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

[Robbie Lindauer]

On Jul 26, 2005, at 9:55 PM, The Avantguardian wrote:

>
>
> --- Robert Lindauer <robgobblin at aol.com> wrote:
>
>> It's implied.  Read it again.
>
> I don't need to read it again. I can recite the
> preamble from memory and it is nowhere implied.

"We the people" does not include blacks, native americans or chinese.  
That their posterity did would have been a complete surprise to the 
formers.

Think of it this way, if they'd wished to ensure the blessings of 
liberty to themselves and their posterity and the "themselves" and 
"posterity" included the slaves, then they'd have made abolition a part 
of the constitution originally.  Posterity is vague between "future 
generations" and one's own descendants.

> Please
> paste relevant text wherein you say that it is
> implied.
>
>> Which people?  "Our posterity".    And buddy unless
>> you're daughters of
>> the american revolution, they weren't talking about
>> you.
>
> They were talking to the future so they didn't know
> WHO they were talking too.

They were talking to their "posterity".  The ones to whom they were 
ensuring the blessings of liberty, e.g. not the slaves.

>
>> Remember that "redskins", "negroes", "chinamen" and
>> women were all
>> non-persons in the old America.
>
> That's my point, the moment they were accepted as
> people, the Constitution applied to them.

Not really, there remains unfair treatment under the law where 
expeditious decisions of one generation are regarded as unthinkable at 
later dates.  Like making fellow "citizens" sit at the back of the bus 
and pay a poll tax.

> It's kind of
> magical like that huh?

Not magical enough to actually make up for the wrongs done to the 
people who suffered as a result of slavery and the conquest of north 
america.

> Don't forget that Old America
> was a tiny sliver of runty states and commonwealths
> stretched along the atlantic sea-board. Our America
> stretches from sea to shining sea.

It's amazing what you can do with some guns and the willingness to use 
them.

>  Admittedly the
> native-americans and the blacks got shafted, but
> nobody twisted the arms of the Chinese to come here
> and build our railroads for us. They did it of their
> own free will and they accomplished a great deed for
> which this country is grateful.

That's a doubtful interpretation.  More accurately things sucked worse 
where they were from or they were hornswaggled.  But how does saying 
that the chinese came of their own free will make it better that they 
were terrifyingly treated when they got here?
>
>> 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.
>
> Yeah and others financed it and got rich for it and
> still others claimed a few acres in the Oklahoma land
> rush, grew some crops, and pretty much minded their
> own business. So what's your point? That because some
> Americans are rich and lazy while others are
> hard-working and poor that the Constitution somehow
> sucks? That does not logically follow.

No, my point is that for all its supposed value, the constitution 
failed to do the one relevant thing for this discussion - to empower 
the lowly, prevent oppression and make even the generational poverty 
that continues to plague us to this very day.  From that point of view 
it's "meet the new boss, same as the old boss."


>> 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.
>
> You know what your problem is Robbie? It's that you
> can't break your mind free of the cultural shackles.

You don't know me very well and this doesn't excuse the formers of the 
constitution for being slave owners.  Rhetorically this is called 
"changing the subject" and it's what people do when they've run out of 
interesting things to say.

> Of course you are not alone in that since that is the
> very thing you are accusing the founders of. You grew
> up believing that slavery is wrong and because of this
> you can't imagine how anyone at anytime could possibly
> have condoned it.

You don't know how I grew up.  This is called an ad hominem argument 
and it's the kind of thing people do when they've run out of 
interesting things to say.  It typically only works when they actually 
know something about the person their arguing against.  I also can't 
imagine how anyone at any time could possibly condone war, lying, 
stealing, cheating, murder or adultery, but this isn't relevant for our 
current subject.

>  Slavery had been going on in the
> world since the dawn of recorded history.

Yes, the powerful of the world have been oppressing the poor since they 
realized they could.  Does this somehow excuse it?

> You think
> that a bunch of guys who grew up with it, saw it
> everywhere, and were practically raised by
> house-slaves themselves would somehow all wake up one
> morning and slap themselves on the forehead and say,
> "My God what was I thinking? Slavery is WRONG."

If they'd read Exodus, they would have.  Oh yeah, they did read Exodus. 
  Yes, I think anyone who's read Exodus should know perfectly well that 
slavery is wrong.  It's the conclusion that Jews came to after being 
enslaved and they encoded their conclusion into their laws.  And yes, I 
think that anyone who sees someone they "own" living in squalor and 
unable to improve their condition should be able to put themselves in 
their shoes and realize that if the tables were turned they wouldn't 
like the deal.

You're claim here amounts to asserting that the formers of the 
constitution were heartless fiends and/or complete and utter 
nincompoops.

>  If YOU
> can't see how THEY thought it was perfectly acceptable
> to keep slaves, then you are guilty of the very thing
> that you are accusing them of and that is being unable
> to lift your mind above the cultural context in which
> you live and see the big picture.

Oy vey.  So because I think slavery is wrong, I'm as bad as a slave 
owner.  I think you're either very confused or really grasping for 
straws here.

>
>> 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.
>
> You are right, the framers of the constitution were
> intimately familiar with Exodus. Here are some
> relevant excerpts:
>
> Exodus 12:44 - but every slave that is bought for
> money may eat of it after you have circumcised him.
>
> Exodus 21:2 - When you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall
> serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out
> free, for nothing.
>
> Exodus 21:7 - When a man sells his daughter as a
> slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do.
>
> Exodus 21:20 - When a man strikes his slave, male or
> female, with a rod and the slave dies under his hand,
> he shall be punished.
>
> Exodus 21:21 - But if the slave survives a day or two,
> he is not to be punished; for the slave is his money.
>
> Exodus is chocked full of laws from God regarding how
> to treat slaves, how to punish them, what to feed
> them, and nowhere does it say it is wrong to have
> them.

