The Way We Are Now—The Campaign
A strongly shared sense of right and wrong has maintained a working peace and harmony within many societies over long periods. This is probably what saw the class-ridden British through an empire and two world wars. It is what kept the South relatively free of violent racial strife before and during the War for Southern Independence and most of the time since. If so, we are in trouble. In the U.S. today the ruling elite are without any sense of right and wrong, having only a self-serving agenda, cynical manipulative techniques, and a shoddy and shallow worldview.
American public affairs are present-centered (an adolescent characteristic). Nobody remembers any past record of a politician. No sense of history, even recent history, is to be found. There was a time when the political commentators who were listened to were newspapermen with long experience and credibility. Our commentators now have no moral authority whatsoever and no earned wisdom. They exist only by media hype. A good many are even foreigners.
Thus our "news" is trivial, amorphous, anonymous, and conformist, for petty ideologues who lack any genuine knowledge and moral authority cannot be otherwise. Who are these people? Where do they come from? Who were their parents? How were they educated? What previous record of character and knowledge have they established? These were questions that used to be asked by civilized people as a matter of course before conceding authority. But Americans have managed to wipe out all except the present moment on the screen. Not only are such questions not answered, it occurs to nobody to even ask them of our politicians or "news" authorities.
Here is something that I have been observing for almost half a century now with only rare exceptions. When one puts forth a proposition, whether about current events or history, mainstream intellectuals (and their vast numbers of wannabe-intellectual lackeys) do not answer with argument or evidence. They merely dismiss you as one who is not smart enough to know the accepted ideas; rather like someone who wears white socks to a formal affair. This is particularly true of academics whose thinking usually reflects fashion rather than actual knowledge.
Obama will be President. The gamblers are banking on it. How can he fail? No Republican will dare bring out any of his numerous negative factors—that would be forbidden "racism." Obama gives millions of people a safe way to express their profound fear of having unrespectable thoughts and their profound hypocrisy—which is itself an expression of their profound and unacknowledged fear of black people.
There are millions of Americans who actually believe that the election of Obama or Mrs. Clinton as President will be a great forward step in history.
A "news" story tells me that reparations for slavery will be a good thing because it will bring about "healing" and "forgiveness." What can this mean? There is no one alive who qualifies to be healed or forgiven in regard to the institution that ended a century and a half ago. Should money be offered to "heal" wrongs known only in imagination? Alas, reporting on imaginary things and emotions like a supposed future "healing" now takes the place of facts in most of our "news."
Presidential candidates. Who among them has pietas and gravitas? Who has any true sense of the law and the Constitution? Who has thought about the proper ends of man and society? Who has more than a superficial relationship to the two millennia of Western culture?
I experienced a perfect illustration of the state of American freedom when I went to vote in the presidential primary. After casting my ballot, or rather touching my screen, I was driving along basking in my virtue. Two blocks from the polling place, I was pulled over by a deputy sheriff with a flashing blue light. I was informed that I was in violation for not having turned on my headlamps for the rain (which had barely started) and traveling 3 mph above the speed limit. And this is one of the least regimented counties in one of the least regimented States.
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#43: "If it be true that 13% of the people are terrorizing 87%, then I respectfully submit that there must be something seriuously wrong with the 87% (as the confusion of the above discussion would seem to indicate)."
Maybe I can confuse this one too, then. The problem is that most of those 87% are *not* terrorized or otherwise inconvenienced, and therefore are quite willing to sell out those few unfortunate percentage points who are.
Back to the amoeba that’s too big in [my] paragraph 4 above… The first one celled organism when it became too big I suppose billions of years ago it divided and became two healthier amoebas. That was attempted via our Civil War....52 Bill Temple
Your analogy is all mixed up.. the healthy multi celled amoeba was the republic before the civil war. The civil war was an attempt to to turn it into the one celled creature. Reverse evolution?
It is universally accepted, even by people who should know better, but not proved, that antebellum Southern slavery was a "crime" rather than a benefit.
Does it count for anything that slavery was abolished by "European-Americans?"
I greatly admire MacIntyre and Fleming for all of their ideas and agree with them whole-heartedly about liberalism in general. If I dismissed reparations glibly I would not challenge you at all. The reason I am, though, is to say that I reject 'modern individualism' but still see reparations as a great evil on several other grounds, including how we define what exactly group identity entails. It seems we agree more than each of us thinks. However, I am not going to discuss right now the idea of reparations and why it would be a disaster.
