MASTER RACE :

The Fall of the Libertarians : Sept. 11 might have also brought down a political movement. (FRANCIS FUKUYAMA, May 2, 2002, Wall Street Journal)

Libertarian advocates of genetic choice want the freedom to improve their children. But do we really know what it means to improve a child? It is hard to object to therapeutic aims, such as the elimination of genetic tendencies toward diseases. But would a child be "improved" if parents were able to eliminate genetic propensity toward gayness? Would the child of an African-American couple be "improved" if she could be born with white skin? Would boys be better human beings if they were born with less of a
propensity for aggression? The possibilities for politically correct, or incorrect, parental choices are endless. Parents, of course, try to improve their children in all sorts of ways today, through education, resources and upbringing. But the genetic stamp is indelible, and would be handed down not just to one's children but to all of one's subsequent descendants.

It is in this respect that the cloning bills before the Senate take on significance. Cloning itself may not be a large issue, since there are few who would want to clone children at present. But it is the first step in a series of technologies that may lead to genetic engineering of humans. Research cloning of embryos to extract stem cells may show great medical promise, but it too involves the deliberate creation of something unquestionably human, even if that something doesn't have the moral status of an infant. It is a line that we should cross only with trepidation. During the stem cell debate, proponents of stem cell research promised that it would not be crossed at all, and have already managed to slide down that particular slippery slope.

The liberalism of the Founding Fathers was built on natural rights. Political rights were seen as a means of protecting those rights which inhered in us as members of a human species that sought certain common natural ends. Thomas Jefferson, toward the end of his life, observed that political rights should be enjoyed equally because nature had not contrived to have some men born with saddles on their backs and others born "booted and spurred" to ride them.

We are at the beginning of a new phase of history where technology will give us power to create people born booted and spurred, and where animals that are today born with saddles on their backs could be given human characteristics. To say, with the libertarians, that individual freedom should encompass the freedom to redesign those natures on which our very system of rights is based, is not to appeal to anything in the American political tradition. So it is perhaps appropriate that the liberal revolution of the 1980s and '90s, having morphed from classical liberalism to libertarianism, should today have crested and now be on the defensive.

Because he begins this essay by attacking Libertarianism in general, Mr. Fukuyama's more important point, that above, is seemingly being lost. This is a shame because properly understood it has political implications that might make even libertarians more wary about genetic engineering.

One of Mr. Fukuyama's main arguments in his new book, Our Posthuman Future, is that bioengineering threatens to fundamentally alter human nature and that this matters because the political system that we have mutually and nearly universally determined best suits our nature is liberal democratic capitalism. Change our natures and who knows what system might arise to suit the new species we become. He is asking us to consider the possibility that in making ourselves more physically perfect we may forfeit the human freedoms that we so value. That may be a trade-off that folks are willing to make--I suspect it will be anyway--but it is one that we should not make blindly and it is one that those of us who care more for liberty should be prepared to fight, by any means necessary.

Among the specific ways in which Mr. Fukuyama argues that our politics may be threatened by bioengineering, one has caused particular consternation, and that is that it threatens to undermine the foundational understanding of democracy, that : "All men are created equal". Set aside all the racialist and gender questions about this concept and we can accept that it is indeed the basis of democracy. To the extent that blacks and women and others have been historically excluded from enjoying this equality, we now understand ourselves to have been guilty of irrational bigotry. But suppose that bioengineering achieves what it implicitly promises, the creation of superior beings--longer lived, smarter, less prone to sin and violence--wouldn't it be fair to say at that point that all men are not created equal? And if some are more equal than others shouldn't they also enjoy greater power and benefits within our political system?

People seem most upset by the way that Mr. Fukuyama has described their aspirations :

Libertarians argue that the freedom to design one's own children genetically--not just to clone them, but to give them more intelligence or better looks--should be seen as no more than a technological extension of the personal autonomy we already enjoy. By this view, the problem with the eugenics practiced by Nazi Germany was not its effort to select genetic qualities per se, but rather the fact that it was done by the state and enforced coercively. There is no cause for worry if eugenics is practiced by individuals. The latter could be counted on to make sound judgments about what is in their own and their children's best interests.

They predictably take umbrage at the use of the word "eugenics" and the mention of Nazi Germany. But eugenics, improvement of the race through breeding methods, is precisely what genetic engineering promises. In fact, as Mr. Fukuyama argues, it promises to move us beyond the human race towards some kind of posthuman species. And the question arises : what will be the fate of mere humans when this manifestly superior race rises? We know how poorly we've treated races that we mistakenly believed to be inferior; why should we be sanguine about our treatment at the hands of a race to which we really are inferior? And if the ultimate effects of this kind of genetic engineering will be a net loss of freedom, is it truly something that libertarians should support?

I continue to believe that libertarians and conservatives should be allies in this fight, as we are in so many others. Hopefully, our libertarian friends will endure Mr. Fukuyama's more inflammatory (and I think mostly specious) points and language early in the piece and consider the legitimate points he raises towards the end.

N.B. : Charles Murtaugh, Boston's beloved and brainy bioblogger, has addressed some of these same issues today. As always, he shows himself to be more thoughtful about the implications of his trade than far too many of his fellow scientists.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 3, 2002 5:52 PM