From the WSJ Opinion Archives
WONDER LAND
'Stop!'
It's not an option in the new world.
Former Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill is famous for the political truism that all politics is local. Like just about everything else "local" these days, that truism is under siege. Ask George W. Bush.
Mr. Bush is at the border's edge of a presidential campaign that will require him and a Democrat to traipse the country, nipping and tucking big national issues to smooth local sensibilities. Trouble is, many of the day's biggest issues are no longer containable inside the U.S. landmass. Like it or not, other nations are increasingly casting a "vote" on issues, such as jobs "outsourcing," which drive our politics.
A few years ago, for example, we spent our evenings watching cable's soundbiters fight over Mr. Bush's proposed ban on the science of human-embryo cloning for any purpose. But 15 days ago we woke up to read that South Korean scientists, led by Hwang Woo-suk, had cloned a human embryo, publishing the results in the journal Science for a global scientific community which admitted, yup, they've done it. South Korea? Till that moment, most of us thought South Korea exported cars with hard-to-recall names.
Welcome to the 21st century, whose first contribution to the world's lexicon of shared vocabulary is "proliferation." Not just of weapons of mass destruction, but proliferations of biotechnology, migrants crossing borders for jobs, and the artifacts of mass culture. All are coursing through the globe's hundreds of state political systems, where somebody at the local level inevitably stands up and yells, "Stop!" Recall Jose Bove's famous "stop" when McDonald's arrived in France. U.S. Rep. Joe Pitts wants human-embryo cloning banned "before this unethical science comes to our shores."
"Stop" is indeed the basement level at which most politics responds now to these accelerating global proliferations. Controlling weapons of mass destruction, merely as politics, is in some ways the easiest, since most civilized nations are willing to do at least a little something to thwart WMD proliferation. "Stop," alas, is the politics of King Canute, who sat himself down at the ocean's edge and commanded the tides to recede--as proof that some forces cannot be stopped.
President Bush (who on occasion must empathize with King Canute) entered the floodtide of labor migrations and came under attack from all sides. Some "conservatives" hate his proposed work permits for illegal migrants, while from liberals and nationalists come cries about "outsourcing" jobs overseas. "Stop!" yell his critics, who believe that if we "enforce our laws," the cross-border traffic in labor will, well, stop. But the global migration of human labor, on which there is little organized data, is perhaps the most powerful force on the globe today. In the Persian Gulf nations, well over half of their labor populations are foreign born. The table nearby depicts a Western Europe awash in work-seeking outsiders.
In turn, these mass migrations of human labor put in motion another disruptive cross-border proliferation--that of culture. In France, Algerian headscarves caused a national crisis. In India, U.S. jobs arrive at Bangalore call-centers, and after 20 paychecks, young Indians act and sound like Americanized yuppies, enraging their parents. Everywhere, newly arriving Africans, Latins and Asians disturb "local" cultures already beset by invasions of mass-market culture, most of it exported from the U.S. China attempts to control the alien ideas pouring in through Web portals even as its pirates copy American movies, CDs and financial software.
Proof that proliferation can turn national politics into a local irrelevancy is nowhere better seen than with the science of biotechnology. The President's Council on Bioethics, some of our best minds, tried to come to grips with human-embryo cloning. Though its members were split, Mr. Bush--reflecting politics and personal belief--came out for a total ban. The Senate did nothing. Similarly in Europe, one-time font of the scientific method, popular opinion rejects genetically modified food ("Frankenfoods"). But whatever arguments are adduced, the bans are wholly quixotic.
South Korea's obviously smart scientists achieved the banned human-embryo clone. Biotech venture capitalists who visit China hear from ministries there that China intends to biotech every problem in sight--food, pollution, disease. Why should they wait while France's farmers and America's ethicists dance on the heads of ancient pins? Of course while we dance, the biotech knowledge base may tip to Asia (our own best minds can also migrate to where the work is).
What to do? We've known for centuries that free trade would mitigate labor migrations, and resist it still. But the Just Go Away school of politics is becoming a formula for losing. In a world that is throwing so many new variables together, we might start by looking for common denominators.
The South Korean scientists said they support a ban on the cloning of a human being, as do all members of Mr. Bush's Bioethics Council and virtually all civilized scientists. There you have a common denominator that is achievable and worth having. But to get it, the U.S. would have to sign on to allowing cloned embryos, a blastocyst, to exist for therapeutic science (i.e., to find solutions to human ills) for no more than 14 days, as seven members of the Bush bioethics group proposed. That deal would not stop determined human cloners, but it would brand them as outlaws.
No, this is not a veiled call for "global government." Local traditions matter. It is a call for abandoning the last century's solutions. "Stop" won't work.
Mr. Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. His column appears Fridays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.
