In another response to the question about criminal punishment, forgiveness, and the state, MOJ friend Matt Donovan sends this Weekly Standard story about Sam Brownback, evangelical-turned-Catholic and potential 2008 presidential candidate, periodically giving a Bible study at a state prison (and spending a night in a cell) as part of the Inner Change Freedom Initiative.
Leaving Building 4, Brownback goes to the spacious (9,167 square feet) Spiritual Life Center, recently built to accommodate a growing inmate demand for religious programs. On its website, the Kansas Department of Corrections describes the center as providing "opportunities for inmates from diverse faiths to develop and restore relationships with God, their families, and crime victims." In a conference room, Brownback engages a dozen inmates in an hour-long conversation about their post-prison hopes. He tells one who calls him "Mr. Brownback" to change that to "Sam." And "Sam" it is. To another prisoner he says, "Your experience sounds like my own. You don't recognize temptation when you should." A prayer by Brownback closes the meeting, and then the senator retraces his steps to Building 4 and then to G-pod, cell 42, where, locked down, he spends the night.
You might not expect someone weighing a presidential run in 2008 to spend a dozen hours
in a state prison; it's not exactly the best place to go in search of campaign dollars or volunteers. But once you grasp Sam Brownback's political vision, his visit to the Ellsworth Correctional Facility seems less odd.
Earlier this year, Brownback gave a lecture at Kansas State, his alma mater. He chose as his topic "American exceptionalism"--the idea, as he explained it, that our country is a "special place" and that it has a "special destiny for mankind." Brownback said that the source of American exceptionalism lies in "our fundamental goodness," and that while we have had our problems and "often get things wrong," we eventually find our way, because "some movement based on goodness and fixing what's wrong" starts up and doesn't stop until the problem is fixed. Like the abolitionist movement, which settled in Kansas "with a heart to end slavery." And the civil rights movement, which sought to end segregation. Those movements, said Brownback, fought for "the inherent dignity" of every person, for "righteousness and justice." In our time, he continued, we must carry on this fight by reaching out to people who need help--"the poor and dispossessed," including prisoners and their families. We need to defend the dignity of people "no matter where they are, no matter what they look like, no matter what their status." And not just here at home. Brownback pointed to the sub-Saharan region of Africa, where he said 60 percent of the children have malaria; to Darfur, where the genocide continues; and to the Congo, where "an estimated 1,000 preventable deaths" occur every day.
I know that I'd disagree with a number of Brownback's political positions; and yes there are real constitutional questions if the Inner Change Freedom Initiative is the only or dominant life-transformation program in the prison. But shouldn't everyone across the political spectrum recognize that it's unusual and valuable for a politician to care enough about prisoners to spend any time with them and to call attention to these so-often-forgotten people? You sometimes hear critics refer to the most intensely religious Republicans -- Brownback, Rick Santorum -- as the "nut case" Republicans, in contrast to the moderates. They're right: it is nutty to spend your time visiting prisoners who can't vote, or (in Santorum's case) to push against the business-lobby types that dominate the executive-branch roster of his party for more money for anti-poverty programs (that include faith-based or other personal-transformation emphases).
Now the questions. I'd like to put John McCullough, who asked about this topic originally and does good work with expunging criminal records and helping ex-prisoners, in conversation with Senator Brownback and see what the two say to each other. I wonder what Brownback's position is on expungments of criminal records -- or on the laws that disenfranchise felons permanently or long after their sentence has ended. My sense is that Brownback's party overall has had a pretty "non-compassionate" record of supporting the strictest and long-lasting disenfranchisement laws. I also wonder what other kinds of social supports would be very helpful for ex-offenders -- job retraining etc. -- but face opposition from those on Brownback's side of the aisle who tend to be negative on social spending. In his references to sub-Saharan Africa, Brownback implicitly recognizes the importance of material aid as well as personal transformation; does that show up in his budget priorities [addition here] in general, not just regarding Africa?
