President Obama — in an inspired move — named Dr. Francis Collins head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr. Collins is one of the world’s leading scientists. He is a physician-geneticist known in part for his landmark discoveries of disease genes and for his leadership of the Human Genome Project. (Collins served as director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the NIH from 1993-2008.)
The New York Times reports, however, that a couple of objections have been raised to the choice of Dr. Collins. According to the Times:
The first is his very public embrace of religion. Dr. Collins, who was not raised with any religious training, wrote a book called “The Language of God,” and he has given many talks and interviews in which he has described his conversion to Christianity as a 27-year-old medical school intern. “I came at this from a position of ignorance,” he said. “I came at it from an intellectual point of view.” Religion and genetic research have long had a fraught relationship, and some in the field are uneasy about what they see as Dr. Collins’s evangelism.
This is an example of the sometimes subtle and sometimes overt bias against people of religious faith. Collins’s critics speak as if Obama had named the President of Westminster Theological Seminary as head of NIH instead of one of the world’s greatest scientific minds and a man of sterling scientific credentials. Dr. Collins being a person of faith — and in particular, of the Christian faith — seems to alarm some people in the scientific world, despite there being nothing in Colins’s body of work that would cause anyone to think twice about how his faith might negatively impact his work at NIH. The mere fact that Collins embraced Christianity and is viewed as an “evangelical” is itself considered grounds for suspicion.
Fortunately, none of this will matter. Dr. Collins will provide outstanding leadership to the NIH. He will show that faith and reason are perfectly compatible. But this episode underscores the prejudices that have to be overcome. And those who think the world of science is free from such things ,ought to think again.
Since they’re against funding our own defense, the Obamists are unlikely to be in favor of funding our allies’ defense.
The Chinese don’t think there ought to be anything special about the dollar. And giving THEM a bunch of free DVDs would be funny – in a gallows humor kind of way.
Smart power = Number One’s allies are the U.S.’s enemies. Boneheaded.
what’s that famous saying?
being america’s enemy is dangerous; being america’s friend can be fatal…
it’s good to see that this administration takes at least half of that cliche seriously….
This illustrates a key problem with modern American liberalism, especially in its more “progressive” variants – what it takes for granted. Too many liberals simply assume that international treaties, organizations and laws have a force of their own divorced from Western power (see Darfur, Tibet, the West Bank, Bosnia or Georgia), or that old alliances will hold because it is simply natural for people to want to get along, especially with us (’cause all we really want is to be liked).
The assumption underlying The Lightworker’s foreign policy is that it is all so simple – we can give a “reset” button to dictatorial thugs and they will want to unclench their fists (even though, from their perspective the kind of truly cooperative relationships we are proposing does represent being “overcharged”). Conversely, we can act as if the leaders of allied countries are the equivalent of local bosses who popped in for a word or two, and can be treated as the mood strikes us (esp. if we are out of sorts after talking to the various thugs/autocrats and butchers we are now courting or while dealing with tricky domestic problems – I thought His charm included the Lightworker’s self-proclaimed capacity to manage a number of different problems at once with equal grace). If at times President Bush represented a certain kind of American hubris, that thought that force, generosity, sacrifice and good will could mend the world’s wounds, The Lightworker’s deeply shallow viewpoint represents a different, but at least as dangerous, kind of arrogance coupled with ignorance (maybe Chavez does have him pegged?). It is the arrogance of a rube who believes that several years living in Indonesia as a lad gives him as much foreign policy experience as seasoned politicians, for whom ultimately what matters is what we do and believe (as if other people’s ideologies, history and experiences are fungible), that prosperity locally or internationally happens of its own (and all a good politician needs do is concern himself with spreading the wealth while pocketing a modest fee for future campaigns), and who thinks that whatever happens in the outside world (up to and including genocide) is secondary to what we do and need at home. Such limitations and blinkered domestic focus make it perfectly natural that our Chicago ward heelers who are successfully masquerading as national (and God help us, international) leaders think that the White House’s situation room is a perfectly appropriate place to conduct domestic political strategy sessions). I am sorry for Poland, which has paid a price in blood to cement their alliance with us and has a gifted foreign policy establishment that can sense the slow build up to new disasters (Casandra as a role is interesting – as a real life career choice it must really suck), but I am even more sorry for us. We are demonstrating to the world that we are truly unreliable as a strategic partner.
We want to make sure … that it works.
We certainly know it works to some degree. Is this administration anti-science?
If it doesn’t work, then why are the Russians so paranoid about it? Probably, because they know more about it than the POTUS. Just like in the days FDR and Clinton, this administration is probably infiltrated by the Chinese and the Russians at the highest levels, and have a better grasp of our technology than do the Enlightened Idiots running the country.
Even if it doesn’t work as good as we’d like, does it make sense to let our adversaries know this? Oh, by the way, my dearest Supreme Leader, our weapons aren’t that much of a deterrent after all.
David Curp,
Did you read Anne Applebaum’s column today in WaPo? She is on the same wavelength.
MONTAGE – SERIES OF CLOSE-UPS: clenched fists – of all nations – pound red “over-charge” buttons over and over, laughter re-echoes.
VB,
No I didn’t, but I imagine her inside info on things Polish (and her deeper understanding of the security/kleptocracy apparat that currently misrules Russia) makes it even clearer just how provocatively weak we are coming across in our efforts to appease Putin/Medvedev and co. – esp. since by leaving the Poles (and Czechs) to hang out to dry we are signaling all our real friends in Europe that Atlanticism is too thin a reed (or too expensive a shield in its unpredictability?) for them to lean on.
“There’s nothing special about Britain. You’re just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn’t expect special treatment.”
Regardless of its absurd equation, this comment by the unnamed viper in our State department should come as no surprise. It’s part and parcel of the global village/one world government/multicultural/field leveling/enemy appeasing/ally snubbing/soft power/risk averse/anti-Western claptrap the department has been pushing for the last two decades. Why would a fool like that understand the special relationship between America and Britain when he cant even understand the concept of a strategic relationship? These people think that allies can be taken for granted because they need us and they’re too civilized to retaliate. They conversely believe that enemies can be appeased by paying lip service to their phony grievances and treating them as equals.
In the real world, our allies are not inalienable and we need them, while our enemies cannot be appeased and strongly desire our failure.
Is it any wonder President Obama shows little interest in foreign policy? He doesn’t understand it any more than the politically correct tards in the State Department. I seriously doubt he cares about the rest of the world. He just wants it to like us. Why would his foreign policies be any less sophomoric than his domestic ones?