[extropy-chat] Copycat Copycat

[Reason]

-->  Joseph Bloch
> Sent: Saturday, December 25, 2004 10:20 PM

> Some ends, such as the abolition of slavery, justify almost any means,
> including (to use historical example) the waging of an arguably
> unconstitutional and inarguably vicious and vastly destructive military
> action. You've doubtless heard of it... the Civil War? Or, since you
> live south of the Mason-Dixon line, the War of Northern Agression.

Not a very good example - slavery was a convenient fig leaf in that case.
The war was fought over resources and centralization of power, as are most
wars. The people of Great Britain managed to put slavery behind them without
any comparable violence several decades earlier.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig2/miller1.html

Britain heralded the end of slavery, in the Western world at least, with its
Bill of Abolition, passed in 1807. This Bill made the African slave trade
(but not slaveholding) illegal. Later that year the United States adopted a
similar bill, called the Act to Prohibit the Importation of Slaves, which
prohibited bringing slaves into any port in the country, including into the
southern slaveholding states. Congress strengthened this prohibition in 1819
when it decreed the slave trade to be a form of piracy, punishable by death.
In 1833, Britain enacted an Emancipation Law, ending slavery throughout the
British Empire, and Parliament allocated twenty million pounds to buy slaves
’ freedom from their owners. The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer
rightly described this action as one of the greatest acts of collective
compassion in the history of humankind. This happened peacefully and without
any serious slave uprisings or attacks on their former owners, even in
Jamaica where a population of 30,000 whites owned 250,000 slaves.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo17.html

(On tariffs and protectionism of the time, part of a larger work).

Reason
Founder, Longevity Meme