#57: I think it counts a lot that slavery was abolished by whites, and it especially counts that it was abolished at an enormous cost in blood. I tend to see that as having canceled the debt.
Whatever their merits or lack thereof in principle, I agree that in practice, in the current political climate, reparations would be a disaster. I wasn't arguing for reparations, but rather against one type of objection to them, the individualist objection implied by Mr. Wilson. I agree that we seem to agree.
Clyde Wilson (#56): "It is universally accepted, even by people who should know better, but not proved, that antebellum Southern slavery was a “crime” rather than a benefit."
Yeah, I was the one who called it a horrible crime--obviously speaking morally rather than juridically. Just out of curiosity, do the "people who should know better" include Eugene Genovese?
Except for calculations which measure benefit by the amount of food in one's belly--which I think we can all reject out of hand--I've never seen a calculation that those African-American slaves who survived the journey (it's sufficient for my argument to focus on the first generation) were better off as slaves than they were back in Africa. That may be just a sign of my own ignorance. I don't pretend to know anything about the history, and I'd never presume to argue the historical facts with Professor Clyde Wilson.
Let's assume blacks transported from Africa were better off as slaves by some accepted measurement, whatever that would be. Kidnapping a person (to use an individual analogy), taking him far from his home, and holding him for the rest of his life, even for his own good, is a moral crime. Of course there were arguments that it is not immoral when committed in the context of racial slavery, but I doubt if anyone here would accept those arguments. Presumably the slaves would have liked to go home, at least at first, even though they'd been benefitted. If American slavery was a net benefit to the first generation of slaves themselves, it was nevertheless a horrible crime as well. The two are not contradictory.
Pion Almoni, with all due respect, the slaves weren't kidnapped. They were already slaves and were sold by their own people to the European and Yankee slavers. As for it being 'racial', the chief factor in slavery was economic, not racial. They weren't brought over here because of their race, but because they were an economic asset. They were brought from Africa and not elsewhere beacuse that was where slaves were easily and cheaply obtained.
There was also white slavery in the form of illegal 'indentures'. This illegal form of slavery went on under the cover of the legal indenture system, and did involve kidnapping, along with forged indenture papers, etc.
Dr. Wilson,
Your words:
"It is universally accepted, even by people who should know better, but not proved, that antebellum Southern slavery was a “crime” rather than a benefit."
I note that a crime is an act malum in se under common law or an act that is malum prohibitum under a statute legislated, tending toward positive law. Slavery was certainly not a crime in the antebellum South.
As to sin, to the extent that it might apply - with the ultimate repose of an position thereon lying in St. Paul's letter to Philemon, one sins against God and save for the blood of the Christ answers to Him for that affront; for as David so eloquently tells us it is against God and against Him alone that one sins. One does not sin against the emotional sentiments of a confused age which claims that it - said age - can be held to no standard while it - said age - deigns in arrogance and hubris to hold other ages accountable for notions of "sin" which it has created out of whole cloth, said age having replaced God with itself and its own whimsical notions.
Since the servitude of most Africans who were slaves in the antebellum South began in Africa itself, either under their own kin or, if not kin, then under those of their own race, then the practical question of "benefit," assuming that the condition was in fact given, would be was servitude in that condition better or worse in their native Africa or the antebellum South. In which circumstance was one likely to be better treated or to live longer.? In which circumstance were their customs of liberty and traditions in play through which one or one's progeny more likely become free and come to participate in a stable society?
As to reparations, the alleged moral facade reeks of the scent of money for attorneys, for the shakedown artists and for, in much more paultry sums, the allegedly aggrieved. For the politicians, it means power by having placated with someone else's money their constituency and interest groups. For the moralizing chattering class reparations would bring on a sense of moral action, having used the power of the state to take the wealth of the historically innocent to placate the wants of the allegedly aggrieved class.
It seems that any ploy for the transfer of wealth using the power of the general government is considered and executed: from the Tariff of Abomination to the current ruse.
It is curious that with all the abstract rights and wrongs being thrown around, plundering (stealing from) the working class for money to buy the votes of the non-working class is obviously not considered a wrong. Hmm...?
