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"The Case for Food Stamps"

“The Case for Food Stamps”

By Christopher D. Cook for the Los Angeles Times (May 24, 2013)

Slashing food aid makes no sense in humanitarian, economic or public health terms.

“To hear Republicans — and some Democrats — in Congress talk, you’d think food-stamp dollars just disappear into a black hole. The prevailing debate in the Senate and House versions of the farm bill, which contains funding for food stamps (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP), is over how much to cut. But when more than 15% of Americans remain impoverished, slashing food assistance for the poor makes no sense in humanitarian, economic or public health terms.

The House bill, which is gaining steam after passage by the Agriculture Committee last week, is the more draconian of the two. It would chop $20 billion over 10 years from SNAP, and its changes to food-stamp eligibility rules would cut off vital sustenance for about 2 million low-income people, including seniors and families with children. According to the Congressional Budget Office, 210,000 children in low-income families would lose their free school meals under the House plan.

The Senate version would cut far less, though a final figure will be hashed out by a conference committee in June. But the attacks on food assistance for the poor are deeply misguided and are only going to get worse. The proposed House budget from Rep. Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) seeks to gut food stamps by another $135 billion through block grants to states.

Yet government and other studies clearly show that food stamps are among the most wisely spent public dollars, providing essential nourishment and public health benefits to low-income people as well as economic stimulus to rural and urban communities. These are returns on spending that you won’t find in the corporate tax giveaways and military spending boondoggles routinely supported by both political parties, even as they scream for austerity when it comes to slashing ‘entitlements’ and food assistance for the poor.

The Trust for America’s Health, a health advocacy organization that focuses on disease prevention, warned recently of the consequences of cutting food stamps: ‘If the nation continues to underfund vital public health programs, we will never achieve long-term fiscal stability, as it will be impossible to help people get/stay healthy, happy and productive.’

Indeed, according to a 2011 study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, ‘research shows that low-income households participating in SNAP have access to more food energy, protein and a broad array of essential vitamins and minerals in their home food supply compared to eligible nonparticipants.’ [….]

In another key finding, the National Academy of Sciences reported that food stamps helped lift nearly 4 million Americans out of poverty in 2010, while improving basic food and economic security for millions more.

Cutting food stamps also means reducing economic stimulus and job creation, precisely what’s needed to help reduce poverty and hunger. The 2011 USDA study found that food-stamp dollars ‘ripple throughout the economies of the community, state and nation,’ creating multiple levels of economic stimulus. The study also found that ‘every $5 in new SNAP benefits generates a total of $9.20 in community spending.’ Each additional food-stamp dollar generates another 17 to 47 cents of additional food purchases. [….]

In the farm bills moving through Congress, the politics of austerity are again being used to undermine food assistance for the poor. As the House and Senate debate how many dollars and people to cut from food stamps, their members should consider the daily realities the poor face. Most are living on a few dollars a day for food and, at best, work in minimum-wage jobs that barely cover rent. Cutting off these basic supports for those at the bottom of our economy is unwise, counterproductive and shameful.”

Christopher D. Cook is a journalist and the author of Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis (2006).

Please note: Inexplicaby, Typepad has twice failed to post my reply to the first comment to this post so I am making it here. First, the “case for Food Stamps” was not made by me, but by the author of the editorial, Christopher Cook, although I am in wholehearted agreement with his views. Second, the discussion and debate in Congress is not about possible alternatives to the Food Stamp program but about possible cuts to this particular Welfare State provision of food aid to the poor. Personally, I would prefer a Guaranteed Annual Income (or Basic Income Grant) scheme, but that is not what is at issue here. Finally, and assuming what is intended by the garbled and inarticulate word “gummint” is the term government, in a democratic welfare regime (be it liberal, corporatist, or social democratic), the payment of taxes does not amount to theft, either literally or figuratively. To believe otherwise, evidences a failure in  understanding the nature of modern democratic governance, in the nature of taxation, and in the role of economics in solving collective action problems in a democratic polity (in this case, as a modest principle of interpersonal ethics writ large so as to discharge our moral duties to vulnerable and thus dependent others) wherein the function of markets depends on the laws of the State. In any case, as Robert E. Goodin persuasively argued in Reasons for Welfare: The Political Theory of the Welfare State (1988), those who advocate market principles will find it difficult if not impossible to avoid at the same time committing themselves to a least a minimal welfare state, as the welfare state addresses well-known historical instances of market failure while at the same time affording new opportunities for those are vulnerable and dependent to participate in markets. The welfare state in fact serves to safeguard several fundamental preconditions of the market in Goodin’s argument, as markets presuppose, first, secure property rights, second, that not all goods or things will be subect to the marketplace, “for there to one sector that is governed by the laws of the market, there must be some other sector that is not.” Third, markets presume  or presuppose that its participants are essentially independent (or free) agents: “A variety of arguments (political, sociological, economic, and ultimately moral) converge on the conclusion that dependent agents [the converse of the state of independence or the state of insufficient freedom] ought to be beyond the play of market forces. In order for people to participate in the market as independent agents, there must be some nonmarket sector to meet the sorts of needs that would otherwise render those people dependent, and hence unqualified for market relations.” In short, welfare state provision like Food Stamps renders otherwise dependent individuals substantially independent of those market transactions that created or exacerbate their vulnerability (and increase the likelihood of exploitation), while enhancing their potential or capacity for some forms of market participation.   

Christians Must Confront Scientific Illiteracy

Where science is concerned, responsible Christians are caught in the vice grip of two extremes.  On the one hand, there is the defiant and willful ignorance of persons like Congressman Paul Broun (R-Ga.), who famously declared during last fall's election cycle that "evolution and the big bang theory are lies straight from the pit of hell." And on the other hand, there is the cool atheism of someone like Richard Dawkins, contentedly dismissing the whole of religious experience as the magical thinking of the great superstitious mass of humankind.

Christians must provide effective witness against both extremes.  But before Christianity can engage atheism it must first address the scientific illiteracy in its own house.  For the greatest danger Christianity confronts at the present moment is not incipient persecution, but increasing marginalization and irrelevance.  If Christians cannot engage reasonably and responsibly with science, there will be no place for them in the public life of advanced societies.

I recently had my attention called to the work of Ken Ham. I must confess that I had not heard of him, but I soon learned that he is a figure of some influence in fundamentalist circles.  He was born in Australia, where he took an undergraduate degree in environmental biology.  He has since immigrated to the United States, settling in Cincinnati.

He expounds a doctrine known as "young earth creationism," which promotes the view that the first chapters of Genesis must be seen as scientifically valid.  The Earth was created just 6,000 years ago.  Dinosaurs and human beings walked together in those early days.

"The Bible,' Ham declares, "clearly teaches that God created [Earth] in six literal, 24-hour days a few thousand years ago" (Ken Ham, "The New Answers Book, No. 1," p. 26).  He then twists and turns all of the tools and findings of modern science to support this thesis.  Radiocarbon dating is unreliable, Ham asserts.  When "a scientist's interpretation of data does not match the clear meaning of the text in the Bible, we should never reinterpret the Bible" (p. 78).  What about the "ice ages"?  We need to be vigilant against those "secular/uniformitarian scientists" who understand glacial periods in terms of hundreds of thousands or millions of years (pp. 212-213).

Creation scientists, however, know better.  At best, there was only one ice age, directly after Noah's Flood, and it lasted for only a few hundred years (p. 214).  There never was a big bang (p. 245), and the speed of light is variable, meaning that accurate dating of the universe is impossible (p. 247).

It is easy to dismiss this stuff, but there is real danger in treating it lightly.  In the secular imagination, this fantasy view of the world is fast becoming the public face of Christianity.  Certainly, Ken Ham is a respected figure in his own community. He recently received an honorary degree from Liberty University.  His website promotes a mix of pseudo-science and survivalism.  (Check out the blog entry, "Noah the Super Prepper," May 16, 2013, AnswersinGenesis.org, for a cheerful mix of both strains of thought.)  In 2007, he opened the Creation Museum in northern Kentucky, just outside of Cincinnati.  In its first three years of operation, the Museum received more than 1 million visitors.  Even though attendance has recently declined, more than a quarter-million annually still visit it.

Christians have not always been such enemies of science.  Aside from the occasional embarrassment, such as the persecution of Galileo, science often thrived in explicitly Christian settings.  In early Christianity, there was the Bishop Synesius (373- ca. 414).  In his student days, Synesius, with his pagan instructor, the woman philosopher Hypatia, he explored the deep mathematical structure of the universe.

Then there is Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543).  A brilliant man and a Catholic monk, Copernicus held important positions in both secular and ecclesiastical government, all the while writing voluminously.  A sophisticated economic thinker, Copernicus was the first to propose that increases in the money supply have a tendency to drive price inflation.  But what he is remembered for today is his heliocentric theory of the solar system.  Through patient observation and calculation, Copernicus displaced the earth from the center of things, reorienting the way we view everything and thereby ushering in the modern world.

Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) was an Augustinian monk and professor of natural philosophy and eventually became the abbot of his monastery.  And today he is recalled for his path-breaking studies of pea plants which showed the existence of recessive and dominant genes, an essential cornerstone of modern genetics.

