The earlier post The President's Council discussed the partisan flap over the actions of the President’s Council on Bioethics. That post dealt with an aspect of a larger theme often discussed here, the failure of putatively progressive ideas in the past few decades, especially those relating to technology and the environment.

This New Atlantis article by Wilfred M. McClay, one of several in the Winter 2004 issue that reflect on a report entitled Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness issued by the President’s Council on Bioethics in October 2003, speaks of the anti-democratic nature of "Progressivism".

Although Progressivism had various aspects, one of its chief features was its optimistic faith in the power of disciplined intellect to reorder society, and free it of the inefficiencies, inequities, and pathologies that beset it. A powerful and active government was the chief means through which the disciplined intellect could act upon the world, and the burgeoning research universities were the places where that expertise was formed and transmitted. Rule by experts was deemed far preferable to conventional democratic politics, which amounted, it seemed, to little more than a messy hurly-burly of colliding interest groups, with no room for a consideration of the public interest and the general good. How much preferable to live under the rule of accredited, competent, wise, rational, and disinterested leaders, university men trained in the natural and social sciences, including the science of governance, free of the taint of corruption, beholden to no party or interest!

Such, at any rate, were the hopes of influential Progressives. Their viewpoint tended to favor the translation of politics into administration, statesmanship into problem-solving, and competing values into manageable facts. The shift of emphasis was evident at all levels of government. It helped give rise to a profusion of nonpartisan regulatory boards and agencies, as well as such quintessentially Progressive innovations as the city-manager system, which turned responsibility for municipal governance over to a nonpartisan administrator chosen precisely for his supposed remoteness from politics, or the growing use of state and municipal research bureaus to provide specialized research in support of progressive legislation...

All too often, such unelected bodies serve to provide politicians with an easy means to punt the hard issues into the arms of “experts,” and thereby subvert the scrutiny, accountability, and public debate that are the essence of a healthy democracy. In so doing, they tend to weaken the capacity for self-government. Indeed, the great paradox of Progressive reform was that a movement enthusiastically dedicated to increasing the public power of ordinary people ended up strengthening the authority of bureaucrats, managers, and specialists instead. That paradox is sadly confirmed in the steady decline of voting and political participation since the reforms of the Progressive era took hold, and by the accelerating readiness of representative institutions to turn political decision-making over to courts, regulatory agencies, and the marketplace.

Unpacking the strident claims of latter day Progressives about the polticization of science reveals how completely they have succumbed to the anti-democratic ideas of that failed Progressivism. They don't have a clue about why those interested in self rule would work to bring decision making out from behind the closed doors of bureaucratic administrators into the sunshine of public scrutiny and debate. Here's a clue: It isn't only that some are focused on the ideology of self rule, it is the repeated failure of the various commissions and bodies of experts to reach useful conclusions, formulate effective policies and govern well.

Progressive cluelessness explains why they have so thoroughly bungled the public debate about the Beyond Therapy report. They don't want a debate, they want a President’s Council packed with simpatico members that will produce marching orders consistent with a Progressive bias regardless of what the public thinks. Progessives quibble about the members of the council, dispute their scientific credentials or smear them with accusations of bias. It isn't that they are opposed to bias, they are after all very biased, they just want their biases to dominate.

McClay states the true nature of the conflict:

What does all this have to do with the President’s Council on Bioethics, and the report now before us? This brief glance backward should make it clear how dramatically this Council has broken with precedent, and done something that few, if any, of its predecessors have ever tried to do. It has deployed its own expertise, and the expertise of others, not to propound the “solutions” to the problems before it and thereby remove them from the vagaries of the political process, but to give us an informed glimpse of the complex and far-reaching choices before us. It is not doing so to frighten us, or steer us in some particular direction. There is no hidden agenda. The report’s irenic and tentative tone, and the complete absence of bullet points in its text, should dispel any such misimpressions. Instead, it is doing so to equip the rest of us for the work of genuinely democratic decision-making, for the difficult tasks of self-rule that lie ahead. It reminds us of what we all know, or should know—that the deeper questions raised by the advance of biotechnology are not technical problems to be fixed, at least not in any obvious sense. Instead, they are questions that penetrate to the very heart of our humanity. They are questions that, by their very nature, cannot (and should not) be delegated to others, for they are beyond the competence of any existing expert to judge. It will take all of us, deliberating in good faith, using all our faculties and all our knowledge about the human condition, to decide them wisely.

Some are beginning to grasp the implications of the break with precedent of the Council's report. This Reason article by Ronald Bailey sees the issue but doesn't want to have a debate since in his mind the debate has already happened.

Opponents of biotech progress are always demanding that before "we" deploy any new biotechnologies, "we" must have a "societal conversation" about the morality of things like cloning, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis and genetically engineering babies. Where have they been for the past 200 years?

We've been having those "conversations" at least since Mary Shelley published Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus in 1818...

So why rehearse all this old history? To counter the constantly propounded notion that humanity is facing the moral issues posed by new biotechnological developments for the first time. In fact, we've been talking seriously about the moral concerns surrounding new biomedical technologies for generations. However, history also shows that talking about such moral issues rarely resolves them in advance.

Bailey inadvertently demonstrates the problem - the "we" problem. He lives in an echo chamber populated with like minded fellow travelers - superior people, the kind that "should" rule - and simply has no time for public debates involving those he doesn't respect. For Bailey the issue is settled and he has the "old history" he cites to prove it. It's amusing that this type of argument is one used by advocates of positions Bailey opposes, arguments he ridicules when they use them. In another New Atlantis article, a somewhat premature post-mortem for the Kyoto Protocol that Bailey would likely applaud, S. Fred Singer notes:

To ensure that the disparities do not get publicized, environmental lobbying groups (and their allies in politics and the media) generally refer to the science as “settled.” They refer to the “scientific consensus” of the 2,000 or so scientists connected to the IPCC...

No, climate science isn't settled and neither is bioethics. The reason these two issues and some others so clearly require public debate is that they can't be neatly bounded, aren't obviously individual choices with limited effects. They seem to be public issues that consume public funds and have broad impacts. They aren't simply technical issues that only require competent technicians. They absolutely do not fit the Progressive - perhaps more usefully paleo-progressive and not truly progressive - model of bureaucratic administration by self selected meritocrats. Social progress, a central concern for progressives if not Progressives, requires the participation and assent of the public on issues that consume their resources or otherwise constrain them.

Bailey's naive complaint that "talking about such moral issues rarely resolves them in advance" reveals his simplistic world view and impatience with others. Moral issues are never settled, much less settled by public debate. That's not how democracy works. Consensus is never reached to the satisfaction of all. Broad consensus isn't a democratic objective, it's a majoritarian objective. Democracy is about public deliberation, reason and discourse, to inform all about the views of each so that policies can be adopted that do not oppress minorities and lead to disobedience, sabotage and rebellion. Nothing is ever settled. Elections don't settle leadership debates. Legislation and executive orders don't settle policy debates. They are pragmatic and provisional decisions taken for limited purposes during an ongoing debate that never ends. Self rule never ends and cannot be delegated to a committee of experts.

This is frustrating for absolutists and demagogues of all persuasions since many of the social controls they seek cannot be implemented. People have too much freedom and diversity for their tastes and their pet projects are either rejected or underfunded. They want control but all they have is a voice in the debate.