miz L., for a mother-of-the-bride outfit. We were in a large department store's dress section. While we were mocking all the prom dresses which had been herded together in a cornucopia of technicolor nausea, I almost stepped on something.

"Aw... somebody lost their binky!" I shuffled a blue pacifier lying on the floor with the toe of my shoe. Miz L. and my BFF and both cooed an "awww" in unison. I reached down and picked it up. It had little bears on it.

Suddenly Miz L. burst out, "It's a good omen! It's the gypsy in me... Sorry." I raised a sarcastic eyebrow. She insisted "It is!" She's a straight-laced fundamentalist with a crazy old alcoholic mother who insists somewhere in her family line there was a speck of a drop of gypsy blood. Nanna Ginblossom capitalizes on that fantasy as much as she can, to the chagrin of the rest of the family. We all started laughing hysterically. And wondered aloud where the crying baby was who'd lost his blue bear binky.

But I took it home anyway. I washed it and put it in the bud vase on my kitchen windowsill. It reminds me of my hope.

And it reprimands me when I think I might not be ready for children. That we might be too busy or too important to another ministry or cause. That I'm just fooling myself when I say I want a child. That my body might be right. It might be the manifestation of the spiritual reality that I'm unfit to carry a child. So I shouldn't want it. I don't really. I'm fine. I'll just get a dog. Or volunteer at a charity. That will fix the longing in my soul for something to love and nurture and cuddle. That will make the smell of baby powder and the sound of lullabyes an impotent threat.

Little blue bears and baby powder. The tears they bring are worth the reminder.