"Your analogy is all mixed up.. the healthy multi celled amoeba was the republic before the civil war. The civil war was an attempt to to turn it into the one celled creature. Reverse evolution?" -woodcutter
I don't 'deserve' to post here because I usually just stumble in and post after reading a couple or few words of something which triggers me. So I don't usually give others at the site (although they no doubt deserve it) the respect of having read them before I throw a wrench in.
However I usually do so since it feels like a good idea. Feelings aren't always facts. But I do it on a hunch, I should...it couldn't hurt?
However for the first time in Western Civilization since Christianity Lincoln attacked civilian populations (and even his own) as a strategy for waging war. Europeans were astonished.
An amoeba by definition is a one-celled organism or creature. The South rebelled or tried to split. If it had it would have been, given my analogy above, another unified or one-celled creature, making two instead of one. It is not possible to have a multi-celled amoeba.
However I take your point. The South only rebelled because the healthier multi-celled paramecium that the country was back then was being threatened with DEVOLUTION (like say one of us, probably me, suddenly growing a tail) and Forced-so I guess it would be reverse-evolutionary engineering into being a one-celled organism yet again such as an AMOEBA. Perhaps his name ought to have been Amoeba Lincoln?
Let's call it then between an often incoherent myself and woodcutter at least in this case a draw. The two duelists probably on purpose prudently missed each other... ships passing in the night.
When in the future reading my posts if you do... remember their THEME - 'stop making sense.'? ?
Let Shakespeare make sense:
To leave poor me you have the strength of laws
For why to love [you/universal] I can allege no cause
But that your disbelief now becomes my fee
Mine ransoms yours and yours [must] ransoms me...
"Huh?" ... no, it's Shakespudder - or rather - 'Shakespeare approximately'
is it me or is it getting weird ? or BOTH. prudent to woodcut... keep it simple.
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If you late comers think we Southerners alone should pay for slavery, then you owe us for pioneering a wilderness and setting up a free society for you to immigrate to. You can't claim the benefits of the founders of America without incurring their debts also.
Since I had a Native American ancestor that was enslaved by another tribe and sold to one of my European American ancestors and the only ancestor I can find that owned African slaves was Cherokee can I just write myself a big fat check and forget about this non-sense?
If we pay reparations now they will want more in the future. The only way to end it now if we pay them reparations is to send them back to Africa.
#60: Good points. I don't know the history of American slavery so I'm just reasoning (maybe incorrectly) from common sense. I was aware that slaves were bought from African slaveholders. However, common sense tells me that such a high demand in the US would affect the supply in Africa. That is, more slaves would be captured (by Africans) because of the overseas trade. It's not as if there were a predetermined number of slaves, and the choice was whether they'd be enslaved in Africa or America. But if there is empirical evidence that demand didn't affect supply, I think it would be interesting.
The racial aspect of slavery is important from the point of view of group responsibility--again, using that concept to mean more or less what Alasdair MacIntyre means by it. "Individual" slavery might be just as bad, but racial slavery was a moral crime committed against African-Americans as a *group*.
#64: Mr. Wilson's comment is puzzling because as far as I can tell, the only reference to specifically Southern responsibility was by me, when I wrote [emphasis added], " I think that present-day southerners are responsible for slavery only as whites, NOT AS SOUTHERNERS". I meant that it's European-Americans in general, not Southerners, who should bear responsibility.
Ploni Almoni @
Your words:
"...but racial slavery was a moral crime committed against African-Americans as a *group*."
What is "racial slavery" and what is a "moral crime"? How does a "group," i.e. all members thereof, become guilty; and how does a "group," i.e. all members thereof, become victims?
Pioni Almoni: The issue of whether demand for slaves increased the supply in Africa is obviously complicated and perhaps unresolvable. However, didn't the Spaniards take a whole lot more slaves to their colonies than were taken to America? Also, I believe that the increase of slaves in America was, early on, due more to them multiplying here, rather than continued importation. The Spanish and Portuguese were involved in it before the Dutch, Brits and Yankees, and before that, the Arabs, yet we hear nothing of demand for reparations in Europe, Latin America or the Muslim world, nor do we hear demands for reparations to be paid by African descendants of those who sold their fellow Africans or even kinsmen to an alien race. Talk about race treason!
