Copyright LewRockwell.com (Link to article)
I agree with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas who remarked recently that people now seem more overly sensitive about racial differences than 50 years ago.
In my view, the elitists of the Left seem to be obsessed over race, but not in a genuinely sensitive way, more in a self-righteous and even hypocritical way. When someone criticizes Barack Obama, for instance, the race-obsessed accuse the critics of racism, regardless of the issue. And many news editors continue to censor out the race of black youths accused of assaulting white victims.
And, believe it or not, there has even been a case recently in which the president of a prestigious university misread an article which had already quoted out of context Walter Block, an even more prestigious economics professor. This led to the university president to claim that the professor had endorsed slavery “enforced against someone’s free will,” when in fact Dr. Block had stated that the “only real problem was that this relationship was compulsory. It violated the law of free association, and that of the slaves’ private property rights in their own persons.”
Perhaps the university president who complained needs to get reading glasses (or better ones, if he already has them).
Over-sensitivity to racial matters or references to early American chattel slavery seems to go with many other kinds of politically-incorrect intolerance in America now.
Another example is the MSNBC crowd who believe that one’s support for independence from central planners has racist motivations, as the elitists look upon nullification advocates and secessionists as “neo-confederates.”
Yet, those people on the Left are the very ones who actually do advocate slavery, in the truest definition of the word.
No, they do not promote chattel slavery, in which an individual is involuntarily made to be the property of another, such as the aforementioned slaves of early America.
But both the Left and conservatives promote a more collectivized enslavement of each individual in the collectivists’ beloved compulsory government policies, such as insurance mandates and micro-managerial bureaucratic regulations, drug laws and marriage laws, which force everyone to involuntarily serve government bureaucrats and their minions, as well as the enforcers of such bureaucrats’ whims.
Another phrase for enslavement is “involuntary servitude,” such as with taxation.
Statist rationalizations for the robbery and labor-enslavement committed by government thugs are never-ending.
When government bureaucrats force someone to perform an extra hour of labor per day to serve the bureaucrats’ demands, in the absence of a voluntary contract, then it is obviously involuntary.
Oh, the collectivists and statists come up with rationalizations for such involuntary servitude and compulsory contract-less labor, saying there’s some sort of societal “contract” or “compact” (that doesn’t exist except in their own heads).
You see, those who want to force others to serve them and their interests and their causes will come up with excuses.
And when people are ordered by government officials to give them personal information, such as one’s place of employment, one’s salary or what one pays employees or one’s profits or losses — information that is none of their business — how is that not being a slave of those giving the orders?
And what about the Affordable Care Act? Bureaucrats order you to purchase an insurance policy or provide insurance to employees, or you will be punished. And doctors must follow intrusive rules written by know-nothing parasites, and doctors and hospitals must submit patients’ private medical information to those government bureaucrats.
How are all these people not the property of those dictatorial government bureaucrats? It is as though the bureaucrats own you and the most personal aspects of your private life.
In those instances, your ownership of the fruits of your labor and of your “personal effects” (such as your private medical information or business matters) is expropriated by the bureaucrats.
In contrast, when you own your own life, you decide whether or not you will purchase health insurance — not some little dictator central planner. And doctors will decide how to run their own medical practices — not some schnook bureaucrat. In these cases, no one may rob you (called a “fine”), no one may arrest you, no harassment by non-productive uniformed thugs.
And if you own your own business that you established through your own labor, capital and investment, and on your own time, you decide whether or not to provide insurance to employees. And in such a situation free of government criminality, the relationship between employers and employees is strictly voluntary.
If the employees don’t like the unavailability of health care provision at some company, they are free to work elsewhere.
In this system of freedom, no one is the slave of a government bureaucrat giving orders that must be obeyed involuntarily.
So regarding the idea of government bureaucrats claiming ownership of the lives of those over whom they rule — in the name of “health care” — it is really just a case of covetous parasites who just get off on imposing their own will onto others as if the others are the property of the bureaucracy parasites. And this enslavement of other people isn’t just by government employees, but all those activists and special interest groups who align themselves with these State vultures.
Besides the ongoing medical slavery imposed by fascists and collectivists with power, there is the enslavement of the general population by the badged goons and thugs who enforce the bureaucrats’ diktats.
