PeteEyre.com | Slavery today is not based on skin color but on the means one survives through – economic or political. Those classified by the economic means earn their wealth through voluntary arrangements. They create value. They innovate. Those using the political means earn their daily bread through theft. They survive off the labor of others.
Is that not slavery?
Those in the former group know that if they steal from someone or lie or if they don’t provide a good product at a good price, things will be tough. But if those in the latter group do the same thing, they’ll demand more money and expand the number and severity of “laws” their tasked with enforcing, continually narrowing their definition of individual rights under the guise of the “public” good.
Is that not slavery?
Those in the former group know that they don’t have the right to tell their neighbor how to run their lives. Sure, mistakes may be made, but they’ll learn from them. Those in the latter group believe they have the wisdom and divine right to force others to comply with their dictates. If they’re ignored, men with guns will show up on the “offenders” doorstep and throw them in a cage or worse.
Is that not slavery?
Those in the former group know they, and they alone, have the right to decide who comes onto their property, and under what stipulations. Those in the latter group believe they can use force to prevent people from moving across the property of others – due only to the location of the piece of dirt on which they happened to be born.
Is that not slavery?
Everyone knows that the slavery Frederick Douglass experienced is wrong. It’s morally reprehensible. The system today is no different. Yet many people accept as the norm.
We are not free because of statism.
Statism is the national religion that causes neighbors to kill each other. A violent institution used by those in power to further centralize and concentrate their power justified through massive misinformation campaigns and scare tactics in public schools and the talking heads in the mainstream media. Statism turns the only rational species on earth into unthinking sheep.
You would not allow other human beings to be sold at auction down the street. Yet are you an abolitionist? Do you defend the state – arguing that those who refuse on principle to let their money be stolen and spent on the warfare/welfare state are “cheats”? If you fall into that camp, ask yourself this: If we don’t stand up to statism today how hard will it be for our children to do so?
Leo Tolstoy, born a decade after Douglass, wrote:
The cause of slavery is legislation. Legislation rests on organized violence. It follows that an improvement in the condition of people is possible only through the abolition of organized violence. . . We are so depraved by long-continued slavery that we can hardly imagine administration without violence. . . People must feel that their participation in the criminal activity of governments, whether by giving part of their work in the form of money, or by direct participation in military service, is not, as is generally supposed, an indifferent action, but, besides being harmful to one’s self and to one’s brothers, is a participation in the crimes unceasingly committed by all governments and a preparation for new crimes, which governments are always preparing by maintaining disciplined armies. . . it is time for people to understand that governments not only are not necessary, but are harmful and most highly immoral institutions, in which a self-respecting, honest man cannot and must not take part, and the advantages of which he cannot and should not enjoy. And as soon as people clearly understand that, they will naturally cease to take part in such deeds – that is, cease to give the governments soldiers and money. And as soon as a majority of people ceases to do this the fraud which enslaves people will be abolished. Read Entire Article
By Pete Eyre
