Raising the Call to Fight Slavery
I have begun to pay more attention to the crucial human rights issue of slavery, which by its imposition on human beings, denies human exceptionalism and our intrinsic moral worth. Happily, my think tank the Discovery Institute is moving in the same direction. John R. Miller--who I had the great pleasure of meeting during a recent visit to Washington DC--is the DI's senior fellow working in the area of human rights--with a particular interest in combating slavery. He is a former congressman and for the last several years was a diplomat in the State Department in charge of monitoring human trafficking.
In this NRO piece, Miller urges Freedom House to live up to its name and tradition of excellence by focusing more closely on issues of slavery and human trafficking. Here are a few of his key points:
"What Freedom House has constructed is an index that measures the freedom of the free. If you are a slave, you do not count in the Freedom House index. More importantly, the efforts of those attempting to save you in your adopted country are not weighed in Freedom House's ratings. This approach may reflect the thinking of Aristotle but not of Frederick Douglass.
Freedom House might argue that it cannot evaluate modern day slavery since no government today has laws sanctioning slavery, and most have laws banning the practice. But this argument would contradict the premise of most of Freedom House's report. When it assesses political rights and civil liberties in countries, Freedom House looks not just at the existence or absence of laws, but how the laws are implemented and enforced.
Freedom House should take the same approach with modern-day slavery and ask some of the following questions:
*Are the anti-human trafficking laws being ignored or carried out? Are human traffickers and other perpetrators being punished?
*Are the victims helped or punished?
*Are civil and religious groups who fight modern day slavery merely tolerated or encouraged?
*Is the society that creates the demand for slaves being educated so as to reduce demand?
These are questions that are already being asked by the U.S. State Department and many abolitionist organizations. Modern-day slavery is emerging as a premier human-rights and freedom issue of the 21st century. The illustrious organization with 'freedom' in its name can no longer afford to look the other way."
I hope to work closely with John on issues of mutual concern and keep the readers of Secondhand Smoke apprised of his work on these matters.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 9:05 AM
14 Comments
14 Comments:
That's a terribly important issue, Wesley, and I'm glad you're going to get involved in tracking it.
I have to add that there is no way for you to do so without investing the issue of legalizing certain "services" for which women are now being trafficked. (There, I tried to put that nicely.) Basically, there is a huge divide in world help agencies between those who think they should turn a blind eye to the *enslavement* of these women in order to "help" them in some other way (like giving them birth control) and those who realize that the enslavement itself must not be tolerated. The former group actually makes deals with the slavers not to give information to the slaves on how to get free. This is the price they pay for access. The U.S. in the Bush administration has resolutely refused to let its anti-trafficking efforts be hijacked by those trying to legalize the sale of this "product," but it's been a constant and uphill battle, because these folks will bill themselves as "anti-trafficking." They truly think that if they legalize this sort of "work" they can end enslavement in it. But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that this isn't like working at McDonald's and that the idea of unions of such workers and such is a libertarian daydream and nothing more.
So you have to go there if you're going to investigation the huge issue of modern-day slavery.
Well swell. You are saying I have to research the pros and cons of legalizing prostitution. Well, I can't think of many pros. They have it legal in the Netherlands, and I still think there is trafficking there. So, what does that tell us?
Can I return to the 50s, please, absent the racism.
Great! Common sense and good dinosaur ethics (grin) will do very nicely. (And I apologize for the poor spellings on "investigate" in the previous post. Don't know what happened there.)
Yes, and Germany, wh. Miller explicitly discusses in the article linked, has it legal and this has only encouraged trafficking, big-time. Donna Hughes reported that for the World Cup (I think it was) Germany built or set aside (this is so sick) whole large buildings to accommodate the tourists they believed would come for the World Cup and want to buy this "service." That is, the buildings were for the provision of the "product." So basically it's just part of their gross domestic product, one of their flourishing industries wh. the government is encouraging to bring in tourists and profits. And turning a blind eye, as Miller points out, to the fact of slavery in the "industry."
So all I really meant is that a strong anti-trafficking position in today's world involves not being neutral on the legalization issue, or not setting it aside as separate and irrelevant, but seeing it as bound up with the present problem and taking a stand against.
Which obviously, you do.
I'm going to be terribly, terribly blunt here, because this is a bad setup.
Legalizing whoring isn't going to do jack s**t to stop enslavement. Slavery rings aren't about sex, they're about power. What happens to these people, men and women, is nothing short of rape. A man who wants his own slave to push around, beat on, rape, control - he's not going to want to go to a legalized brothel. That's for little boys who wanna get their rocks off but haven't got a girlfriend, or for guys just before their weddings who are afraid of losing their freedom and want one last wild night. Those are for puppies who need to grow up.
People who want slaves don't care about the other person's humanity. The other person is just a thing. A guy who has sex with a hooker wants sex. A guy who wants sex with a slave wants to be in total control. Rape versus whoring.
Neither are good - whoring degrades the prostitute as much as slavery does. The only difference is that there are places a prostitute can go to get help and get back on his or her feet - prostitution is more of a self-imposed slavery. Slavery, that's imposed from the outside, with or without the slave's consent.
Both should be banned, slavers should be broiled alive and eaten, and johns should be thrown in prison for a while.
(Just lost a comment into cyberspace. I hope this doesn’t end up being a repeat.)
In practice, too, it’s nearly impossible to tell the difference between a willing prostitute and a slave. Often the women are drugged, and often, too, they are in fear of their slavers. The john may want to be told that the woman is willing. She’ll tell him what he wants to hear, because otherwise the pimp will slap her around. If the women have been trafficked in as illegals, that puts them even more in the power of the traffickers. So what most people think of as “ordinary” prostitution and sex slavery are very much bound up together.
