If stem cell research leads to a cure for Creepy Eye Syndrome you can bet that Beck will be first in line for treatment.

Hey, did anyone tell Glenn Beck that if you develop human duplication technology and reprogramming, you can start cloning legions of social conservatives, with built-in Relationship With God (tm) module? No? Because if anyone has, he'd be all for it. Just watch. I'm tellin' you folks, that's how you rally 'em to the cause.

No doubt. At the very least, you'd think they'd use our newfangled cloning technology to cook up a bunch of new Reagans in the lab, as he's apparently the only Republican with worthwhile ideas.

Didn't all those good "Christians" at the Family Research Council every learn the biblical bit about "bearing false witness"?

How about instead of mocking Beck as deranged you actually refute what he is saying? I'd rather read that.

Lest you think it's transparently obvious that stem-cell research != Eugenics, keep in mind that a lot of people in the US will find his assertion believable. So, how do we convince people it's not true?

Rock: well, there's a little thing here called the "burden of proof". It's Beck who asserts that stem cell research will lead to eugenics. He's supposed to prove it.

I do agree, however, that there's a crapload of misinformation out there about not only stem cells, but genetics, molecular biology, physics and suchlike. How many people would believe that "nuclear physics" != atomic bombs? How many people don't know that beings other than humans posses genes? I wouldn't be surprised that hardly anyone can tell you what, exactly, cloning is. So yes, there must be an across-the-board education campaign, but I don't think we should waste any time arguing with Beck. It's a) impossible, b) impractical and c) not enough. This has to start in schools.

I'm pretty sure it's not a progressive tenet to make sure everyone is exactly the same. He's got eugenics precisely the opposite of what it is. It's the most conservative possible approach to reproduction.

Can we mock Beck as deranged AND refute what he's saying? If so, I vote for that option.

Colbert's handling Binkie's refutation and derangement just fine, thank you very much.

..

At the very least, you'd think they'd use our newfangled cloning technology to cook up a bunch of new Reagans in the lab, as he's apparently the only Republican with worthwhile ideas.

I'm thinking there's a book and a movie here, waiting to be produced. Call it, The Boys From Bel Air.

rock, follow the link in the article.

Steve Benen wrote: "The poor man is clearly deranged."

Since I have repeatedly criticized you for characterizing Republicans as "crazy" and "delusional" when in fact they are engaging in cunning and calculated dishonesty, it behooves me to say that I agree with your characterization of Beck's rant as "deranged". And I would add, blitheringly incoherent.

If folks are so up in arms over stem-cell research, then maybe they can go live in caves.

We have to keep pushing the envelope.

But in order to do so, we need rigorous debate, not ranting.

To all of you who earn your salary via stem-cell research, hats off!

To those who equate stem-cell research with human cloning, get a life.

I am getting very fed up with the un-scientists having so much verbal sway these days.

Stem-cells are plastic. Tapping into that force has huge implications for humankind.

Stem cell research is NOT eugenics and eugenics is NOT a progressive idea. Galton thought all the liberal bullsh*t like caring for the poor was weakening the human gene pool. Social Darwinism also embraced racist ideas about the inferiority of women and non-whites-- hardly progressive ideas.

Beck's "arguments" are sad, but not surprising from a Conservative movement that often bastardizes history/facts/science to further their own cause. If Conservatism worked, they wouldn't have to lie so much.

bgoboom wrote: "If Conservatism worked, they wouldn't have to lie so much."

Oh, conservatism works all right.

It works really well at enriching the rich and empowering the powerful at the expense of everyone else. It works great at concentrating wealth and power in the hands of a tiny, reactionary, increasingly hereditary, ultra-rich, corporate-feudalist minority.

Of course if conservatives ran on their actual agenda, they would never win a single election. You just can't win elections with only the votes of "the top one percent".

Hence the old Republican adage, "If you can't dazzle them with deceit, bamboozle them with bullshit".

And SPEAKING of NAZIs

Nazi propaganda minister Goebbles said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. ..."

