tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post5468163699635709659..comments2024-03-28T02:54:46.537-04:00Comments on The TOF Spot: Tabclearing DayTheOFloinnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14756711106266484327noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-23508472970779782162017-09-20T18:00:35.572-04:002017-09-20T18:00:35.572-04:00How does one become a member of the Gandersauce So...How does one become a member of the Gandersauce Society? I want in.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01390387175635219445noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-49329380084034582532017-09-19T18:43:18.391-04:002017-09-19T18:43:18.391-04:00I always want to know, if the US national anthem&#...I always want to know, if the US national anthem's mention of "hireling and slave" is racist, is the French one's mention of "impure blood" (which shall water the fields of France) anti-miscegenation?<br /><br />Hilaire Belloc, in <i>The Servile State</i>, actually argued that slavery as such ("forced labor by positive law") is not evil, though it arguably does always constitute a misfortune ("necessarily bad, not necessarily evil"), and thus not something you should inflict on others all willy-nilly. One could even say that, prudentially, the ease with which the slave-status as such can be abused should rule it out-of-bounds entirely; certainly that argument can be made with regard to convict-labor. (See the Early Modern West voting ever-more-minor crimes as punishable by being sent to the galleys, for economic reasons.)<br /><br />Treating people as objects, as in <i>chattel</i> slavery, is another matter, of course, since people <i>are not</i> objects; since that is the main form of slavery as practiced throughout history, it is convenient to say that "slavery" is intrinsically evil. Of course, there are plenty of other things, such as abortion and the many forms of "commodification of human life" attendant on artificial reproductive technologies, that involve treating people as objects, without directly being slavery. Though many if not most forms of artificial reproductive technology arguably <i>do</i> involve trafficking in human beings...Sophia's Favoritehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02871625814389904112noreply@blogger.com