For Passover: celebrate freedom
[NOTE: This is a repeat of a previous post. The sentiments still seem to me to be highly, highly appropriate. Maybe even more so, if anything.]
It’s the holiday season, and one of those rare years when Passover and Easter come close together, as they did during the original Easter. So I get a twofer when I wish my readers “Happy Holidays!”
In recent years whenever I’ve attended a Seder, I’ve been impressed by the fact that Passover is a religious holiday dedicated to an idea that’s not really primarily religious: freedom. Yes, it’s about a particular historical (or perhaps legendary) event: the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. But the Seder ceremony makes clear that, important though that specific event may be, freedom itself is also being celebrated.
Offhand, I can’t think of another religious holiday that takes the trouble to celebrate freedom. Nations certainly do: there’s our own Fourth of July, France’s Bastille Day, and various other independence days around the world. But these are secular holidays rather than religious ones.
For those who’ve never been to a Seder ceremony, I suggest attending one (and these days it’s easier, since they are usually a lot shorter and more varied than in the past). A Seder is an amazing experience, a sort of dramatic acting out complete with symbols and lots of audience participation. Part of its power is that events aren’t placed totally in the past tense and regarded as ancient and distant occurrences; rather, the participants are specifically instructed to act as though it is they themselves who were slaves in Egypt, and they themselves who were given the gift of freedom, saying:
“This year we are slaves; next year we will be free people…”
Passover acknowledges that freedom (and liberty, not exactly the same thing but related) is an exceedingly important human desire and need. That same idea is present in the Declaration of Independence (which, interestingly enough, also cites the Creator):
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
It is ironic, of course, that when that Declaration was written, slavery was allowed in the United States. That was rectified, but only after great struggle, which goes to show how wide the gap often is between rhetoric and reality, and how difficult freedom is to achieve. And it comes as no surprise, either, that the Passover story appealed to slaves in America when they heard about it; witness the lyrics of “Let My People Go.”
Yes, the path to freedom is far from easy, and there are always those who would like to take it away. Sometimes an election merely means “one person, one vote, one time,” if human and civil rights are not protected by a constitution that guarantees them, and by a populace dedicated to defending them at almost all costs. Wars such as that in Iraq only give an opportunity for liberty, they do not guarantee it; and what we’ve observed there in recent years has been the hard, long, and dangerous task of attempting to secure it in a place with no such tradition, and with neighbors dedicated to its obliteration.
Sometimes those who are against liberty are religious, like the mullahs. Sometimes they are secular, like the Communists. Sometimes they are cynical and power-mad; sometimes they are idealists who don’t realize that human beings were not made to conform to their rigid notions of the perfect world, and that attempts to force them to do so seem to inevitably end in horrific tyranny, and that this is no coincidence.
As one of my favorite authors Kundera wrote, in his Book of Laughter and Forgetting:
…human beings have always aspired to an idyll, a garden where nightingales sing, a realm of harmony where the world does not rise up as a stranger against man nor man against other men, where the world and all its people are molded from a single stock and the fire lighting up the heavens is the fire burning in the hearts of men, where every man is a note in a magnificent Bach fugue and anyone who refuses his note is a mere black dot, useless and meaningless, easily caught and squashed between the fingers like an insect.”
Note the seamless progression from lyricism to violence: no matter if it begins in idealistic dreams of an idyll, the relinquishment of freedom to further that dream will end with humans being crushed like insects.
History has borne that out, I’m afraid. That’s one of the reasons the people of Eastern Europe have been more inclined to ally themselves recently with the US than those of Western Europe have–the former have only recently come out from under the Soviet yoke of being regarded as those small black and meaningless dots in the huge Communist “idyll.”
