I hear a pretty constant stream of a specific kind of personal attack by leftists against conservatives, including to my face.  And honestly, I'm sick of it.  The basic idea they're convinced of is that deep down, we have secret, selfish motives for everything, and/or that we're downright evil.  You can see how this leads to fine, rational conversations about policy with us. 

Here's an excerpt from the latest example of the vile, civilized-political-discourse-destroying, irrational assumption that conservatives (and in this particular case, the President) have only evil motives (even if good leftists can't always uncover them) spewed by Peter Mehlman on the Huffington Post.  (If they take it down, you'll be able to find the whole thing here.)  And frankly, this isn't an unusual opinion, in my experience:

So now we're six and a half years into Bush and everyone from Helen Thomas on down is declaring him the worst president ever. What no one is saying is the one overarching reason he's the worst: the Bush administration is the first that doesn't even mean well.

With the possible exception of immigration reform -- and who knows what grotesque financial incentive underlies that -- try to pinpoint even one policy motivated by the desire to lessen human suffering, to improve the life of citizens. Nothing. There is nothing....

It's been the ultimate frustration to consider the people who don't see Bush's malevolence....You could argue that even the world's worst fascist dictators at least meant well. They honestly thought were doing good things for their countries by suppressing blacks/eliminating Jews/eradicating free enterprise/repressing individual thought/killing off rivals/invading neighbors, etc. Only the Saudi royal family is driven by the same motives as Bush, but they were already entrenched. Bush set a new precedent. He came into office with the attitude of "I'm so tired of the public good. What about my good? What about my rich friends' good?"

How can anyone not see it? It's not that their policies have been misguided or haven't played out right. They. Don't. Even. Mean. Well.

There you go, folks.  I'm so disgusted by this that I have no commentary--at least, none without expletives, and this is a family show.

If you're interested in reading a more level-headed response to this phenomenon that I wrote back when I still naively believed I could reason with leftists about conservative ideas--before I had banged my head against the wall of "secret evil motives" so often that I lost the motivation to interact, read this. 

In Genesis 9:6, God commands, "Whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made man."  Because he bears the image of God, the value of a man is so great that there is only one punishment worthy of the unjust taking of his life.  The ultimate crime against the innocent demands the ultimate penalty for the guilty.  This is not only just, it's also a way to protect the innocent.  According to the article "Studies say death penalty deters crime," anywhere between 3 and 18 (depending on the study) lives are saved when a murderer is executed.

"Science does really draw a conclusion. It did. There is no question about it," said Naci Mocan, an economics professor at the University of Colorado at Denver. "The conclusion is there is a deterrent effect."

A 2003 study he co-authored, and a 2006 study that re-examined the data, found that each execution results in five fewer homicides, and commuting a death sentence means five more homicides. "The results are robust, they don't really go away," he said. "I oppose the death penalty. But my results show that the death penalty (deters) -- what am I going to do, hide them?"

Another professor responded:

"Abolitionists or others, like me, who are skeptical about the death penalty haven't given adequate consideration to the possibility that innocent life is saved by the death penalty."

If the findings are correct, they pose a real dilemma for those who oppose the death penalty:  Is it right to keep a murderer alive if it means as many as 18 innocent people will die? 

From Nancy Pelosi's speech on Thursday in favor of the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2007:

Science is a gift of God to all of us and science has taken us to a place that is biblical in its power to cure and that is the embryonic stem cell research....  Yet, with his cruel veto pen, President Bush dashed the hopes of many for the healing potential of stem cell research.

First, though she says ESCR is "biblical in its power to cure," embryonic stem cell research has produced no usable results. 

Second, has she ever heard of private funding?  Has the president locked all the scientists in a dungeon?  No.  President Bush, with his "cruel pen," protected my will that I not fund ESCR.  Meanwhile, not only did he fund other types of stem cell research, but anyone is free to invest in ESCR if he wishes. 

Third, if anyone is thinking, "Well there aren't enough interested investors out there, so the government has to fund it," then I say, all the more reason for the government not to waste our money.  If there were any certainty about this supposedly huge potential in embryonic stem cell research, you can bet that all sorts of individuals and corporations would be clambering over each other to invest.  The fact is, other areas of stem cell research are far more promising in practice (rather than theory), with already-achieved results.

So why push so hard for this when breakthroughs like this one are already happening that involve no ethical concerns whatsoever?  Why this obsession with destroying embryos?  Why shouldn't we, as a nation, fund the stem cell research that everyone can endorse and leave the funding of ESCR to those who aren't opposed to it and who actually see within it some tangible promise?

She then says, "If we have a scientific opportunity to treat and cure disease, we have a moral responsibility to support it."

The principle she espouses here is ridiculous.  We have a moral responsibility to support whatever gives us scientific knowledge that might help people?  The Tuskegee Study, conducted from 1932 to 1972 was very helpful in teaching scientists about Syphilis and its effects.  Never mind that African-American men were denied available treatment so that the study could continue.  It's our moral responsibility to support it, right? 

That example shows how flawed her principle is.  There are loads of things you could do to gain more scientific knowledge for cures, but there is clearly only a moral responsibility to pursue scientific knowledge to help others if the pursuit itself does not cause moral harm.  And if it does cause moral harm, we have the responsibility to not pursue it.

Therefore the debate over the moral harm of ESCR must be at least addressed before one can claim we have a moral responsibility to pursue it.  Pelosi can't just dismiss without explanation or defense the idea that ESCR causes moral harm and skip to the cure part.

Thank God for that cruel veto pen.

"For God's Sake, Please Stop the Aid!"

The Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati, 35, says that aid to Africa does more harm than good. The avid proponent of globalization spoke with SPIEGEL about the disastrous effects of Western development policy in Africa, corrupt rulers, and the tendency to overstate the AIDS problem.

Mr. Shikwati, the G8 summit at Gleneagles is about to beef up the development aid for Africa...

Shikwati: ... for God's sake, please just stop.

SPIEGEL: Stop? The industrialized nations of the West want to eliminate hunger and poverty.

Shikwati: Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor.