Mirror of Justice

Monday, April 28, 2008

More on China and Human Rights

My colleague Elizabeth Brown sent me the following comment regarding Rick and my posts (here and here) on human rights issues in China:

"When I was in Bhutan in 2002 and in China in 2006, I was told that China's solution to its minorities was to flood them with Han Chinese. I was told that Tibet cannot escape China's grasp because too many Han Chinese have been given incentives to move into Tibet. Tibet is no longer Tibet, any more than South Dakota is Lakota. This was certainly true in western China where the native Uighurs have been inundated with Han Chinese who are given the best jobs and substantial incentives to relocate.

"China has been creating a Potemkin Village in Beijing to put on a good face for the 2008 Olympics. One problem that they can't hide is their horrendous environmental pollution. You can almost eat the air in Beijing. I would not want to be a track and field athlete at the 2008 games.

"Engagement must mean something more than letting China get away with murder (or significant human rights violations) just because American companies are entranced with the possibility with selling to 1 billion plus Chinese. Most of what American companies produce in China is sold outside the country, not in it. Global trade is more of a mixed blessing than most free market conservatives are willing to admit."

China and Human Rights Violations

By Susan Stabile

I'm with Rick in applauding H. Res. 821. However, at the end of his post, Rick suggests that engagement may be a better course than condemnation.

The problem with that is we have had years of engagement with little positive effect. China pledged when it was bidding to host the 2008 Olympics was that it would improve human rights. It clearly has not made good on that promise. Indeed, as the House findings suggest, things have gotten worse there. China's big achievement (although this was prior to its most recent crackdown on Tibetan dissidents) was that is was dropped from the list of the 10 most egregious human rights violators, which simply says it is not quite as bad as places like Myanmar and the Sudan. That's not much to brag about.

I'm not sure I think boycotting the Olympics is that best course of action, although I think the decision to allow China to host the Olympics was a bad one. I admit to being less than unbiased on this subject; the time I spent living in Tibetan communities has made me somwhat sensitive to China's treatment of the Tibetans in particular. But, from any standpoint, I think it hard to come to a conclusion other than that the engagement strategy has been a failure.

Bill Stuntz on America's Huge Prison Population

By Michael Perry

Here.

H. Res. 821 on China and religious freedom

By Rick Garnett

Rep. Thad McCotter, of Michigan, has introduced H. Res. 821, "Condemning Communist China's discrimination, harassment, imprisonment, torture, and execution of its prisoners of conscience". Here's the bill text. Here're the opening paragraphs:

Whereas according to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom's (`USCIRF') 2007 Annual Report, `All religious groups in China face some restrictions, monitoring, and surveillance, ... and religious freedom conditions deteriorated for communities not affiliated with one of the 7 government-approved religious organizations, ... and those closely associated with ethnic minority groups. Religious communities particularly targeted include ... `underground' Roman Catholics, `house church' Protestants, and various spiritual movements such as Falun Gong';

Whereas according to the USCIRF 2007 Annual Report, in Communist China, `There continue to be reports that prominent religious leaders and laypersons alike are confined, tortured, `disappeared', imprisoned, or subjected to other forms of ill treatment on account of their religion or belief';

Whereas according the United States Congressional-Executive Commission on China's 2007 Annual Report, `The Commission noted a more visible trend in harassment and repression of unregistered Protestants for alleged cult involvement starting in mid-2006 ...' and `an increase in harassment against unregistered Catholics starting in 2004 and an increase in pressure on registered clerics beginning in 2005';

Whereas according to the United States Department of State's 2006 Country Report on Human Rights practices in China, `Government officials continued to deny holding any political prisoners, asserting that authorities detained persons not for their political or religious views, but because they violated the law; however, the authorities continued to confine citizens for reasons related to politics and religion';

Whereas according to Chapter II Article 36 of the constitution of Communist China, `No state organ, public organization or individual may compel citizens to believe in, or not to believe in, any religion; nor may they discriminate against citizens who believe in, or do not believe in, any religion';

Whereas according to Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, `Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance'; . . .