Dostoevsky did a great deal of thinking about freedom as well. In his cryptic and mysterious Grand Inquisitor, a lengthy chapter from The Brothers Karamazov, he imagined (appropriately enough for the approaching Easter holiday) a Second Coming. But this is a Second Coming in which the Grand Inquisitor rejects what Dostoevsky sees as Jesus’s message of freedom:
Oh, never, never can [people] feed themselves without us [the Inquisitors and controllers]! No science will give them bread so long as they remain free. In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet, and say to us, “Make us your slaves, but feed us.” They will understand themselves, at last, that freedom and bread enough for all are inconceivable together, for never, never will they be able to share between them! They will be convinced, too, that they can never be free, for they are weak, vicious, worthless, and rebellious. Thou didst promise them the bread of Heaven, but, I repeat again, can it compare with earthly bread in the eyes of the weak, ever sinful and ignoble race of man?
Freedom vs. bread is a false dichotomy. Dostoevsky was writing before the Soviets came to power, but now we have learned that lack of freedom, and a “planned” economy, is certainly no guarantee of bread (just ask the Ukrainians).
Is freedom a “basic need, then? Ask, also, the Vietnamese “boat people.” And then ask them what they think of John Kerry’s assertion, during his 1971 Senate testimony, that they didn’t care what sort of government they had as long as their other “basic needs” were met:
We found most people didn’t even know the difference between communism and democracy. They only wanted to work in rice paddies without helicopters strafing them and bombs with napalm burning their villages and tearing their country apart…
So that when we in fact state, let us say, that we will have a ceasefire or have a coalition government, most of the 2 million men you often hear quoted under arms, most of whom are regional popular reconnaissance forces, which is to say militia, and a very poor militia at that, will simply lay down their arms, if they haven’t done so already, and not fight. And I think you will find they will respond to whatever government evolves which answers their needs, and those needs quite simply are to be fed, to bury their dead in plots where their ancestors lived, to be allowed to extend their culture, to try and exist as human beings. And I think that is what will happen…
I think that politically, historically, the one thing that people try to do, that society is structured on as a whole, is an attempt to satisfy their felt needs, and you can satisfy those needs with almost any kind of political structure, giving it one name or the other. In this name it is democratic; in others it is communism; in others it is benevolent dictatorship. As long as those needs are satisfied, that structure will exist.
I beg to differ. I think there’s another very basic need, one that perhaps can only really be appreciated when it is lost: liberty.
Happy Passover, and Happy Easter! And that was no non sequitor.
Neo,
I find Kundera’s use of a musical metaphor interesting:
Not to play word games, but in music the black dot appended to a note is an important counting device which changes the note. In stressing uselessness, Kundera perhaps inadvertently reveals that even a black dot has a purpose. I would suggest that this is precisely the idea that progressives and leftists fail to grasp as they wander zombie-like in an echo chamber peopled by “credentialed bien pensants.”
RE: Eastern Europe’s tilt toward the US
There seems to be a vague awareness in many of the reasons for this tilt, though at the same time most people seem to ignore those reasons until they’re specifically pointed out. Or in other words, if you were to bring it up people would say, “Of course!” But it would never occur to those same people that they ought to take such things into consideration until and unless the reasons are specifically brought up.
I was having a conversation once with someone who claimed that the moderators for a particular online game (I can’t remember which one) were arbitrary censors because the moderators had quashed a group that had a name with ties to the old Soviet Communists. I asked if the game’s moderators were from Eastern Europe (a very reasonable question given the way game development has been going on over the last several years). There was an uncomfortable pause before the person I was talking to acknowledged that yes, I might have a point.
“We’ve got a whole system set up to prevent people like you from ever becoming
president.” – Abe Simpson
Something about that John Kerry quote reminded me of this.
One of your more impressive posts neo.
Arguably, Easter is a holiday that celebrates freedom as well. Jesus’ resurrection, without which his crucifixion is meaningless, promises the ultimate freedom; that death is not our final destination.
There are some people that think slavery would have naturally ended in the US without a war, that the cost of the war was unnecessary.
Those are the same people either kissing up to the Democrat slave masters now or just ignoring the Left’s war on humanity.