Consider that we may be entering dangerous ground if we talk about collective guilt based on ethnicity or race, because to admit that there is collective guilt for enslaving other ethnicities automatically suggests that there is also such a thing as real race treason in a moral sense. We cant have our cake and eat it too. Why should Africans who sold their own to an alien race not be labelled as race traitors?
Well, we could start with the supposition that such concepts as moral collective guilt and race treason didn't exist back then and we are imposing modern ideological terms on an earlier time. Which is what we might be doing, though I'm not sure in this case because I dont know that much about the whole thing.
Also, what about the claim of some extremist Jews that all Americans of German descent - apparently including those only partly of German descent - bear collective guilt for the holocaust, even though all their german ancestors may have come over here priot to 1800, and who had relatives who fought the Nazis, perhaps even helped liberate concentration camps? Presumably, this responsibility would also extend to anyone even partly of descent from the German's allies as well, namely the Japanese, Italians, Romanians, Croats, Slovaks, Hungarians, etc. Indeed, beyond this, to all white Europeans and peoples of European descent in the world, just because they are related to the Germans. Some have actually said this, and it's insane.
Corruption of blood is illegal before the law as well as immoral. You cannot hold someone responsible for a crime or debt which he himself did not incur or was not involved in, just because he had a relative who did incur such debt or was involved in such crime. To do so is legally a crime against the person to whom you do this, and is punishable to the full extent of the law.
That's also assuming that slavery, as it existed in America at the time, was in fact a crime, which it was not, or even immoral, which it was not according to the Bible.
Mr. Allen @ 69
You make some excellent points.
67Ploni Almoni.....Good points. I don’t know the history of American slavery so I’m just reasoning (maybe incorrectly) from common sense.
Common sense would tell me that by participating in the life of a certain day or age does not make me responsible to future laws. Example......70 years from now it is illegal to burn fossil fuels in cars because it has been named the cause of climate change that has been the cause of millions of deaths world wide. My great grandson is whisked of to jail because I burned 10 gallons of gasoline weekly which is now a crime against society and the world. Or he is required to pay a fine for every year I drove a car......I would say that I firstly am not guilty because this is not a crime today ( no matter how much I demanded and how much was supplied ) and common sense says my great grandson should not be responsible as he is not even born yet and certainly was no part of a non-crime.
I'll try to wrap things up here. I hadn't intended to get so much into this. Lots of good questions/criticisms to which I'll reply in this overly long post (sorry), hopefully my final post on this topic.
My term "moral crime" was both vague and polemic, a cheap shot really. I meant a very immoral (not necessarily illegal) act, and I stand by that description of American slavery. (Note that an act may be immoral even if it benefits the "victim", which I'm still not convinced slavery did.) By "racial slavery", I meant enslavement of members of some race which is institutionalized and justified at least partly on racial grounds. This includes American slavery. I don't know whether or not it includes African slavery, taking "race" in the old sense to refer sometimes to nation or tribe.
On group responsibility, I'm certainly not suggesting that all members of a group are victims or persecutors. That's a form of individual responsibility! I've already referred to Alasdair MacIntyre, because I agree with his concepts if not his philosophy. A simpler example might be the Bible, where entiire nations are presented as "personal" characters in a historical drama. This concept seems especially hard for contemporary Western-educated, intellectual people to grasp. Ask an uneducated African-American whether the "White Man" still owes the "Black Man" for slavery, and he'll probably understand what you mean--or rather, what I mean. The concepts of group identity and group responsibility certainly existed at the time of slavery. Our own age is the exception, not theirs.
Someone said that this discussion is abstract, and I guess it is, but I don't think it's any more abstract than the concept of an autonomous individual self morally unfettered by--abstracted from--the historical situation into which he was born. In other words, the standard enlightened concept of the moral agent.
Granted the concept of group responsibility is dangerous, but it's not obvious that it's more dangerous than modern individualism. I identify strongly as white, much more strongly than do most other whites, and I support white group interests without apology. As I said above, group responsibility presupposes group identity.
On the argument that moral condemnation of slaveholders is ex post facto,
slavery was considered immoral by many at the time, including "conservatives" like Burke and Samuel Johnson. My impression is that Johnson's anti-Americanism was largely a matter of his hatred of slavery. (Remember his most famous remark on that topic, ""How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?" ) In any case, we make moral judgments based on our own morality; we can condemn acts while keeping in mind their context, including the fact that the perpetrators may have been acting morally as they saw it and may not have been "bad people".
