No, I said that I would support waging war on slave holders. Not any system that offends me, but a slave holding system. Anyone who supports freedom and liberty and what America stands should do so as well. If we cannot agree that slavery is an evil worth fighting, then the rest is meaningless.
You can quote what is not in the Bible, but cannot quote anything to support your view of morality.
You need a citation to support the notion that owning another person like a pet is immoral??? Okay, how about "love thy neighbor as thyself". Or, for the secularists among us, how about, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men were created equal, with certain inalienable rights. That among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
You defame the Greek civilization, some of whose works in philosophy, art and scholarship, have never been equaled.
Actually, I didn't mention Greek civilization at all (at least classical Greek). I defamed Roman, post-Roman European, and Near Eastern Civilization. (But it is rather odd that you seem more offended by my "insulting" Greek civilization than that people were held as slaves.) Greek Culture did create unequaled masterpieces and also promoted the evil institution of slavery. I am not saying that the masterpieces are valueless. I am saying that condoning slavery was wrong.
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.
No, I did not simplistically define them. I pointed out that in a basic sense they committed the same crime as every slave-holding society does: they fail to respect the rights of the individual.
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.
Where did you learn history? From a comic book? Lenin was about the revolutionary seizure of power and institutionalizing the power of the proletariat. Trotsky was about permanent revolution and opposition to Stalinism. Hitler was about the Fuhrerprincip, i.e., the leader principle; and the hierarchical ascension of the Aryan race above the Jewish/Bolschevic conspiracy he believed was trying to subjugate it. Mao was about the power of the peasantry in instituting socialism, the doctrine of power from the end of a gun, and the belief that the socialist revolution continues beyond the institution of the socialist government.
To say that they are all simply about "uniformity" is like saying that the cannon of Western Literature is about "bowling." It would not only be overly simplistic, but fundamentally wrong.
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.
Any person who is held in bondage has a moral right to fight back and kill, if necessary, the one holding him. One is also justified in killing, if necessary, to free another. There is no moral sanction in this because it is the enslaver, the kidnapper, who is the morally responsible agent.
And my thoughts are nothing like Mao, Lenin, Hitler or Trotsky. They each permitted slavery of one kind or another in their societies.
That sounds like Communism, pure and simple.
Wrong again. Communism is the last stage of socialism where the state is supposed to melt away and the direct ownership of the means of production is held by the people directly. In practice, it is an oppressive, revolutionary and centralized system whereby state ownership of property is controlled by an oligarchy, and where individual rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are not respected.
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).
You can justify it in your mind in any way you wish. I don't care. That all systems are stratified is true, but trivially so. The issue isn't the level of stratification or the level of compulsion, but whether one human owns another. If slavery exists in fact, but under a different name, it is to be equally condemned. It doesn't justify viewing slavery as less evil.
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.
You appear to be fixated on this point. The motives of Commies or Nazis differ from Rebs in many respect, but, in one crucial respect they were identical: in none of these systems were the rights of all its inhabitants to their basic inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness protected. The rest is irrelevant trivia.
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.
But it did not protect the rights of all of its individuals.
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.
This "one will" "suppression of individuality" thing is your rant. I never suggested that they weren't individual, fascinating, and one of a kind. Stuart had fantasies that he was a cavalier, Jackson had the lemon-sucking issue and the whole holding up his arm thing. I'm saying that the system in the South did not respect the God-given right of those held in bondage to their own autonomy.
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.
Which, unfortunately, included the evil of slavery. And evil which had to be eradicated as one would eradicate an infestation of termites.
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.
You mean it wasn't all "Song of the South"?
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.
Hmmm, let's see, Booker T. Washington is writing after the Democrats succeeding in getting the protection of the Union Army removed from the soil of the South. He offered his people's magnanimity if the whites would agree. He got Jim Crow instead.
The compulsion for uniformity is a hideously cruel thing. It is not something that any Conservative ought to embrace. (See Compulsion For Uniformity.)
What are you talking about? I am saying that one man has no rights to own another and that the slavery system is evil and you're claiming that uniformity is cruel???
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.
And if we see it arise, we must strike it down, and not glorify slavery in any form, in a quixotic attempt to justify the unjustifiable.
Very well said. I agree 100% and your facts are right on. Although, I fear you may be wasting your time.....
But this moral judgment of yours, despite your rant, is not one that you have supported on any basis other than your own rhetoric. While I agree that a slave system is a flawed system, that does not in and of itself make slaveholders evil men; nor does it give you the slightest right to interfere in other people's cultures.
If you want to narrow this to the specifics of this thread, let me be very clear. The Constitution--however you deny it--was a compact between the States, whose independence had been recognized in the Treaty of Paris in 1783. It was based upon delegated powers. As Article VII makes very clear, "The Ratification of the Conventions of nine States shall be sufficient for the Establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the Same."
Parse that language anyway that you like, and it is a Compact between the States that ratify. Several almost didn't join.
There are several provisions in that Constitution, which deliberately took slavery off the table, as an issue between the States, ratifying the Constitution. Your suggestion that you--or those who think as you think--would have been justified in waging a murderous war, against the Southern leadership, because they insisted on the original Constitutional intent, is what is truly immoral; truly evil. It was because there were an increasing number talking, as you are writing, was probably the single most significant reason for the South's secession--although there had been many other issues, also.
As for systems that demean individuals? Do you really think that the slave or bondsman, whether in Biblical, Greek, Roman or ante-bellum Southern times, who served a Master loyally, and in a way that contributed to his social order at the time, had less dignity than someone today, living on Welfare, without even trying to do anything productive? Or take the serf, serving the great landowner, who went off to war with his King, Henry V? Was there not far more dignity in his service at Agincourt, than that accorded many a modern beneficiary of Tony Blair's Socialist Britain?
You want to see history as a battle between Good and Evil, rather than one between differing perspectives, and competing interests. There certainly are evil men; but their differing with you on competing social systems is not the crux of their evil. On the other hand, those who take an oath to support a Constitutional compact, and then call for a course of action that flies in the face of that compact, have violated one of the most sacred principles of morality. The South was reacting, not provoking in her secession. The tragedy--on both sides--flowed from the arrogant madness you espouse.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site