Let’s see how long they can tolerate their own slavery and the Left smashing a boot down on their children’s heads. Let’s see Hypocrisy in action, for once.
T:
Kundera often, very often, uses musical metaphors. There’s a reason for that:
Loking at history, it seems that liberty is not the natural condition of man. Rather, many people seem to be terrified of it, and will settle for being controlled in exchange for being taken care of.
Individual liberty also includes taking responsibility for the consequences of one’s actions and choices, whether they lead to success or failure. A lot of people, perhaps a majority, would prefer not to risk failure and would rather have the security of a guaranteed income instead.
Of course, there are no guarantees in life and such people will have to learn that the hard way. In the meantime, they condemn the rest of us to slavery because of their cowardice.
Ymarsaker,
I happen to be one of those people who do think that slavery would have eventually ended without the Civil War and I’m not kissing up to any Dem slave master. Please understand the distinction here; I’m not suggesting that the Civil War should not have been fought because slavery would have ended anyway.
The reason? Automation. It may have taken an additional fifty or more years, but there would have come a point where machines would have rendered slavery cost intensive rather than cost effective just as it has eliminated many mindless factory assembly jobs and infiltrated farming and mining.
Neo,
Thanks for the link. I do not know much of Kundera’s work but have read some of his inspirations (Kafka extensively).
rickl,
“A lot of people, perhaps a majority, would prefer not to risk failure and would rather have the security of a guaranteed income instead. ”
I often wonder if that’s because many people do not aspire to greater things? I also wonder to what extent that has to do with our past educational system. Going to grade school/high school in the 1950s and 1960s, I only recently came to realize that my education was the end of a Victorian-style system for which the goal was training docile housewives and dependable factory laborers both of which were expected to be good (read obedient) citizens (I thank God that I never quite fit that mold).
Happy Passover, Neo, you sweet lady. Happy Easter to my fellow Christians.
First, though, we have to get through Good Friday. My sister died on that day five years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYELAu9hqdU
Link above: Henry Purcell, Funeral Music for Queen Mary.
Many years ago as I was first introduced to Jewish culture I asked a very good (Jewish) friend of mine if it was appropriate to wish someone a “Happy” Passover. His response was: “Yes! Especially if they’re an oldest child!”
So I second Beverly above: a Happy and Profound Holiday to you all.
“I’m not suggesting that the Civil War should not have been fought because slavery would have ended anyway.
The reason? Automation. It may have taken an additional fifty or more years, but there would have come a point where machines would have rendered slavery cost intensive rather than cost effective just as it has eliminated many mindless factory assembly jobs and infiltrated farming and mining.” T
IMO, you’re greatly underestimating the egotism that many people derive from having other people under their thumb.
I clearly remember black and white water fountains in Southern Florida in the late 50’s, having moved there from the New England area in 1955.
I strongly suspect that had slavery not been ended forcibly, automation in the early 20th century would not have addressed and thus ended the racism that still existed in the south in the 50’s. Nor did automation stop the lynchings in the 1930’s… And as it was racism that justified slavery and the racism continued even after slavery ended, resistance to peacefully ending slavery would have remained.
T
Try a hundred years. From The History of Agriculture in the United States Beginning With the Seventeenth Century.
Like the song says, How Long Lord, How Long? Would it have been worth an extra hundred years of slavery? Inquiring minds want to know.
Liberty is the prerequisite of life. Freedom is not the method but the end of life. There is a freedom to exist that demands exigent necessity and power. Like grammar is to language, so freedom is to life. It makes sense not after but before the expression.
But liberty–not equality or fraternity–is the precursor of freedom. It appears that equality and fraternity wither and die without liberty.
Life! Life is what for the organism? Evolution. Will you take what that demands and admit the consequences, that the evolution ends up where it began.
Moses is called the mediator. What does a mediator do other than facilitate agreement? When One side says, “Thou shalt,” what does the evolving side say?
