The minority shouldn't get any sort of automatic veto, but their opinion should get a quite serious consideration. I don't think the situation is entirely analogous to going to a rule against going to war or imposing the death penalty except by unanimous consent of the entire population.
1 - There is a difference between "except with a broad consensus", and "except with unanimous consent". You probably couldn't get unanimous consent for a declaration that the earth goes around the sun.
2 - There is a difference between not agreeing with something, and finding it to be the same as or equivalent to murder.
3 - Deterring, defeating, and/or punishing external enemies and criminals are things that are essential core functions of a government. Other important functions (or at least functions perceived to be important by a sufficient constituency, I'm not saying all of the following are important), from funding medical research, so social welfare spending, to government run museums, to NASA, to agricultural subsidies, to a national weather service, don't rise to the same level. Without even an attempt to provide internal and external security you have no real government. Without all the others you may miss out on something that some consider important, but they are not a fundamental requirement to even have a government.
Certainly people can disagree about where and how the government should act to try and provide eternal and external security. Reasonable people can disagree as to whether a particular war, or a particular war, or a particular penalty is useful or moral. But the general idea that these areas are the responsibility of government would be accepted by anyone but anarchists. When addressing the core responsibilities of government, a government may have to act. When the peripheral responsibilities are questioned its reasonable for a government to refrain from acting rather than force a substantial minority to support something that violates important and deeply held beliefs. Even in the areas of core responsibilities, I would oppose a draft, which would require a much larger amount of forced support for actions that some people may find deeply immoral, except perhaps in cases where the draft is required to preserve the existence of the nation.
Once again I'm not calling for the right to an automatic veto by the minority. I am however disagreeing with the statement "It simply will not do for opponents of this expanded research to say that the federal government should not force those Americans who find this research abhorrent to support it with their taxes". I think such an argument is useful and can be powerful. It is in not, in my opinion, in anyway out of bounds, and it should not be summarily dismissed.
Tim |
