17A020 Our Slave State by Jim Davies, 5/16/2017    

Everyone's against it. I never met anyone wanting to restore the "peculiar institution". But what is slavery, exactly?

It's an arrangement under which one person or group provides food, shelter, clothing and medical care to another person or group, who in return provides the first party with labor. How's that for a definition? - doesn't that describe life on a plantation?

Not quite; there's an aspect missing. As it stands, that could describe many arrangements current today, in which an employer exchanges pay for work. He directs the labor, and makes enough payment to buy those other goodies; and sometimes provides them directly, as in company housing or medical care. I'm sure I've also eaten a company lunch now and again, provided free for staff members. So what's unique about slavery?

The missing bit is the contract.

Depending on the owner/master, a slave may be able to negotiate minor adjustments to his or her working and living conditions. Some plantations had quite good relationships between master and slave, particularly in the home with domestics. Always, though, the master had the last word; any improvement was by his grace and favor. He suffered no obligation; there was no contract.

The terms of relationship were set by the master. If the slave wished to end it, tough luck; should he walk or run away, the master's friends in government would track him down and bring him back, probably for harsher treatment including chains, to prevent recurrence and pour encourager les autres. The master could end the relationship at will; he could "free" the slave, and some did, especially in their wills, after they were no longer in a position to profit from the slave's labor. But the slave had no such right of termination. In any contract for labor, the employee does have such a right; notice may be given by either party.

That is the essence of slavery. One of the parties has no contractual right to end the deal, nor even to start it; the "deal" was foisted on him or her without any consent or negotiation. The plantation blacks were kidnapped, usually by other blacks. There was no agreement, either to begin the deal or to end it. It was a fait accompli: accept it, or die.

This arrangement is typical also of the Mafia, or of any kriminal act; the victim is faced with an "offer he cannot refuse." He is in the power of the aggressing party. While the kriminal act continues, the victim is a slave.

Let's apply this to the relationship between any person and the government in whose domain he or she lives and works. Does a contract exist? - if so, was it entered freely?

Not that I've noticed. Sometimes a writer will ponder that question and come up with the terms of such a contract that would apply if one did exist, based on the current behavior of each party. Here's an example; its first clause provides:

"I will surrender a percentage of my property to the Government. The actual percentage will be determined by the Government and will be subject to change at any time. The amount to be surrendered may be based on my income, the value of my property, the value of my purchases, or any other criteria the Government chooses. To aid the Government in determining the percentage, I will apply for a Government identification number that I will use in all my major financial transactions."

Outside a mental institution or a torture chamber nobody would sign such a contract, and indeed for its part government would probably not sign it either, for to do so would expose to scorn and ridicule the extent of its own malevolent nature. It goes to a lot of trouble to disguise the fact that it is operating a vast slavery plantation, and such wording raises the lid on the entire scam. Washington reputedly admitted that government is "not reason, not eloquence, but force..." but what politician, in the two and a quarter centuries since, has repeated the confession?

I thought last week that one of them had; the new French President Emmanuel Macron was quoted as having promised "I will serve you with humility, with force." Ha! That would be the first time a humble servant had used force on his master. Unfortunately, it was not well translated; the French word force means "strength"; he was just promising to be a strong leader, whatever that means. Yawn.

How about escape? The antebellum slaves might run away to a Northern State, but if spotted would be sent back; for those governments favored the supposed rights of the Southern slave owners over the real ones of the escapees. Only if they reached Canada, ruled by the British monarch from whom the US had broken free, were they safe. Irony all round. Today, can we escape the slave plantation of the USA? - yes, and no.

We can emigrate to another country, though that may mean surrendering property as it did for Jews emigrating from Germany in the 1930s. But virtually all "other countries" are also slave plantations farming taxes, in ways very similar to the US. There is no underground railroad to "Canada" for us.

There is only one solution, as I may have mentioned before: the slave master must be deprived of labor. Only when nobody will work for government will it cease to exist. Over on the right of this page is a link to the QuitGov site - spread its URL around - which details some of the motivation for doing that, and of course to the Freedom Academy, the master key.