Labeling African slave-merchants as race traitors may be anachronistic. I doubt that Africans identified as "blacks", as opposed to members of some tribe or village. In any case, I think I made it clear that collective responsibility is not determined by biological ancestry.
For Germans, group responsibility for the Shoah is the same idea as white responsibility for slavery.
The reference to "corruption of blood" indicates that I've completely failed to make myself clear. No individual white today bears any guilt or responsibility whatsoever for slavery, nor any German born after 1945 for the Shoah. Similarly, no individual white can claim credit for abolishiing slavery, which whites as a group can claim.
To understand what I mean, try to think of these groups--whites and blacks in America, the German Volk, the Jews--as persons acting in a story. A rough analogy, but useful. Re-reading the Old Testament might make that easier to imagine. (Maybe you could skip over the embarrassing bits about genocide and smashing babies against rocks; I already admitted this stuff is dangerous.) If you object that this way of looking at things is too abstract or metaphorical, I reply that it's the individual, ahistorical moral self which is the more egregious abstraction.
Phoni, your likening of the established domestic family servitude of antebellum America to a German statist extermination project is repulsive in the highest degree and indicates that you are as deluded by abstractions as every leftist and destructive to this or any other discussion on the subject.
Upon what basis is slavery immoral? I don't wish for slavery, but morality isn't one of the reasons.
Ploni Almoni @ 72
Some thoughts on your post.
This issue is neither a gift nor a tuna at the fish market "to be wrapped up."
"Slavery is a very immoral act." A slave - like children, women, apprentices, soldiiers and prisoners - was subordinate to a person or persons in 19th century antebellum America. Today, children, soldiers and prisoners are still subordinant to a person or persons. In recent days, an court in California has made those parents who home school and their childrend subordinate to the state and has essentially decreed, if the judgment holds, that they are criminals if they do not subjugate themselves to the public school authorities. For about eight hours a day, students are subordinate to teachers. Now, I will cede that when one is in a subordinate condition, one is more likely to be maltreated than when not. One always hopes that one's master, one's parent, one's warden, one's officer, one's husband or one's boss is a moral person. Also, a condition of subordination is not an act. Certain acts, moral or immoral, may take place within that condition.
There is absolutely nothing inherently immoral about making decisions based on the race, gender, age or social standing of another. The catagory of "hate crime" can be used to demonstrate. If one kills me because I am white, the immorally thereof which can the catagorized as a crime and therefore punished lies in the killing, i.e. murder, the act of denying me my life and not in the having catagorized me. That is why the catagory of "hate crime" is an absurdity. I am sure you known that American Africans held fellow Africans as slaves in America - an in large numbers, deconstructing the myth of their apologists that they motive was to emancipate their relatives. They were hardly practicing "racial slavery." Or was their "slavery" less bad because it was not "racial"? Was the white master who owned forty slaves more evil than the black master, just down the bayou, who owned sixty slaves?
Your words:
"I reply that it’s the individual, ahistorical moral self which is the more egregious abstraction."
Are you saying that individuals are not morally responsibible as individuals?
If individual whites today cannot be blamed for slavery, then neither can whites as a group. There are no whites alive today who were involved in it, therefore, all whites today are innocent of it; it follows that whites as a group are totally innocent of slavery.
Even if slavery were a 'crime' in any sense of the word, no one alive today is responsible for it, therefore they are innocent of it. They cannot be blamed or justly forced to pay reparations. This is corruption of blood for a crime that never existed, is not in itself immoral, and which was also practiced by blacks both in Africa and in America.
You make sense to me, Ploni Almoni.
Frank, slavery is immoral because Holy Mother Church says so. For me, anyway, that settles it.
Dr. Wilson, surely Ploni didn't mean antebellum slavery was as evil as the German state executing millions. Nonetheless, it was evil. If that makes me a deluded leftist, so be it. The only good result of the War for Southern Independence was the abolition of slavery.
