Technological Unemployment: Fight for the Right to Slavery has been added as a related post - related requested by ChaosEngine on that post.

"When human slavery was the norm, one could have made a similar argument. Unless we were living outside of society, it would have been difficult to be 100% slave-free. Sure, we could have avoided owning slaves ourselves, but it would have been impossible to avoid all items that contained even a small degree of slave input. Slave labor would also have been used in public and private construction. Would it make sense to tell someone who was trying to abolish human slavery that unless they stayed off the roads they’re a hypocrite? Would it make sense to say that since we can’t 100% avoid items made with even a small amount of slave input, therefore human slavery is morally okay and we should go ahead and own slaves?

Of course not.

What we would say is that slavery is morally wrong and we must fight for society to abolish slavery. And in the meantime we should avoid items made from slavery to the extent possible, particularly the primary owning of slaves ourselves and any products made primarily through slave labor."

http://freefromharm.org/common-justifications-for-eating-animals/100-vegan/

“A principle is a principle, and in no case can it be watered down because of our incapacity to live it in practice. We have to strive to achieve it, and the striving should be conscious, deliberate and hard.” ~ Gandhi

veganism is about social justice and non-violence. the only difference between the dogs you love and the cows, chickens and pigs you eat is your perception. vegans get ridiculed due to people's lack of awareness and false perceptions- just as anti-slavery activists were ridiculed in the antebellum south for suggesting the moral equivalence between white people and black people. i believe Arthur Schopenhauer said it best:
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."

Fair point.

Also, I'm not really talking about conservative views in the sense of fiscal conservatives or libertarians. I don't necessarily agree with those positions, but they are genuinely a "difference of opinion" as outlined in the video.

I just don't agree with the general position that social conservatives are entitled to their opinion on gay rights, climate change, etc. any more than the democrats were entitled to their opinion on slavery.

Sometimes you're just on the wrong side of history.

Warning, this is long. It's a general reply to bob, but really it's a rant about the reality of this country, origins, issue, and where we are headed... Like they say in Horace and Pete, at this point we just might deserve a president like Trump (especially because we are stupid enough to vote for HIM, and for so many Senators AND Congressmen like him or even far worse)...

Reply to bob at the top...


I hate to tell you, but "SHALL", according to the times in which the founding fathers wrote this IS indeed the utmost highest form of that period meaning that you "HAVE TO" do something.

Go ahead and let your own party change what grammar and vocabulary meant from that period--or simply not have enough brains to know what it really means (though most of us know by now their assistants have let them know what it means, they just refuse to believe reality and instead insert their own collective psychotic delusion).

Typically when it says SHALL (BTW, NOT doing that job should be getting them in HUGE amounts of trouble as well), they should be doing everything they can TO nominate a new judge into the open position in their next open session (not a session one year away, so Trump or Hillary has to do it).

If they want to complain about the nominee they CAN, just while they are under scrutiny to go up for the vote. But, they simply are NOT supposed to do nothing and furthermore say they WON'T do anything...

I'll have to look up what the penalty is for not doing this, but it could be a full "boot" from their job. Simply what has been referred to by Republicans in the past as Impeachment. But, then the Senate has to start that (I'm not sure if anyone else can; hence, this is why I said I'd try to see if there is anything else that can be done)

I believe they can also do it at the state level... BUT ALL of this requires for our government officials to do their fucking jobs! PLUS, the citizens that voted them in to give a shit!
----------


We REALLY, REALLY, do not deserve a country like this...it is BARELY alive and well. We are just a few presidential terms away (plus senators and congressmen) before we grind to a complete halt.

Then we can finally watch everything implode on CNN and FOX while REAL extremists take over and then the real fun starts. True extremists taking control with minimal bloodshed and shouting matches, civil war with outcomes that grant us either the NEO-United States (the U.S.A. V:2.0, which might be good), to the Neo-Confederacy (since that is what it all amounts to on the FAR right's spectrum). OR we simply just dissolve and become something entirely new.

Hey, bob did you know that your party used to be JUST like the Democrats of Lincoln's age. The Republican's were more like the Democrat's of our age. Weird right. THAT conservative party died out with Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose party; then all of the citizens decided that they simply liked the name "Republican" more (since they'd always voted for that name, right...it'd be weird to change it). That is where the Republican's became a FAR different party than they had been (though they still had a few more GREAT leaders before their schism drove them all, sadly, into madness ). The "Democrat's", they thought slavery was just peachy at first, and now they vote for gay-rights. NEITHER party remembers it's roots and the citizens of the United States have had their idiotic teachers and parents tell them all sorts of stories about how great either party WAS, but never telling them what they are like NOW. We all need to vote for our president, nowadays, without even LOOKING at their part's affiliation. It doesn't do any of us any good. Because none of them have ANY real lineage or links to the old presidents of these United States--they're full of shit.

