What's interesting is that all of a sudden these libertarians think freedom isn't worth anything.

Are you trying to trap me or something?

Apparently slaves had a low rate of suicide. Some people have tried to use that as proof that their life wasn't that bad. And therefore that somehow justifies or excuses in some way the scummy actions of slaveholders, but only the ones who founded universities or helped people with their homework or something something.

I don't recall a specific mention in his posts that descendants of slaves are better off. My recollection of that discussion is that it was framed in Jefferson's time. However it is not difficult to dispel the later notion by questioning how anyone is better off being conditioned into slave mentality.

Well hey 3 squares a day, and sometimes they even let them get married...

So some people have posted like a graph showing low suicide rate of slaves and said here is proof that slavery wasn't so bad? That is audacious and sounds like trolling.

Honestly it doesn't matter much. Both ideas come from the post Civil War South that imagined Dixie as a harmonious union between the dutiful slaves who lovingly cared for their owners while the owners paternalistically tended their charges.

http://m.theatlantic.com/national/ar...st-had/276431/

So basically a sinister motive to make slavery less bad (by openly discussing slavery) either exists or is imaginary and the proof of it's existence remains to be snarky conjecture and old posts that are not even worth re-posting for show and tell. Well...

This is preposterous. Only someone being purposefully obtuse would think this. Then again, judging by your and a few others here inability to even attempt to put yourself in the place of people living 200 years ago to help understand how they could rationalize such atrocities like child molestation, beating women and children as a form of routine discipline, and even slavery, I guess I shouldn't be surprised you have little understanding of the matter, or even care to.

200 years ago? Your boy Bruce is rationalizing that **** today with his "slaves won the lottery" nonsense.

One of those ideas is part of a historical backdrop in understanding slavery and slave life/mentality,. The other is praxeological neo- confederate nonsense, which they also apply to the first.

How to people rationalize slavery today?

I'll ask again for some citation regarding your claims that everybody was diddling kids back then and it was accepted.

And you keep going back to this thing that because corporal punishment was routine and accepted then, it's easier to forgive them from our perspective. And it is!

The problem for Jefferson is that slavery was in his day already controversial and widely considered by many to be wrong and reprehensible.

I hear you. That otherwise great people are capable of rationizing such terrible injustices is a lesson we should get out of this. We can use that knowledge to help understand current injustices to women in the Islamic world, and hopefully convince them to change.

You still have absolutely no ability to comprehend. He was clearly saying that from the point of view of someone 200 years ago, understanding one way they must have rationalized slavery. Seriously, why are you even here? Oh, nevermind. Your name says it all.

Really, is that true?

No both are BS. First, how do we know what conditions of the then contemporary Africans were like? Did BruceZ provide a study? What did the slaves themselves think of the difference between their old and new lives? Oh we didn't bother to ask? Seems awful convenient to have an assumption that's also a bit self serving.

Secondly, the phrasing of the argument is wrong. Slaves weren't guaranteed room and board and food. At most that's what your parents provide when you spend 6 months on the couch after being kicked out of college. Slaves were guaranteed nothing. They usually were given enough food and enough clothes to keep themselves alive and be productive, nothing more. The whole "guaranteed" bit is just a shtick banking on the imagined paternal utopia of Dixie.

I suppose the answer has to be more or less, but I think it's more. The LA Times ran a whole week on tomato farms in Mexico. LA Times is really good occasionally on issues like this where they give serious space to something every day for a week.

Except not everyone around the world was diddling children. The age of consent in many countries was already higher than in the US, in some countries it was 18 - 20 y/o. But, yes he had figured out slavery was wrong, and for some reason wouldn't make the sacrifice of freeing his slaves. That must have been some tough rationalizing.

I've read that most of the estimated 2.9 million slaves in China were given a choice between slavery and working for Apple. Not many of them said they had won the lottery by choosing slavery, but many did say they had dodged a bullet by avoiding the alternative.


Sent from my iphone

I like to bring modern slavery into this discussion because it's something that we are exploiting right now. Chocolate is super easy to bring into it because it's entirely a luxury and the industry uses labor that is literally sold as property. Of course the slavers are doing worse than consumers, but are we so unwilling to do anything about it that we won't even pass on chocolate or pay a little more for fair trade?

This makes me wonder what would happen if you went back in time and explained how in modern times blacks and whites are considered equal, and there's even a black president and Supreme Court judge. Like would it change their way if thinking a little, or would they just refuse to believe such nonsense?

Like I said before, the age of consent being so low doesn't mean:

1) Sex with children was common
2) That it was accepted and not looked down upon


Go ahead and try to hook up with a 16 y/o and see how that goes for you.

Normally, in casual conversation of abstract topics like a historical circumstance, people use their imagination and try to speculate based on the facts they know and by relating to their own disposition. A person who imagines some slaves grew content may themselves be prone to rationalizing a kept-existence if they perceive it as comfortable and with a low risk of danger? Or they could be white supremacists trying to trick folks into believing that slavery was just alright? Or maybe not all slaves thought alike?

Because I can read and I don't consider you qualified to judge his grasp of morality.

You shouldn't care what I think, you should care what you think and what you think isn't particularly well thought out.