Taking Orwellian Liberties With Ordinary Language.(Editorial)

On those occasions when I sit down to try to figure out what motivates our benighted opposition, honestly, I really try my best to extend them the benefit of the doubt. Not only does that help keep me intellectually from becoming slovenly, we are indeed foolhardy if we too readily dismiss arguments that many people find persuasive.

But the truth is that since so much of what they say is sheer sophistry, we can dispense with the idea they actually believe what they say except on rare occasions. What other explanation might there be for their behavior?

Perhaps they've persuaded themselves that their cause is so right - - it "liberates women," etc., etc. - - that they're comfortable spinning what they might call webs of "noble lies" (the "ends justify the means" sort of rationalization).

However, there is an area where I simply no longer can give them even the slightest benefit of the doubt. And that is human cloning.

What you'll read in the stories on pages 17 and 34 is nothing short of cozying up to infanticide in the guise of "banning reproductive cloning." If measures such as those proposed in New York and New Jersey were ever to pass, ethically, we would've crossed the Rubicon with the most frightful consequences.

The good news is that North Dakota and Arkansas have enacted genuine bans on all human cloning. The bad news is that the stake has not yet been driven through the heart of these awful cloning bills in New Jersey and New York.

The trick to decoding what's in these bills is to be able to unveil the real meaning cloaked in layers of duplicitous language. About 99.9% of us would assume that what's meant by banning "reproductive cloning" is that the human clone will not be implanted in a woman's uterus and brought to term. (We, of course, vigorously oppose creating a human clone to experiment on who is killed and tossed away like so much refuse.)