Just remember, Republicans and their party were formed basically to try and abolish slavery--now they are more likely to put it back into action; a complete reversal of their direction, progressive and liberal!

Democrats tried to keep things the same as it was and to even expand slavery--now they want to allow marijuana to be legal, allow gays to have rights, and essentially pick up many progressive and liberal causes... They too have utterly reversed the direction they were at and taking during Abraham Lincoln's time. Conservative on many topics and wanting to expand the states' rights and abilities. Now they are the ones that would abolish slavery and even have Lincoln on their ticket if he ran...

Our parties in these United States are abysmal, a joke, a farce, and shouldn't even be used... The Founding Fathers would be dismayed over so many issues it wouldn't be even funny. They would more than likely throw OUT the Constitution and start a new draft, simply due to the amount of changes we've made in the WRONG direction and the fact that they weren't able to see the future far enough ahead to imagine gigantic empires made only of Business (with a mere handful of people, not hundreds, thousands, and many more like it was in their times) and how News would become so powerful it is essentially as powerful as the president of the United States--and if watched by enough people it is even FAR more powerful than him/her (like in Russia; The Internet being the ONE thing the Founding Fathers would pat our country on the back over and it's what can restore balance to the people who watch or only can gain information from these entities; a new type of "University" where anything can be shared; truth and facts obtained at every man's fingertips nearly instantly at any point on this planet; it IS the world's greatest WONDER ever made).

Lastly, they would absolutely abhor our parties and how they are used--internally and externally (how our politicians...how all the issues interconnect together; all politicians that receive outside money, they would likely want to have them all impeached, same with those that USE the media; they would HATE parties--but they know they'll always exist, you just have to get rid of the things that LET parties abuse we the people and also the government, and those things are: money and media...).


/length

Coming back to the topic, anti-abortionists do not realize that you cant force people to be your version of moral.

You can enforce common concepts of morality by law but you first have to stop lying to yourselves about what those common concepts are and then be willing to accept a compromise.

An overwhelming majority of educated, civilized people now (as oppposed to a hundred years ago) believe (yep that stupid word again) that women, non-whites, marihuana smokers and liberals AND social democrats AND atheists, among others, are acceptable members of society capable to decide on their own what is good and bad, moral and immoral. Not just the grumpy rich old white anglo-saxon gentlemen club members anymore.

It is not a good tactic to try to decide approved morality for these "other" people either by means of social or real slavery, legislation, economic pressure or plain old brute force or gunpoint.

Rubio mentioned (off of one of his implanted CD´s) in one of the debates something about liberals wanting to legalize abortions to up to one day before the scheduled birth. It doesn´t get much more stupid than that.

Trump apparently switched to pro-life a couple of years ago in a press release.

Cruz favours condoms over abortion (which is IMHO fine BTW), oblivious to what the true christian stance is on condoms.

So anyway it is very difficult for the majority of civilized, educated people to accept this notion that ALL abortion is immoral and should be illegal just because SOME people maintain that view based on ideology and belief.

Once you get that in your head you can start having a discussion about which possible abortion cases are really immoral and unacceptable and in which cases you should concentrate on helping the woman rather than the little glob of cells trying to survive in a hostile environment.

If you REALLY want babies to survive you have to help the women, Bob, you cant go against them.

this is pretty high on the retarded scale.
and tagging this in the *education *philosophy and *learn channels is insulting to those who use their brains.

look man,i get that you disagree with socialism as an economic system,and you are perfectly within your rights to hold that opinion,but it is apparent that you have no clue what socialism is and continue to regurgitate the tired old tropes from the mcarthy era.

you,my friend,suffer from an incredibly bad case of doublethink.

you cannot on the one hand view taxes as theft and then turn around and support the military.which is a socialist institution and uses taxes to fund itself.

what you fail to realize is that this discussion goes back to the beginning of this country:what is the governments role.since the constitution was a brilliant document,and what made it brilliant was NOT simply the words written but the fact that our forefathers KNEW that they didnt know everything and they allowed for the constitution to be changed,as our society changed.

which is why we got rid of slavery,and allowed women to vote.we expanded the bill of rights to include blacks.