But of them all, my own favorite is the unjustly obscure Georges Lemaitre (1894-1966), the "father of the big bang."  A Belgian priest, Fr. Lemaitre did his graduate work in theoretical physics at Cambridge University and Harvard. In 1927, while still a junior lecturer at the Catholic University of Louvain, he proposed an expansionary theory of the universe at odds with the then-prevailing belief that the universe had always existed in a steady state.  Four years later, in 1931, he asserted that the entire universe began with what he called a "cosmic egg" or "primeval atom" -- a theory that Sir Fred Hoyle derisively dismissed as "the big bang."  Later that same year, Fr. Lemaitre argued that not only was the universe expanding, its expansion was accelerating in speed.  While it has taken decades, Lemaitre's theories have been confirmed in every major particular.

This is the heritage that Christians must reclaim and reassert.  Science and religion are not opposites.  Faith and reason can be reconciled in truth.  And Christians, furthermore, must police their ranks.  When someone like Congressman Broun -- who sits on the House Committee on Science and Technology -- denounces scientific knowledge in the name of misguided fundamentalism, Christians should be the first to call him out.

Cross-posted at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-j-reid-jr/christians-must-confront-scientific-illiteracy_b_3307516.html

For God's Sake, Mr. President, Reclaim Your Spine.

Both Patrick's recent post marking the birthday of Malcom X, and Steve's post before it questioning just how 'scandalous' the IRS pseudoscandal really is, invite some reflection on President Obama's reaction to the mentioned pseudoscandal thus far.  In my humble opinion, that reaction has been the very contrary of what it ought to be, and this might owe partly to a handicap that many have long suggested the President might labor under.  If that perception of handicap does indeed partly explain the President's weak showing right now, I very much hope he will recognize that he has nothing to worry about, then reclaim his spine and resume his hard work for the nation.  Let me explain.

To begin with, let us refresh ourselves on the backdrop against which the President has recently professed 'outrage' and accepted the resignation of acting commissioner Steven Miller at the IRS.  There is so much irony, injustice, and outright lying in these latest Republican and 'Tea Party' attacks on the IRS and the President that it is difficult to know where to begin in demonstrating their empirical falsehood and sheer venality. 

First, note that the head of the IRS at the time in question (2010-2012) was a Bush appointee who, as a Republican, had much more reason to 'target' Tea Party groups for scrutiny concerning their right to tax subsidization for non-qualifying, avowedly political activities than did any Democrat.  For the 'Tea Party' circa 2010, recall, was to the Republican Party much what Ralph Nader was to Al Gore circa 2000 - a spoiler.   

Second, note that huge numbers of these new 'Tea Party' groups - groups named, by the way, lest we forget, for a famous act of criminal vandalism and property-destruction in the name of an anti-tax protest - began suddenly claiming tax exempt status during the time in question, requiring IRS verification of the groups' charitable rather than political status.  Even if deliberations at the IRS over how best to meet these new verification needs antedated by some months the actual influx of applications, as suggested by the Washington Post late last week, this would hardly be surprising given how likely it clearly became that such screening would be necessary once these groups began forming in 2009 and the Supreme Court's infamous Citizens United decision virtually invited them to begin seeking 501(c)(4) status.  

Third, House Republicans had by this time cut funding for the IRS to the point (check the numbers - they're shocking) that such verification was nearly impossible without using streamlined 'profiling' methods commonly employed in law enforcement - methods, by the way, that self-professed 'conservatives' regularly endorse when it is African Americans or putative 'Islamist terrorists' who are to be profiled rather than racist rightwing hate groups and gun-toting tax-evaders.  This fund-cutting of course followed a familiar pattern of Republican slash and burn tactics where the drowing of government in Grover Norquist's bathtub is concerned.  Indeed, that other preposterous pseudoscandal which has plagued news outlets in recent months - 'Benghazi!' - itself stems directly from the Republican House's slashing of funding for US embassy needs abroad, and is itself being used now to 'target' the front-runner for 2016's forthcoming Presidential Campaign, former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. 

(And this is of course not to mention the recently revealed real scandal, to the effect that Republican operatives actually doctored White House documents which they sent to ABC News last week with a view to slandering the Obama Administration - why is this not being 'investigated'?) 

Fourth, and as mysteriously unmentioned by 'conservatives,' the IRS used the same methods to screen for progressive, not just 'Tea Party' groups, while Republican Senator McConnell is on record as claiming that such progressive groups should be specifically 'targeted.'  You can watch and listen to McConnell on this point here, at 3.12 minutes in. 

Fifth, the IRS ultimately (and to my mind, bizarrely) approved the tax-exempt status of all of the 'Tea Party' groups whose applications for tax subsidization it reviewed, while denying that status to some of the progressive groups that applied (just as Republican Senator McConnell recommended).  You can read about that in painstaking detail on the front page of yesterday's Sunday NYT. 

Sixth, as we all know, Republicans have fought the President at every turn to prevent his restoring equity to the tax code in the name of both justice and budget-balancing.  So devoted have they been to this cause that they have actually made history by forcing the nation's first-ever credit downgrade by a bond rating agency in 2011, all in the name of economically illiterate 'austerity' policies that have brought Europe to virtual ruin.  The Republicans finally lost this ongoing battle decisively in November 2012, yet they are now on record as being willing to pursue their ends, in the immortal words of Malcolm X, 'by any means necessary' - e.g., through appropriations refusals and false 'scandal' manufacture - when they lose, as they increasingly are doing now, at the ballot box. 

Seventh, the same holds true in respect of the President's signature health insurance reform legislation, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010, which Republicans have now voted 37 times to undo or 'repeal,' and which is administered in part by the IRS.  Indeed, that the latest attack on the IRS is simply a new front in this ceaseless guerilla war against res judicata and the ACA is essentially admitted both by Mr. McConnell in yesterday's Meet the Press interview linked to above, and in a host of similar Sunday morning speaches by and talkshow interviews with other Republican legislators that aired yesterday.  (Not a single Republican speaker or interviewee in recent days has failed to highlight the shrunken IRS's role in administering their favorite 'big government power grab,' 'Obamacare.')

And finally eighth, the Republicans are also on record as having explicitly adopted a srategy, immediately following the 2008 election and during the months preceeding the President's taking office, of preventing the President's accomplishing anything at all while in office - even things that they themselves might agree to be good for the country - simply in order to enhance their own future electoral prospects.  Republicans have even regularly admitted this, apparently taking a chortling pride in it, as can be read about in further detail here.  This is of course fully as astonishing as was Republican willingness to ruin the nation's credit rating.  It is nothing short of a clucking, Cheshire cat style admission of intent to sabotage the nation itself in the name of future partisan prospects - the very contrary of that repudiation of 'faction' which so characterized the ideals of the Founders whom Republicans and Tea Party types comically purport to admire and follow.  

Add all of this together, throw in now-routine Republican filibuster abuse in the Senate and attempts to prevent voting during electoral seasons in racial minority districts, and you see at once what the latest Republican pseudo-scandals are really about.  They are about nothing more than continuing, systematically planned Republican 'dirty tricks' in the name of undermining national tax policy, health care policy, economic policy more broadly and even the democratic  process itself.  They are simply the latest tactic, in other words, in the ongoing Republican strategy of systematic sabotage. 

Against this backdrop, I submit, the only real offense of which the President is guilty is either Pollyannish blindness, low energy, or cowardice.  And this takes me to the putative 'handicap' to which I referred above. 

Why in heaven's name did the President presumably ask for and certainly accept the resignation of a decent man, Mr. Miller, over at the understaffed, underfunded IRS last week?  Why did he stand by in silence while grandstanding and outright lying Republican House members publically humiliated this decent public servant in bad faith showtrial 'hearings' last week?  And why does the President not change course now, now that Republican intentions are so transparent? 

Many will recall that, during the 2008 electoral cycle, some commentators worried that then Senator Obama would have to take care to avoid evoking the 'angry black man' stereotype in his campaigning, and that this need to appear 'more Martin than Malcolm' might render him vulnerable to unscrupulous campaign tactics on the part of the McCain campaign.  After all, it would require a form of unilateral disarmament.  This worry became all the more manifest when some began attacking the then Senator for his past attendance at the church of the so-called 'firebrand' Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and when the self-congratulatorily know-nuthin' Republican Vice Presidential candidate began suggesting that Senator 'Barack Hussain Obama' liked to 'pal[ ] around with terrorists' such as the educator William Ayres. 

While the then future President fortunately weathered this ugly storm in 2008, during his first term - especially during its first half - he seemed often to continue to act as if he still had to bend over backwards to seem more Martin than Malcolm, even after he had long since come by many to be considered 'post-racial.'  So, for example, very shortly after the Fox 'News' clown Glenn Beck began relentlessly slandering White House 'Green Energy Czar' Van Jones in 2009, the President accepted Jones's resignation.  Then, shortly after perennially angry Andrew Breitbart began slandering Shirley Sherrod of the Department of Agriculture the following year, the same happened.  And of course, all the while, the President continually sought to demonstrate his cooperative and compromising spirit by preemptively surrendering all of his principal druthers ahead of all negotiations with Republicans on matters of financial reform, health insurance reform, tax policy and budget policy more generally.        

None of this placating and preemptively compromising behavior, of course, availed the President - or the causes of justice and national economic recovery - anything.  For the President was dealing with nothing more than political boors - bestial types who view good faith and friendliness as no more than weakness inviting more bullying.  And happily, for a time, the President seemed to have figured this out. 

