12 replies to this topic

[thefirstimmortal]

         Mangala quote  Think about slavery! African Americans were enslaved for 100's of years


   Mangala quote  I'm an American, and I appreciate being an American every day, but I do not appreciate being a part of the American history of making slaves and virtual slaves in order to maintain freedom for some.

   O'Rights  QUOTE     I want to live in the America of Washington and Jefferson that promoted good will and honest commerce toward all countries, and hatred toward none -- one in which the politicians don't blame their own
                          failures on faceless foreigners.



                   Mangala quote  Both had slaves and could not care less about any other countries' people. End of story.

That's right Mangala, I don't duck the hard issues.

Slavery was about as clear a violation of libertarian principles as could be imagined, so it’s no surprise that many leading abolitionists were libertarians. They staked their argument on the natural and imprescriptible rights of life, liberty, and property, noting in particular that each person owns himself-so the slaveholder is, as this Declaration of Sentiments of the American Anti-Slavery Convention (1833) argues, a “man-stealer.” Abolitionism was not only a crusade for individual rights, it was an important element of the long historical struggle to extend dignity to more individuals.

You are right to raise the slavery issue. It hath caused me to think more deeply about individual liberty and our government.

[thefirstimmortal]

More than 200 years have elapsed, since a band of patriots convened to devise measures for the deliverance of this country from a foreign yoke. The corner-stone upon which they founded the Temple of Freedom was broadly this, ”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.” At the sound of their trumpet-call, millions of people rose up as from the sleep of death, and rushed to the strife of blood; deeming it more glorious to die instantly as freemen, than desirable to live one hour as slaves. They were few in number, poor in resources; but the honest conviction that Truth, Justice and Right were on their side, made them invincible....

Their grievances, great as they were, were trifling in comparison with the wrongs and sufferings of those for whom we now speak of. Our forefathers were never slaves, never bought and sold like cattle, never shut from the light of knowledge and religion, never subjected to the lash of brutal taskmasters.

But those, for whose constituting at least one-sixth part of the countrymen-were recognized by law, and treated by their fellow-beings, as marketable commodities, as goods and chattels, as brute beasts; are plundered daily of the fruits of their toil without redress; really enjoyed no constitutional nor legal protection from licentious and murderous outrages upon their persons; and were ruthlessly torn asunder-the tender babe from the arms of its frantic mother-the heart-broken wife from her weeping husband-at the caprice or pleasure of irresponsible tyrants. For the crime of having a dark complexion, they suffered the pangs of hunger, the infliction of stripes, the ignominy of brutal servitude. They were kept in heathenish darkness by laws expressly enacted to make their instruction a criminal offence.

These were the prominent circumstances in the condition of more than two millions of our people, the proof of which may be found in thousands of indisputable facts, and in the former laws of the slaveholding States.

I maintain that, in view of the civil and religious privileges of this nation, the guilt of its oppression was unequalled by any other on the face of the earth.

I further maintain that no man has a right to enslave or imbrute his brother, to hold or acknowledge him, for one moment, as a piece of merchandize, to keep back his hire by fraud or to brutalize his mind, by denying him the means of intellectual, social and moral improvement.

The right to enjoy liberty is inalienable. To invade it is to usurp the idea and spirit of the Constitution. Every man has a right to his own body to the products of his own labor to the protection of law and to the common advantages of society.

[thefirstimmortal]

In the words of Fredrick Douglass


More than twenty years of my life were consumed in a state of slavery. My childhood was environed by the baneful peculiarities of the slave system. I grew up to manhood in the presence of this hydra-headed monster, not as a master, not as an idle spectator, not as the guest of the slaveholder, but as A SLAVE, eating the bread and drinking the cup of slavery with the most degraded of my brother bondmen, and sharing with them all the painful conditions of their wretched lot. In consideration of these facts, I feel that I have a right to speak, and to speak strongly. Yet, my friends, I feel bound to speak truly.