we did these things as a society.

we got rid of child labor and we decided that basic education was a fundamental right.

socialism is not a utopian philosphy.it is an economic philosophy and it can be just as abused as capitalism.the bank bailouts in 2007 was a socialist reaction,and one the majority of the american people disagreed with,but so was the interstate highways...which we DID agree upon.

so to title this "socialism explained" is pretty fucking stupid.

i already linked you an actual breakdown of american socialism,which appears you failed to read.so allow me to try again and i implore you.give it a read:
https://mises.org/blog/bernie-sanders-right-us-already-socialist-country

Well if you hate your country then try and fix it.
I love mine, and I hate some of the problems we got, but I'd never go anywhere else. If enemies try to attack us, then don't whine when we retaliate. And yes we've had a technical coup de tat during Roosevelt era, he ignored the standard 2 terms and stayed in 4 terms, 16 years instead of 8. It was after him that a new amendment was formed to force the 2 term limitation as before it was a honored tradition only stated verbally by George Washington, and kept until Roosevelt, then a law had to be made to stop it from happening again. Since he abused it.

become a hactivist, if you don't want to take up arms. learn sql injection, xss attacks, and use wikileaks to expose things and force changes. Or if the majority is fed up then the people have the right to coup de tat.

If you don't like how Americans on a whole do things, then in your router block the American CIDR. Go to Arin.net and you can easily firewall the entire country so you'll never see another Amercan based website again.

While I may dislike certain policies or even hate my president and disagree with occasional supreme court ruling. There's 3 things I'd have zero problems dying for. First I'd die for my son, I'd die to defend myself and my home, and I'd die for my country.
The American dream can never be destroyed, no matter how retarded and uneducated the 'political correct' mongs try, or any whining, or anything at all, will never change the American way of life.

I'll let a few founding fathers' quotes explain the ferocity of the "American way of life". I would never want to live anywhere else.

"I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery."
- Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, January 30, 1787

“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

"Americans need never fear their government because of the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation on Earth."
- James Madison

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom... go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels nor arms. May your chains set lightly upon you and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
- Samuel Adams; 1776


and in response to people like you who attack what we say/do/etc for not being "political correct" or whatever made up phobia they want to use this week.

"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
- Thomas Paine

Americans never ran? Who the fuck are these americans you refer to? You guys are mainly british, dutch, french and german immigrants who committed genocide and mass-slavery to make sure you can force your worldview and way of living on everybody else. You people are to the world of the 18th and 19th century what ISIS is to today's world. Just because you changed a bit for the better doesn't mean you get to sit on any horse, high or not, and judge others. You can't even own the terrible, terrible shit your ancestors did and your patriotism ramblings show that. The reason you're so terrified of muslims is because they just might start returning your smallpox blankets.

I give a shit about political correctnes and that's why I wrote this.

After seeing the colony freeze, go hungry, suffer plague, have it's foreign support removed, get swindled by outsiders, and eventually descend into near-anarchy, Bradford made the following entries:


All this whille no supply was heard of, neither knew they when they might expecte any. So they begane to thinke how they might raise as much torne as they could, and obtaine a beter crope then they had done, that they might not still thus languish in miserie. At length, after much debate of things, the Govr (with the advise of the cheefest amongest them) gave way that they should set corve every man for his owne perticuler, and in that regard trust to them selves; in all other things to goe on in the generall way as before. And so assigned to every family a parcell of land, according to the proportion of their number for that end, only for present use (but made no devission for inheritance), and ranged all boys and youth under some familie. This had very good success; for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more torne was planted then other waise would have bene by any means the Govr or any other could use, and saved him a great deall of trouble, and gave farr better contente. The women now wente willingly into the feild, and tooke their litle-ons with them to set torne, which before would aledg weaknes, and inabilitie; whom to have compelled would have bene thought great tiranie and oppression.

