Anti-abolitionist thought for the day
Please can we get this person a slot on Radio 4 instead of the current worthy religious dullards?
"Just as husbands can abuse wives, does it mean marriage is evil? Or parents can abuse their children, does it mean parenting is wrong? Because masters can be evil to their slaves, it doesn't mean that slavery is wrong."
[Via Pharyngula.]
In all seriousness, I once met someone who saw the abolition of slavery as the moment that political correctness first cast its sanity into doubt. Although he was not a sensible person, I did admire the single-mindedness with which he trudged off in the opposite direction at even the haziest spectacle of egalitarianism or social justice, and didn't stop even after he'd fallen off the edge of the world in the 12th century.
But I'm sure there's a modern, secular, libertarian argument for slavery too. As a first draft, how about...
Everyone, even the desperate and illiterate, own their own life absolutely and without preconditions. So if someone wishes to make a rational choice to sign away their freedom no-strings attached to a slave-trader, then HOW DARE the socialist State rob them of that inalienable right? This crushing of our right to be enslaved is yet another example of the totalitarian nanny State running wild and presuming that it, rather than individuals knows what's best for us, subjugating our wishes and choices to its own... (et cetera ad nauseam)
6 Comments:
In all seriousness, I once met someone...
It wasn't one D. Duff, was it?
Amazingly, it wasn't actually. But I would be interested to hear DD's take on this (insofar as I am ever interested to hear his take on anything that is).
Of course, marriage is just a socially acceptable form of slavery in which society acquiesces... etc etc etc (copyright Julie Bindel)
Thank you for your kind invitation, Dr. 'Teabag', and before entering I have wiped my feet nicely on the 'Doormat', and by the way, what has happened to 'Matty the Woofer', I do so miss the drooling, flea-ridden, old mutt.
Why anyone would assume that I might be in favour of slavery (I use the word in the old-fashioned sense) is beyond me. Nothing I have ever written would lead an intelligent reader to suppose otherwise - ah, there-in lies the answer, perhaps.
However, it would be useful if you could define the word 'slavery' for me. Like so many other words in the English language it has been gang-banged out of all meaning. Until then I leave you with this thought, nations that were based on old-fashioned slavery were, I suspect, no unhappier than those, like our own "scepter'd Isle", that have, not so much banished it, as changed the rules of it.
Why anyone would assume that I might be in favour of slavery (I use the word in the old-fashioned sense) is beyond me.
I didn't actually think that you were in favour of it, but the reason that you might be is that slavery is an ancient institution, and the abolition of slavery is modern development based on concepts such as "human rights".
Given your general opinions of ancient institutions, modern developments, and concepts such as "human rights", it's not entirely ridiculous a thought.
As for a definition, the compact OED has:
noun 1. [historical] a person who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them
2. a person who is excessively dependent upon or controlled by something: "a slave to fashion"
3. a former used-car salesman whom terrible liberals oppress by forcing him to pay taxes and the like
Nice one, Larry, I'll come back to you later.
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