Discovery Senior Fellow John R. Miller, a long time friend and ally, as well as a much-appreciated colleague, has an oped in The New York Times today that ought to embarrass the Bush Administration. It takes up over half the oped page, so let's see whether the White House and Congress even notice.
Miller tells as story that is sad on several levels: 1) The slavery issue is real and dramatic and yet is is still under-reported. Opponents of the Wilberforce Act of 2008--the anti-slavery bill now stuck in Sen. Biden's committee in Congress--seem to see it mainly as a U.S. issue, but it is world-wide and much more serious overseas in Africa and Asia. You can't just wish this subject away and claim you care about human rights. 2) Some supposedly sophisticated people insist on thinking that forced prostitution is such an ambiguous concept that it should not be included in the slavery issue. But they simply don't grapple with the facts of how young girls, even in this country, are dragooned into demoralizing, dangerous and often-fatal "sex work." 3) President Bush really does deserve credit for moving forward on this issue, but he now either is backing away from more serious enforcement or his own White House staff (not to mention the Department of Justice that is holding up the Wilberforce Act) is not keeping him abreast of developments on the issue. 4) There may be valid bureaucratic reasons for resisting some of the provisions in the new act, but, if so, the Administration and Sen. Biden in the Senate aren't ventilating them. There is no move to engage the bill's proponents in discussions about a reasonable compromise. Conservatives in particular should be sympathetic to the objectives of the Paperwork Reduction Act, but conservatives and liberals alike should be willing to find reasonable ways to deal with that act within the policy goal of combating involuntary servitude.
I suspect that the Administration has been distracted on this issue, what with the crisis in the Middle East, Iran and North Korea, not to mention the economy. The bureaucrats at DOJ are left to call the shots. Surely it is time for the big boys to get into this matter. What is missing is some clear direction from the top.
John Miller has a longer piece on slavery that just came out in The Wilson Quarterly.
One final thought. As president of Discovery Institute I am moved to action by the question John Paul II asked when he was a bishop in Communist Poland and later, in different contexts, when he became pope: "What does it mean to be human?" This is a question that really might be addressed to all people in Western societies today. It applies to the slavery question, where numerically there are more people--many of them children--physically forced into demeaning or degrading service than even at the height of the slave trade in the 17th and 18th centuries. Why should such people be regarded, in effect, as sub-human?
The question applies, also, to unborn children, aged people in their terminal phase of illness (targets now of euthanasia in the Netherlands and assisted suicide in this country), or embryonic stem cells (if they are not human, what are they?). Meanwhile, the reductionist morality of the Cultural Left is trying to assign human rights--literally--to great apes! This is a program promoted by such worthies as Richard Dawkins and Stephen Pinker and various radical animal rights activists. Get it? People are losing their exceptional dignity, while animals are elevated to human status. Somehow, human dignity always suffers in this exchange.
The key participants in Discovery Institute's program on Human Rights and Bioethics are John Miller, Wesley J. Smith and John West. The issues they handle are separable and it should not be assumed that each is responsible for the views of the others.
Nonetheless, it is hard not to see the linkages. Further, one would have to be obtuse not to see the way that Darwinian science (covered by the Discovery Center for Science and Culture, has contributed to the confusion over "what it means to be human".
I don't shirk here from telling you that this program is badly underfunded at Discovery Institute and is mostly absent in the attention of other think tanks. If you know anyone who would like to help us, please let us know!