On the other hand, I imagine that the challenge Brownback might raise is to ask how we have confidence that repentance and personal transformation really have occurred in a person during prison. Aren't efforts like the Inner Change Freedom Initiative -- assuming there are some secular counterparts, and that we avoid Establishment Clause concerns -- a precondition to wiping the legal slate clean? In writing this, I see a number of rehabilitation-oriented programs listed on the expungement clinic website: looks great. Isn't Brownback right that a faith-based program like Innter Change Freedom Initiative is an important contribution to this cause? Shouldn't we try to keep these programs, structuring them in a way to minimize the concerns about government-imposed religion, rather than toss them out altogether?
Separate from all this, there's the stuff from Senator Brownback about "American exceptionalism" and our "fundamental goodness." That deserves a separate post, since this one is already so long.
Tom
Apparently, the City Council of Chicago has passed an ordinance that makes Chicago the largest city in the United States to impose special wage and fringe benefit requirements for "big box" retailers. Gary Becker has an interesting post on the matter, here.
A few days ago I commented on the statement, "Beyond Same-Sex Marriage" (and Martha Fineman responded). Now Robert George praises the statement's signers for their intellectual honesty in admitting that "what lies 'beyond gay marriage' are multiple sex partners." Jonathan Rauch replies to George here. (HT: Dale Carpenter)
Rob
A few days ago -- I have been vacationing in Alaska -- Professor Brian Leiter posted a long discussion of the some bloggers' responses to Professor Stone's post, "Religious Rights and Wrongs", about President Bush's stem-cell veto. My Prawfsblawg co-blogger Paul Horwitz and I (link) were among those to whom Professor Leiter responded. I agree with Michael P. that the Leiter post is well worth reading, though I think others here at MOJ have highlighted some weaknesses or gaps in it.
Responding to my post, Professor Leiter writes:
"Public reasons" are, by hypothesis here, reasons that may properly ground legislation and exercises of state power. The argument that religious reasons are not "public reasons" isn't that they lack a certain kind of foundation that genuine "public reasons" have . . . ; the argument is that they aren't public, i.e., that they aren't the kinds of reasons acceptable to all reasonable people in a pluralistic society. Many "public reasons" in this sense may lack foundations of one kind or another, but that has no bearing on their public status. To put it (a bit too) crudely, reasons are "public" largely in virtue of a head count, not in virtue of their having more robust epistemic foundations. So, contra Professor Garnett, it is not apparent that the the foundations of the beliefs or reasons in question are at issue here.
It sounds to me (and, of course, I could be misunderstanding) that Professor Leiter is not ruling out the possibility that "public reasons" could have "religious" foundations (or, foundations that would widely be regarded as "religious"), or lack "robust epistemic foundations," so long as they were, in fact, widely accepted. Or, would Professor Leiter's view be that "religious" reasons simply are not -- cannot be -- "acceptable to all reasonable people in a pluralistic society," because, in such a society, "reasonable" people do not regard regard "religious" reasons as "acceptable"? Or, is it that a reason that is widely accepted by otherwise "reasonable" people is not, precisely for that reason, "religious"?
In addition, I am afraid it is still not clear to me what, exactly, are the markers of "religious" motivations and reasons. "The Bible says so" and "God told me last night" seem to be easy candidates. But what if my motivation for supporting Policy X is that I believe that Policy X will better secure and respect, say, the dignity and authentic flourishing of human beings? So phrased, this motivation would not, I suspect, be regarded by Professors Stone and Leiter as "religious." But why not? What if, behind this stated motivation, is a view that, really, the reason why "the dignity and authentic flourishing of human beings" is anything other than a fairy-tale construct is because human beings are made and loved by God?
If you have not been on the First Things blog lately, you might want to check it out. Among other things, there is an interesting conversation going on about just-war theory.
Flannery O'Connor died 42 years ago today. Amy Welborn has a post with lots of good links, etc. If you have not read her short stories, or the collection of her letters ("Habit of Being"), you're missing out.