Upon discovering that Breitbart had outright lied about Ms. Sherrod, for example, the President's Department of Agriculture offered her a new position.  And as the 'Occupy' movement proved it safe to discuss plutocracy and worsening inequality again just as the 2012 electoral cycle began picking up in late 2011, the President grew increasingly vocal in his Teddy-Roosevelt-channeling commitment to restoring the American middle class, even if this meant holding firm on allowing some of the profoundly unjust and profligate Bush era tax cuts for plutocrats to expire.  And then, best of all, upon decisively winning reelection this past November, the President seemed virtually a new man, ready to push hard for what he professed to believe and no longer worried about latent racialist fears in 'post-racial' America. 

What, then, has happened?  Why do we seem to be right back to 2010 only four months into the President's new term?  

I confess, I do not know.  Perhaps the President is tired.  Or perhaps he is disgusted and demoralized by the recent failure of new gun 'background check' regulation to get past yet another Senate Republican abuse of the philibuster.  What ever the cause, I think we must all pray - and now urge - that the President return to his January 2013 mentality at once.  He should not be professing 'surprise' and 'outrage' at the IRS, or acting as an accomplice to venal Republicans seeking to gut that essential government instrumentality - and with it, his own signature ACA - even further than they have done since the 1990s.  He should not be throwing Mr. Miller under the bus of grotesque Republican posturing and bullying.  And, finally, he should not be acting as if he were aloof or 'above the fray.'  'Transformational' leaders don't duck frays; they win them - precisely because their causes are just. 

What then should the President do?  And what should the other forces of light - in this case, the Democrats - do?  I think it's very simple.  They should 'come clean with the American people,' as all of those ersatz-'outraged' Republicans often put it, and call out the current Republican tactics for what they are.  The President should hold a frank, thorough discussion with the public, in the form of a long address, interview, press conference, or some combination thereof, in which he begins with Mr. McConnell's first articulation of the Republican scorched earth policy immediately after the 2008 election and proceeds from episode to episode, demonstrating in stark detail the sabotage policy that has been at work in literally every Republican action and tactic of the past four years. 

He should sprinkle the discussion with all telling numbers - number of IRS employees in 1998 and now, number of resorts to the philibuster, number of agency posts and judgeships still unfilled, magnitude of cuts to agency budgets, amounts of campaign donations from sectional interests to Republican candidates for office, etc., etc., etc.  He should paint the entire picture in bold strokes and with full narrative sweep, finally closing with both a demand that Republicans begin actually joining in governing rather than sabotaging all governance and a request that the public join him in this demand.  Call the Republican tactics for what they are.  And do it every single hour of every single day until it becomes the subject of the national discussion, as well it ought.  For this is the scandal - literally the only true scandal.  As it has been since late November of 2008. 

Meanwhile, and in this same spirit, the Democratic Senate should complement the President's efforts by holding 'hearings' of its own to supplement and correct the Republican House's bad faith showtrial proceedings.  It should call before it all private political 'operatives' and 'consultants' with whom the Republican 'leadership' has met since late 2008, requesting enlightenment as to every detail of the scorched earth, propaganda and sabotage strategy that has been Republican 'governance' policy since losing the 2008 election.  This should be easy, in view, once again, of how proud these self-satisfied creatures seem ever to be in discussing the successes thus far of their tactics. 

The Senate should also, of course, conduct a very public inquest into how Republican operatives came literally to doctor White House documents released to ABC, with a view to falsely incriminating the Administration in connection with the 'Benghazi' nonscandal.  And it should commence at once to change the philibuster rules to put an end once and for all to antimajoritarianism in the Senate.  Again, the goal should be to show all of this to constitute the scandal.  For again, that is precisely what it is.  The Republican sabotage strategy, at work since 2008, is the scandal.  The only scandal.         

All of this, it seems to me, should be done at once, while there is still time to salvage the first half of the President's second term.  And the President should coordinate with the Democrats in both chambers on all of it, while also compiling a comprehensive agenda of all helpful measures that the Administration can constitutionally take without antidemocratic House approval (recall that even the House is now undemocratic, inasmuch as gerrymandered districts yielded a slim Republican majority notwithstanding over 1.4 million more votes' having been cast for Democrats than Republicans).  It should also go without saying that the President and the Democratic Caucus should now be working quite energetically to ensure a return of the House to the Democrats - the one party that still believes in governance - in 2014, so that the process of full economic recovery can be well and truly completed before the President leaves office.  Only then will his presidency be truly 'transformational.' 

Oh, and finally, lest I forget: the President should rescind his acceptance of Mr. Miller's resignation from the IRS - and offer a new position while at it to Van Jones for good measure.  (What better symbol of his finally having learned his lesson?)  Here's hoping he does this 'with all deliberate speed' - if possible, as early as tomorrow morning.     

Teresa Forcades, the radical Catalan nun on a mission ...

"Sister Teresa Forcades is one of Catalonia's foremost political figures, but uniquely for a faith-led figure in Spain, her ideology is feminist and left-wing. Against a backdrop of continued economic contraction and austerity, she spoke to the Guardian about the need for an alternative to capitalism and criticised the misogyny of the Catholic church."

You can watch the six-minute video about Sister Forcades here.

Malcolm X (May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965)

Today is the birthday of Malcolm X. By way of celebration, I leave you with three provocative books discussing his life and ideas:

• Cone, James. Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare? (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1992).
• Marable, Manning. Malcolm X: A Life of Revolution (New York: Viking, 2011).
• Wolfenstein, Eugene Victor. The Victims of Democracy: Malcolm X and the Black Revolution (London: Free Association Books, 1989).

The Marxist Spirituality of C.L.R. James

I found occasion once before to post something on the “cricketing Marxist,” C.L.R. James, and now I’d like to draw your attention to a piece by Kenan Malik on “the 50th anniversary of C.L.R.  James’ wonderful, groundbreaking work Beyond a Boundary.” James exemplifies what I can only describe as a Marxist spirituality, the adjective qualifying something like the following:

“[A]t the richer end of the spectrum [of spirituality], we find the term used in connection with activities and attitudes which command widespread appeal, irrespective of metaphysical commitment or doctrinal allegiance. Even the most convinced atheist may be prepared to avow an interest in the ‘spiritual’ dimension of human existence, if that dimension is taken to cover forms of life that put a premium on certain kinds of intensely focused moral and aesthetic response, or on the search for deeper reflective awareness of the meaning of our lives and of our relationship to others and to the natural world.”—John Cottingham in The Spiritual Dimension: Religion, Philosophy, and Human Value (2005)

In Mad and Divine: Spirit and Psyche in the Modern World (2009) the Indian psychoanalyst and writer Sudhir Kakar, reminds us that

“Spirituality, like culture, has many definitions and yet manages to give a sense of familiarity to most of us. For me, the spiritual occupies a continuum from moments of self-transcendence marked by loving connection to an object—nature, art, visions of philosophy or science, the beloved in sexual embrace—to the mystical union of saints where the sense of the self completely disappears. The spiritual, then, incorporates the transformative possibilities of the human psyche: total love without a trace of hate, selflessness carved out of the psyche’s normal self-centeredness, a fearlessness that is not a counter-phobic reaction to the fear that is an innate part of the human psyche.”

Finally, a neurosurgeon, professor of medical ethics, and a philosopher, Grant Gillett, completes our generous conception of a spirituality that embraces a Marxist like James:

“Spirituality lifts our eyes from the possibilities defined by the everyday and economic. The divine wind recalls the breath that gives us life and the cleansing water that allows healing and refreshment in the arid wastes of suffering is a figure with meaning that goes beyond the material. In the most unlikely places we find loving and transformative touches, that are the things of the spirit in that they are ways not only of understanding but also beatifying what we do, however bloody, messy and unromantic it is. We are beset by directives and discourses that reduce, demean, and obscure our humanity, that are not noble, uplifting, inspiring, and fulfilling. We can render life in operational (or narrowly functional) terms and make it tolerable through escapism and pleasure but there is another way. We live and love in a world where real tragedies happen, real joy is found, and real connections are forged through time and across barriers of culture and position. In those things we discover the resonance in ourselves of inscriptions, utterances, and works that deepen our understanding.” From Gillett’s book, Subjectivity and Being Somebody: Human Identity and Neuroethics (2008)

Our conception of spirituality thus clarified, here are the first two paragraphs from Malik’s post on James:

“This year marks the 50^th anniversary of CLR James’ wonderful, groundbreaking work Beyond a Boundary.  To call it a book about cricket is a bit like calling cricket a ‘game.’ Beyond a Boundary blends politics and memoir, history and journalism, biography and reportage, in a manner that transcends literary, sporting and political boundaries. V S Naipaul, not a man given to offering easy praise, described it as ‘one of the finest and most finished books to come out of the West Indies.’ John Arlott, that most wonderful of cricket commentators, wrote of Beyond the Boundary, that it was ‘a book so outstanding as to compel any reviewer to check his adjectives several times before he describes it and, since he is likely to be dealing in superlatives, to measure them carefully to avoid over-praise – which this book does not need.’