First of all, I will state, as well as I can, the legal and social relation of master and slave. A master is one, to speak in the vocabulary of the southern states, who claims and exercises a right of property in the person of a fellow man. This he does with the force of the law and the sanction of southern religion. The law gives the master absolute power over the slave. He may work him, flog him, hire him out, sell him, and, in certain contingencies, kill him, with perfect impunity. The slave is a human being, divested of all rights, reduced to the level of a brute, a mere “chattel” in the eye of the law, placed beyond the circle of human brotherhood, cut off from his kind, his name, which the “recording angel” may have enrolled in heaven, among the blest, is impiously inserted in a Master’s ledger, with horses, sheep, and swine.

He can own nothing, possess nothing, acquire nothing, but what must belong to another. To eat the fruit of his own toil, to clothe his person with the work of his own hands, is considered stealing. He toils that another may reap the fruit; he is industrious that another may live in idleness; he eats unbolted meal that another may eat the bread of fine flour; he labors in chains at home, under a burning sun and biting lash, that another may ride in ease and splendor abroad; he lives in ignorance that another may be educated; he is abused that another may be exalted; he rests his toil, worn limbs on the cold, damp ground that another may repose on the softest pillow; he is clad in coarsed tattered raiment that another may be arrayed in purple and fine linen; he is eltered only by the wretched hovel that a master may dwell in a magnificent mansion; and to this condition he is bound down as by an arm of iron.

[thefirstimmortal]

That a human being cannot be justly held and used as property, is apparent from the very nature of property. Property is an exclusive right. It shuts out all claim but that of the possessor. What one man owns, cannot belong to another. What then, is the consequence of holding a human being as property? Plainly this. He can have no right to himself. His limbs are, in truth, not morally his own. He has not a right to his own strength. It belongs to another. His will, intellect, and muscles, all the powers of body and mind which are exercised in labor, he is bound to regard as another’s. Now, if there be property in any thing, it is that of a man in his own person, mind, and strength. All other rights are weak, unmeaning, compared with this, and, in denying this, all right is denied.

The slave holder claims the slave as his Property. The very idea of a slave is, that he belongs to another, that he is bound to live and labor for another, to be another’s instrument, and to make another’s will his habitual law, however adverse to his own. Another owns him, and, of course, has a right to his time and strength, a right to the fruits of his labor, a right to task him without his consent, and to determine the kind and duration of his toil, a right to confine him to any bounds, a right to extort the required work by stripes, a right, in a word, to use him as a tool, without contract, against his will, and in denial of his right to dispose of himself or to use his power for his own good. A slave, is in the power of the master to whom he belongs. The master may sell him, dispose of his person, his industry, his labor; he can do nothing, possess nothing, nor acquire any thing, but which must belong to his master.”


Now with this in mind Mangala, could you answer the following question that I have asked before.

All these taxes together total roughly 47% of your income. How free are you when government takes 47% of your earnings?


Adding the cost of taxes and regulation together, government is soaking up 57% of your economic life. It means you work 4½ hours out of every 8-hour day for the government, and only 3½ hours for yourself and your family. Or, put another way, you work until around July 27 of each year (6 months, 27 days) for the government, and only the remaining 5 months and 4 days for yourself.

I have a question for you Mangala, if this is freedom, at what level of confiscation are we no longer free?

[thefirstimmortal]

Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The labour of his body and mind, and the work of his hands and thoughts are properly his.


Live Long and Well
William O'Rights

[thefirstimmortal]

Mangala is correct, our nation was built in part on slavery, a house torn down by the great Civil War. But this new house of mirrors, of secret rooms, of hidden passages, indeed, a vastly more subtle and deluding structure, has been built on the same malignant foundation. And today we all live in this house, and we are still slaves. No one is as hopelessly enslaved as the person who thinks he is free.

[thefirstimmortal]

Love it or leave it, the bumper sticker on the cars of patriots used to read. Get With It Or Get Out.

