A few days ago US Senator Jeff Merkley, an inveterate Communist whom I have frequently chastised, emailed me regarding the Abolition Amendment. He pointed out to me, who has been held in captivity a slave for three years, that the 13th Amendment we suppose has abolished slavery allows for it as 'punishment for crime'.
This time I did not castigate him. I fully support his, and every, effort to eliminate that exception to reason and justice. You, I, and Mumbet each and alone can raise our heavy hands to our weary brows to wipe away the sweat of our hard labors, and this sole option is ours due to our natural birth. It cannot be taken from us, nor can we give it away. As we alone have the power to will ourselves to act that cannot be sold, transferred, nor assigned to others, we inherently have the right to determine our actions.
We are permanently sovereign and cannot be property, not even our own property. I can sell my hat, but I cannot sell me. I say it is past time that affront to reason, justice, and the very laws of physics that govern the universe, that exception in the 13th Amendment making slavery legal in the land of the free, is eliminated.
I, like Mumbet, have been considered property, and have experienced the sophistry of my captors as they dangled persuasions to convince me to will myself to act as they preferred, alternately offering me money, relief from harsh treatment, and entertainments, and threatening harsh treatment, penury, and torturous sensory deprivation and solitude. I refrained from waging war unto death for that time, as I knew the time would end, and I would again be free from those unreasonable impositions, as I am.
Or are we? Are we free to transact with our fellows today? Free to make our homes and work where we will? Or are our bonds more subtle than chains, taking the form of prices we cannot pay, for products that are not for sale, or for lands and properties our masters claim are theirs?
There is coming a world where men will have only what they make themselves, or trade what they make for what those they know have, when global trade is no more, and only global institutionalization and captivity is offered. Today I go see a man about making my own fuel, growing it in a garden so that I can drive my personal vehicle when and where I want, without suffering the vagaries of OPEC or paying taxes. I am going to be making my freedom one mile at a time.
We will be as free as we make ourselves, and as enslaved as we seek to be. I look forward to the day we offer the WEF free rest from their labors, free rope for their necks, and free public exposition, dangling from street lamps across the free world.
Thanks!
Let freedom ring!
When it comes down to it, you're right.
I think back in Mumbet's and Jefferson's day, slavery was still an idea that, although you might not be able to be born into it, slavery, as punishment for crime, or perhaps just wanting to sell yourself as a slave for some reason, was possible.
But I'm sure we have come very far since then. Oh, very very far. Perhaps in some strange directions, but in the end, you're right. We need to re-establish the 13th amendment to ensure that it is neutral in terms of who it targets as to whom is immune to being a slave, and also, it must be made impossible for a slave to exist in America. The moment your littlest toe touches American soil, the chains are broken. You are free.
And thus, we must understand what a slave is, and how to define it very accurately. Because I certainly don't want to be a free person forced to work for faceless masters in exchange for cheap bread and filthy water, to be housed in a small hovel.
No, I would rather build myself a garden, I would rather filter my own water, and I would rather work for myself, or perhaps with a business, in order to build wealth.
What a slave is in the modern day is not someone who is wrapped with chains and whipped. No, it is more subtle than that, and it is the subtle definition that we must respond to. Lest we wind up back where we started! Slaves to a king.