The end of the year traditionally is a time of self-reflection, when we take stock in our achievements and our failures and hope to improve in the upcoming 12 months. Likewise, we, as Americans, tend to evaluate the state of our nation. When the public needs to point to a political body to laud or lament, no one is more scrutinized than the president. In truth, while the president has the power and influence to affect much policy in these areas, it's not entirely his duty or responsibility.
This year, however, has truly been the president's year. Of course, this year has been unusually tilted toward the influence of the president. In most years, the public blames the presidential administration for creating the problems. In 2001, the Bush administration has had difficulties thrust upon it. Difficulties like a recession (that we now know officially started in March), inadequate regulation of stem-cell research by the Clinton administration, the events of Sept. 11 and anthrax in the mail. Any one of these events would have politically defined Bush's first year. Together, they require tremendous fortitude. And concurrently, they present one of the largest government efforts of the last 50 years.
The American public has also faced great challenges of a kind never seen in this generation. We all have needed to redefine the way our lives are led. Yes, we have been told to \go about the business of America,"" but we now live in a new America where we face choices that we have not been faced with before, let alone emotions that we haven't felt before. This has been a year of hard choices, and if I had to select the dominant theme of 2001, I would choose morality: making choices on what we think is good and what we think is evil. It is that personal sense of what is moral, what is right, that we have each needed to personally define so many times in so many ways this year.
Morality doesn't necessarily have to do with religion or spirituality, although for many it does. For others, morality is defined by a sense of what it means to be human or what is natural. The battles among moralists come in part because moral beliefs are deeply set and very personal. Since different people hold different, strong, unwavering moral values, the conflicts are frequent and heated. A salient example would be that the citizens of democratic nations generally believe that freedom for all people is a moral value. But, as we have seen within Afghanistan, the Taliban regime believes morality is determined by God's will as read through a very literal understanding of the Quran. While these are certainly extreme examples, we can see that many of the recent issues our nation has faced and continues to face take into account moral values more than perhaps any other thing we value.
All during this summer and into the fall, embryonic stem-cell research was debated in our homes, in our churches and in the halls of Congress. To some, the embryo from which stem cells are obtained is human life and therefore, immoral to kill. Others believe that what is immoral is not pursuing a technology that has the potential to cure life-debilitating and threatening disease. The debate over embryonic research has been reignited this week when Advanced Cell Technologies announced that it had successfully pioneered a technique to clone a human embryo. Despite insistence that the technique was far from perfected and that the intent is to create stem cells specific to a certain genetic makeup, many people believe that the creation of human life outside of the womb, in any form, is immoral. To the scientists of ACT and supporters, it is life-affirming.
Morality is also at the center of the war with terrorism. Some of the moral questions we continue to face include: Knowing that many innocent lives will be lost in the conflict, should our government liberate a people oppressed by a totalitarian regime? Should our government make every effort to capture Osama bin Laden and his followers or is he a military enemy and subject to ""incidental"" death in battle? Is it right for the U.S. government to hold foreign nationals residing in our country on immigration violation when they may or may not be involved in terror plots? Is it right to coerce, threaten or torture a suspected terrorist to gain valuable information that may help save hundreds of lives? Should the United States create military courts to try suspected terrorists in this country, thus circumventing the judicial system normally guaranteed to those convicted of crimes?
These are tough questions without clear answers. We can't, and won't always, have our moral beliefs upheld. But we can be happy that we live in a nation where, perhaps more than ever in our history, so many different moral beliefs can be fairly represented in a manner where so many different values can be protected under the law.
