Lazy Libertarians

The blogosphere is a fairly politically diverse area of cyberspace. There are liberal blogs, conservative blogs, Catholic blogs, and of course libertarian blogs among many others. Some blogs are devoted to specific political issues and others are more general. The entire phenomenon of political blogging, however, has been spearheaded by libertarians or "techno-libertarians" who view technology as unquestionably liberating and blogging as integral to fostering their project. Blogging for many techno-libertarians is the free use of technology to foster the advancement of liberty through technology. Blogging, therefore, is at once a means and an end. The techno-libertarians sometimes present themselves as a marginalized, disgruntled lot, but they are unequivocally the establishment in the blogosphere.

Accordingly, no group of political bloggers has been harder than the techno-libertarians on the President's Council on Bioethics lead by Leon Kass for recommending in its report,
Human Cloning and Human Dignity: The Report of the President's Council on Bioethics, a government-imposed moratorium of all human cloning activities. Few issues captivate the techno-libertarians as much as cloning; and nothing upsets them more than the president's council, for the council has ethical and political doubts about the progress of science.

Perusing the most established techno-libertarian blogs, however, reveals a disappointing reluctance to address Kass and the arguments against cloning directly. Few libertarian bloggers give evidence of having read the Kass Council's report. In fact, having ascertained early on that Kass had expressed reservations about cloning in other writings, much of the blogosphere's concern with the issue centered around the constitution of the council itself and whether Kass would choose only likeminded members. Searching major techno-libertarian blogs such as Glenn Reynolds' Instapundit and Virginia Postrel's Dynamist reveals that most of the commentary on cloning and the Kass Council occurred well before the council's report was even issued. And while one could say that some of Kass's arguments were known previously through his public writings, the early blog commentary again reveals no serious confrontation with those arguments.

Most surprising is the techno-libertarian crowd’s unwillingness to address Kass’s arguments that cloning destroys the uniqueness and individuality of the offspring and implies a much greater control of parents over their offspring than is the case with sexual reproduction. One would have thought that libertarians would have been particularly sensitive to these arguments which suggest that cloning may usher in new forms of tyranny.

There are many issues here regarding cloning-for-research in which a very young embryo, having had stem cells harvested, would then be discarded and cloning-to-produce-children which is self-explanatory. Almost nobody but the libertarians condones the most extreme use of the technology, cloning-to-produce-children. The Kass report itself gives those who might favor cloning-to-produce-children but understand the current limits of technology the benefit of the doubt by pretending that a time will come when science will allow cloning-to-produce-children safely. The report expresses grave concerns regarding how science will advance in this manner, since attempts to make advances violate codes of conduct designed to prohibit experimentation upon humans. Nevertheless Kass conducts a kind of thought-experiment assuming that human clones may be safely produced at some point. This thought-experiment allows him to convey some of his deepest reflections regarding family life, the responsibility and limits of parenthood, human uniqueness and psychological individuality, and human dignity, all of which libertarians have failed to address.

We will now briefly review the Kass report’s arguments regarding manufacture, identity, and family life, and conclude with some libertarian commentary on cloning.

Manufacture, Identity, and Family Life

Kass is excellent at discerning the implications and assumptions inherent but often unacknowledged in certain activities. Sexual reproduction, including in vitro fertilization, produces beings who are genetically unique, implying the limited authority of parents whose duty it is to prepare the children for eventual independence. Children may be consciously wished for in sexual reproduction, but their arrival is not perfectly predictable and therefore resembles a gift more than a product of the parents’ wills. The fact that parents attempt to form and mold their children, preparing them for adulthood and even threatening to stifle them, reinforces the sense that the children are not the parents’ possessions. A child is not manufactured in sexual reproduction; rather it is the much more unpredictable outgrowth of the act of love.

Asexually-produced or cloned human beings, by contrast, would be so totally manipulated and manufactured so as to imply a much greater authority of parents over their offspring. Such children would likely not be met with the acceptance with which normal parents treat their children. And no matter how well-meaning certain people might be, no matter how much they might accept the clone as a gift, the act of cloning itself bespeaks very different things and places parents in different roles and on different footings in relation to their offspring. As Kass puts it, “the act itself teaches a different lesson." Cloning implies that the children exist solely for the pleasure and fulfillment of the parents in ways that sexual reproduction does not. Cloning would rob the manufactured offspring of its ability to stand beside its parents as an equal, as an unmade gift; it would rob the offspring of its dignity. Not simply a biological experiment, cloning-to-produce-children would be an experiment in procreation, altering the roles of parents and children as we understand them.

Sexual procreation gives rise to genetically new and unique individuals who are, therefore, imbued with a sense of individual identity and of occupying a place in the world never having belonged to another. At the same time, sexual procreation locates the child in a network of relation and natural affection. Cloning would deal a severe and perhaps disabling blow to the challenge of individual identity formation; it would rob a person of knowing and feeling that nobody has previously possessed his particular gift of natural characteristics and of going forward as a genetically unique individual into a relatively indeterminate future. A cloned individual would be forever overshadowed by the life of the “original.” This is not the case with twins who are of the same generation and whose potential is fulfilled simultaneously and not known in advance.

The ability to clone successfully would also likely usher in a new age of “private eugenics,” which although without the dark implications of state-sponsorship, could alter or obliterate human nature. The fear of eugenics is not born of a thoughtless rejection of progress; it arises out of the rational recognition that we would be in uncharted waters without knowing whether we were producing improvements or the reverse.

Finally, cloning-to-produce-children would create troubled family relations, for even with well-meaning parents the clone’s place within the family would be confused. Cloning would blur the distinction between generations in ways that in vitro fertilization and adoption do not. Rivalry, jealousy, and parental tensions could be exacerbated. The example of the father seeing again the young woman he once fell in love with, if the woman were cloned, illustrates how cloning would complicate the already difficult situation of being and rearing an adolescent.

The Absent Libertarian Response

Although it sounds hyperbolic to say this, the truth is that there has been no response on libertarian blogs to any of these arguments. Since the Kass Council issued its report last July, a search under “cloning” on Glenn Reynolds’ website, Instapundit, reveals nine blog entries. But one is quickly disappointed to find that none of them even pretends to address the arguments in the report. Some provide links to other commentators, none of whom addresses the report directly either. Only prior to the report’s completion did Reynolds address Francis Fukuyama’s reservations about cloning, specifically that it could usher in new kinds of slavery by allowing us to breed inferior beings for the purpose of doing hard labor. Reynolds’ response to this concern is an endorsement of fellow-blogger Stephen Green’s staggeringly stupid remark that the government would protect such people’s rights anyway.

“Fukuyama [with his intellectual sloppiness and rash pronouncements] is not a serious person,” Reynolds adds, after claiming that Fukuyama's first book was either embarrassingly obvious or obviously wrong. Really? Had Glenn Reyonlds thought seriously about thymos as the engine of history before Franics Fukuyama brought it to his attention? Does Reynolds think that idea is embarrassingly obvious or obviously wrong? Does Glenn Reynolds even know what thymos is to be making such pronouncements about Fukuyama? Of course, one may disagree with Fukuyama both on history and on cloning, but he is clearly someone who deserves a more serious hearing than Glenn Reynolds can muster for him.

Only slightly less embarrassing is Virginia Postrel’s response to the Kass Council. Reviewing Postrel’s blog, the Dynamist, which also includes her pieces published in mainstream journals and newspapers, reveals at least some effort in reading Kass’ writings, notably his first book, Toward a More Natural Science. However, she butchers passages so badly, even incorrectly accusing Kass of simply opposing cadaver research, that her unwillingness to engage seriously with his arguments becomes apparent quickly. For a time, Postrel ran a feature on her blog called “Kass Watch,” but this only amounted to details of the composition of the Kass Council and observations on articles and interviews that appeared about Kass along with adolescent, nasty remarks. Nothing resembled serious argument.

Among libertarians, only Charles Murray, in a recent superb roundtable with Kass and others published in the Public Interest, has registered a respectful and thoughtful dissent from the Kass Council. Conceding the council’s grave concerns over the effects reproductive cloning will have on family life, Murray doubts if it is possible or practical to deny scientific progress.

It is time to call the techno-libertarians’ bluff and show that they have no arguments against Kass’s concerns about identity and family life. Besides juvenile quips and sneers, they haven’t voiced anything substantive. Ironically, it may be that those who seek to defend cloning will have to go to the Kass report itself instead of to libertarians, because the report presents both sides of the issue. As another member of the roundtable, Diana Schaub, pointed out, Kass's report is so remarkable that it resembles something like a fictional Constitution Papers or a combination of the Federalist and Anti-Federalist writings, giving full panoply of argument and counter-argument.

Will the techno-libertarians ever state their case in a mature manner?