I don't know how "politic" this kind of stuff is. Still, I say "bravo". Also, I don't know whether it makes sense to boycott the 2008 Olympics entirely, or if the cause of human rights in China is better served through "engagement" (or, "massive transfers of money through consumer spending") or condemnation. At the end of the day, perhaps the best course is the former. Still, this is a powerful image:

Charles Taylor on religion and "critique"

By Rick Garnett

Here is Charles Taylor, over at The Immanent Frame:

What are we to think of the idea, entertained by Rawls for a time, that one can legitimately ask of a religiously and philosophically diverse democracy that everyone deliberate in a language of reason alone, leaving their religious views in the vestibule of the public sphere? The tyrannical nature of this demand was rapidly appreciated by Rawls, to his credit. But we ought to ask why the proposition arose in the first place. . . .

The state can be neither Christian nor Muslim nor Jewish; but by the same token it should also be neither Marxist, not Kantian, not Utilitarian. Of course, the democratic state will end up voting laws which (in the best case) reflect the actual convictions of its citizens, which will be either Christian, or Muslim, etc, through the whole gamut of views held in a modern society. But the decisions can’t be framed in a way which gives special recognition to one of these views. This is not easy to do; the lines are hard to draw; and they must always be drawn anew. But such is the nature of the enterprise which is the modern secular state. And what better alternative is there for diverse democracies?

Now the notion that state neutrality is basically a response to diversity has trouble making headway among “secular” people in the West, who remain oddly fixated on religion, as something strange and perhaps even threatening. This stance is fed by all the conflicts of liberal states with religion, past and present, but also by a specifically epistemic distinction: religiously informed thought is somehow less rational than purely “secular” reasoning. The attitude has a political ground (religion as threat), but also an epistemological one (religion as a faulty mode of reason). . . .

There's a lot more. At Balkinization, Andy Koppelman has posted some thoughts in response:

Taylor’s analysis implies that absolute neutrality is unattainable. Any state position will rely on some common ground, and no common ground is universal.

The answer to this puzzle, I think, is to note that there exist a large variety of possible modes of neutrality. The absolute neutrality toward all conceptions of the good proposed by Ronald Dworkin and Bruce Ackerman are only one available flavor of neutrality.

The range of possible justifications for any version of neutrality is broad. The following is a crude taxonomy of typical strategies of argument. It probably does not exhaust the possibilities, and arguments for neutrality typically rely on more than one of these moves.

One strategy is the argument from moral pluralism, which holds that there are many good ways of life and that the state should not prefer any of these to any other. Another is the argument from futility, which holds that some perfectionist projects are doomed to failure. The argument from incompetence holds that the state should be neutral about things that it is likely to get wrong. The argument from civil peace proposes that some issues be removed from the political agenda in order to avoid destructive controversy. Finally, the argument from dignity argues that some political projects fail to properly respect citizens’ capacity for free choice.

Different formulations of these arguments have persuaded different people. Everyone probably accepts most of these five arguments for neutrality, at least in some form, as applied to some question. Conceptual analysis cannot, of course, say whether or in what form you ought to accept them. There is probably an infinite number of ways in which any of them could be formulated, and an infinite number of ways in which those formulations could be combined. Shifting from any formulation of each rationale to a slightly different one will probably yield a slightly different prescription for neutrality. Neutrality is not a fixed point, but a multidimensional space of possible positions.

Both of these posts are well worth reading in full.

Friday, April 25, 2008

John Green (Pew Forum) on Catholics and Obama

By Thomas Berg

Apropos the Sisk/Shiffrin exhange on Obama's problems with Catholic voters, here are thoughts on the subject from religion and voting expert John Green of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

Spring and Fall and the Catholic Vote in the Presidential Race

By Greg Sisk

In response to my post charting the trends in the Catholic vote during the Democratic Presidential primaries, Steve Shiffrin argues that “[w]hat the Democratic primaries show is that Obama loses the Catholic vote to Clinton. That data shows little about how Obama would do with the Catholic vote against McCain.” I appreciate his kind response to my posting (it's nice to know that someone actually read it), and I acknowledge his forceful point.

Looking at the data alone, Steve is right — mostly. How Democratic primary voters allocate themselves among Democratic candidates would not ordinarily tell us much of anything about how those Democratic primary voters would respond to a later general election between one of those Democratic candidates and the Republican contender. Still, looking only at the data in this remarkable case, the lop-sided distribution of the numbers — showing Senator Obama losing the Catholic vote by margins that now exceed 40 points — and the persistence and stability of similar numbers from state to state do suggest something quite powerful and enduring is at work here. An empirical scholar seeing such a dramatic slope of the data in one direction would hypothesize that a significant variable (or set of variables) is at work, some powerful influence that may serve as an explanatory model.