But I thought then, as I do now, that the true test of liberty is the right to test it, the right to question it, the right to speak to my neighbors, to grab them by the shoulders and look into their eyes and ask, "Are we free?" I have thought that if we are free, the answer cannot hurt us. And if we are not, must we not hear the answer?

[thefirstimmortal]

More than 200 years have elapsed, since a band of patriots convened to devise measures for the deliverance of this country from a foreign yoke. The corner-stone upon which they founded the Temple of Freedom was broadly this, ”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.” At the sound of their trumpet-call, millions of people rose up as from the sleep of death, and rushed to the strife of blood; deeming it more glorious to die instantly as freemen, than desirable to live one hour as slaves. They were few in number, poor in resources; but the honest conviction that Truth, Justice and Right were on their side, made them invincible....

Their grievances, great as they were, were trifling in comparison with the wrongs and sufferings of those for whom I now speak of. Our forefathers were never slaves, never bought and sold like cattle, never shut from the light of knowledge and religion, never subjected to the lash of brutal taskmasters.

But those, for whose constituting at least one-sixth part of the countrymen-were recognized by law, and treated by their fellow-beings, as marketable commodities, as goods and chattels, as brute beasts; were plundered daily of the fruits of their toil without redress; really enjoy no constitutional nor legal protection from licentious and murderous outrages upon their persons; and were ruthlessly torn asunder-the tender babe from the arms of its frantic mother-the heart-broken wife from her weeping husband-at the caprice or pleasure of irresponsible tyrants.

For the crime of having a dark complexion, they suffered the pangs of hunger, the infliction of stripes, the ignominy of brutal servitude. They were kept in heathenish darkness by laws expressly enacted to make their instruction a criminal offence.

These were the prominent circumstances in the condition of more than two millions of our people, the proof of which may be found in thousands of indisputable facts, and in the former laws of the slaveholding States.

I maintain that, in view of the civil and religious privileges of this nation, the guilt of its oppression was unequalled by any other on the face of the earth.

I further maintain that no man has a right to enslave or imbrute his brother, to hold or acknowledge him, for one moment, as a piece of merchandize, to keep back his hire by fraud or to brutalize his mind, by denying him the means of intellectual, social and moral improvement.

The right to enjoy liberty is inalienable. To invade it is to usurp the idea and spirit of the Constitution. Every man has a right to his own body to the products of his own labor to the protection of law and to the common advantages of society.

[Mangala]

You know Mr. O'Rights, repeating a whole post again will not reinforce your point, it will just cause people to skip over it. It wastes valuable server space as well ). Anyway,about your whole slavery issue. Yes America was built on the backs of slaves in the 18th century, as well as the 19th century, and the 20th and the 21st. But what you and your fellow libertarians call slavery is little more than freedom with limits. After all, we are all free to do certain things in this country, pick our jobs, pick our hobbies, pick our friends. But we are not free to do certain other things such as assault people, or embezzle money, or commit adultery. We understand that humans must be free in order to enjoy life, but we also understand that there must be limits on how much freedom we have or else we would live a life of poverty and fear.

In truth, you and the other libertarians here are NOT slaves, you are simply whiners. You don't like paying half of your income to the federal government, and yet no one agrees with you that you shouldn't have to. Libertarians as a party are never voted for in federal government offices because people know this country needs the government on their side to provide them with services like military protection and social security.

We still need slaves however. How do we manage to live these lives of luxury that libertarians call slavery? We use slaves from other countries. That's right, I'm talking about sweatshop workers. We let companies run amok using laborers from other countries with no job security or decent hours every day without pause. If you want to whine about how bad your life is, it's only better than the industrial revolution because companies found other places to take advantage of people.

I'd rather pay money to a group of people I elected than some ragtag job insurance corporation which started up on its own accord. The government can value people, corporations can only value dollar signs. And any commercial that tells you a company does care about people is proof enough that they only value capital.