Beyond the Boundary was a book that CLR James had to write, and that only he could write. Novelist and orator, philosopher and cricketer, historian and revolutionary, Trotskyist and Pan-Africanist – there are few modern figures who can match the intellectual depth, cultural breadth or sheer political contrariness of Cyril Lionel Robert James. He was a lifelong Marxist, yet one with an uncommonly fierce independence of mind that expressed itself both in his rejection of conventional Marxist arguments and in his refusal to repent of his politics even when it became fashionable to do so. He was an icon of black liberation struggles, and yet someone whose politics was steeped in a love of Western literature and Western civilization. He was a man whose affection for cricket was matched only by his love for Shakespeare. The book is in the image of the man himself. Brilliant, complex, contradictory, beautifully observed, deeply insightful, but sometimes also romantic and naïve. And, of course, boundary-crossing.” [….]

The rest is here.

Should the IRS Pay Special Attention to those Groups Who Believe Taxes are too High?

Is it unreasonable to suppose that groups who are ideologically committed to the proposition that taxes are too high are more likely than other groups to play fast and loose with the tax laws? If so, would it not make sense for the IRS to pay special attention to these groups to make sure they comply? Is this significantly different than paying special attention to those who meet a drug courier profile or to those who match a dangerousness profile upon entering the country? Of course, it is possible that the IRS paid special attention to conservative groups because of distaste for their politics. But it is also possible that the IRS paid special attention to these groups without regard to their own feelings about the politics of the groups they looked at. I cannot say that about the Republicans or the Democrats. The Speaker of the House is ready to send someone, anyone, to jail before the facts are determined. Fox News and George Will compare this to Watergate with no evidence that the President was remotely involved. Worse, the Democrats support throwing people under the bus to show their disapproval of what might have happened without a showing that the stigmatized individuals were any more involved in partisan discrimination than the President. Political meanness, corruption, and cynicism is not a good substitute for political morality.

Several Updated Bibliographies

I’ve recently updated several of my bibliographies:

(i)    Ecological & Environmental Worldviews: A Basic Transdisciplinary Bibliography

(ii)   Punishment & Prison: A Bibliography   

(iii)  Terrorism—Moral, Psychological, Political & Legal Perspectives: A Select Bibliography

(iv)  Torture: Moral, Legal & Political Dimensions—A Basic Bibliography

WASHINGTON — “A nonpartisan, independent review of interrogation and detention programs in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks concludes that ‘it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture’ and that the nation’s highest officials bore ultimate responsibility for it.” (New York Times, April 16, 2013)

The Superimposition* of a False Scandal upon a Real One at the IRS

Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times provides us with much needed context and perspective on the so-called “IRS Scandal.”

As Juan Cole notes, “The IRS scrutiny of Tea Party groups applying for tax-exempt charitable status derived from a legitimate concern at the more than doubling of such requests after the Citizens United ruling, and a suspicion that the groups were backed by Republican billionaires intending to use them for politics, not charity. It may be that the scrutiny was sometimes invidious, but it is not obvious on the surface as to whether the bureaucrats actually did anything out of the ordinary (left-wing requests for tax exempt status were flat; if they had suddenly doubled presumably they would have attracted attention too).”

See too, Peter S. Goodman at The Huffington Post: “The IRS was Dead Right to Scrutinize Tea Party.”

* Adhyāsa (Sanskrit: अध्यास) in Advaita Vedānta philosophy: “Throwing over or casting upon; misconception or erroneous attribution, the significance being that the mind casts upon facts, which are misunderstood, certain mistaken notions; hence false or erroneous attribution. Simply put, adhyāsa means superimposition or false attribution of properties of one thing on another thing.” [Adapted from Wikipedia entry]

Happy (Radical) Mother's Day!

At Huffington Post’s “Religion” page: Diana Butler Bass on “The Radical History of Mother’s Day.” (An introduction to Anna Reeves Jarvis— September 30, 1832-May 9, 1905). See too Ruth Rosen at Slate: “Soap to Ploughshares.” 

Why is Religion a First Amendment Stepchild?

I do not know, but the law seems to treat religion as less important. If a law is not aimed at speech, but hits communicative conduct (law outlaws destruction of a draft card which might or might not be done in the presence of another), the law can be constitutionally applied only if it furthers a substantial state interest by means no greater than is essential to the furtherance of that interest. But if a statute prohibiting particular conduct (eg., ingesting peyote) whether religious or not religious, hits religion (e.g., a Native American religious ceremony involving the ingestion of peyote), no First Amendment test applies unless another constitutional right is also burdened or the government is singling religion out for special treatment.

But suppose a First Amendment test is warranted in a statute directed at the content of a communication or in a statute primarily aimed at a form of religious conduct. In the speech context the courts require the government to show that the statute or regulation is necessary to further a compelling state interest. This is called “strict scrutiny.” On the other hand, if a statute is directed against religious conduct, the courts apply a less demanding standard to the government action even though the courts will label their standard as “strict scrutiny.”

The courts have not explained the basis for this different treatment. Perhaps they think the justification is obvious. But I think you have to get up very early in the morning to explain the different treatment of speech and religion – particularly when these rules have been fashioned by judges who are members of religious associations. Although I am writing this post very early in the morning, I have to say I am baffled.

Motley readings worthy of our attention…

The following articles, and one book (in no particular order), I think well warrant our attention:

• Diane Marie Amann, “The President & the Prison Camp” (cross-posted at IntLawGrrls)
• Dan Joyner, “Syria Update, and the Evolution of a Right of Counterproliferation Oriented Preemptive Self-Defense”
• Charles S. Maier, “The Return of Political Economy”
• Neil deMause, “Contingency Plan: Outsourcing Education”
• Christopher McCrudden, “In Pursuit of Human Dignity: An Introduction to Current Debates”
• Adam Hanieh, “The Oslo Illusion”
• Allegra Pacheco, “Expanding the Legal Paradigm for Palestine: An International Law Conference at Birzeit University”  
• Wajahat Ali, “Against the Brahmins: An Interview with Pankaj Mishra”
• Richard M. Locke, “Can Global Brands Create Just Supply Chains?”
• From the editors of Himāl Southasian, a series of articles under the rubric, “Farms, Feasts, Famines”
• Melvyn Dubosky, “Does Organized Labor Have a Future?”
• Bill Fletcher, Jr., “Now What? Labor Unions and the Inevitability of Class Struggle”
• Michael Hirsch, “So Why Don’t We Have Better Unions?”
• Spencer J. Pack, “How the Right Got Adam Smith Wrong on the Eve of Environmental (and hence Economic) Catastrophe”
• Lisa Herzog, “Markets” (from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
• M. Lynx Qualey, “5 Arabic Books to Read ‘Before You Die’”
• Forthcoming: Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown (London: Verso, 2013)

Cambridge's Polynices

[N]one shall entomb him or mourn but leave him unwept, unsepulchered, a welcome object for the birds, when they spy him, to feast on at will.

Many an educated reader - and many an educated lawyer in particular - will have encountered the line I've just quoted, as well as the name I have quoted in the title to this post.  These are words spoken by Antigone, apropos an edict prohibiting entombment of her brother, Polynices, in the Attic tragedy that bears her name.  Polynices has made war on his own polis, Thebes, and for this reason Creon, the ruler of Thebes, has decreed he is not to be accorded the rites that both sacred and customary law prescribe.  The 'luckless corpse of Polynices' is to be left to be eaten by carrion-birds.  A resultant clash of contrary obligations - that to obey ruler-posited law on the one hand, that to obey divinely and custom-posited law on the other hand - is of course what renders Antigone's predicament 'tragic' in the classical Greek ('damned if you do, damned if you don't') sense rather than in the watered-down, contemporary sense per which 'tragic' is roughly synonymous with 'unfortunate.'

I'd like to suggest here that a cognate tragedy to Antigone's is now in the course of enactment in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the family of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the accused Boston Marathon bomber killed in the course of his apprehension by authorities, is finding it impossible to locate a cemetary at which Mr. Tsarnaev can be properly interred. 

To be sure, there are obviously critical differences between the Tsarnaevs' case and that of Antigone.  One is the irony that in the present instance it is private parties who are refusing proper burial while ultimately a state institution will likely be that which accords it.  Another, related distinction is that the tragic clash of principle in the present instance is not between divine or customary law and royal decree, as in Antigone, but between the former on the one hand and an apparently deeply felt imperative  to express and even 'live out' disgust and disapproval on the other. 

Nevertheless, I think we shall ultimately agree that the similarities between the Tsarnaevs' plight and Antigone's are more salient than are the distinctions.  That is primarily for two reasons.  The first is that in both cases, the clash of principles at work can indeed be understood as a clash between admittedly compelling principles.  The second is that, again in both cases, it seems nevertheless clear which principle must ultimately prevail.

As for the first of these, I trust it is obvious that both 'sides' of Antigone's predicament are compelling.  Divine and customary law in the polis are binding requirements par excellence, while municipal law is for its part a prerequisite to that 'order' which underwrites 'ordered liberty.'  In contemporary Cambridge and human society more generally, by much the same token, custom, a decent respect for (not to mention cherishing of) our fellow citizens and their faiths, and, I believe, what many if not most of us still thankfully consider 'divine' and 'natural' law remain as compelling here and now as they were in the Hellenic world of Sophocles's day.  At the same time, the irreducibly reverential character of any proper funeral rite, combined with the unspeakable monstrosity of what was done in Boston this past month, certainly can make it seem, on the surface at least, as though permitting proper burial would constitute some falling short of full repudiation of the deed now attributed to the dead. 

