Thread by ReformationFan.
I’ve been reading a fascinating book by economist, Stanford University professor, and Hoover Institute Senior Fellow Thomas Sowell called Black Rednecks & White Liberals. In an essay titled “The Real History of Slavery,” Sowell analyzes the complex reasons why most Americans who were morally opposed to slavery did not side with the radical abolitionists. A whole host of reasons stopped good men — including Washington and Jefferson — from supporting any endeavor to simply declare slaves free and release them into the wide world, and foremost among these concerns was the well-being of the slaves themselves.
Thomas Sowell knows things you will never know. Sowell quotes Edmund Burke, the 18th century British philosopher and opponent of the slave trade.
… Burke put the problem, as he put so many other problems, in the context of the inherent constraints of circumstances. While seeing slavery as “an incurable evil,” Burke was concerned with what would happen to the slaves themselves after they were freed, as well as the implications of their freedom for the society around them.
The “minds of men being crippled” by slavery, Burke said, “we must precede the donation of freedom” by developing in the enslaved people the capacity to function as responsible members of a free society…
[N]owhere did Burke view this is an abstract question without considering the social context and the consequences and dangers of that context.
Slavery is almost as old as humanity, and as widespread as the globe. The Islamic world was notorious for its slave trade. Slavs were notoriously slaves. In fact the word “slave” comes from slav. Arabs and North Africans enslaved Europeans, Europeans enslaved other Europeans, Africans enslaved other Africans. Everyone enslaved someone.
(Excerpt) Read more at lifesitenews.com ...
Thread by me.
Egbert, a slightly built, genial and energetic retired anesthesiologist with a snowy goatee, turns to his computer, his back to me, content to answer an e-mail while I sort through the pile. Once I finish untangling, I hold in my hands a curious plastic sack, about 21 inches long and 18 inches wide. A bunched white elastic strip, reminiscent of a garter, circles the mouth at the open end. A thick plastic tube runs into the sack, stretching 37 inches before branching into a T-shape with 12-inch arms extending from each side of the joint.
Egbert calls it an “exit hood.” It’s a contraption that can end a life in minutes. The 84-year-old doctor, who formerly served as a campus Unitarian Universalist minister and has taught as an assistant visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University, offers to explain how it works. The tube connects to two helium tanks, he says. He lifts the hood over his head and lowers the open end, letting go as the garter clamps to his forehead. Then, he says, you release the valves on the tanks, streaming helium into the hood.
“You fill it up until it feels like a New York chef’s hat,” he says, stretching the hood to demonstrate.
Then, he says, you pull the hood down. And he does just that, easing it past his eyes, his nose, his chin, and cinching it even tighter at his neck with a sweatband. His face goes hazy behind the plastic, a blurry image of a man whose life and work are prone to distortions and intrigue. His breath fogs the plastic, but he holds the hood there for a moment, saying something that I can’t quite make out.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...