To add to the discussion about automation ending slavery: fromThe New Revolution in the Cotton Economy
This suggests that in the absence of the Great Migration, which would have absolutely precluded by slavery still existing, there would have been even less incentive for cotton picking to automate.
Also bear in mind that slaveowners had their ways to make their slaves more productive than free people. Even less incentive to automate.
Geoffrey Britain and Gringo,
I said fifty or more years — 100 may be accurate, but it is an unnecessary point. As for racism and slavery, they are different. GB you say it was racism that justified slavery, I suggest it was the other way around. Slavery originated about 2,500 BC with the Akkadians in the Mesopotamian River Valley. Prior to slavery, conquering forces simply slaughtered the inhabitants of the defeated city-state — that is until someone got the idea to put them to work. Don’t forget that many peoples were slaves — The Jews several times, the Carthaginians, even the Greeks (to the Romans) The question of whether any kind of racism was involved in this early slavery (I think not) could be debated forever with no solution in sight. Once one establishes a slave caste, it’s easy to see them as subhuman although this is not always a cause and effect relationship (e.g., the Greek slaves during the Roman Empire).
In any slave based economy, there are always marked cultural distinctions; in ancient Egypt, slaves were unclothed while the citizenry wore (at least) loin wraps. The “colored only” water fountains were, IMO, the racist residual effect of slavery rather than any racism which inspired it.
As The economist Herb Stein said, “What can’t go on forever, won’t!” and the fact that equality was written into the founding principles of this country means to me that the enslavement of Africans was ultimately doomed in America. Even at the authoring of the Constitution, the Northern states wanted to abolish slavery; the 3/5s rule was a necessary political compromise to limit slaves (non-voters) from being counted as part of the population and thus swelling the white Congressional representation of the pro-slavery Southern states. I submit that the handwriting was on the wall in the U.S. from the get-go!
Either of our arguments, however, is tantamount to irrelevance because we are arguing “coulda, woulda, shoulda” while it is a simple historical fact that the Civil War did occur.
Gringo,
I think your argument might be taken to have some effect on a projected timeline (perhaps even later than 1955) but it doesn’t speak to whether automation would have actually ended slavery. My response — Herb Stein.
Slavery was a Southern phenomenon because it was the de facto way the South’s aristocracy of Demoncrat fers could have to keep their power and social authority.
During Jim Crow, that wasn’t really economic. Black labor could help Atlanta rebuild, but that wasn’t allowed because it would break the power balance. Northern money wasn’t accepted either for rebuilding. Most of the South’s post war deconstruction myth they talk about came about due to Democrat commands to go it alone, with neither black liberty, labor, political representation nor Republican Northern money or military security accepted as legit.
Knock down slavery, the Democrats put up Jim Crow. Knock down Jim Crow, the Democrats put up separate but equal. Knock down separate but equal, and the Democrats kill Luther Jr and Malcom X, to shut them up, and take over the black community and make the blacks vote Democrat.
Your idea of “slavery”, T, in America isn’t close to the truth. Few people realize what was really going in America. If they did, the Left wouldn’t have smacked them in the head with surprise in this Century.
And the idea that slavery was an economic cost factor equation is like kissing up to the Democrats now by saying their healthcare is just a cost factor equation, that the mistakes made are just mistakes in cost factoring.
It’s papering up Democrat crimes against humanity, which later became Leftist crimes against humanity once the Democrats founded/joined the Leftist alliance.
Either of our arguments, however, is tantamount to irrelevance because we are arguing “coulda, woulda, shoulda” while it is a simple historical fact that the Civil War did occur.
What we’re talking about is how T doesn’t want 100 years of Democrat tyranny, but for blacks he never saw and doesn’t care about, it was fine for them back in the day to live under the lash for some odd centuries.
You don’t feel the weight of responsibility, T. But you will, when the Left’s boot smashes your head in. Nothing I say has to convince anyone, the Left will do it for me. And their power is something you can’t talk your “wouda, shouda” line on to much effect.
