Regulated Superpowers for Some, Mandatory Abortions for the Rest

The Weekly Standard reviews the new literature:

Ponnuru refrains from engaging in the kind of bitter vituperation and personal invective against those with whom he disagrees that fouls so much of contemporary political discourse.

That's Wesley J. Smith writing about Ramesh Ponnuru's The Party of Death, whose "provocative title" does not constitute a slur against the Democratic Party ("the primary engine driving our country toward accepting killing as an answer to life's difficulties," according to Smith.)

Totally civil and appropriate, and furthermore a much-needed antidote for the truly toxic harangues polluting the media—an unusually hostile example being my forthcoming book, Prat or Prick? Wesley J. Smith, Considered. In this text I argue that only a douchebag with a limited imagination and meager grasp of reality characterizes the Democratic platform as endorsing the following agenda items:

. . . euthanasia, treating nascent and cognitively disabled humans as mere natural resources (embryonic stem cell research, cloned fetal farming, organ harvesting from patients in a persistent vegetative state, etc.), and resurrecting eugenics policies that would not only wipe out people with Down Syndrome, which is already happening, but also potentially lead to genetic engineering aimed at creating a "post-human" race of superbeings.

Admittedly, as an aside, I argue that the Democratic efforts to promote a regulated, progressive metahuman class are in fact a just development for society—"safe, legal, and rare" being the liberal motto. But without mincing words I riposte that Smith is, in fact, an invertebrate who has not yet exhibited secondary sexual characteristics (a subtle rejoinder, my reviewers say).

To be sure, in my book I take care to disambiguate Ponnuru and Smith, noting, in fairness, that there's little Smith could do to advance on the prattishness of Ponnuru's assessment of the Dems as "the party of the little guy" that "turned its back on the littlest guy of all." I respond to such simpering rhetoric by asserting that Ponnuru and Smith are "the party of two serious wimpsters."

But for the most part, my book is a thorough exploration of ways to mock Smith without addressing and thereby validating the distressing dishonesty at the root of his essay (and, apparently, in Ponnuru's book), a review the Weekly Standard should be above publishing. "Wesley Smith? More like Wesley Crusher," I write in the second chapter. And though my publisher won't be happy with me for revealing the exciting conclusion, in the final analysis, it in fact takes a total prat to write with the voice of measured conservatism and yet fail to even describe one legitimate aspect of liberal opinion on the subject. But reasonable minds will differ on the subject, and I grant that those who find Smith prickish have some solid ground on which to stand.

Posted by Kriston at June 26, 2006 7:19 AM