The Republicans need to learn tactics from someone else's playbook. Honestly, WWII been replayed more than enough times...

there's a little thing here called the "burden of proof". It's Beck who asserts that stem cell research will lead to eugenics. He's supposed to prove it.

"Burden of proof" is foreign to most people. For most people, if someone they trust says something that is aligned with the opinions they already have, that is all the proof that they need. And if someone they're not sure of says something that is not-so-aligned with their existing opinions, chances are that someone is confused and/or evil.

Knob is spelled "K - N - O - B," you knob.

bgoboom: "...eugenics is NOT a progressive idea."

We should also point out that eugenics is not Darwinism, either. Eugenics is artificial selection -- which existed for thousands of years before "Origin of Species."

I don't understand this compulsion to fear-monger and lie, but it isn't so surprising. Thanks for pointing this out, Steve. Will be watching out for more disinformation.

Beck is obviously projecting his own guilt about his Aryan-nationalist desires on the rest of us.

The poor man is clearly deranged.

No more so than, say, Ben Stein.

Eugenics in the U.S. was championed by the religious right of the day. See Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement by Christine Rosen

For some reason I turned on Beck's radio show for a few minutes today. He was ranting about how Obama's new tax rates is designed to ATTACK GOD and to undermine religion in America. Because according to Beck Obama's goal is to make people more dependent on the government, not religious non-profit organizations.

I kid you not. What is his reasoning? (If you can call it that.) If rich people making over $250k have their taxes (increased by 4%) and have their deduction ceiling lowered, resulting in limits on tax-excempt domations, then that will hurt donations to churches. Therefore, Obama's budget is an attack on God and all religious Americans. He was screaming about how this is a warning to all who believe in God, that Obama's SOCIALIST government is trying to destroy God just like they did in awful, godless France. (I'm not exaggerating, that was his argument, that higher taxes are what killed God in France.)

Beck is beyond ridiculous and beyond pathetic.

What should be remarkable but is actually so common among right-wing commentators is the completely incoherent nature of his rant. Look at the first sentence of the excerpt:

"So here you have Barack Obama going in and spending the money on embryonic stem cell research, and then some, fundamentally changing -- remember, those great progressive doctors are the ones who brought us Eugenics. It was the progressive movement and it science."

Beck simply jumps from talking about embryonic stem cell research to the allegation (false) that progressive doctors are responsible for Eugenics without even trying to make the case that these two things have any relationship to each other.

Even aside from his bizzare, slanderous and historically revisionist linkage between Anerican Progressives and the Nazi's "final solution", he never tells us what any of this has to do with stem cell research. I guess because he mentioned them both, his audience is supposed to just understand that they are "obviously" connected.

Beck is proof cloning works.

The history of biology in the 20th century - in the United States - was seriously tainted by an institutional desire to position the discipline as having a social purpose. Jealous of the press the physicists and chemists were getting, life scientists were all too willing to exploit fears of the poor, the foreign and/or people of color in order to advance their own status as managers.

That the poor and the out of power never learned to worship science should not come as a surprise.

Yes, it's crazy to suggest the funding of stem cell will lead to eugenics. But Christian conservatives are in many ways creatures of science's own making.

Eugenics also brought us royal families intermarrying to keep the bloodline pure. Proof that too little information, in the wrong hands, breeds conservative thinking.

What, that doesn't make sense? Well, I'm sure some people will believe me anyway.

On a related note, if Beck's gonna rally against stem-cell research because it might lead to another "Final Solution" I'd like to point out that religion is the #1 cause of "religious wars," so maybe if we all became athiests, we'd stop trying to kill each other in God's name.

On second thought, don't tell Beck that, it might make his head explode.

On THIRD thought, tell Beck that. Now.

They just don't come any stupider ignorant delusional crazy than Beck. The man should be in a straight jacket. It would be people like Cheney trying to mold a master race clone under the veil of secrecy rather than any progressive...even in his fantasy world.