You're quite wrong, it does very specifically give rules about which 
people can be enslaved (only Hebrews, not foreigners) and the terms of 
their slavery (6 years) and that they ought not be treated cruelly.



>  So don't try to pull that Jewish "holier than
> thou" crap on me. The only thing the Hebrews had
> against slavery was they prefered to own them rather
> than to BE them.

You forgot to read where it says:

""Love the stranger because you were strangers in the land of Egypt."  
- Deuteronomy
10:19

God promised to punish them if they treated strangers like they were 
treated.

> Just look at the history of Solomon,
> second king of Israel son of the great David whose
> star is the symbol for the whole of the Jewish people
> and reputed to be the wisest man in the world.
>
> 1 Kings 9:20-9:23 "All the people who were left of the
> Amorites, the Hittites, the Per'izzites, the Hivites,
> and the Jeb'usites, who were not of the people of
> Israel-- 21 their descendants who were left after them
> in the land, whom the people of Israel were unable to
> destroy utterly--these Solomon made a forced levy of
> slaves, and so they are to this day. 22 But of the
> people of Israel Solomon made no slaves; they were the
> soldiers, they were his officials, his commanders, his
> captains, his chariot commanders and his horsemen."
>

Solomon also erected an Asherah pole and made sacrifices to other Gods. 
   Does the bible therefore also condone those actions, according to 
you?

>
>> 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.
>
> No. It was intended to allow for "Government of the
> people, for the people, by the PEOPLE."

Some of the people, the rich and powerful ones.

>  I am sorry
> that all the founders could leave for you was a scrap
> of paper that had some really nice inspirational
> platitudes written on it. I wish they could have left
> you more of what they had. . . like vision, courage,
> and the will to take what is rightfully yours.

Now I'm a coward with no vision.  Have you been reading my diary?

>> Irrelevant.  Thinking that cigarette smoking is bad
>> for you and
>> quitting are two different things.  Only one of them
>> is important,
>> guess which.
>
> Why would anyone quit if they didn't think it was bad
> for them?

Slavery, stick to the subject.  Saying slavery is bad but not letting 
your own slaves free is called hypocrisy.

>
>> I grew up in the inner-city.  I spent -enough- time
>> in Mexico.  I know
>> whereof I speak.
>
> Yeah? Mexico is the Ritz-Carlton compared to
> Bangladesh where 1 in 3 children are born retarded
> because of thyroid defects caused by their mothers
> getting insufficient iodine in their diet during
> pregnancy. Why you ask? Because iodized salt costs a
> couple of pennies more a pound. When you are digging
> maggots out of your own shit for protein, then you
> will understand true poverty. Until then, you are just
> an apostate prince in a self-imposed exile of the mind
> because you don't like your daddy's royal decrees.

You're right, I never did any maggot digging, thank God!  But they do 
eat maggots in mexico, I've seen it.  I didn't claim I'm among the 
poorest, just that I'm not rich and I've seen poor.  Perhaps you should 
go to mexico, it's close by.  Take a look at the makeshift toilets in 
the cardboard cities.  Or go see how people live on the hills outside 
Caracas.  I think your point was that I'm a spoiled child of some kind. 
  To some people, no doubt I am, a house-nigger who was allowed to go to 
college because the powers that be thought I'd make a good laborer in 
that class.  But as with every plan, there are two sides.  If you 
educate the slave enough to do your books, they may also steal from 
you.

Are you from Bangladesh?  Have you been there?

>> 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.
>
> Do you always use nigger, china-man, and other
> monikers of hate?

Yes.  It occasionally has the desired effect.  I would never want to 
forget that my ancestors were the object of ridicule because of their 
race in order to further the economic goals of the dominant class of 
their time.  It's an important aspect of who we are.  It also explains 
why I see it go around still.

Did you understand the analogy?

>  You do have freedom of speech but
> still it's not very progressive now is it?

I'm not a progressive.  Sometimes you need to scratch the wound to 
remind everyone that it still hurts.

>  For the
> record, I am nobody's slave. I am free, educated, and
> powerful. I could seize power over others through
> force and guile but I choose not to. I am a man of
> reason and not some brute animal ruled by my instincts
> for domination. That those who claim to be my leaders
> seem to be, shames me greatly. But neither you nor
> they would be wise to mistake my generous nature for
> servility.

Don't be fooled, your claimed leaders would not allow you to seize 
their power by force or guile.  They didn't acquire their power being 
stupid or weak.  They acquired their power by being stronger and 
smarter than everyone who came before.  Unless you think you're Genghis 
Khan and can rally an army to rival the US army without them noticing 
first, your best option might be to be a terrorist.  Terrorists are 
like gnats to the US - they kill off a thousand people now and again, 
but can't really touch -the system-.   Well, that's the thinking of the 
current major threat to the US, anyway.   To the people with -real 
power- you are chattel.  You will further their goals or drivel away in 
obscurity.  You may be more or less valuable chattel, but that's what 
you are.  If you become a nuisance, they'll simply kill you.  If you 
just try to muddle along and stay out of their way, play their game, 
etc., you're capitulating and likely being duped in the process.  You 
may try to escape, you may succeed.  I wish you all the luck in the 
world.

>> Don't worry, I dropped out.
> Too bad . . . I am just getting started. :)

Advice - don't run a rat race.

Robbie Lindauer