[Lazarus Long]

It is a big world out here and there is nothing that the US depends upon that is not in some way linked to a global economy, from both legal and undocumented immigrants feeding the service economy to petroleum and rare earth metals that feed internecine wars in Africa and elsewhere. If the US returned to an isolationist ethic it would not only economically collapse it would be overrun by other nations and peoples that think globally. King of the Hill is a Machiavellian Game and we are the Modern Roman Military Industrial State at the top of the heap.

Even the black market force of illegal drugs is a domestic consumer demand that is woven into global economics not the other way around despite the empty rhetoric of the Drug Warriors.

How does it feel my fellow American's to hold firmly in your teeth the Tiger's tail?

Only so long as the pull is equal to or grater then the strength of the tiger will you be able to keep the jaws away from you but there is second option that few recognize and that is to make peace with the tiger.

Just remember that if you try to kill the tiger it is more likely that you in turn will be killed. Slavery is parasitism and it always has been, and yes we still depend upon slavery but so does every modern state and they are just able to divert attention to us with the blame for being the lead state that is profiting the most, at the moment.

Look at the history of such seemingly benign states such as Holland. Their security and wealth today was built on the marketing of illegal weapons, drugs, and slaves. Arguably their legal sex trade today is still a form a slavery that exploits many foreigners who are limited at getting work in only this manner.

[Mangala]

But is that right? Are you justifying sweatshop labor? Do you believe we should let companies do whatever they want in terms of manipulating uneducated and downtrodden people?

[Lazarus Long]

But is that right? Are you justifying sweatshop labor? Do you believe we should let companies do whatever they want in terms of manipulating uneducated and downtrodden people?

Of course not but if you plan to effect any rational change in the state of current events then you had better be an astute scholar of history, fluent in cross cultural analysis and a damn rational pragmatist when it comes down to methods.

"Right?" What is right about history, stop whining about what should be and take a deep breath and work diligently for what can be. Don't let your ideals interfere with your ability to achieve change. There is no top down solution that can be expected, you might as well be waiting for Godot, or a Second Coming.

Of course I am not justifying Sweatshops and if people stop buying the products then of course the children would be out of work and would starve long before getting an American Minimum wage. Naivete like good intentions is simply no excuse for all the harm done when making sweeping gross externally imposed changes on other societies.

American companies are all we can enforce any rules of operation over and frankly the problem is that most real Transnationals are no longer domestic affairs. You also have to do business in a foreign country under the rules of commerce there. This isn't a simple good guy bad guy scenario.

This isn't a situation where if you automatically close sweatshops in Sri Lanka and send the children home they will be welcomed with open arms, in many cases it was their own parents that sold their children into servitude in order to borrow money for keeping the rest of the family fed and there isn't even the basis of a true public school system to which to send the children, or shelter system in place to house and feed them. Stop thinking that just because we are to the exploitative end consumer that we are in such a strong position to remedy all wrong in the world. We can influence change but the process is as slow as evolution and excruciating so to the impatient. Revolution is more likely going to increase the supply of starving exploited children not reduce it.

[Mangala]

We use products made by Americans all the time. We've shown that Americans can survive without slave labor. It is my belief that Americans can still remain dominant and give minimum wage and good working hours to people. We live in an era of progress and power in America. We should be working to lift people up instead of holding them down. One day soon China will end up the major world power. When that happens, with 1.1 billion people, will we accept lower wages in order to compete at their level of need?

I say we start now. We shouldn't just let corrupt corporate policies just run amok just because it has happened. Lazarus your just buying into the idea that companies have already won and there will be no way to stop them. Wake up and realize that everything won't be made in China forever.

And the children will not be welcomed home with open arms because the corporations have already taken away the lifestyle these people used to live. They need sweatshop labor now but it does not have to be that way. This is what I mean by corporations having too much power. Should money driven people at the top who we did not elect force us to accept slave labor? Do you HAVE to buy shirts made for 11 cents sold for 20 dollars? No, you don't, you just think you do.

It's never been different so you just accept it as truth.