Ultimately, however, I think the mentioned surface appearance illusory, and this takes me to the second salient similarity that I think we shall find between the cases of Antigone and the Tsarnaev family.  In the case of Antigone, it seems clear to me at any rate that the divine and customary law of Thebes must ultimately prevail in the event of conflict with a monarch's arbitrary and vindictive decree.  And much the same, I believe, can be said even of many conceivable cases in which even bona fide democratically decided legislation offends certain more 'fundamental' precepts, even if in most of these cases the calls will be tougher.  In the case of the Tsarnaev family, by the same token, resolution seems to me similarly straightforward - indeed even moreso.  For, unlike the compellingness of civic decree, that of symbolic repudiation is not predicated upon any determinate necessity - at least not determinate in the sense of 'independent of articulated interpretation.'  What is more, I think that the interpretations of what we are doing that we both can and ought articulate in connection with doing right by the Tsarnaev family is far more plausible than that which today's refusers of proper rites appear to assume.

What do I mean here?  I mean essentially two things, one of them primarily in connection with the previous sentence but one, the other in connection with the previous sentence itself. 

So first, in alluding to 'determinacy,' I mean to say that there is no message of approval - no symbolic condoning of bombing - inherent in according our sisters, brothers, and fellow citizens in the Tsarnaev family the space in which to grieve, pray for, and properly bury their kinsman.  That is particularly so insofar as we, and in particular the proprietors or administrators of what ever cemetary ultimately proves to be the final resting place, make plain that so doing is the reason for ending the current refusal.  The meanings of actions are critically, even if not always solely, what we take, decide, and articulate them to be; and I suggest that respect for and empathy with the Tsarnaev family both is and should be the dominant meaning that will attach to ending the present refusal to let them bury their kinsman.  (And lest you find 'empathy' too strong a word here, please view any clip now available on the web of Tamerlan Tsarnaev's uncle's expressions of distress over not being able to find a resting place for his nephew; it is heartbreaking beyond measure.)   

Second, I think another meaning is worth noting in connection with the case of Tamerlan Tsarnaev - a meaning that I think at least as much there to be seen and appreciated as to be deliberately attributed:  In according the proper funereal respects to Mr. Tsarnaev, I think, we attribute full significance to the deed of which he stands accused, in a way we might not if we simply 'make him disappear.'  Not allowing proper burial - leaving him out for the carrion-birds, so to speak - seems to me to suggest a certain deteriorability or dissipatability in connection even with the dead's alleged deed, as if the wrong will dissolve into nothingness with the body.  It suggests that there is no meaning borne by this man's body or person, hence that no meaning inheres in his actions. 

To continue to hold fast to Tamerlan Tsarnaev's sacred humanity and his soul's persistence, by contrast, in recognizing and embracing his family's sacred right and obligation to do with his body what their (not to mention our) religious laws require, is to accord the permanence and significance of his alleged deed its proper weight.  It is to recognize that this deed is still 'out there,' as it were, still weighing on the moral and spiritual economy of our lives.  And it is also, it bears noting in passing at this site in particular, to recognize the continuing opportunity of the dead to repent, and the hope that they will, in eternity.

 

Cross-posted at Mirror of Justice

[NB: I hope it will be clear in the foregoing that I recognize 'proper rites' to be faith- and culture-specific.  As Patrick could no doubt remind us, Polynices's being left to 'carrion-birds' would be no disgrace within certain Tibetan or Native American traditions in which 'feeding the sky' is the prescribed mode of disposition of the dead, nor would one's being cremated constitute any disgrace in Hindu or Old Norse societies that prescribed the same.  In Tamerlan Tsarnaev's faith tradition, on the other hand, proper burial is the prescribed rite, and to deny this to the Tsarnaev family here and now is to wrong them most grievously.] 

The Corporatization of Higher Education: A Basic Reading List

After reading a skeptical query at another law blog about the putative “corporatization of higher education,” I thought to assemble this select bibliography on the topic. Incidentally, it turns out the law professor who posed this question responded in turn to a reply by proclaiming with remarkable confidence that “corporatization has not come to law schools in any meaningful fashion.” Is that true? [Correction: It may not have been a law professor, although perhaps someone who has published law-related articles and now works for a private corporation.]

• Aronowitz, Stanley. The Knowledge Factory: Dismantling the Corporate University and Creating True Higher Learning. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2001.
• Aronowitz, Stanley. C. Wright Mills and the Making of Political Intellectuals. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012.
• Bok, Derek. Universities in the Marketplace: The Commercialization of Higher Education. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003.
• Chomsky, Noam, et al. The Cold War and the University: Toward an Intellectual History of the Postwar Years. New York: The New Press, 1997.
• Chomsky, Noam. “American Freedom and the Corporatization of Universities” (partial transcription of lecture), April 6, 2011: http://www.chomsky.info/talks/20110406.htm
• Donoghue, Frank. The Last Professor: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities. New York: Fordham University Press, 2008.
• Ginsberg, Benjamin. The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
• Jacoby, Russell. The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe. New York: Basic Books, 1987.
• Kenney, Martin. Bio-Technology: The University-Industrial Complex. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988.
• McGettigan, Andrew. The Great University Gamble: Money, Markets and the Future of Higher Education. London: Pluto Press, 2013.
• Mills, Nicolaus. “The Corporatization of Higher Education,” Dissent (Fall 2012): Available: http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/the-corporatization-of-higher-education
• Mirowski, Philip. Science-Mart: Privatizing American Science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011.
• Nelson, Cary and Stephen Watt. Academic Keywords: A Devil’s Dictionary for Higher Education. New York: Routledge, 1999.
• Newfield, Christopher. Unmaking the Public University: The Forty-Year Assault on the Middle Class. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008.
• Nussbaum, Martha C. Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.
• Nussbaum, Martha C. Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010.
• Readings, Bill. The University in Ruins. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996.
• Ryan, Alan. Liberal Anxieties and Liberal Education. New York: Hill and Wang, 1998.
• Schrecker, Ellen. The Lost Soul of Higher Education: Corporatization, the Assault on Academic Freedom, and the End of the American University. New York: The New Press, 2010.
• Scott, Debra Leigh. “How the American University was Killed, in Five Easy Steps.” The Homeless Adjunct blog (August 12, 2012).
• Simpson, Christopher, ed. Universities and Empire: Money and Politics in the Social Sciences during the Cold War. New York: The New Press, 1998.
• Steck, Henry. “Corporatization of the University: Seeking Conceptual Clarity,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 585 (Jan. 2003): 66-83.
• Tuchman, Gaye. Wannabe U: Inside the Corporate University. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2009.
• Washburn, Jennifer. University, Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of American Higher Education. New York: Basic Books, 2005.

Thanks to a colleague at my college, Paul McDowell (Anthropology), for a couple of additional titles.

Happy May Day! (that is to say, the real ‘Labor Day’)

“The struggle for the 8-hour day reached a significant moment on May 1, 1886 as the Knights of Labor and numerous other labor organizations called for a national work stoppage on this day to demand that the 8-hour day become the law of the land. Thousands of workplaces shutdown across the country and capital trembled. Linked to the issue of shorter hours was the question of child labor as depicted in this 1908 Lewis Hine photo of a few of the doffers and sweepers in the Mollahan Mills in Newberry, South Carolina. In the U.S. serious legislation governing the hours of work and child labor was a long, long time coming as workers fought and died well into the 1930s before an upsurge in organization pressured the government into making a handful of modest reforms.”—From the Facebook page of the Bread & Roses Centennial (1912-2012) Committee.

Prior May Day posts (including an historical introduction to the holiday in the first of the two links) are here and here.

Several years ago ago at Slate, Robert Pinsky discussed two poems by William Blake that serve to fill out the meaning of this holiday, both titled “The Chimney Sweeper,” from Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794) respectively.

Neoliberal Capitalism in Bangladesh: The Violence of "Free Markets"

At least 3,000 people are believed to have been in the building on Rana Plaza at the time the building collapsed. More than 380 bodies had been recovered by Monday morning. Hundreds are still missing. And with every day that passes, the chances of finding survivors grows dimmer.

The deadly incident in Savar has already been called the worst industrial accident in the country’s history. It serves as a reminder that nothing has changed when it comes to the inhumane conditions under which clothes are made in Bangladesh for European and American textile companies and clothing chains. And the same can be said about the culture of corruption that is rampant in Bangladesh, the abundance of illegally procured construction permits and the lax attitude factory owners take toward safety standards. — Hasnain Kazim, Nils Klawitter and Wieland Wagner, from their piece for Der Spiegel (April 29, 2013), available here.

The disaster refocused attention on the dangers facing workers in the booming Bangladeshi garment industry, ramping up calls for stricter regulation. Western brands whose labels were found in the wreckage faced new pressure to sign on to a safety agreement.

