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SCIENCE MATTERS by David Suzuki
What have you done? What have you done? It’s the question I wanted to ask my friends in the US after last month’s election result. But I already knew the answer. They did everything they could. They just lost.
So now we have four more years of George W. Bush’s regressive social, environmental and foreign policies to look forward to. That certainly doesn’t bode well for science, the environment or human rights in the USA, or elsewhere for that matter.
Do such statements make me “anti-US?” According to many pundits and politicians weighing in on both sides of the border after the election it does. Apparently, disagreeing with the US popular vote makes you either anti-American or “intolerant” or some sort of “high-minded liberal elitist.”
Even some of our elected Canadian parliamentarians insist that any critical analysis of the US or its policies simply amounts to anti-Americanism. The irony, of course, is that this is exactly the kind of “you’re either with us or against us” mentality that drove many of the criticisms of the Bush administration in the first place.
In his first term, President Bush forged a path of US unilateralism in the world community. He pushed a “me-first” agenda and was willing to trample human rights, science and the environment to do it. Just ask the 5,000 scientists, including 48 Nobel laureates, who have signed onto a statement accusing the Bush administration of “manipulation of the process through which science enters into its decisions.”
Yet now, those who dare criticize the choice of the slim majority of US voters who picked Bush are being accused of being anti-US. Well, if being anti-US means being against the war in Iraq, supportive of women’s rights, supportive of progressive environmental policies, against the missile defence system, supportive of stem-cell research and supportive of same-sex marriage, then sign me up. But I don’t believe it does.
Simply disagreeing with that slim majority of voters does not make a person anti-US. In my youth I received a scholarship from a US university worth more than my father made in a year and it allowed me to attend one of the finest colleges in the world. Later I earned a PhD there and I am forever grateful to the people of the US for that. When I returned to Canada, I could not compete with my peers elsewhere in the world because of the poor funding available in Canada at the time. I stayed in the States because I received a large grant. I will never forget the generosity of the US and owe a huge debt of gratitude. But it is precisely because I love America that I am so profoundly disturbed by what is going on there. Unquestioning acceptance of the status quo isn’t exactly a US ideal. In fact, it strikes me as decidedly un-US.
So yes, when 52 percent of US voters cast ballots for Bush, I will say that I think they made a mistake. And when 11 states vote overwhelmingly to ban gay marriage, I will speak up. Disagreeing with a ban on same-sex marriage is not a matter of being out of touch with “US values.” It’s a matter of human rights. When one group in society is singled out and repressed and not given the same opportunities as others, then their rights are being violated. That is simply wrong. It doesn’t matter if the majority of people voted for it. You can’t vote away human rights.
Pundits who insist that critics of President Bush are anti-US are really saying that if 52 percent of Americans believe anything then that’s what the US stands for and everyone else has to respect that. This is a morally relativistic viewpoint that doesn’t even withstand the most basic of scrutiny and critics of the Bush administration should not be bullied into believing it does.
Those of us who feel that 52 percent of US voters made a mistake on November 2 don’t hate Americans. On the contrary, we care enough about the people and the ideals the country is supposed to represent to be very, very concerned.
Take the Nature Challenge and learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org
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