Gringo,
“Also bear in mind that slaveowners had their ways to make their slaves more productive than free people. Even less incentive to automate.”
That may well be true, but “less” incentive is not “no” incentive. It doesn’t address the fact that slaves were expensive to purchase (when the slave trade was active), that they were expensive to keep at any time (if one wanted a productive worker) and they were liable to escape or rebellion. Machines do none of those things.
Ymarsaker,
“What we’re talking about is how T doesn’t want 100 years of Democrat tyranny, but for blacks he never saw and doesn’t care about, it was fine for them ”
You are now writing like the leftists that you condemn; inferring and imputing motives when you think they run counter to your own narrative. You know nothing about what I care about.
Shame on you!
“It doesn’t address the fact that slaves… were expensive to keep at any time (if one wanted a productive worker) and they were liable to escape or rebellion. Machines do none of those things.”
One inexpensive meal a day, a cardboard shack to house them in and rags to clothe them is in fact a minimal expense. Minimal medical care and virtually no dental or eye care. Slaves also reproduced, considerably reducing the cost to maintain and increase the work force.
Machines wear out, break down despite investment in preventive maintenance, require the purchasing of fuel to operate them and perhaps most importantly, do not satisfy the egotistical and sadistic…
Seems the top of the top slave owners fancied themselves the equivalent of Britain’s county society. In each case, owning land was the key. Vile trade, no matter how lucrative, was not quite the thing.
The Brits had tenant farmers, the South slaves.
See Stanley Elkins on “Slavery”. His view, expanded slightly, is that racism became the defense against moral reproach of slavery. Prior to that moral reproach, slavery was just one of those things, better you than me, buddy. And, oddly, since even the slaveholders were uncomfortable defending it on moral grounds, other grounds had to be used.
After the war, the plutocrats needed racism to keep the poor whites and the blacks from allying.
Also occasional reports that it was impossible to get good work from free whites to do the work slaves might do since it was beneath them. You were left with the shiftless and the drunk.
Having a war didn’t change that.
Richard Aubrey,
“You were left with the shiftless and the drunk,” and the Irish. Don’t forget the Irish. They were in many areas considered lower than slaves (“Irish need not apply”) in the first half of the 19th century.
GB,
“Machines wear out, break down despite investment in preventive maintenance, require the purchasing of fuel to operate them and perhaps most importantly, do not satisfy the egotistical and sadistic…”
I don’t deny that, but it really does sound like you’re projecting here.
T,
Facts, reason, logic and a clear view of the worst in human nature is not ‘projecting’. But denial of such is evidence of willful blindness.
I understand that antebellum public works such as draining swamps was so dangerous–disease, I imagine–that the contractors couldn’t rent slave gangs. They had to hire Irish.
Thing about machines is you don’t have to feed them when you don’t need them. Keep them in the shop with a tarp over them. And you don’t have to pay to maintain free labor when it’s not the season for needing it.
Some agricultural machinery was powered by being hauled across the ground with gears and belts and whatnot. That meant bigger teams of horses or mules or oxen, but that’s different from fuel.
The problem with cotton is making the sharp end, so to speak, capable of getting the cotton bolls off the plant without pulling up the plant or otherwise damaging the field. That’s pretty finicky engineering. Not sure when it was developed to a useful level.
Even today, much of our food has to be handpicked by imported stoop labor because it’s too delicate for current mechanization.
As Beverly finds it important to remind us, no more than 5% or even 2% of Southerners owned slaves. That included rich INdians and blacks who owned slaves too, perhaps.
The cost… was either too high or there were other barriers.
I don’t disagree on the figures. It just shows that 2% of a people can control 99% of the people in a democracy. Rule for and by demons, demoncracy.
It’s like the conspiracy theorists over at Tea Party and INfowars thinking this country’s policy is run by 20,000 Marxists. It’s not like that would ever happen, right.
