Sun, 09/07/2008 - 3:06pm — lambert
Sarah, you write:
Taking away the right to control what your body is put through against your will …
Of which dumping old people into beds so they can lie in their own shit is an excellent example.
Or forcing people to work in poisonous workplaces or not feed their families.
There’s a lot of slavery going about and it applies to all flesh (what the corps call “human resources”).
I’m not diminishing what you say, I hope, just adding on.
Discuss.
No biting or bottles!
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Let's start with the slavery
that dare not speak its name: the pro-life, no-exceptions, refuse-to-choose movement.
We can admit that we’re killers … but we’re not going to kill today. That’s all it takes! Knowing that we’re not going to kill today! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0
1 John 4:18
The reason forced pregnancy is slavery
is that it turns OWNERSHIP of the woman's body over to the fetus. And to the men who want to use her body to propagate their genes.
Suppose there was someone in the hospital who could survive if they were hooked up to your body as their life support system for 9 months. Should you be legally required to do that? Particularly if the process risked your life and health and was extremely painful?
Follow the Drinking Gourd
Mythos has in many minds obscured the common venality of decisions made around the Civil War. In truth, the North feared it could no longer compete economically with the advantages of slave labor, and while the anti-slavery movement served a convenient function as moral cover the real driver for containment was all about money. With the South’s capital wealth increasingly bound up in slaves,
the region’s apparent strength was also their greatest weakness – unlike machinery, human beings can revolt. When slaves heard that the anti-slavery Lincoln had been elected, they misinterpreted that as a sign of liberation and walked off plantations in such large numbers that the white power structure was overwhelmed and unable to contain them. Eventually, 186,000 men of African descent joined the Union Army and provided the difference in manpower needed to defeat the Confederacy. It is absolutely true that Lincoln and the Union did not free the slaves; they freed themselves.
Today we see another great economic realignment, with the value of modern labor being measured by the ability of the ruling class to extract money
and accumulate capital wealth at the expense of the poor and what was the middle class.
Self-identified Liberals, or Progressives if you prefer, are only about 17% of the US population and have been unable to impose their views for 40 years. Certainly in this election the choices from the Democrats were one right-of-center politician or another while the Republicans again proposed a very far-right ticket while the Congress is and will remain firmly in the hands of a Republican–BlueDog coalition. There appears to be very little immediate opportunity for Progressives to make their wishes heard.
But 17% of 305,000,000 is a very formidable 51,000,000 people. In comparison, the population of Canada, where they are having an election in a few weeks, is a little more than 33,000,000 of whom well less than a majority self-identify as Conservatives.
If all fifty-one million of us turn North, towards the Drinking Gourd, and run like hell….
do the Canadians want us?
in any case, via Sonya, Slavery Haunts America's Plantation Prisons