“Brands can no longer justify any further delay.... The lack of action demonstrated by brands amounts to criminal negligence,” Ineke Zeldenrust of the Clean Clothes Campaign said in a statement Monday.—From the Los Angeles Times (April 30, 2013)

These tragedies could not have come at a worse time for major retailers that purchase garments from these factories. For months the International Labor Rights Forum and other labor rights groups have encouraged garment retailers to sign a binding agreement that would create a system of rigorous inspections, transparency and oversight. Thus far, they have had limited success, with only the parent company of Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein brands and one German retailer signing on.

The agreement, the Bangladesh Fire and Building Safety Agreement, would establish a nine-member Oversight Committee, with four members appointed by Bangladesh and international labor groups, four members appointed by business representatives chosen by companies sourcing from Bangladesh, and one member mutually chosen by the other eight. Corporations that sign on to the MOU would help fund the costs of improving fire and safety standards in the factories where they source their supplies. [….]

A key provision in the Agreement is binding arbitration. Specifically, the Agreement requires the Oversight Committee to develop a plan for the implementation and administration of the Bangladesh fire and safety program that includes “[a] process for binding and legally enforceable arbitration of disputes between parties to this MOU with respect to this MOU and the program….”

In other words, labor unions and participating corporations would sign a binding agreement to improve the working conditions of Bangladeshi garment workers, and any corporation that failed to comply with its funding or other obligations under the MOU could be the subject to international arbitration enforceable under the New York Convention in that corporation’s home country. [….]—Roger Alford at Opinio Juris (April 26, 2013)

“The Terror of Capitalism,” Vijay Prashad, CounterPunch (April 26-28, 2013)

“On Wednesday, April 24, a day after Bangladeshi authorities asked the owners to evacuate their garment factory that employed almost three thousand workers, the building collapsed. The building, Rana Plaza, located in the Dhaka suburb of Savar, produced garments for the commodity chain that stretches from the cotton fields of South Asia through Bangladesh’s machines and workers to the retail houses in the Atlantic world. Famous name brands were stitched here, as are clothes that hang on the satanic shelves of Wal-Mart. Rescue workers were able to save two thousand people as of this writing, with confirmation that over three hundred are dead. The numbers for the latter are fated to rise. It is well worth mentioning that the death toll in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City of 1911 was one hundred and forty six. The death toll here is already twice that. This ‘accident’ comes five months (November 24, 2012) after the Tazreen garment factory fire that killed at least one hundred and twelve workers.

The list of ‘accidents’ is long and painful. In April 2005, a garment factory in Savar collapsed, killing seventy-five workers. In February 2006, another factory collapsed in Dhaka, killing eighteen. In June 2010, a building collapsed in Dhaka, killing twenty-five. These are the ‘factories’ of twenty-first century globalization – poorly built shelters for a production process geared toward long working days, third rate machines, and workers whose own lives are submitted to the imperatives of just-in-time production. Writing about the factory regime in England during the nineteenth century, Karl Marx noted, ‘But in its blind unrestrainable passion, its wear-wolf hunger for surplus labour, capital oversteps not only the moral, but even the merely physical maximum bounds of the working-day. It usurps the time for growth, development and healthy maintenance of the body. It steals the time required for the consumption of fresh air and sunlight…. All that concerns it is simply and solely the maximum of labour-power that can be rendered fluent in a working-day. It attains this end by shortening the extent of the labourer’s life, as a greedy farmer snatches increased produce from the soil by reducing it of its fertility’ (Capital, Chapter 10).

These Bangladesh factories are a part of the landscape of globalization that is mimicked in the factories along the US-Mexico border, in Haiti, in Sri Lanka, and in other places that opened their doors to the garment industry’s savvy use of the new manufacturing and trade order of the 1990s. Subdued countries that had neither the patriotic will to fight for their citizens nor any concern for the long-term debilitation of their social order rushed to welcome garment production. The big garment producers no longer wanted to invest in factories – they turned to sub-contractors, offering them very narrow margins for profit and thereby forcing them to run their factories like prison-houses of labour. The sub-contracting regime allowed these firms to deny any culpability for what was done by the actual owners of these small factories, allowing them to enjoy the benefits of the cheap products without having their consciences stained with the sweat and blood of the workers. It also allowed the consumers in the Atlantic world to buy vast amount of commodities, often with debt-financed consumption, without concern for the methods of production. An occasionally outburst of liberal sentiment turned against this or that company, but there was no overall appreciation of the way the Wal-Mart type of commodity chain made normal the sorts of business practices that occasioned this or that campaign. [….]

In the Atlantic world, meanwhile, self-absorption over the wars on terror and on the downturn in the economy prevent any genuine introspection over the mode of life that relies upon debt-fueled consumerism at the expense of workers in Dhaka. Those who died in the Rana building are victims not only of the malfeasance of the sub-contractors, but also of twenty-first century globalisation.”

Vijay Prashad’s latest book is The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South (London: Verso, 2012).

Addendum: See too this timely Forum discussion at Boston Review: Can Global Brands Create Just Supply Chains? The lead article addressing the question of corporate responsibility with regard to industrial workers involved in the geography of global manufacturing is by Richard M. Locke.

MARRIAGE EQUALITY: How I Changed My Mind

From 2003 to early 2009, I wrote a series of historically-grounded papers that reached the common conclusion that marriage equality represented a radical departure from the western tradition of marriage and so, for that reason, should be rejected as a matter of public policy.  I have now changed my mind regarding this conclusion.  While there is no question that marriage equality represents a dramatic departure from what has gone before, I can now find support within our western tradition for expanding the definition of marriage to embrace loving, committed same-sex unions.

Let me begin with my professional background:  I am a lawyer and an historian.  These two sides of my brain co-exist in what I like to think is, for the most part anyways, a creative tension.  The lawyer side of my brain considers public policy issues in the urgency of the present.  The historian's training, however, summons me always to look at the deep picture, to appreciate what has come before, and it was this innate conservativism that long governed my instincts on marriage equality.  In my historical writings on the subject, I made essentially three arguments:  (1)  In the few instances in which same-sex marriage was debated on the historical record, it was rejected; (2)  a principal reason for this rejection, furthermore, was because marriage was about procreation, and only procreative relationships should therefore be recognized as marriage; and (3)  public policy should remain within these tightly-drawn boundaries, because any departure would be likely to result in arbitrary line-drawing.

The historical record on same-sex marriage is a surprisingly deep one.  So far as I can tell, it was discussed for the first time in the first and second centuries of the common era when the Emperor Nero engaged in a same-sex marriage with a galley slave during a lavish festival stage-managed by his praetorian prefect, Tigellinus.  The ancient authors were unremittingly harsh on Nero for this action.  Tacitus turned his ferocious irony on Nero, blaming him for the Great Fire at Rome, while Juvenal simply mocked him and those who later tried to emulate him.

Twelve centuries later, the canon lawyer Hostiensis raised the subject of same-sex marriage once again.  Hostiensis is one of those figures, well known to specialists but who has simply vanished from the popular historical understanding.  A scholar with a virtuoso's talent at raising and answering challenging questions, Hostiensis asked whether it was ever possible for a man to marry a man.  He answered in the negative and did so in order to read into his legal definition of marriage the developing theology of unnatural acts found in the scholastic writers.

His analysis would be repeated and expanded by other writers, also well-known to specialists but forgotten by nearly everyone else.  Antoninus of Florence mooted this question in the fifteenth century and Johannes Brunellus in the sixteenth.  Echoes of this mode of thought can still be found in the magisterial documents of the Catholic Church.

And if this line of thought represented one element of my own perspective, the procreative dimension of marriage represented the other.  Secular and religious sources, it seemed, converged on this point of agreement.  The Emperor Augustus decreed that marriage had to have a procreative dimension and where procreative intent was excluded from marriage, the Roman state itself might impose penalties.

The theologian St. Augustine, four centuries later, had much more to say on this point.  Marriage, he insisted, had to be procreative.  Where two parties took steps affirmatively to frustrate the natural fruitfulness of marriage their union could not be called marriage.  It was invalid and amounted to a sham.

Early American lawyers and judges were inheritors of this tradition.  Indeed, nineteenth-century marriage law had a profound Augustinian structure to it.  St. Augustine, after all, had argued that not only did marriage exist essentially for procreative purposes, but also that it was necessarily exclusive and permanent.  That is, those who strayed from their marital obligations should be punished for adultery or for fornication, while simultaneously divorce should be granted, if at all, only for a few narrowly defined causes.

These three essential marital properties had been bedrock teaching from the time of St. Augustine, through the medieval canonists, up to the eccesiastical courts of early modern England.  Early American jurists borrowed many of their matrimonial categories directly from the English ecclesiastics and almost without conscious reflection made this framework the superstructure around which they constructed their own marital theories.

American marriage law was dominated by this vision of marriage until the 1950s and 1960s, when the law began to shift fundamentally.  Adultery and fornication, while still seen as moral wrongs, ceased to be prosecuted as crimes.  No-fault divorce meanwhile eroded the law's commitment to marital permanency by greatly expanding opportunities to depart from marital commitment.  Finally, the Supreme Court's right of privacy cases, beginning with Griswold v. Connecticut, severed the connection between marriage and procreation.

This is a story I repeated in several iterations in my writing between 2003 and 2009.  The record seemed compelling.  It seemed self-evident that the conservative side of this debate had the mandate of history if not of heaven.