There were all kinds of white Southern aristocrats that wanted to change or reform the system. The system didn’t want to change. General Lee didn’t like slavery, the South told his As to shut up and sit down, his opinion wasn’t needed. Forest didn’t like the KKK, even though he founded a chapter to restore economic security in the South, because the South told his As to shut the hell up and sit down, they were going to lynch them some niggers.
98% of the Southern population never saw any of that, so they thought it was some alien problem and that everyone was doing their best to work out a solution (except the Republicans). Everyone thinks the Democrats are just another political party, that bipartisanship and compromises will “work out a solution”.
If only healthcare became affordable. If only technology would solve environmental and energy problems. If only. If technology solved those problems, the Democrats would make some more sh up the next day.
A civilization based on technology like Google glasses, needs a servant class that is educated.
The Southern aristocracy didn’t like educating landless white or landless blacks. That wasn’t so much of a white problem as a Democrat problem with competition.
So the only technology that could be imported was from the industrial north, which people disliked and resented because it wasn’t home built. Imported technology is extremely difficult to maintain and use, because the technical and spare parts for maintenance are made elsewhere.
It’s often always better logistically to use on land resources, such as manpower and transportation.
T, I notice that you didn’t answer my question, so I will repeat it:
Like the song says, How Long Lord, How Long? Would it have been worth an extra hundred years of slavery? Inquiring minds want to know.
Regarding the willingness of the slaveholders to yield to Herb Stein’s dictum “What can’t go on forever, won’t,” I refer you to William Dodd’s The Cotton Kingdom: A Chronicle of the Old South.
With the slaveholders wanting expansion of slavery, I find it doubtful that they would have willingly yielded to Herb Stein’s dictum.
William Dodd, a native Virginian, gained greater fame as Ambassador to Germany during the 1930s. In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin was written about his term as Ambassador.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Garden_of_Beasts:_Love,_Terror,_and_an_American_Family_in_Hitler%27s_Berlin
Saw a book discussion on CSpan. The book was “What This Cruel War Was Over”, a riff on the old song.
The author looked at huge numbers of soldiers’ letters, north and south, and was surprised to find the issue of slavery so common on both sides.
Keep in mind that, even if you didn’t own a slave, you might rent some from your uncle for a project or a harvest, and stand, possibly, to inherit some.
The south was trying to expand westward and into Central America to take its slavery with it and even those who didn’t own slaves might have seen an opportunity there, which would include slaves.
If you were a lawyer in a big city, you might have hired help around the house, but the stable where you kept your horses, or rented them, probably had slaves. As did your clients, from whom you earned your living.
Very complicated, even for those who opposed slavery.
Geoffry Britain,
I must say that I am amazed at how infused the leftist Manichean view of slavery is that it reveals itself even among casual conversation of the more conservative. I apologize for the length of this comment and note that this is not any attempt to change your own belief system. it’s really designed to flesh out clarify my points prior to the onslaught that I suspect is to come.
First, let’s clear the air. Just because I examine slavery apart from the moral repugnancy brush doesn’t mean I support it. That’s the kind of inference that Ymarsaker made above and that’s what leftists do all the time to anyone who dares to disagree with them. For the record . . . let me repeat that . . . For the record, I too, find it morally repugnant. I also happen to know some small amount about it historically as well as being able to identify it as an economic system. Those are different issues and the point of departure of my views in this present discussion.
I referred to “projection” in your comment above because you seem to paint with a such broad brush and take the (leftist) approach that all slave owners were Simon Legree types whose first mode of operation was to abuse and overwork their slaves.
So, do you think Thomas Jefferson stood over his field hands with a black-snake bullwhip and beat them and worked them into the ground? George Washington?
In fact, my reading has shown that only about 1% – 2% of Southerners actually owned slaves. Why? because they were expensive to buy (until the slave trade was abolished in 1802) and they were expensive to keep even at the minimal levels which you suggest. Were there plantation owners who mistreated slaves as you imply? Undoubtedly! Did all slave owners do that? Undoubtedly not. Again I offer that slavery was an economic system first and a good businessman does not abuse the engine of his prosperity if he wants it to be continuously productive. And make no mistake about it, there is a big difference between abusing one’s engine of prosperity and simply reducing its cost.