Some people out there might think it absurd the suggestion that the civilian population are “slaves” of government police. But readers here already understand the reality in modern Amerika.
William Grigg recently wrote about the relationship between us mere civilians and the “law enforcement” masters.
From that perspective, all citizens are incipient slaves, subject to detention, abduction, and other abuse at the whim of uniformed slave-keepers.
A slave is somebody who cannot say “no” – as in, “No, I can’t talk to you right now because I’m on the clock and there are paying customers ahead of you.” This is because the slave doesn’t exercise self-ownership in any sense in the presence of a slave-keeper.
A slave-keeper is somebody who claims the legal right to take ownership of another person at his discretion, and use physical violence to compel submission.
. . .
The conceit that defines law enforcement is that all claims to self-ownership evaporate in the presence of a police officer.
And Grigg also notes that
From its inception, American “law enforcement” has been in the business of harassing harmless people, demanding that they present their “papers,” and violently abducting them if they cannot give a proper “accounting” of themselves to those who presumed to own them. Victims of 18th century slave patrols might be mystified by the accoutrements of contemporary police, astounded by the technology they can employ in the service of official coercion, and horrified by their capacity for unprovoked violence, often of the lethal variety.
One example of the enslavement of civilians by both government legislators and their badged enforcers is the drug war.
Quite simply, if you own your own body and your own life, then of course you have a right to put whatever chemicals into your own body you want to have.
In a mature and just society, individuals would be expected to take responsibility for their own choices and decisions. (Sadly, our society is neither mature nor just.)
But if the State owns your body and your life, then of course the “lawmakers” (sic) and their enforcers have a right to tell you what you may or may not put into your body. You belong to them. You are their property.
The absurdity of these laws of State enslavement of the people is obvious when a peaceful individual is not harming anyone, yet is captured by a uniformed goon and thrown into a cage, merely for ingesting a drug or just for being in possession of something. It’s nuts. Only the “low-information voter” types (as the “Ditto-Heads” would say) or those bent on sadism would enforce such laws of subjugation.
Which brings me to the immigration laws. Speaking of “Ditto-Heads,” it is mainly the conservatives who support these laws which go against the truly American concepts of self-ownership and private property. The conservatives don’t realize what covetous collectivists they are when they support this communal ownership of the territory as a whole.
With the immigration issue, such communal, communistic collective ownership of the entire territory really amounts to the collective owning everything within the territory, including all property, businesses, and the people themselves. When you have armed goons going into a “private” business to harass or arrest the owner for employing a non-approved immigrant, you are claiming ownership over that person’s business, and his life. If the owner really does “own” his business, then he decides whom to employ, based on which applicant would better serve his customers.
And how un-American is it to demand from someone “your papers,” someone who is not suspected of any actual crimes, and is minding his own business?
The anti-immigration crowd believes in socialist central planning in immigration — they want more know-nothing government bureaucrats to decide who may or may not be here, work here and start a new life here. In this issue, conservatives love central planners.
So, not only do the anti-immigration people claim ownership of the lives of their fellow Americans, employers and workers alike, but over the lives of foreigners as well.
Like it or not, all human beings have a natural, inherent right of self-ownership, a right to their freedom to travel and migrate, as long as they don’t trespass on private property.
Private property rights is a concept which is foreign to the conservatives as much as it is to the Left. This is why conservatives generally want anti-gay marriage laws. They believe they own the lives of others who want to marry someone who is not approved by those covetous conservatives.
In fact, the conservatives act as though they own the “institution of marriage” itself. The conservatives and traditionalists have seized ownership of marriage, and their rules of “opposite-sex only” must be instilled into law — private property rights, the sanctity of voluntary contracts, and self-ownership be damned.
In our majority-rules democracy society, everyone gets to use the powers of the State to covet and enslave everyone else and their property. That’s why we call them “statists.”
Well, the world would be a much better place if peaceful people who just want to live their own lives were left alone by the enslaving and covetous statists. The parasites need to cease their claims of ownership of other people, and of property they did not acquire justly.
Get the parasitic State and its minions out of other people’s private lives, their medical matters, their earnings and private wealth, their drug choices, out of their marriages, and stop getting in the way of people who want to migrate to a new, what used to be better, area of the world.
Scott Lazarowitz is a writer and cartoonist. Please visit his blog.
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