The experience that was had in this commone course and condition, tried sundrie years, and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanitie of that conceite of Platos and other.ancients, applauded by some of aater times; -that the taking away of propertie, and bringing in communitie into a comone wealth, would make them happy and $orishing; as if they were wiser then God. For this comunitie (so farr as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much imployment that would have been to their benefite and comforte. For the yong-men that were most able and fitte for labour and servise did repine that they should spend their time and streingth to worke for other mens wives and children, with out any recompence. The strong, or man of parts, had no more in devission of victails and cloaths, then he that was weake and not able to doe a quarter the other could; this was thought injuestice. The aged and graver men to be ranked and equalised in labours, and victails, cloaths, etc., with the meaner and yonger sorte, thought it some indignite and disrespect unto them. And for mens wives to be commanded to doe servise for other men, as dresing their meate, washing their cloaths, etc., they deemd it a kind of slaverie, neither could many husbands well brooke it. Upon the poynte all being to have alike, and all to doe alike, they thought them selves in the like condition, and ove as good as another; and so, if it did not cut of those relations that God hath set amongest men, yet it did at least much diminish and take of the mutuall respects that should be preserved amongst them. And would have bene worse if they had been men of another condition. Let pone objecte this is mens corruption, and nothing to the course it selfe. I answer, seeing all men have this corruption in them, God in his wisdome saw another course fiter for them.


there many forms of enslavement,to wit most people are wholly unaware,either unwittingly or unwillingly.

"none are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free" van goethe.

consider this my friends:
if you accept currency for your labors,where you toil for anothers financial gain.you are literally renting yourself.trading your time,creativity and labors for coin.you are a wage slave and a hundred years ago our ancestors were very aware of this and found it detestable.they literally saw it as a form of slavery.

now as @Lawdeedaw pointed out,there are some protections put forth by our government,along with other governments,but those were not just handed out.they had to be fought for,and many died for those protections.by whom? wage slaves,but in those days they KNEW thats what they were,and proceeded from that premise.

the philosophy of the matrix even addressed this very idea of slavery (yep,i went there).that the majority of the people had become so entrenched and immersed in the system,that to even question the system would illicit a violent and defensive response.they would fight to remain in the system.

just look at our friend @Barbar 's reaction.
even the term "slave" was enough for a visceral reaction.

i am reminded of a doug stanhope routine in where he states " at least i KNOW i am a slave,YOU,however..remain clueless".

so let us take the term "slave" off the table and instead use the dynamic of "power vs powerlessness".

the current systems of power have the majority of people running on hamster wheel of desperation.may it be "pay check to paycheck" or "mortgage and credit cards" or the subtle doctrine of "conform and obey".this could also be "all of the above".

the real question is this:
do you consider yourself free?
because a comfortable slave.....is still a slave.
the term may be dramatic,but it is accurate.

Whenever I see something as horrendous as slavery downplayed (by likening it to today's working class) I'm likely to find myself agitated, and I think that contributed to my tone when replying earlier, and I'm somewhat ashamed for overreacting.

I could be totally wrong with my interpretation of the video, however. I guess the best thing to do is present my interpretation before any argument ensues.

It seems to present the similarities between the relationship a plantation slave had with their masters and the negative parts of the relationship a modern citizen has with their government and employer and the influential elite.

By creating a character as odious as the slave owner, they are poisoning the discussion. Their grievances are with three separate groups of people, but they push them all into one. Then they tar him by making him the slave owner, making it almost impossible to have a real discussion about him. Furthermore, they dismiss any of the benefits they enjoy from the three groups they are demonizing.

I'm sorry. I didn't mean to go overboard, and it's been pointed out that I may have misunderstood the video in the first place. I hate the things you mention as much as you do when they are employed against me.

I will say that I'm not downplaying the evils of government as much as I'm upplaying the huge number of benefits it provides, as contrasted with the horrors of slavery.

Again I apologize for the tone of my argument.

The fabric thing is valid, but the New Testament specifically exempts food, so the food laws no longer apply. Of course the New Testament doesn't forbid owning slaves, in fact tells slaves to continue to obey their masters... so technically, slavery is still allowed by the faith despite their claims that they are the ones who got rid of it... of course the South used all the slavery verses to justify their use of slavery, just like during the 50's and 60's people used the verses about mixing races to justify keeping segregation going and refuse interracial marriage licenses. Really when it comes down to it, you can use the Bible to prove any side of an argument you want apparently... I guess god really is perfect as his book can be used to justify 100% opposite positions.. <eye roll>

I respect your position and defence of it. I must say though that on inspection, the quoted reasoning can and therefore probably has been used in the past to condone slavery in America, and other awful stuff.

The problem with it is that you state your dedication to something regardless of the morality of it.

I'm trying to think of other things that have used the same reasoning. Sexism, bullfighting, fox hunting, anti-semitism, age old wars like the irish feud (until common sense prevailed)?

It really isn't a great way to set out your stall. There are so many things that we used to think were ok that needed to change, and the world is a better place because we didn't follow that "it's tradition" ethos.