Furthermore, your broad brush paints all slaves not only as though they were all mistreated, but also as though they were all field hands. What about domestics? ? Your last sentence includes the words “egotistical and sadistic,” and while there’s no denying that the sadistic existed, do you think it served the egotistical patriarch/matriarch well to have an emaciated, malnourished, scarred-from-the-whip domestic present a tray of hors d’oeuvres to his/her socially esteemed guests?
Let me clarify once again that I, too, find slavery morally repugnant okay? It is especially so in our society which was based on the principle that “all men are created equal,” but that is an issue aside from the fact that slavery has been a historical fact for over 4500 years. It was part and parcel of the economic system which was present at the founding of this country which is why even many of the founders were slave owners in their own right. It was a present-day fact to the founders with which they had to contend, and like it or not, insistence on it’s immediate abolition as a sine qua non would have prevented the founding of this overwhelmingly successful social experiment we call our nation because the Southern colonies would not have signed on and accepted the Constitution.
Finally and once again, just because I think that slavery was economically doomed in this country from the signing of the Constitution does not imply that I think the Civil war was a mistake or that it should not have been fought (like some decry the Hiroshima bombing). As I said above, it happened and like the very presence of slavery in the 18th century it is a historical fact with which we must contend. My “woulda, coulda, shoulda” above to which Ymarsaker took offense was meant to clarify that our discussion here is moot. It doesn’t change the historical fact that the Civil War was fought and will not affect the future; it’s a subjunctive conversation.
No willful blindness here, just not the broad Manichean brush that would demand that my rhetorical adversaries walk through the cyber halls with a bell announcing themselves as “Unclean! Unclean!”
Gringo,
I did not answer your question because I thought it to be rhetorical. I think an answer appears in my response to GB above:
If, OTOH, you are asking me is for a precise definition of how long I would allow slavery to exist absent the Civil War, I offer that such is like asking me if I think WW II should have continued (with the loss of millions more lives) without using the bomb.
As to your quote from Dodd, it seems at first reading that it supports my contention that slavery was an economic system aside from any moral repugnance we might (then or today) view it with (I will read it again more intently).
Richard Aubrey,
“Very complicated, even for those who opposed slavery.”
My point precisely. Not the simple Manichean good v. evil with which we tend to paint opposing views.
Richard A, one speculative alternative history produced the Draka, manifesting in a South African Empire covering all of Africa using the slave trade as the social, political, and ideological foundation. Slavery can be refined to produce a technical class. Just look at the Left’s cannonfodder for an example.
The other line of thought, which I might come to believe more, is that if the South had successfully seceded, they would have taken over Latin America instead. Venezuela tyranny before Venezuela, so to speak.
T, a correction needs to be added.
This isn’t about whether T is supporting slavery or not. This is, as the original line you responded to had in it, about hypocrisy vis a vis slavery. Hypocrisy in slavery isn’t about owning slaves or liking liberty.
Hypocrisy is about whether you apply the same logick and magick to other people as you do to yourself. Thus if T’s logick is that slaves in the past only needed to wait until technology and automation freed them, then where is T’s absolute obedience to the Left in the modern day at? Where is T’s talk about technology making Obamacare workable? Where is T’s talk about technology freeing us from the Leftist alliance? Is T going to sit around and wait for something to free him from the Left?
This correction shouldn’t have been necessary, but you’ve been going on the wrong road for awhile, T.
Ymarsaker,
Au contraire this is not about hypocrisy at all. You have completely mis-read what I have written. My simple point was that whether the Civil War was fought at all, I submit that slavery was doomed in this country due to its underlying principles of equality in the Constitution and the march of technology.
