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« Truth With/out Love | Main | Age of Transgendered Consent »

May 05, 2008

Monstrous But Ignored

My friend Logan Gage writes over at the First Things blog about modern day slavery, "A Crime So Monstrous," the title of a new book on the subject:

“Here, 600 miles from the United States, and five hours from the desk of the UN Secretary-General,” summarizes Skinner, “you have successfully bargained a human being down to the price of the cab fare to JFK.” Benavil even offered fake adoption papers to transport the girl to the United States. This took place not in the remote past but in October 2005.

This is an issue that is not going away, is growing, and a sign of something broken in the world, and ought to be more compelling than something like global warming. Ditto abortion. But we've already seen how that issue flies.

Posted by James M. Kushiner at 04:02 PM | Permalink

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Comments

I may read the book. It's a thing I've wished to see more light on since years ago...

Posted by: Clifford Simon | May 6, 2008 10:01:00 PM

Is there any significance in the fact that this blog post has only two comments, while Tony's post on "grammar" has, well, many more?

Posted by: Matt Beatty | May 8, 2008 10:10:13 PM

Slavery is bad. What more is there to say? The article at First Things said it all very well. In particular, it criticizes Skinner for trying to exclude prostitution from his definition of slavery if it is "consensual", since apparently he is concerned about the rights of "sex workers". Yet prostitution is the overwhelming reason for slavery today.

Posted by: Stuart Koehl | May 9, 2008 5:44:55 AM

I agree. There's just not much anybody can bring to the table on something like this other than "Slavery is bad." To try to "discuss" it would almost seem to make it less important, less monstrous than it is.

Posted by: Bob | May 9, 2008 10:02:07 AM

I don't. Discussion means dissemination. We can't do anything about things that we are unaware exist. Americans tend to assume that slavery is nonexistent because we made it illegal. I don't think most Americans know how incredibly widespread it is, here and in other countries. Twenty-seven million men, women, and children are enslaved at this moment. Every year two million children are forced into sexual slavery. The facts are horrific.

Yes slavery is bad, but we can and must do something to combat it. Gary Haugen has made less difficult for people like us to do something. He founded an institution called the International Justice Mission. IJM works to rescue not only the enslaved but other people who suffer injustice. I would encourage all of you to learn more about this group and what you can do about injustice. An IJM advocate spoke in one of my classes this semester. If she hadn't I would only have a vague knowledge of that these things exist. Without details this was only an abstract concept for me. It's more now. I hope it becomes more for you as well.

Posted by: Sara | May 9, 2008 1:50:46 PM

Johns Hopkins University-SAIS, where I am a fellow, has sponsored an organization called "The Protection Project" for the past five years, dedicated specifically to monitoring human trafficking and helping implement and enforce laws against it, so it's not like some of us don't know what is going on.

if there is a conspiracy of silence about the continuing existence of slavery, one reason might be political correctness: the main centers and hotbeds of the trade happen to be in Arab and African countries, and we wouldn't want to say anything disparaging about either one of those two charming cultures, would we?

Posted by: Stuart Koehl | May 9, 2008 2:09:14 PM

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