But I now recognize that I had merely told the story of how we got where we are and contented myself with the conclusion that that story, standing alone, provided sufficient guidance for future decision-making.  But I appreciate now something that I did not appreciate seven and eight years ago, when I commenced my writing on this topic.  I needed a more expansive historical vision in order to speak normatively.  The story I told was a static account.  I needed to identify the dynamic element within the history of marriage.

And that dynamic element is love -- enduring commitment to the personhood and welfare of another human being.  Love has been a central feature of the marital ideal for nearly as long as people have written about marriage.  Babylonian poetry recites the story of Dumuzi and Inanna, two adolescents, highly anthromorphized deities, who flirtatiously courted and wed.  Teasingly, joyously, with all the warmth and playfulness of youth, they ease themselves into a loving marriage.

In the Hebrew Scripture, we find the Song of Songs.  I have always doubted the imputation of this book to King Solomon.  It is an erotic celebration of love, told from the woman's perspective.  Christians have always felt the need to spiritualize this book, to make its explicit sexuality an allegory, but this I think is a mistake.  It is a book about love, passionate marital love, and it is found in the Bible.  And then there is St. Paul who in his letter to the Ephesians advises Christian spouses to love each other sacrificially, as Christ so loved the Church.

St. Augustine belongs to this tradition also.  When he wrote his treatise On the Good Of Marriage, he commenced with the words:  "Every individual belongs to the human race, and by virtue of his humanity, is made a social being.  In addition, the person possesses a strong aptitude for friendship."  Yes, procreation was a defining element of marriage for St. Augustine, but so also was companionship.  In the end, it is because we are social beings who know how to love that marriage becomes an appropriate means of procreation.  Love comes first, for St. Augustine, then procreation.

Great modern secular writers, too, have explored the importance of love and marriage.  One of the earliest, and among the most profound, was Mary Wollstonecraft, in her many works of fiction.  She could mourn the misery that comes when marriage is severed from the longings of the heart.  But she celebrated warm-hearted love, too, in whatever strange corner of human experience it might be found.  The women writers of the nineteenth century knew this too.  Elizabeth Cady Stanton argued for consensual divorce not to provide an easy escape valve from marriage but as a way of ensuring that love and marriage might always and everywhere remain perfectly matched.

And it is safe to say that since 1960s, American society has witnessed a sea change in the area of marital theory.  Where once marital theory rested securely on Augustinian premises, the rise of artificial birth control and the right of privacy cases have shifted the foundations.  Marriage today, as a matter of public understanding, can only be grounded on love and commitment, not procreation.  As a Catholic, I still understand marriage, in my faith tradition, to unite the procreative and affective ideals.  As an American citizen, however, I also know that I belong to a diverse and creative world where a new set of public norms is even now coming into being.

And these new norms are love-based.  I feared for a long time the confusion that might result from marriage grounded solely on affection.  How do we determine what to honor with the term "marriage" and what human relationships should be characterized merely as "friendship?"  The former, esteemed by the State, carries with it legal rights and duties.  The latter, privately respected, confers no public recognition.  But how do we demarcate one from the other?

I can see now that that boundary line must be in the strength of commitment shared by two loving hearts.  I have personally witnessed successful same-sex relationships.  The response of the gay community to the AIDs crisis, particularly in the 1980s, stands as further vivid testimony to the strength and power of sacrificial, self-giving love.  For AIDs brought forth truly heroic demonstrations of love and new conceptions of family.  Susan Sontag captures these related phenomena brilliantly in her short story, The Way We Live Now.  We find there the many faces of love, as a concentric circle of friends gathers, hovers, retreats, and congregates once again, all of them trying to comfort their dying friend.

Marriage equality is a new departure in history, but that does not mean we lack all guidance from the past.  History, in the form of the story of love itself and the vast treasure-house of human experience that relates to it, can serve as our steady guide.

Who Cares about the Poor

April’s Harper’s Index reports that only 42% of American women believe they have a personal responsibility to help the poor. The report is even more disappointing for American men. Only 27% believe they have a personal responsibility to help the poor. The source for these statistics is Environics Research.

I am not sure what to make of this. In any given year approximately three quarters of American families give money to charities though it is not clear what percentage of these families give money to the poor. We do know that 75 million American give no money to charities of any kind.

In any event, most politicians obviously think the public does not care much about the poor. The poor are denigrated by Republicans and largely ignored by Democrats. I have no confidence that political leaders will cultivate concern about the poor. And such leadership certainly will not come from those who preach the prosperity gospel.

If the public does not care about the poor, you have to wonder what religious leaders have been doing or why they have been ineffective. I am an ex-Catholic, but I am praying for the success of Pope Francis.

 

Discovering Milner Ball: A Theologian of Hope

As I continue my work on a writing project focused on William Stringfellow, I have been greatly encouraged by a growing band of companions on the way. Recently Frank Alexander, law professor at Emory University and director of their Center for the Study of Law and Religion, sent me a wonderful packet of material related to Stringfellow. Among these was a remarkable essay and tribute to the work of Milner S. Ball, a theologian and for many years a professor of law at the University of Georgia. I have just finished an exhilarating essay of Ball's, entitled "Don't Die Don Quixote: A Response and Alternative to Tushnet, Bobbitt, and the Revised Texas Version of Constitutional Law." I confess that it both fascinates and dumbfounds me--Ball's thought is, for this theologian at least, an alternate universe: close to the ground of contemporary constitutional law theory, full of references to Karl Barth, Bonhoeffer, Augustine, and William Shakespeare, and advocating for a utopian form of scholarship wedded to a preferential option for the poor. Why have we in theological circles never heard of him? (well, I think I know some of the reasons why, which are the same reasons why Stringfellow is not more widely known in academia as well). 

 

In any case, perhaps some Religious Left Law readers will smile knowingly at my belated discovery of Ball. If so, I will be delighted to hear their own impressions of this most amazing theological-legal voice. For now, I simply want to share a passage from another essay of Ball's that I found cited in a tribute to Ball by Erica Hashimoto, now also teaching at U. of Georgia (Hashimoto's piece, Reflections on Hope, is a quite lovely tribute to Ball, her teacher).  From the essay "The City of Unger", Ball writes, in words I find all too relevant to today's struggles, 

My generation is tempted to think that the irony of innocence savaged and destroyed is a description of necessary reality...We are lured by the belief that serious commitment to a just world means that sooner or later our hearts will be broken.... Other less classic temptations exist. One is the upbeat mythology ...do deals and abandon the realities of mass suffering for bold, unapologetic acquisitiveness. Another temptation is to give up and do nothing.... If we refuse these temptations, it is because we catch glimpses of another, more authentic possibility. The facts yield no ground for optimism, and yet we snatch from them intimations of more and better. The facts yield no ground for optimism, and yet we snatch from them intimations of more and better. We are led to suspect the penultimacy of current events and to anticipate the ultimate. Our suspicions draw nourishment from several sources, including surprises, exceptions, and experiments that spring up, against the odds...

In Milner Ball's poetic stagings of the interrelationship of law, hope, and theology we can see just such "glimpes' and "intimations" of something more and better. Like Stringfellow, Ball was deeply suspicious of those who claimed themselves to be "religious," so to call this something more and better a specifically religious claim would miss his point. Stringfellow said that to be holy was not to be better, or more religious than others, but to be nothing more than utterly human. Like Kierkegaard's knight of faith, the holy person will not look much different from the beggar on the street. Ball, in his reading of Toni Morrison's Beloved, says this, following closely Baby Suggs' non-religious mysticism of love: 

"In the religion it thus adopts, the Word, although incorrespondent, becomes nonetheless accessible-in words and in hearts speaking beyond the need for words. The incorrespondent Word, the wholly other, is contextually, particularly human. Her religion-religion adopted by the Word-is determinative of who she is as a human and of how she is human. It cannot occupy an isolated sphere either metaphysical or private. It gives her humanity and life instead of rescuing her from either."

This is a vision quite close, I think,  to what William Connolly calls, following Foucault, a "political spirituality," or what John D. Caputo has called a "religion without religion." Mysticism of the left, it is roomy enough for a circus tent full of misfits. May its tribe increase!

 

 

 

Locating the Dignity of the Dead

“Even those who think that death is a continuation, and not an ending, can benefit from contemplating the implications of annihilation. That annihilation would be bad for them explains why it is important to live forever: it is the only way to avoid the evil of annihilation. If, on the other hand, annihilation would not be bad for them, the question arises as to why they value the prospect of immortality.”—Steven Luper [1]

“The human species is only partly natural. It is the only species about which that can be said.”—George Kateb [2]

“Philosophers tend to think that precision is always important, but they have known since Aristotle that that may not always be wise. Sometimes the quest for precision blinds us to certain insights that we can as yet only formulate haltingly; sometimes it blinds us to the importance of pursuing certain questions (and linking them to other questions) even when there is not yet an answer in sight.”—Jeremy Waldron [3]

At Concurring Opinions a couple of weeks ago, Professor Taunya Banks penned a delightfully provocative post titled “Fortune’s Bones: Is There Dignity after Death?” Banks introduces three different historical cases: the 1995 Body Worlds exhibit by Gunther von Hagens; the skeleton of an enslaved man (whose name was Fortune) who died in 1798 and was being studied by the anthropology faculty and students at Quinnipiac University; and perhaps the best known of the three, the story of Henrietta Lacks as recently discussed by Rebecca Skloots in her book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2010), that together raise for her the question of whether or not the concept of dignity can be applied to deceased individuals, in other words, “Is there dignity after death?” The following paragraphs conclude her discussion, followed by my attempt to address her question:*

[….] “Scientists and anthropologists might argue that the cases of Fortune and Mrs. Lacks are distinguishable from Gunther von Hagens’ Body Worlds exhibit because the educational value is clearer in the former than the latter. They might also argue, as one Johns Hopkins researcher told me, that the HeLa cell is not part of Mrs. Lacks but has morphed into something quite different.[4] Thus it does not matter that her family consider the cell to be a living part of their deceased family member. Still others like academic Stephen Bates ask whether human corpses are different from skeletons or human cells. (Prenates, Postmorts and Bell-Curve Dignity, Hastings Center Reps. 2008) The more human-looking the remains, Bates writes, the more concerns about dignity seem to arise.

