 Book Reviews
with Robin Osborne
The President of Good & Evil
By Peter Singer
Text $30.00
 Hypocrisy and conspiracy are the core themes of this damning analysis of whether America's 'most prominent moralist', the president who has said more about 'good and evil, right and wrong' than any other in history, has practised what he preaches.
Melbourne-born Peter Singer, currently Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, achieved considerable fame with Animal Liberation and later became a target of the American Right for his writings on abortion, euthanasia and stem cell research.
'It is impossible to be sure how genuine Bush and those who advise him are about the ethics that he advocates. This book can therefore be seen as an attempt to cover all the possibilities. When Bush speaks about his ethics, he is either sincere or he is insincere. If he is insincere, he stands condemned for that alone.
'I have started with the opposite, more generous assumption: that Bush is sincere, and we should take his ethic seriously, assessing it on its own terms, and asking how well he has done by his own standards.
'Even if that assumption should be false, the task has been worth undertaking, for we now know that, sincerely held or not, Bush's ethic is woefully inadequate.'
Only on foreign aid has Bush revealed an ethical streak, reversing the backwards trend under Clinton, although the percentage of US aid to its GDP is still well below other developed countries, including Australia, and outpaced by trade barriers that deprive developing countries of about $100 billion in income.
As for conspiracy, Singer explores the influence of one Leo Strauss, a refugee from Nazism, whose academic writings have found favour with Bush's circle, notably those running Middle East policy.
The Straussians believe morally acceptable but intellectually lacking 'gentlemen' can be manipulated by their 'philosophical superiors' into certain actions, for instance attacking Iraq, a long-held ambition.
Meanwhile, 'one kind of truth [is given] to the masses', often in the form of religion, which 'breeds deference to the ruling class.'
'The fact that Straussians are cultish and network to find one another jobs in Washington has taken them to a position of extraordinary influence in the Bush administration,' concedes Singer, not given to conspiracies but obliged to note that even in his own field, 'Bush listens to another Straussian, Leon Kass, who now heads the President's Council of Bioethics.'
- Thanks to Book Warehouse, Keen Street, Lismore for supporting this column.
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