Alzheimer's disease would be well on the way to being cured with stem cell research just to mention one possibility but idiot like Beck are out there screaming "Frankenstein's Monster 's coming". A complete goober.

The human from which Beck was experimentally cloned is gonna' get pissed with all this eugenics talk.

The right may have Beck, but I suspect we enjoy him more. Gee, I wonder why inbreeders object to Eugenics? Not saying that Beck is, but I wonder how many of the people who buy his argument have first cousin romances in their family tree.

So either Hitler was a scientist, or scientists led him astray, thus the final solution.

Somehow, I think the twisting of science by Hitler pretty much validates Obama's main point today: don't confuse science with ideology.

Beck has every right to be upset. When Obama's Dr. Frankenstein's design the new master race, they won't be putting in any Glenn Becks.

The Constant Weader at www.RealityChex.com

Beck's wording is quite awkward, but I believe he was attempting to argue that this law is the first step to the same idealogy that spawned the Final Solution- the ideal that Obama and many of you yourselves spout: For the "betterment" of mankind, scientific progress can not be fettered by primitive religious ideals and moralities.
I admit he came across as silly in his presentation of it, but in a world where our own young are regarded as nothing more than cancerous growths to be removed, I believe the core argument is sound. (speaking in long-term of course) Call me ignorant if you wish, I don't care.

And last of all, once stem-cell treatment hits mainstream, how are the thousands of discarded fertility clinic embryos going to cure the MILLIONS of afflicted people in the world? Think about it,demand WILL outweigh supply eventually, and then embryos must inevitably be created to match this supply. And thus we will have human lives created solely to be destroyed.

THAT is what I believe Beck was referring too... but then again perhaps I'm giving him too much credit.

Practically speaking, embryonic stem cell research would be almost useless without human cloning. Why? Rejection of foreign stem cells by the body of the treated individual. The only way around that is to clone the treated individual. The morality involved in embryonic stem cell research goes way beyond simply the morality of using embryos.

The pity is that there are ethical questions which should be explored relating to genetic manipulation (not really related to stem cells) but all the wackjobs wave around eugenics and final solution so debate will never happen on whether we should permit e.g. genetic selection of embryos for "desirable traits"

banning stem cell research is not the answer.
extremist talk slows figuring out ethical behavior.
end result, the wackjobs get what they fear.

they can't lead, they can't follow and they won't get out of the way.

It isn't really surprising how few Leftard know anything about history. For a second I thought I was at the home page of "Idiots International"

You guys need to spend some time at Wiki, so you can change all of the entries about "progressives" and Nazis and Eugenics.

From Wiki:
In the USA, eugenic supporters included Theodore Roosevelt, pre-1960's Democratic Party.... Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood of America to urge the legalization of contraception for the lower classes. In its time eugenics was touted by some as scientific and progressive, the natural application of knowledge about breeding to the arena of human life. Before the realization of death camps in World War II, the idea that eugenics would lead to genocide was not taken seriously by the average American."

So the founder of Planned Parenthood was a big Eugenicist. I guess Planned Parenthood is not "progressive".

Take a minute and do some research on "induced pluripotent stem-cell". That is where we want to go, not embryonic stem cell research.

There are several problems with liberalism. One is that they hold nothing sacred, nothing is inviolet (sp?). Also, who the hell are you telling me that I am the problem? Is it the 18 hour days, or the 7 day weeks? I make the money I make because I WORK for it. I do not have a government job which takes tax payers money. I do no use government grants. Just because I do not want my tax money going to lazy crack heads and stem cell research, does not make me Evil. IF stem cell research is so critical, it would pull in enough funds from private sources. Just thing for one minute. Instead of us giving the government all of our money (those of us who actually pay taxes), why not keep it and give it to the research we find important? By growing the federal government and creating a class of people who rely solely upon that goverment, the liberals are creating a voting group that will perpetuate government for their own purpose. Why do people who do not even pay taxes get to tell those who do what to do with those taxes?

You take our money to pay for your perversions. All we ask is that you leave some of our sacred items alone!