I brought up the legalization issue, because it’s a very live one among people involved with the issue of trafficking. Silly as the pro-legalization position sounds, it is highly popular with liberals and was de rigeur in the Clinton administration--a discouraging situation for real anti-trafficking activists. They got tired of all the lies--that most of the women are doing this willingly, that what they really need is condoms and other “health care,” that legalization will help them, etc. Yet that sort of thing is earnestly believed by many out there who have actually brought suit to overturn a present law, passed under Bush, banning the funneling of anti-trafficking funds to groups that promote legalization. They actually think this law should be overturned and are very angry about it! It’s crazy.
What they don’t realize are various obvious fact like: 1) The nature of the “work” here virtually guarantees that demand will exceed truly willing supply. 2) Women and children are usually physically weaker than men, so it’s not so hard to keep them enslaved with threats. Legalization won’t change this but will only give the pimps a legal front and take police scrutiny off of them, making it even harder for slaves to escape.
So, as with various confusions in the pro-life sphere, so here: It’s good to have an answer in mind to the pseudo-reasonable confusions that are going to crop up.
Mr. Smith, I am glad that you will be tracking this issue and I praise you for your stand on human exceptionalism and universal human rights. I hope you will also be covering more in your blog the even more pressing and grievous issue of legalized abortion. (I have only been reading your blog for about 3 months now).
Phos:
Welcome to the family! Wesley is a good friend and you'll find a lot of spirited debate on these boards, but most everyone on here has a good time and is interested in making a case without hurting anyone else (although there are times when even the most mild-tempered of us can get carried away (((waves the guilty flag)))).
Hope you enjoy your stay.
Lydia:
"In practice, too, it’s nearly impossible to tell the difference between a willing prostitute and a slave."
Y'know, in my humble opinion, there's no such thing as a "willing" prostitute. There are women who feel pressured by something and instead of seeking help and *getting* the help they need (because the high-and-mighty a*****es out there can't give an eff about people that don't fit their little happy world views), they sell themselves, and don't see themselves as the special beings they are.
They're totally objectified. About the only thing separating them from slaves is that they don't necessarily have a slaver (pimp) holding their leashes, but that's okay - society fills in quite nicely.
Legalizing prostitution won't help the deal - there will be an even further split in society, making the prostitutes second-class citizens. How many people thought, "Well, at least this guy is only killing prostitutes" when the Green River Murders were going on? More than are willing to admit it, I'll bet.
There's no excuse for allowing whoring of any type, and you're right - legalizing it will only give slavers a cover to hide behind and make it harder to get babies and girls back to their families where they belong.
Broil and eat 'em. That's about all slavers are good for. Pimps, too.
Here I was, all ready to at last find a point and cause where I was in complete agreement with Wesley and crew. Slavery is an unquestioned evil and every person of good will should support efforts to end it.
Yet somehow the discussion immediately veered off course into areas of controversy. Naturally sex is involved.
I admit to a smidgen of sympathy for libertarian positions on prostitution, but only a smidgen, not enough to argue it here. There does seem to be something inherently exploitative about it, although why it is in principle any more exploitative than, say, harvesting lettuce is hard to say.
There are good arguments, I think, for legalizing it even so. Similar to the arguments for drug legalization -- some behaviors are so entrenched and impossible to eradicate that its better to regulate them.
It looks like the antislavery movement (about which I know very little) is split on this issue, with some (like most here) wanting to eradicate prostitution and the other half wanting to legalize and support efforts of sex workers to unionize.
I don't really have a position on this myself, except to note that people's attitudes to sex and their politics are deeply entertwined in a way I don't fully understand.
nor is there a "willing" pimp, john, wife or husband, for that matter. i'm a willing son though, but that's about it.
(I'd have been a willing daughter too. I don't remember choosing. Maybe if we go back to the fifties, I'll pay more attention to my conception, to see where i went wrong.)
John:
"(I'd have been a willing daughter too. I don't remember choosing. Maybe if we go back to the fifties, I'll pay more attention to my conception, to see where i went wrong.)"
You make that choice before you get born, so your conception wouldn't have much to do with it. You'd have to go back to a time before you existed. HEeee!
I love that argument.
mtraven:
Your point is mostly the same as ours, so don't worry, you're still pretty much in agreement.
Many prostitutes are little more than slaves as it is and even in places where there are unionized and legal brothels you'll still have folks going for the mostly-enslaved prostitutes instead of heading over to the local cat house.
Reason has to do with power, not sex. Like I said, most of the guys who would use a brothel would be puppies wanting to knock boots for fun, not the really sadistic folk who enjoy objectifying others.
Legalizing prostitution makes it harder for people trying to free slaves to do their jobs - someone can hide behind the, "It's all perfeclty legal" line and still be abusing and using another person. That's my angle.
That and slavers should be eaten.
On a different note, just because you mentioned it, I'm actually not *totally* against the idea of legalizing drug use, not because I like them (I detest drugs - there are easier ways of committing suicide), but because I'm curious about how long it would take for the entire South American continent's economy to collapse if we did so. If we did it right we could buy Brazil! Anyway, that's more of a complaint against people who don't care about how many people they hurt or how badly they damage the ecosystem in their persuit of money. I'd rather not starve the normals down there, which is why legalizing drugs and collapsing the economy there would suck, but I'd prefer not to deal with drug cartels and gang wars and all that bull spit.
The theory behind legalization of vice (drugs, prostitution, gambling) is that such acts are going to happen anyway and it's better to have them aboveground where they can be regulated, rather than as part of a criminal underground.
Again, I don't know enough about the issues to have a position myself, I'm just repeating the argument. These are complex policy questions.
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