Michael Rosen at TCS launches a new series on embryonic stem cells. Several NR writers are mentioned including Ramesh, Kathryn and yours truly. It’s an interesting piece, but I take particular delight in that someone writes that I made a stronger argument than Ramesh has. This is an event of astological-scale infrequency.

As for Rosen’s contention here:

…NR’s Jonah Goldberg, in a generally balanced article, concludes with the thought that federal funding “force[s] people who think human life is precious to pay for its destruction.”
The sincerity of this argument cannot be doubted, but its logic certainly can: by the same token, opponents of the Iraq war, who believed that their taxes were funding the deaths of innocent Iraqi civilians, could contend with equal justification that they are forced to collude in an immoral act (devout pacifists would have an even stronger claim). For that matter, animal rights activists could well assert that their taxpayer dollars unjustly finance the killing of animals for research purposes.
In all three cases, state action violates the core beliefs of some of the very people who underwrite that action with their own checkbooks. But those who are opposed to the government action have several means at their disposal of escaping this conundrum. They may band together at the ballot box and support politicians who share their views. They may lobby their representatives or loudly (but peacefully) protest their actions. Or they may refuse to pay taxes and bear the consequences.

Me: I throw a big flag on the animal rights thing and small one on the war thing. Take war first. War is a fundamental function of the state. Always has been and always will be. The moral objection by some citizens will always be part of the equation. Medical experimentation and research is not central to the state’s existence. It may be nice and worthwhile but it is something different, I think, than the state’s obligation to protect us from enemies. One may dissent about whether the Iraq war was necessary, but again, only really silly people say that war is never a legitimate function of the state. And the loss of innocent life is always a hazard of war. I think Rosen’s point is still worth making in general, but it’s less powerful than he suggests.

As for the animal rights thing, come on.