Mr. Peters, possibly Ploni agrees that individuals are morally responsible as individuals. I think the key word is "ahistorical" in his (her?) phrase "individual, ahistorical self". As I understand it, he means we aren't merely individuals with no ties to larger groups. Consequently, we reap the blessings and the curses of group membership. It is precisely because of that there "is absolutely nothing inherently immoral about making decisions based on the race, gender, age or social standing of another."
Mr. Collins, where do you get your history? The RC Church never condemned the domestic servitude of the Old South, unlike the Northern branches of most Protestant denominations and in fact did forcefully condemn abolitionism. Bad masters might be condemned but not domestic servitude itself---which was not condemned by the Church or Scripture. The Church was well aware that the South was the most Catholic-tolerant part of the U.S. while the Yankees were promoting conspiracy theories and mobs burned convents in Boston and Philadelphia with the collusion of local authorities. Pio Nino expressed sympathy for the Confederacy and proclaimed against Yankee recruiting in Ireland and Catholic Germany. The notion that the Church has been always in the forefront of antislavery is purely imaginary. It comes about because post Civil War Catholic immigrants were eager to fit in with their self-righteous Yankee neighbours.
Yes, Mr. Wilson, I understood that the Church never condemned slavery until the late nineteenth century (1893, I think). The important thing is that now that it has been condemned, for over a century, we can say that slavery was in fact evil. Had I lived before 1893, I wouldn't be saying that.
Furthermore, I don't think Pope Leo XIII condemned it just so Catholic immigrants to the US could fit in with self-righteous Yankees.
we can say that slavery was in fact evil. Had I lived before 1893, I wouldn’t be saying that.....David Collins
Listen to what you are saying "we can say that slavery was in fact evil" ...... It WAS NOT crime, it WAS NOT morally wrong... we there fore cannot say it was anything but what it was. We may say it was viewed this way or that by certain peoples at the time but but we must say the truth. If it was evil we need to say in who's eyes it was seen this way at the time.
If we use your way of thinking based on what we view as evil , we will need to condemn every society that ever existed and every society that is not ours today. The reality that no one around us or before us has ever perceived evil in the way our post-modern secularists society does. Every man who ever spanked a child would be condemned to hell and jail based on some present day laws and your way of thinking.
Woodcutter, can you really not say that spanking children is a practice on which people and societies can disagree, while slavery is morally wrong?
Of course societies differ in their views of morality. In eras where slavery was economically beneficial, it was always rationalized. But societies which have no economic use for slavery have never condoned the practice, which is probably a clue that slave societies justify their behavior for selfish reasons, rather than deriving it from moral principles.
Your point about limiting how we judge other societies strikes me as valid. Surely we should not judge people's behavior as criminal, simply because future laws would have made their conduct illegal.
Can we not, however, still say that their behavior was wrong? That they treated their fellow human beings in terrible ways, for their own selfish interests? That they either couldn't see, or else ignored, how wrong that was?
Can we not, however, still say that their behavior was wrong? That they treated their fellow human beings in terrible ways, for their own selfish interests? That they either couldn’t see, or else ignored, how wrong that was?
How about this...... can we not, however, still say that their behavior was different than ours, if it were to be the present day it may be considered morally wrong by some.
You see, I hesitate to condemn peoples actions as wrong in the past. The way we were in the past required that we live in the moment. Just as we do today. There is no doubt in my mind that there will be things that we practice and do today that will be seen as morally wrong in 100 years (rightly or wrongly).
Capitalism has preached subsistence wages and even today appears to know no bounds for its greed and exploitation of the weak. And socialism is similar to slavery in that the state promises to take care of its subjects. And what of class systems in general? Are they too now evil?
That the Catholic church now opposes slavery means the church was wrong for all of those years? The Bible and the traditional teachings and interpretations from it ought to be what a man looks to, not to some leader's new interpretation, unless said interpretation has some solid foundation. Even the Catholic church is surely not immune to public opinion - so it must be advisable for a wise man to look to previous ages for a more objective view of the truth.
Woodcutter,
the point you seem to be missing is that: all masters are not bad masters, and slavery does allow for the protection of the weak and the stupid: those who would not be able to take care of themselves.
It is just that the most capable and virtuous rule over the less so. Someone must gather the crops, someone must build the farming tools etc., and someone must undergo strenuous education and training to become well suited for governing and heading the local militia. Slavery provided a system to resolve the questions of who should do what, just as does a class system.
