Stem Cell Veto Reflects Bush's Values

Like many who are "saved", Bush is a zealot. This is something that get ignored a lot. Most critics focus on his lack of curiosity and his supreme self-centeredness and seem to believe that his stated values are really just a screen for the fact that he's too intellectually lazy to have formed any values at all.

Well, he is intellectually lazy, but he's also "born-again." The combination means that he never did bother to form his own system of values, but instead adopted the most shallow way of thinking from the most shallow of fundamentalists. He's not alone in this, of course. Many, many people do the same thing in all areas of life, every day. But he's the president. We do expect better from our presidents. (Although we long ago came to the understanding that we can't expect more from him.)

This is a major problem with Dubya. When he forms his own ideas about an issue, he bases his decisions on the most shallow, least reasonable, least rational form of fundamentalism. So it is that we have him claiming his love for life has led him to veto legislation in an effort to protect the lives of embryos that are destined to never truly live in the first place. Meanwhile, his decision means the very real probability of much more suffering and many more deaths among people whose lives are actual, not theoretical.

And the sickest part of it is, he really is doing this because he believes. He believes as only someone who can never be bothered to think can believe.