[extropy-chat] Why I am No Longer a Libertarian Either...

[Robert Lindauer]

On Jul 26, 2005, at 5:28 PM, The Avantguardian wrote:

> --- Robert Lindauer <robgobblin at aol.com> wrote:
>
>> It's implied.  Google:/SLAVERY.  The blessings of
>> liberty were supposed
>> to be secured for "our posterity" - not that of the
>> poor dominated
>> underclass that contributed the labor and suffering
>> to make America the
>> great country it is today.
>
> No. The constitution does not start out "We the rich
> white-folks. . ."

It's implied.  Read it again.

> It was to secure the liberty of the
> posterity of the people.

Which people?  "Our posterity".    And buddy unless you're daughters of 
the american revolution, they weren't talking about you.

Remember that "redskins", "negroes", "chinamen" and women were all 
non-persons in the old America.  This is how we got abundant food, good 
roads, railroad tracks laid, abundant coal and steel - somebody worked 
the mines and didn't get paid much if anything for it.   This had been 
going on for more than a hundred years  at the time of the drafting of 
the constitution and its signing exclusively by slave owners, none of 
whom showed remorse at the having of them.

>  Don't blame the framers of
> the constitution for the fact that the definition of
> who we classified as people changed as we became more
> inclusive as we became more intelligent.

Slavery was known to be wrong by the Jews around 3000BC, each of the 
framers of the constitution were intimately familiar with Exodus.  They 
SHOULD have known better.

>  Sometimes
> even questionable people can create something bigger,
> better, and more profound then they themselves are.

Sometimes.  And sometimes what they create is just more of the same in 
a new package.

> I
> think the Constitution is clearly one of those things.

I like the ideas of the constitution.  It's clearly an advance over 
what came before.  It's not clearly an end to the ongoing class-war nor 
was it intended as such.  Instead it was intended to ensure the power 
of those who took it by force and guile.

>> Certainly -some- people deliberately thwart the
>> vision of the founding
>> "fathers".  I'm not actually clear on whether or not
>> any of them
>> thought slavery was wrong, though.
>
> Some clearly did. Do you think Thomas Jefferson would
> have willed his slaves freed upon his death if he
> thought it was right? He more than most in his time
> understood the distinction between convention and
> correctness.

Irrelevant.  Thinking that cigarette smoking is bad for you and 
quitting are two different things.  Only one of them is important, 
guess which.

>
>>  There is,
>> however, a continuous
>> class of land-owning wealthy people in the United
>> States who despite
>> not having slaves have managed to surround
>> themselves with the same
>> level of comfort and security of their power
>> structure as when they
>> did.  They have, instead of literal slaves,
>> effectively slaves.
>
> Actually the industrial capitalists got away with a
> lot more oppression than the slave owners did.

Yes.  I think that's what I was trying to get across here.

>  Slave
> owners had a vested interest in the health and welfare
> of their slaves because slaves were expensive
> investments.

they still have vested interests in (some of) our health and education, 
etc.   They need expensive slaves to keep the cheap slaves in line and 
design artificial intelligences for their cruise missiles.

>> They're called the middle class.  The ones that live
>> in tract houses
>> that they "own" by paying rent to "the banks", that
>> drive to work in
>> cars that they're paying "the banks" for, that work
>> for companies owned
>> mostly by "the banks", that were educated in the
>> "learn to work
>> program" of the new deal.  "You are a slave neo,
>> kept in a prison you
>> can't see or touch or feel, a prison for your mind.
>> Free your mind!"
>
> Wow. If you think that the middle-class suburban life
> is slavery, you need to spend more time in the
> inner-city or the third-world.

I grew up in the inner-city.  I spent -enough- time in Mexico.  I know 
whereof I speak.

Slave owners always had house-niggers to ensure that the business of 
the house was taken care of.  They were better treated than the other 
slaves, sometimes they got to be bosses.  Sometimes they got to whip 
the other slaves when it was needed.  Middle-class americans are, to 
follow through the analogy, the house-niggers of the world.  We whip 
the slaves when necessary, we take pride in our ability to read and we 
say yessa massa when the boss says to work on saturday or he wants to 
sleep with our women.

> But don't worry, your
> slavery won't last long as the middle class is quickly
> disappearing to be replaced by the super-rich and the
> seething masses of the truly poor that would envy
> slaves if they only understood that freedom doesn't
> pay the bills.

Don't worry, I dropped out.

Robbie Lindauer
thetip.org