I bolded a few sections…do you really believe that a slaveowner, faced with a slave who was not performing, sat the disobedient slave down and gave them a good talking to? I am not saying that the talk never happened for any slave, but I am dubious that most owners thought, “well Ol’ Tom aint doing what i told him to do, better have a chat” instead of meting out punishment of some variety as a first resort. I also don’t believe that if they had a mule that wouldn’t work they sat the beast of burden down and lectured him on his mulish duties.
The other thing I bolded was that remaining slaves thought it was “silly” to escape their owners. While the remaining slaves may have been afraid to make the attempt themselves, or cautious about the chances of a runaway, but it’s not as if they were unaware that were property. If you knew someone who was abused, or lived under threat of abuse, and they escaped that situation – would you think of them as silly for making the attempt to no longer be someone’s property? Some slaves were no doubt treated better than others, but it was hardly a secret that slaves could be brutally treated with no recourse for justice. What other option would they have, other than to at least consider escape?
I don’t want to join the pile-on of Sage Rat, but want to extend the Pitting to all Libertarians.
Libertarians, if they’re intellectually consistent, will applaud that people have the Liberty to enter into employment contracts. Indentured servitude was often voluntary – or almost always voluntary if you include impositions to compensate for an unpaid debt that was voluntarily assumed. Medieval serfdom was voluntary(*): to be an unarmed man without a liege lord was suicidal in those Libertarian days.
And Libertarians, if they’re consistent, should applaud that poor children have the Liberty to become slaves and help pay off their parents’ debts.
(* - When children were considered the property of their parents, parents had the Liberty to impose their servitude on children, born or unborn, and on their descendants as well. America’s Hyperlibertarians do retain eough neurons not to carry their despicable ideology that far.)
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Sorry for the hijack. I feel that the perverse Libertarian philosophy, which infects many young Americans ( ), is far more worthy of our contempt than Sage Rat. OTOH, Mr. Rat may himself be a Hyperlibertarian:
Absurd to judge history based on standards and attitudes of today. Two-hundred years from now, they’ll probably view some of our actions as appalling. Who knows, maybe slavery and indentured servitude will become commonplace by then, as capitalism/labor morphs into something unrecognizable…
This is an argument of profound moral cowardice. I’m perfectly happy judging history by the best standards I have available to me, and in turn I submit to the best moral standards available at any point in history. During Washington’s time, there was an active movement of abolitionists who considered his actions deplorably brutal and anti-democratic. The arguments of the 1770s have not changed significantly since then, except inasmuch as Washington’s has lost favor.
I appreciate your point that the evil is perfectly provable, but categorically reject the idea either that people in this thread aren’t rebutting his ideas, or that you are.
This thread is chock full of people–not including you–citing specific historical documents that rebut Sage Rat. For you to come in with a supercilious chiding of other people is obnoxious, especially when you’ve nothing to contribute to the rebuttal except a rephrasing of what I’ve already said.
Why on earth did you think such a chiding was either accurate or appropriate? Consider rereading the thread, including the multiple historical cites therein, before replying.
I’m a centrist (if you care to look up the Political Compass thread from way back). I think Ayn Rand was stupid for trying to define some inhuman ideal of how people should live, which is the same complaint I have for Jesus. People are imperfect. Expecting them to live up to some idealized standard is bound to fail.
Fair point. I should have said, “I don’t like this thread thus far,” because I replied to a post at a point where that had not happened all that effectively, and as you correctly observe, it did develop as the thread progressed. My bad.
Sage Rat, serious question for you. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being “have no fucking idea what you’re talking about” and 10 being “have read hundreds of primary sources and have published on the topic”, how knowledgeable do you believe you are about the actual, not hypothetical conditions in the daily lives of American slaves?
Given your posts I’d put you at about a 2, but I’m curious where you put yourself.
I mean to say that reading your expansive proclamation literally, you appear to be suggesting that it’s always appropriate to assign our moral standards to anyone in history. Robert the Bruce, King of Scots in 1306, was not unreasonable in his failure to take a strong stand in favor of transgender rights, even though our current moral understanding urges such a stance on us.
Appreciated. I think several folks–myself included–were so viscerally repulsed by Sage Rat’s posts (and if anyone’s thinking of mocking folks for self-righteousness that person can kiss my ass, they were repulsive as fuck) that they had to shake the shit off their foot before they could collect themselves enough to explain exactly what was wrong.
It’s quite possible to say that something was morally wrong in the past, while understanding that virtually no one from that past could have possibly shared that view.
In the case of American slavery, of course, contemporaries did indeed find it morally repulsive, even if it took some time for this to become the majority view.
ETA: As a Catholic, I assume you believe in at least some universal and timeless moral values?
Part of my moral standard is a bit like the Catholic church’s doctrine of salvation (according to my limited understanding about which I am certain I am about to be schooled, but please bear with me). AIUI, the Church doesn’t think a person is responsible for finding Catholicism in a vacuum; they must be exposed to the idea before the question of their salvation becomes important. Similarly, I don’t fault someone for not trailblazing a new ethical system. If the basic underpinnings of a rational ethical choice are unavailable to them, it’s not their fault that they made an unethical choice. If Robert the Bruce did not treat his transgender subjects with full equality, having never encountered the idea of transgendered rights, that’s not something I can fault him for.
None of that applies to Washington, who was thoroughly familiar with the idea of abolitionism and the idea that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were self-evident human rights, and who rejected those rights in favor of increasing his fortune. He did not need to trailblaze; he did not need to reach ethical standards in a vacuum. He made a conscious and deliberate choice to continue a brutal system, having been exposed to alternatives.
), is far more worthy of our contempt than Sage Rat. OTOH, Mr. Rat may himself be a Hyperlibertarian: