Convenience of Ethics, Morality or Justice

[stanleyg]

Convenience of Ethis, Morality or Justice

U.S Congress has implanted slavery in our U.S. Constitution under the cloak of ethics, morality or justice. Religion is the diametric of good vs. evil. The latter is asserted as a convenience to support punishment. Phrases such as cruel and unusual seek to justify slavery as being just or right in the sight of God.

Amendment XIII

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

If one were to analyze the above amendment it connotes that slavery has been taken from the hands of private citizens and legalized under our government.

Isn't it a great sigh of relief to know that slavery has been legalized by our U.S. Congress to protect the moral majority from immorality?

 

[James R]

Why reference your dictionary so much? It's distracting.

 

[Baron Max]

I agree! Every person who violates any legal law should be either put to death by firing squad immediately ....OR... released back into society.

Baron Max

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

As a libertarian I believe that all activities between consenting adults must be legal so long as they cause no direct harm to others. That includes contracts. Therefore I suppose that must include contracts in which one person agrees to be under the total control of another person in exchange for something of value. Money for his family, a new church for his offbeat religion, an expensive cure for a life-threatening disease. Who are we to tell him that whatever he's accepting in payment is not worth the cost of his freedom?

So in that well-defined context, yes. Like wacko religious cults, gun nuts, drug addicts and every other persecuted one-percenter, I guess the libertarian movement will next be adopted by people who want to sell themselves into slavery and people who want to buy them. And we wonder why our movement isn't taken seriously.

Nonetheless, this is about consent and adults. Children may not be enslaved. No one may be forcibly enslaved against his will. This is also about contract law. There has to be a fair exchange of value, no one can simply volunteer to be a slave without compensation because he's ashamed of something he's done. There can't be any violence, threat of violence, or fraud involved. You can't do something to a slave that would be illegal against a free citizen, such as murder or torture.

Who would participate in this enterprise? It's been a century and a half since the first economists figured out that slaves don't produce cost-effective work. And that was back when they were sold for a few hundred bucks by people who had kidnapped them from Third World countries. And there were no laws about pesky details like housing standards and medical care. No one today would take on a slave simply to put him or her to work.

It would have to be simply a fetish, an extension of today's B&D culture.

 

[Baron Max]

As a libertarian I believe that all activities between consenting adults must be legal so long as they cause no direct harm to others.

And just who is it that determines whether harm is being done? Everyone does not see things in the same way, which is, of course, one of the major problems in any society and under any form of government.

Some people think that selling porno magazines is harmful to the people of their society. Who is to force them to believe otherwise?

Libertarians are just idealists with a tiny bit of reality sprinkled into the mix in order to build their "almost-idealistic" social structure. But in the end, it's no different to most any form of idealism ....it won't work without taking into account the basic nature of humans ...greed, hatred, lust, gluttony, etc.

Baron Max