POSTHUMOUS CITIZENSHIP

Over at Talk Left, the idea of posthumous citizenship for soldiers is "insulting." Could be; if some people view it as a sign of unfulfilled promises, that's entirely reasonable. As I noted earlier, the broader question is what other sorts of concessions the government is likely to make during wartime. In and of itself posthumous citizenship is symbolic: the dead don't care what country they hale from. But when people die, we do things that are meaningful for us, not for them, even if we do it "to them". Posthumous citizenship is a good idea not because the dead care, but because it can help to create pressures for other kinds of government action around citizenship that will be meaningful for the living.