While the data by themselves are only descriptive — showing, as Steve rightly says, only that Senator Barack Obama loses the Catholic vote to Senator Hillary Clinton — the insistent and more interesting question is what has caused these sizeable loses. What has influenced Catholic voters to turn away from Obama in such overwhelming numbers and will those significant factors translate into influences on voting trends in the different context of the fall election? On this question of influence, we move away from empirical analysis (absent a better set of well-measured variables and a better specified model with which to work than is available through exit polling results at present) and into the realm of interpretation and judgment. Here our opinions and impressions, which may be better or less informed, will play a substantial role in our evaluation of what is happening on the ground in the Democratic primaries — and why.

So I’d invite our readers to ask the following questions and answer them for yourselves, based on your own observations of the candidates, information about the campaign, and knowledge of the Catholic electorate (which of course is hardly monolithic, as Steve rightly says):

• What are the variables giving rise to Clinton’s huge victories over Obama among Catholic voters? Are Catholic voters powerfully attracted toward Clinton, meaning that these primary results reflect little aversion toward Obama (and thus tell us little about how these voters will respond in the general election should Clinton then drop out of the picture)? Or are Catholic primary voters strongly turned-off by Obama, finding him unpalatable as a candidate?

• If it is the latter, are these causes of alienation from Obama likely to persist into the fall election? Indeed, is it possible that additional factors relevant to this estrangement will emerge or be emphasized in the fall campaign, factors that were not fully explored in the Democratic primaries or on which there was little contrast between the Democratic candidates?

• And, finally, even if the Catholic margin against Obama’s candidacy is a direct rejection of him as a candidate for reasons that have continuing resonance in the general election, is Senator John McCain likely to fare better on those factors and become an acceptable (or at least less objectionable) alternative for these voters?

If the answers to these interpretive questions are unfavorable for Obama, to a greater or lesser degree, then the large margins of defeat for Obama among Catholic voters in the primary may well presage a dismal outcome for him in the November election (at least among Catholic voters, who usually side with the winner).

In my prior postings (here and here), I’ve offered my own tentative analysis, impressions, and speculations on some of these matters. I won’t repeat that here. Yes, I do agree that every prognostication in such a dynamic phenomenon as a political campaign is risky, and thus my attempts to extrapolate from the data into the future are fairly subject to debate and disagreement or dismissal. Still, if those in the Obama campaign believe his landslide losses among Catholic voters in the primaries carry no message for the fall election, I gotta tell ya — I think they are whistling past the graveyard.

Greg Sisk

No St. Thomas Law Public-Service Credit for Work at Planned Parenthood

By Thomas Berg

This week our dean at St. Thomas Law, Tom Mengler, ruled that students seeking to satisfy our 50-hour public-service requirement for graduation cannot get credit for hours volunteered at Planned Parenthood, even if the specific work they do is not abortion or contraception services. The Cardinal Newman Society (CNS) applauds the decision here. I'm not trying to curry favor with my dean when say that I (along with lots of others) applaud it too. Since some of Tom's explanatory email has already been quoted by the CNS, I think it's best just to post the whole email and let it speak for itself.

Tom B.

++++++

Dear friends,

I write to resolve a community dispute regarding a decision made yesterday by our Public Service Board (PSB). Yesterday, the PSB voted to authorize public service credit to a student who would like to volunteer at Planned Parenthood. Since then, Dean Organ and I have received a number of emails or visits from students and faculty questioning the PSB’s decision, as well as questioning some of the language and processes under which the PSB functions.

For now, I would like to set aside for another day some of the broader questions that members of this community, including members of the PSB, have raised with respect to modifying the PSB guidelines. These Guidelines were adopted by the faculty and can be amended, therefore, only by a favorable vote of the faculty.

I do think it is important, however, for me to treat as a formal appeal to the Dean the specific concerns that many from this community have voiced regarding the PSB’s decision to certify volunteer work at Planned Parenthood as “qualifying public service.” [I'm omitting a short discussion here about the appeal procedures.--TB]

As the PSB Guidelines make clear, they are designed to encourage an ethic of servant-leadership within this community. The Guidelines also clarify that qualifying public service is restricted to “any type of volunteer work that is consistent with the mission of the School of Law and the University of St. Thomas.” Not surprisingly, this broad encouragement of public service activity places few restrictions on the types of volunteerism for which our law school community should be congratulated.

