Ten reasons why slavery should not be abolished.
1. Slavery is natural. People differ, and we must expect that those who are superior in a certain way for example, in intelligence, morality, knowledge, technological prowess, or capacity for fighting will make themselves the masters of those who are inferior in this regard. Abraham Lincoln expressed this idea in one of his famous 1858 debates with Senator Stephen Douglas:
2. Slavery has always existed. A key principle espoused by conservatives as well as Libertarians like Hayek, is that, although we may not understand why a social institution persists, its persistence may nonetheless be well grounded in a logic we have yet to understand. Consequently it would be dangerous to get rid of our proud institution of slavery that was handed down to us by our forefathers. This idea can also be summed in the old adage of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".
3. Every society on earth has slavery. The sheer pervasiveness of the institution of slavery constitutes compelling proof of its necessity. A key reason may simply be practicality. Every society has slavery because certain kinds of work are so difficult or degrading that no free person will do them, and therefore unless we have slaves to do these jobs, they will not get done. Someone, as the saying went in the Old South, has to be the mud sill, and free people will not tolerate serving in this capacity.
4. The slaves are not capable of taking care of themselves. People such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who regarded slavery as morally reprehensible, continued to hold slaves and to obtain personal services from them and income from the products that these "servants" (as they preferred to call them) were compelled to produce. They did so because it would be cruel to set free people who would then, at best, fall into destitution and suffering.
5. Without masters, the slaves will die off. Following on from (4), the natural end result of removing the masters will be high death rates. In 1865, Northern journalists traveling in the South immediately after the war reported that, indeed, the blacks were in the process of becoming extinct because of their high death rate, low birth rate, and miserable economic condition. This is sad but true. As the first-hand observers declared, the freed people really were too incompetent, lazy, or immoral to behave in ways consistent with their own group survival.
6. Where the common people are free, they are even worse off than slaves. As sociologist George Fitzhugh wrote, freeing the negroes of the South merely means instituting a system of 'wage slavery' in which nineteen out of twenty individuals have the inalienable right to be slaves. We should do away with so-called free competition which enriches the strong and crushes the weak and we should adopt socialism which affords protection and support at all times to the labouring class. We need to remedy the inequalities of the working man and get rid of the exploitation favoured by our Northern brethren. Indeed slavery fulfills all of these ambitions perfectly. Slavery is already socialism in all save the master.
7. Getting rid of slavery would occasion great bloodshed and other evils. Slaveholders will never permit the termination of the slave system without an all-out fight to preserve it. Sure enough, when the Confederacy and the Union went to war set aside that the immediate issue was not the abolition of slavery but the secession of eleven Southern states great bloodshed and other evils did ensue. These tragic events could have been prevented if people had only opposed abolition in favour of the greater benefit of a stable and safe society.
8. Without slavery the former slaves would run amuck, stealing, raping, killing, and generally causing mayhem. Such an uprising is self-evidently true. Preservation of social order therefore rules out the abolition of slavery. It is bad enough that our cities are already sufficiently intolerable, owing to the massive influx of drunken, brawling young men into places like Kings Cross or radicalised, law-hating terrorists into SW-Sydney. Throwing free blacks into the mix would well-nigh guarantee social chaos.
9. Trying to get rid of slavery is foolishly utopian and impractical; only a fuzzy-headed dreamer would advance such a cockamamie proposal. Serious people cannot afford to waste their time considering such farfetched ideas.
10. Forget abolition. A far better plan is to keep the slaves sufficiently well fed, clothed, housed, and occasionally entertained and to take their minds off their exploitation by encouraging them to focus on the better life that awaits them in the hereafter. We cannot expect fairness or justice in this life, but all of us, including the slaves, can aspire to a life of ease and joy in Paradise.
With special thanks to the members like Newtosilver for enlightening me on this topic.
1. Slavery is natural. People differ, and we must expect that those who are superior in a certain way for example, in intelligence, morality, knowledge, technological prowess, or capacity for fighting will make themselves the masters of those who are inferior in this regard. Abraham Lincoln expressed this idea in one of his famous 1858 debates with Senator Stephen Douglas:
2. Slavery has always existed. A key principle espoused by conservatives as well as Libertarians like Hayek, is that, although we may not understand why a social institution persists, its persistence may nonetheless be well grounded in a logic we have yet to understand. Consequently it would be dangerous to get rid of our proud institution of slavery that was handed down to us by our forefathers. This idea can also be summed in the old adage of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".
3. Every society on earth has slavery. The sheer pervasiveness of the institution of slavery constitutes compelling proof of its necessity. A key reason may simply be practicality. Every society has slavery because certain kinds of work are so difficult or degrading that no free person will do them, and therefore unless we have slaves to do these jobs, they will not get done. Someone, as the saying went in the Old South, has to be the mud sill, and free people will not tolerate serving in this capacity.
4. The slaves are not capable of taking care of themselves. People such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who regarded slavery as morally reprehensible, continued to hold slaves and to obtain personal services from them and income from the products that these "servants" (as they preferred to call them) were compelled to produce. They did so because it would be cruel to set free people who would then, at best, fall into destitution and suffering.
5. Without masters, the slaves will die off. Following on from (4), the natural end result of removing the masters will be high death rates. In 1865, Northern journalists traveling in the South immediately after the war reported that, indeed, the blacks were in the process of becoming extinct because of their high death rate, low birth rate, and miserable economic condition. This is sad but true. As the first-hand observers declared, the freed people really were too incompetent, lazy, or immoral to behave in ways consistent with their own group survival.
6. Where the common people are free, they are even worse off than slaves. As sociologist George Fitzhugh wrote, freeing the negroes of the South merely means instituting a system of 'wage slavery' in which nineteen out of twenty individuals have the inalienable right to be slaves. We should do away with so-called free competition which enriches the strong and crushes the weak and we should adopt socialism which affords protection and support at all times to the labouring class. We need to remedy the inequalities of the working man and get rid of the exploitation favoured by our Northern brethren. Indeed slavery fulfills all of these ambitions perfectly. Slavery is already socialism in all save the master.
7. Getting rid of slavery would occasion great bloodshed and other evils. Slaveholders will never permit the termination of the slave system without an all-out fight to preserve it. Sure enough, when the Confederacy and the Union went to war set aside that the immediate issue was not the abolition of slavery but the secession of eleven Southern states great bloodshed and other evils did ensue. These tragic events could have been prevented if people had only opposed abolition in favour of the greater benefit of a stable and safe society.
8. Without slavery the former slaves would run amuck, stealing, raping, killing, and generally causing mayhem. Such an uprising is self-evidently true. Preservation of social order therefore rules out the abolition of slavery. It is bad enough that our cities are already sufficiently intolerable, owing to the massive influx of drunken, brawling young men into places like Kings Cross or radicalised, law-hating terrorists into SW-Sydney. Throwing free blacks into the mix would well-nigh guarantee social chaos.
9. Trying to get rid of slavery is foolishly utopian and impractical; only a fuzzy-headed dreamer would advance such a cockamamie proposal. Serious people cannot afford to waste their time considering such farfetched ideas.
10. Forget abolition. A far better plan is to keep the slaves sufficiently well fed, clothed, housed, and occasionally entertained and to take their minds off their exploitation by encouraging them to focus on the better life that awaits them in the hereafter. We cannot expect fairness or justice in this life, but all of us, including the slaves, can aspire to a life of ease and joy in Paradise.
With special thanks to the members like Newtosilver for enlightening me on this topic.