Our modern society today expects an aloof federal government and aloof mega corporations to take care of us all. If they treat us well, then such a system is just. However, if they give into temptation and treat us badly, then such a system is unjust. The masters knew their slaves; our masters in Washington and Wall Street do not. The masters were Christians; our masters in Washington and Wall Street are predominantly not.
In my opinion slavery was a mistake, but morality is not one of the reasons.
I wonder if I could get reparations from Bill Gates... The prices he charges for his software are unjust and undeserved - he can only charge such outlandish fees because he holds a near monopoly. So, in a sense he claims the right to exploit us because of his dominant position over the market, just as might a king or a slave master. And Gates provides us no protection or guidance in return.
Just a couple quick clarifications. I didn't bring up the Shoah; someone asked me about it and I replied. I would never compare it to American slavery, except to say that both are examples where group responsibility applies. One reason I used the word "Shoah" is that the word "Holocaust" has become corrupted by such abuse.
I never wrote what was attributed to me above, "Slavery is a very immoral act". If you check, you'll see that I was talking specifically about American slavery. I know essentially nothing about the history, but even granting all my correspondents' factual claims, the institution of American slavery (including the overseas slave trade) still seems immoral to me. I don't think that slavery is always immoral per se.
The suggestion that there is no white group responsibility/guilt because no living member of the group is responsible/guilty ignores the fact that a group extends through time (as Burke said about the nation). Seems to me the concept of group responsibility is easily grasped by everyone except educated modern Westerners.
If we go back far enough in time, most every group has wronged most every other group. The solution is to forgive and remember. What ought whites do to right blacks? What ought Mongolians, Berbers, Huns, Turks, etc. do to right Europeans?
However, slavery was rampant in Africa - you cannot say that removing blacks from slavery and taking them to another land as slaves is wrong.
That such is done by whites over blacks actually makes it more just, since blacks appear weaker in both discipline and intellect. As Aristotle points out: it is just that the better rule over the lesser.
Was slavery in America a case of the equal ruling over the equal, such would be unfair. The black / white divide allows for a clear division between who is citizen and who is slave, since even free blacks did not have equal rights. Similarly skin color seems to have partially distinguished the Hindu classes, as well as those of the Central and South Americans both before (Incas) and after the Spanish.
Blacks blame whites because they are told they are equal and were mistreated. They do not know history any better than do American whites. Accepted history has become a fairy tale.
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Regarding how Northerners do not share in the blame: who do you think sold a large share of the slaves to the Southerners? Are merchants innocent?
Frank @ 84
I agree one hundred percent, I was replying to James at 81 with sarcasm. I should have used quotes.
Gah, yea I had you mistaken, apologies.
If the Bible does not condemn slavery, but instead regulates it and lays out duties of slave to master and master to slave, then slavery is not immoral, much less evil, regardless of what the Catholic church might have said by 1893, when it was already over with for all practical purposes anyway.
As for 'group responsibility', or however else anyone wants to put it, I am not a group that lived 150 years ago. I am not responsible for slavery regardless of whether it was 'immoral' or 'evil', and I will not be held responsible for it. If you try to hold me a part of some group, and then say that that group has committed a 'crime' real or imagined, then you hold me personally responsible for something which you know very well I never did. That is indeed corruption of blood if we are talking about racial or ethnic groups, no matter who may wish to deny it. You are also being dishonest by saying I am responsible for something you know I never did.
My money, what little I have, is hard earned while having to tolerate discrimination and bigotry from politically correct scum and their favourites, including some Yankee immigrants who come into my homeland and try to treat me as their inferior. My money did not come from the labour of any slave. It's mine, and nobody has any right to steal it from me using some pseudo-moral, pseudo-historical excuse.
For those who wish to hold me responsible for something I never did, if you endeavour to steal what is mine and what belongs to my family and neighbours because of the mere colour of our skin, then be prepared for a fight. To hell with all of your silly self-righteous 'group responsibility' abstractions. We are talking mass robbery of people who are already becoming economically dispossessed and have a bleak future ahead. You words are irresponsible and will only serve to encourage and justify a real crime, and lead to further social discord and further breakdown of good will and harmony between black and white, just as the crimes of the Lincolnites, reconstruction and the so-called 'civil rights' movement and all that related propaganda have done.