According to my colleague Leslie Henry, there are strong arguments for dignity after death as well as some laws that arguably recognize some type of dignitary interest. Physicians usually are required to secure consent from the deceased’s next of kin before using a cadaver to teach medical students. There are statutes that penalize the desecration of grave sites (beyond trespassing). There also is the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) which required federal agencies to return ‘cultural items’ including human remains, to the descendants of Indian tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations. Granted none of these laws directly touch on the cases of Fortune and Mrs. Lacks.

In the end I offer no suggestions. But I am concerned because too often the people denied dignity in death, were also denied dignity in life.”

*           *           *           *           *           *           *

I’ve been pondering Professor Banks’ thoughtful and moving post for some time now and have arrived at the point at which temerity prompts me to share my tentative thoughts on (explicit and implicit) questions raised by her piece. I think it is true that there is something to the notion of a “dignitary interest” with regard to the dead (as individual persons). This is not my preferred term, however, as it suggests the decedent herself has post-mortem “interests,” which is eminently arguable and, I believe, not true.[5] But if we understand this dignitary interest as having something to do with the attitude and respect of the living toward the decedent as a previous embodiment or incarnation of transcendent value, a value which transcends sentience, then it’s possible to articulate a stipulative or précising definition which allows for the possibility (in some sense) of “disrespecting the dead” but not harming them. It is not that the dead person’s bones or cremated ashes, or some scientific sample of cells, as such, that incarnates the transcendent value of dignity; so we cannot speak, literally at least, of “continuing assaults on the dignity of the deceased.” Rather, with death, it is our memory of the fact that a person, with a unique narrative history, a person of intrinsic dignity and incomparable value or worth has passed, and death, as the converse of life, is an occasion for our individual and collective reflection on—as remembering, commemorating, and honoring—the precious nature of personhood, the powerful concept of dignity, and the nature of human normative agency. Our treatment of a dead person’s remains will reveal our ability to respect and to honor, and is therefore symbolic of, a human being who, for a brief period of time, was locus of the dignity of humanity in his or her own person, an individual who was, at one time, the incarnation of transcendent value.

In addition to or apart from recognizing the expressed preferences of the decedent about what to do with her remains, or attempts at inferring the wishes (e.g., by way of immediate family, closest friends, or end-of-life caregivers) of the decedent, and sans any traditional burial or after-death treatment and (ritualistic) practices associated with a decedent’s worldview, I think we might somehow express, reveal or evoke something of the dignitary attitude of respect in the manner in which we respond to the death of an individual and treat their remains. Such expression can come not only from those who knew or were close to the decedent, but also from those whose task is to handle the remains. We might, for example, mandate a period of memory and commemoration for the decedent that recognizes an individual of incomparable worth, of inherent dignity has died (regardless of whether such dignity was respected in the person’s lifetime or what kind of life that person lived; hence, again, this is not about any post-mortem interest as such), and deserving of acknowledgment and remembrance if only for this reason. I believe the manner in which we handle the remains can and should be the occasion for honoring or celebrating the dignity of personhood, for ritual remembrance of the respect owed humanity in the individual person. The remains can become the occasion or means whereby we honor the transcendent value of dignity that we failed (or may have failed) to recognize and respect during the person’s lifetime. This demonstration of respect I imagine to be very close—similar or analogous—to the Confucian understanding of the proper performance of li.[6] As Banks notes in her second paragraph above, there are some legal rules for particular situations or occasions that can be viewed as (directly or indirectly) permitting or encouraging demonstration of this respect. 

   The question then becomes whether or not we can find some means whereby we generalize such an attentive and focused demonstration of dignitary respect for all decedents, perhaps through engagement in a (secular) ritual celebration or honoring of the dead person in a way that affirms and reinforces our belief in human dignity and the incomparable value of normative human agency. After Stephen Darwall, this takes the form of recognition respect, distinguished from appraisal respect insofar as the former lacks the latter’s conceptual connection to merit and esteem: “Recognition respect concerns, not how something is to be evaluated or appraised, but how our relations to it are to be regulated or governed.” Following the performance of such a secular ritual (at least in the case of those whose wishes are not known or whose worldview does not prescribe some kind of funeral service), which might be as simple as a published or public proclamation (that speaks to the dignity and inviolability of the human person), perhaps in conjunction with or followed by a period of time in which the remains are not in any way disposed or used for scientific research, the decedent’s remains—be they bones and teeth, cremated ashes, or simply cells—could then be buried, scattered, or enlisted for scientific research. At this point in time, that part of ourselves which belongs indissolubly to the natural world (for a ‘transcendental’ or non-reductionist naturalist like Grant Gillett, this ‘part’ would be a human being absent the narrative ‘space’ of reason and will) and by which we make sense of the notion of embodiment, can now return to the natural world (including the natural world as understood in the sciences), no longer a locus of transcendent value in the form of human dignity. This (so to speak) return to the natural world upon the fulfillment of such conditions represents one point along the continuum of dignitary respect for the dead, for the living, and for those who follow us as loci of transcendent dignity. To leave our “human world” and return to the greater natural world is something the psalmist and secularist, the Muslim and the man-in-the-street, the Daoist and the Buddhist, can alike appreciate in a language that connotes spiritual, metaphysical and aesthetic sensitivity and sensibilities in speaking to the grandeur, the sublimity, the harmony, proportion, and beauty of nature. (Bear in mind that things are a bit different in the case of Mahāyāna Buddhism because, after Nāgārjuna, nirvāṇa and saṃsāra are said to be ‘not different’ when viewed from the ultimate nature of the Dharmakāya, for an individual can attain nirvāṇa in this lifetime by following the Buddhist path. Their duality is only (a) conventional (truth), for if they were ultimately different (or expressed an absolute truth) this would be impossible. By implication, this speaks to the conventional duality of life and death as well, hence a ‘return’ to nature is only true conventionally speaking, and thus for any of us who have not had the requisite spiritual realization that establishes the non-difference between nirvāṇa and saṃsāra…or life and death, it will appear as absolutely true. Something comparable to this might also be the case in Daoism.) But as a condition of this return to nature, a ritual or solemn acknowledgement of transcendental dignity and intrinsic inviolability of the human person in reference to the decedent, including a proscribed period in which the decedent’s remains are not to be used for any educational or scientific purposes, could go some way toward communicating the all-important value of human dignity and our respect for the nature of personhood as indicative of the manner in which our species transcends the natural world.

Now, for various reasons, some of them of Kantian provenance or inspiration, showing respect for such dignity has been taken to mean acknowledging the person’s (normative) human agency (as a capacity), in the sense that the ways of being (a) human (animal) distinguishes us from our nonhuman animal relatives. This means honoring both our “being” and “willing.” David Luban, who prefers a naturalistic and non-metaphysical account of dignity—albeit one with “ontological heft”—believes Kant was speaking more about “willing” than “being,” but I think he’s mistaken on this point. In any case, Luban’s discussion of dignity is largely intended for legal ethicists (although it has wider value outside that application, as he himself suggests and demonstrates), and in this context he speaks of the lawyer listening to the client’s “story,” every person having a “story” to tell insofar as they are “authors” in some measure or another of their lives (and, as characters, part of the narrative accounts of at least some of those with whom they have interacted over the course of their lives). These stories revolve around “meaning” of various kinds, however inarticulate or disturbing we might, as outsiders, find them to be (think of those accused of the most heinous crimes), for to “have a story,” Luban writes, “means being the subject of experience, and it means existing in a web of commitments, however detestable or pathetic those commitments may be.” Luban’s naturalistic rendering of dignity appears unable to account for how we might accord dignitarian respect toward the decedent, after all, the author of the story, the subject of the experience, is no longer with us. And yet he or she may become a character or even protagonist in the stories of those who survive and follow the decedent, for we are, as has been said “inveterate story tellers” (folk psychological theory, say, like that proffered by Daniel Hutto, is here quite useful in accounting for this fact). These stories could be seen as functioning to remind us what it means to be human, involving questions of individual and collective identity, memory, and meaning, for example.[7] In short, we treat the dead with respect (more about this in a moment), as a reminder to the living what it means to live a human life, for death is a vivid and insistent reminder of the value and beauty of life (human and non-human), a value and beauty that becomes part and parcel of the best stories we tell. Luban’s approach might be filled out or simply supplemented with recent work in narrative ethics and narrative metaphysics, especially if we should want to employ it for treating the question of “dignity after death.”