One restriction, however, flows directly from the University of St. Thomas as a Catholic University, and of the School of Law as an academic unit that seeks to live its Catholic identity. At this University, there is helpful precedent. Nine years ago in 1999, Father Dennis Dease as President of this University decided an issue very similar to the one that presents itself to our law school community. Father Dease denied externship credit to an undergraduate student who wished to volunteer at Planned Parenthood on grounds that St. Thomas cannot endorse -- with academic credit -- student service at an organization whose mission is fundamentally in conflict with a core value of a Catholic University. Because Planned Parenthood is a leader in the abortions rights movement and because opposition to abortion is one of the core values of the Catholic faith, Father Dease refused to authorize the extension of academic credit to academic or service work at Planned Parenthood.

I regard Father Dease’s decision in 1999 as controlling -- and for this reason I must reverse the decision of the PSB. Volunteer service at Planned Parenthood, whatever the nature of that service, advances the mission of Planned Parenthood, an organization whose mission is fundamentally at odds with a core value of the Catholic Church. Such service does not constitute “qualifying public service” for purposes of satisfying the School of Law’s graduation requirement of 50 hours of public service.

I understand and appreciate that my decision in this matter will be met with mixed reaction. At the School of Law, we have set a course that attempts to live out our Catholic identity in a way that, on the one hand, is true to this identity and, on the other hand, is welcoming and embracing of those who differ. I regard this decision as an effort to walk that path. Because our Catholic identity begins with the value of extending respect and dignity to every individual, rarely should it require us to make decisions that cause unhappiness or discontent. This is one of those rare circumstances, however, in which living out our Catholic nature as a Catholic law school may cause a difference of opinion and feelings among students, faculty, and staff.

Finally, I would like to make clear that my decision should not be read as critical of the fine work of the PSB. The student members of the PSB have consistently worked effectively and tirelessly to administer our public service requirement, to make public service opportunities available to this community, and to encourage all of us to become servant leaders. With regard to this particular issue, the PSB debated deliberately and reflectively on their roles and attempted to reach a decision that was true to our Catholic identity and encouraged each of us to draw on our own faith and values to become professionals of character and integrity. I commend the PSB on the seriousness with which it undertook to resolve a difficult question.

Sincerely,

Dean Mengler

Racism Charges Dog Planned Parenthood

By Michael Scaperlanda

"Dr. Alveda King, niece of the late Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., has called Planned Parenthood a "racist organization" with a "racist agenda." She and others in the pro-life black community are calling for Congress to terminate all federal funding to Planned Parenthood.

Some apologists within the black community compare the services provided by Planned Parenthood to "genocide." Even though African-Americans comprise 13% of the

United States

population, they represent one-third of abortions. While genocide may prove too strong of a term, it does cause concern that African Americans are reproducing below replacement level and that partly due to the high rate of abortions."

For the rest of this article, which also contains an interesting conversation between a UCLA student and a Planned Parenthood employee, can be found here. For another recent story on the subject, click here.

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Ethics of Immigration

By Michael Scaperlanda

The May 2008 First Things contains an exchange between me and William Chip on immigration. Here is how FT's Jody Bottum describes it:

"Surprisingly, some of First Things’ readers prefer sharp-edged commentary on the public issues of the day, and if sharp edges are what you want, the May issue features “The Ethics of Immigration,” a strong exchange between William Chip and Michael Scaperlanda. “Is a country that cannot handle its responsibilities to its native workforce in the face of massive economic migration at least capable of fulfilling its moral obligations toward the migrants themselves?” asks Chip. “Data from reliable government sources indicate that we are manifestly incapable of ensuring the successful social and economic assimilation of the enormous numbers that are actually arriving today.”

But Scaperlanda replies: “William Chip’s disagreement with the Church (and me) is not over faith or morals but over economic analysis. . . . If I am correct in my assessment, America continues to be one of those prosperous nations with an obligation to welcome the stranger journeying here in search of economic security.”"

The issue also contains an excellent essay by Cardinal Dulles entitled "The Freedom of Theology," which is relevant to our discussions on academic freedom. More on that subject later.