Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Catfish who wrote (119863)	12/28/2000 3:03:46 PM
From: JDN	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Dear Gemini: You know, I think studies were done to prove eventually that slavery ACTUALLY wasnt as economical as merely hiring them as cheap labor. I cant be sure anymore as it was so long ago that I studied any of this. I am curious how we got on this subject to begin with. I honestly DOUBT very much ANYONE on this thread has, is, or will advocate slavery as morally correct. So, its probabably the ONE SUBJECT we all AGREE on. haha. JDN

To: Catfish who wrote (119863)	12/28/2000 3:23:52 PM
From: Johannes Pilch	Respond to of 769667

You are wrong. Without the economic need for slavery, it would have never existed. There was no economic need for slavery. Folks could have picked their own dang cotton and slopped their own dang hogs. Of course we wouldn’t be sitting here today with all our computers and planes and junk, but then we wouldn’t have so many hurt people either. You keep talking all this rubbish about cheap labour as if we HAD to enslave folks. We didn’t HAVE to do it. In 1619 the first blacks arrived on American shores. They came to Jamestown, Virginia aboard a Dutch freighter. These blacks worked in the settlement and were essentially treated as indentured servants. After a period of 3-7 years, they were to be released. And guess what? While race was always an influence in the settlement, it was really no great issue, certainly not as it later became. Those black servants lived with white servants, they slept with them in the same houses, and together they sometimes plotted their escape from their masters. The real division of the settlement was class oriented. Some of the black servants, after serving their time in indentured servitude, purchased land and became as productive as anyone, becoming in some cases pillars of the settlements. No one HAD to create a perpetual slave class in this country. Due to greed, we caused what historian Peter Wood calls a “terrible transformation,” where we gradually decided to free whites and keep blacks and their children in perpetual slavery. Even if conditions warranted our farming for subsistence, we did not HAVE to enslave anyone. Yes, that's right, the economic condition had everything to do with it. All slavery is wrong where ever it has existed, but the morality of the subject is a side issue. Wrong. It is not a side issue and we have some 40 million wounded blacks in our country to prove it. EVERY dang thing has a moral basis. You name any action, any action at all, including scratching your butt and going to the John, and I can show you its moral basis. Some things are founded on morality that reflects humanity. Other things are founded on morality that reflects inhumanity. The Confederacy defended slavery on moral grounds that were hostile to humanity and to every true American’s reason for being. Slavery was not established just to enslave blacks. Of course not and this is not the issue. The issue, once again, concerns the basis for slavery’s defense. The Confederacy claimed it had a divine right to enslave blacks. I have shown this repeatedly here. Well then if they had this friggin’ divine right back in 1860, they have it today. That is why blacks are so fearful and hateful of the Confederacy and those who defend it. That is why many of them hate Christianity, instead flowing toward Farrakhan’s garbage. They correctly reject the filthy god that would declare them innately designed for human ownership. They know what the Confederate leaders claimed, and when they see pro-Confederates today refusing to openly admit and then repudiate the philosophy of the Confederates, they sense that modern pro-Confederates in some way yet support that view. It is not enough to claim “no one supports slavery.” What needs to be said is “The Confederacy was dead wrong on slavery.” Then, and only then, can folks push the slavery issue aside and get on with exploring the many laudable traits of men like Robert E. Lee. The need for cheap labor was the primary factor that created slavery. That is so dang irrelevant I cannot find words for it. The issue concerns, for the tenth friggin’ time, the basis of slavery’s defense. Confederates claimed Jefferson was wrong, that all men are not created equal in the sense of owning by nature the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Now the two positions are clearly mutually exclusive. As Americans, just as was the case in the 19th century, we must choose between them. You want to just sweep the choice aside, claiming it a “side” issue. No true American can possibly take this view because it is the very basis of our existence as Americans. We must choose. I choose American philosophy, and that means I must reject the Confederate view.