Ha ha. Well, John Brown may have been crazy, but I'd take his brand of crazy any day over the ranting of an apologist for slavery. Too bad there weren't more psychopaths like him in 1860 going down South. It might have saved the lives of a lot of innocent Northern boys.
***
However, it is not in accordance with traditional Western Theology. Both the Old and New Testaments, as I mentioned earlier, accepted slavery.
Accepted and in some degree mitigated. But they didn't condone it. They didn't celebrate it. The fourth commandment wasn't "Thou shalt raise scars on the back of the field hand if he doesn't work hard enough"; Ecclesiastes didn't say "For everything there is a season, a time to be born, a time to die, a time to rape the mulatto wench you own..."; John 3:16 doesn't read, "For God so loved the world that he made the black folks to serve the white folks." Get real.
You sound like a multiculturalist talking about the clitoris slicers in Africa, "We may not understand it, but it's their culture. It's part of their heritage. Who are we to judge?" What the hell kind of person can look evil in the eye and just shrug his shoulders?
***
Your rants would pillory the fountainheads of Western Culture. Ancient Attica had more slaves than freemen. Ancient Rome had a slave culture. And, as I have already mentioned, such was also prevalent in Biblical times, in the Holy Land.
Okay. Without getting into the extraordinary differences between these types of slavery, so the hell what? Do you spend every day of your life saying, "Well, it looks like evil to me, but the fountainheads of Western Culture may have thought differently, so I'll excuse it..."
The fact of the matter is that Western Culture, prior to the Renaissance, was as backwards as any. It had the seeds of greatness, for sure, but Rome was a cesspool of depravity, life was cheap in the Near East, European society after the fall of Rome to about 1500 had all of the grace and moral stature of a cock fight or a date rape. It was only after the society began to respect the rights of the individual that the society itself became worthy of respect.
***
You seem to feel that you have the right and duty to meddle in other people's affairs, to enforce your moral judgments; that the ends justify the means.
No, I feel I have the obligation to point out evil. And chattel slavery was unmitigated evil. I feel that if you think it is right for you to own another person like you would a swine or steer, that it is okay for me to free that person by killing you, if necessary. I feel that if you co-opt your country into enforcing your ownership of another person, that I have the right to get another polity to wage war on you until all those who share your crime are dead.
What the hell? You complain about me wanting to "meddle in other people's affairs" but you blithely excuse a system where the cream of the South not only meddled in other people's affairs, but actually owned the other people. That's sick.
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Such was the doctrine of Lenin and Trotsky; such that of Adolph Hitler and Chairman Mao.
Don't be stupid. The communists and Nazis used the power of the state to strip from the individual his right to freely enjoy his rights and his life. They said that an individual is nothing, the duty to the state was everything. In the old South, the lives and rights of the slaves meant nothing. The state stripped from those individuals their right to freely enjoy their rights and their lives. The whip-crackers said that the slave as an individual was nothing, his duty to the master was everything. If you've got a Commie/Nazi fetish that you're looking to indulge, there you go.
***
I find that doctrine very offensive.
You excuse chattel slavery, but find it offensive for me to point out that it is immoral for the state to allow one person to own another? That's sick. Seriously. That's really sick.
Your simplistic analysis of the issues, does not qualify you as the anointed one, to define other people's mental health or morals. You give away your fanatic arrogance, when you suggest a right to wage war on others, whose systems offend you. You can quote what is not in the Bible, but cannot quote anything to support your view of morality. You defame the Greek civilization, some of whose works in philosophy, art and scholarship, have never been equaled. But when you simplisticly define the Socialist fanatics of the Twentieth Century, as just being about appropriating the individual for the State, you deliberately miss the point of what motivated them.
Lenin, Trotski, Hitler and Chairman Mao, were all about uniformity; uniform values; uniform condition of life. The individual had to be suppressed, so that the few would not be allowed to rise from the mob. You have much the same attitude. You may convince yourself that it is because of your abhorrence of slavery; but you would actually murder--by your own admission--those who rose to the position, where they in fact became Masters. That sounds like Communism, pure and simple.
The Master/Servant relationship, is not just a matter of buying slaves from overseas vs. employing labor at home. In Europe, serfdom arose in part from conquest, in part from a need for protection from marauding forces. The point is not how a system arises, so much--at least not to me. The point is that all societies that advance beyond the most primitive homogeneous tribal level, have a clear cut hierarchy. To the extent that those at the top, are able to require and compel the labor or services of those beneath them, you have a form of bondage (i.e., slavery).
Because the egalitarian society, is mythological, rather than real; even the most extreme Socialists have a hierarchy--and to that extent, you can cite examples of Bolshevik and Nazi actions, which are analogous to those in a slave system, but the whole motivation is entirely different. You can no more compare the antics of the Communist Party members in Soviet Russia, or the SS and Gestapo in Socialist Germany to the Southern Plantation owner than you can compare a mule to a Dachshund.
Communism and National Socialism were totally about suppressing individuality. On the other hand, the Old South, as the true Christian civilization that it was, was probably the most individualistic society of its time. The Confederate Officer Corps were a cast of characters--intelligent, fascinating, but clearly, in many cases, one of a kind. No one ever suggested that they all acted with One Will, etc.. No one ever suggested that they wanted to take over the World and suppress all dissent.
Just look at the ethnic makeup of the Confederate hierarchy--the Scots-Irish, Huguenots, as well as the direct descendants of the original English settlers. Individualistic people, schooled by personal experiences of their own families, in the fundamental American values.
Yes, you can cite specific instances where slaves were cruelly treated. But in every State, save Louisiana, where Roman legal concepts survived the French roots, there were laws requiring humane treatment. And the proof of the overall pudding, is in the fact that there was no major slave revolt, even with the White Manhood off to War; and again, later, in the images cited by Booker T. Washington, of the weeping former slaves following the caskets of the beloved former Master or Mistress to the gravesite, years after freedom.
The compulsion for uniformity is a hideously cruel thing. It is not something that any Conservative ought to embrace. (See Compulsion For Uniformity.)
No slavery is not a good system. But I seriously doubt that either you or I will ever see a time, when it is not present in more than one area of the earth. And with the tendency towards more and more dependence on Government, across much of the globe, I really suspect that we will see more, not less of it, in the not too distant future. I seriously doubt, if it will be administered with the Christian spirit, which prevailed in much of the Old South, however.
William Flax
Really, you equate Hitler to Jefferson Davis!
it is immoral for the state to allow one person to own another?
May I sell myself into slavery?
ML/NJ