I never said slaves should have waited until technology freed them. You said that I said that (and just where in the Hell did you come up with that?). I never said that the Civil War should not have been fought; you are implying that I said that. I never said that technology was/is the be-all end-all to social and cultural problems; you are saying that I said that. In fact you have inferred those interpretations presumably because you are responding from your own pre-conceived narrative rather than reading and understanding what I have written.
So all of your counters (e.g., “Where is T’s talk about technology making Obamacare workable?”) and your claim of hypocrisy are non sequitur issues invented by you. They have no more validity in this commentary than if you were asking where is my talk about technology allowing the sun to rise in the west, and they are just as absurd.
In true leftist fashion you are playing the troll in this conversation. You argue from false premises and you have made the jump to an initial ad hominem attack in essence saying that I am a hypocrite who does not care about blacks who lived in slavery.
I repeat my claim. You are now “debating” like the leftists you condemn and as with a leftist debate, one can always tell when the left is losing because they either revert to ad hominems and name calling or they just shut up and walk away.
On the question of moral issues, there’s no guarantee that people who own slaves are evil. Nor are they hypocrites merely because they own slaves but like the US Constitution.
That’s not the problem at hand.
Evil and hypocrisy are states of being that requires some additional work to demonstrate.
The problem in the US with slavery was that it was a social and philosophical institution that people had a lot invested in. They weren’t going to let it go away, the same way Reid won’t let ranchers interfere with the Left’s plans for Nevada. One person has already died in that operation, before Reid told BLM to withdraw.
Evil is a choice. People who own slaves may have little to no choice about it, because their wealth is tied up in this social institution. When given a choice between 95% wealth without slaves and 105% wealth with slaves, what they choose thus determines good or evil. The Left, for example, would rather turn their wealth of 8 to Bundy’s 6, into a wealth of 4 to Bundy’s 0. The Left would rather take an extreme hit on their own wealth, so long as their competition is cut to zero, vs letting others have almost as much wealth and power as the Left has. That choice is ultimately an evil one, as self interest doesn’t even factor into it, except as a side vacation.
While people who grew up with racism and class differences may think the negro is put in the right place for that skin color, their question of personal responsibility comes after they are given a choice about it. After they are told that there is a difference, what do they do about it? Ignore it? Attempt to pursue truth where ever it may lead? Lynch the messenger?
The state of hypocrisy, mutual eradicating contradictions in one person, has different consequences and lead ups. A person can be evil, but no hypocrite. They can’t be good while being a hypocrite, however. In so far as robbing Peter to pay Paul does no good, since it’s a zero sum equation. A mutual contradiction means that for whatever a person does Right in A, the contradiction in B to Z overrides the A. There’s embezzlement going on but it’s unknown where exactly it is.
If a person in the modern era can honestly apply the same judgment to the past as they do their own blood family, then they can pass the hypocrisy test. If a person truly thinks that X, Y, and Z were all that was necessary to solve the problem of slavery, then when their blood family is enslaved, they must truly think that X, Y, and Z will solve the same problem.
However, any contradictions or differences must be explained or proven. Otherwise the test or interview is failed.
This isn’t about morality and it isn’t about a circle jerk intended to make people proclaim their “moral repugnance” at slavery, as if that does any good in the 21st century. People confuse certain things with the Left because they are surrounded by Leftists calling themselves Americans, but they should check that at the door.
If you really think this is a circle dance intended to make you or anyone, T, proclaim Morality on slavery, just watch what happens to anyone that tries to make me retract my statement that “owning slaves doesn’t make one evil (by itself)”.
Clearly, a nerve has been touched.
Hypocrisy is not a nerve. It’s only your natural resistance to two things.
1. Truth
2. Human emotions.
I will leave that for the readers to decide.
Feeling a bit self-righteous today are we?
Escape if you must. My point was made long ago.
The humans left in slavery, past, present, and future, would love to have your luxury of choice though.
Your human emotions are lacking, T. But don’t worry, once you experience the pain of the Left’s boot on your head, you will understand.
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