Politics & Power Quote by Kevin J. Anderson

Anderson’s line weaponizes a very American habit: treating moral posturing as policy, then acting surprised when the rest of the world treats it as an opportunity. The opening “Sure” is doing heavy lifting. It grants Bush the right to speak in the language of ethics and restraint, then immediately undercuts it with “believe me,” a colloquial pivot that signals the real arena isn’t virtue but leverage. Anderson isn’t primarily arguing about embryos; he’s arguing about advantage.

The subtext is brutally transactional: if the U.S. chooses symbolic purity over investment, it doesn’t stop the science. It simply exports the science. “Japan is applauding” isn’t literal praise so much as the imagined sound of competitors quietly celebrating an unforced error. The jab lands because it reframes a domestic culture-war decision as a gift-wrapped industrial policy for someone else.

Then comes the kicker: “do it first and get all the patents.” Anderson compresses globalization into a single fear Americans reliably understand - not just losing a race, but losing ownership. Patents stand in for the whole downstream economy: biotech jobs, medical breakthroughs, prestige, and the power to set terms for everyone else. In that framing, a funding ban isn’t neutrality; it’s a strategic retreat that still leaves Americans paying later, either through licensing fees or delayed cures.

Context matters: early-2000s stem cell restrictions were sold as conscience-driven governance. Anderson’s intent is to puncture that self-image with a writer’s instinct for irony: the rhetoric of principle, ending in a receipt from abroad.