"I despise Lincoln, that man was literally America's Hitler. He would have made Satan proud." u/LibertyPatriot7 calmly and rationally discusses his opinion on Abraham Lincoln's policies. (np.reddit.com)
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103 ups - 47 downs = 56 votes
96 comments submitted at 06:01:54 on May 7, 2014 by Sanomaly
Nonsense. They could have paid the slaveowners to free their slaves, so it wasn't necessary to wage a war in order to free the slaves.
And it's not like the South needed "cheaper labor". Just look at what happened when slavery was abolished: slavery was merely replaced by sharecropping. Sharecroppers were very cheap labor -paying sharecroppers was only slightly more expensive than providing food, shelter, and clothing for slaves. It's unfortunate that slavery existed in the first place, but the slaves didn't just disappear when slavery was abolished - freedmen became the new supply of cheap labor.
Alright, I'll bite. Why did the plantation owners deserve to be compensated for the act of owning human beings as chattel?
I've heard two arguments for paying. The first was that it would (hopefully) help lower the damage done to the southern economy. The other was to try to create less resentment among southerners. I disagree with both arguments completely myself, but I kinda understand the thinking behind them.
There's something to those arguments (though I don't agree with them) and it did work in England. But Lincoln /did/ offer to buy them. The southerners didn't want to sell because their economy depended on slavery.
Because we live in the real world and morality takes a backseat to practical application. A country's economy is not the same as disciplining a class of kindergarteners.
Man I have no idea where you are going with that metaphor
First of all: slaves cost money, and slaveowners had to work hard to get the money to buy slaves. It might not have been right to have slaves in the first place, but it certainly wouldn't be fair to just steal their property away without compensation.
Secondly: even if they didn't deserve to be paid, it would be better to just pay them than to start a war in which tens of thousands of people died. edit: And let's not forget that the war cost more than it would have cost to just pay off the slaveowners.
How can you characterize freeing enslaved people as theft of property? How can you weigh fairness towards slaveholders against the basic human rights of the enslaved? You make that argument in horrifying terms, and seem more concerned with the victimhood of the confederates than the suffering of people they exploited.
You're arguing with a guy who has submitted not 1 not 2 but 5 posts about how Cliven Bundy is not a racist, and actually is a very upstanding civil rights activist.
WELL I MEAN YEAH OBVIOUSLY
First of all, property rights are more fundamental than human rights. Human rights exist only because human beings own themselves as property (the self-ownership principle). People own themselves in just the same way that they can fully own inanimate objects.
This is why it is so important that property rights remain sacrosanct. Once you impede on property rights, it paves the way to impede on human rights. It was wrong to institute slavery in the first place, but stealing the property of slaveowners was also wrong, and two wrongs don't make a right.
Second of all, keep in mind that prior to emancipation, slaves were legally considered to be property. They were morally illegitimate property, but just because the laws were wrong doesn't mean that slaveowners should be punished for obeying the law. (The US constitution prohibits ex post facto laws, btw.)
> First of all, property rights are more fundamental than human rights.
Oh, I didn't realize you were a lunatic.
Holy shit.
Excuse me? The Self ownership principle isn't lunacy, it's a cornerstone of libertarianism (along with the non-aggression principle (NAP)).
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..."
I don't see nothing about no self-ownership.
So you're still a big fan of modern day human trafficking then? When Interpol busts that shit up, they're violating property rights of the people who bought another human being?
Right, and Libertarianism = lunacy
Except it's not a very good cornerstone if you violate it in your first argument to keep it for someone else. IE Where were the slaves "self ownership principle"? By taking someone as a slave, they are having their right to self-ownership denied, so by freeing them you're not removing property that someone has obtained in a manner consistent with the "self-ownership principle" you're taking away what amounts to stolen goods. Would you argue that if I stole item X from you I now own it and attempts to reclaim it would be theft? If not, then your entire argument falls in on itself. If you would argue it, then your argument is consistent, but stupid.
So your argument is "slave ownership is wrong, but stealing property is also wrong, and slaves are property because they were paid for, so freeing them would be wrong." It seems to me like this argument only justifies the continued ownership of slaves if you are willing to stand by the belief that anything paid for with money must now be respected first as property, regardless if that thing is a living and thinking being.
I'm not really sure that's a philosophy that is going to help people take your belief seriously. I get the idea behind it (property rights obviously have a value) but if the right to owning property is equal or greater than the right of a person to not be a slave to someone else... Well, I think we'll pass on that.
I wish I had enough money to somehow bankrupt your family, buy everything you own and force you into slave labour, just to see if you still think that is true. But then again, I could never do that, because I'm not a menace to society. Your way of thinking is juvenile and devoid of empathy to any human being. You're born in the wrong century, if not millennia
Edit: A word
> First of all, property rights are more fundamental than human rights.
Yeah... no.
This is why your pathetic philosophy will never be anything more than some mentally ill 20 year olds jerking off each others neckbeards on internet forums
>First of all, property rights are more fundamental than human rights
Nope.jpg
>First of all, property rights are more fundamental than human rights.
No they're not. Rights are subjective and of course you're free to prioritize ones I would consider more superficial over others. But don't make the mistake of thinking your inherently subjective preferences are some kind of natural law.
>Human rights exist only because human beings own themselves as property (the self-ownership principle). People own themselves in just the same way that they can fully own inanimate objects.
Most people reject the notion that property rights apply to people. You do not "own" yourself, because you cannot be owned. If people can be owned, then that ownership can be transferred to other people. Which is slavery. Ironically, despite libertarianism's rhetorical obsession with "freedom" and "liberty", its prioritization of property rights above all other rights makes it perfectly open to situations where people are literally owned by other people, the least free situation imaginable.
I mean listen to yourself. A libertarian, unparalleled champion of liberty, or so you probably imagine yourself, arguing against the notion of freedom at all costs. This is actually very common among your type, because despite the rhetoric -and I think most of its adherents are very sincerely oblivious to this- libertarianism is not actually about freedom.
>First of all: slaves cost money, and slaveowners had to work hard to get the money to buy slaves.
Well boo-fucking-hoo. It is literally no one's obligation to care about that.
> Secondly: even if they didn't deserve to be paid, it would be better to just pay them than to start a war in which tens of thousands of people died.
The point is made moot by the fact that the slave owners rejected the offer to be paid in exchange for freeing their slaves.
Make no mistake: If other countries ended slavery essentially by bribing the slave owners, it was because that happened to be the most convenient method to achieve that goal, not because the slavers were entitled to a single red cent. The moment the Sothern states declined the offer to be paid off, that stopped being a viable method.
The second argument is the answer to the first. They didn't NEED slaves, they wanted them. Like, enough to fight over it. Hence the need for a war and not just appeasement and subsidy.
> They could have paid the slaveowners to free their slaves
Lincoln offered to pay slaverowners to free their slaves. The plan was rejected by all border states so I'm not sure in what sense your "could have" is true.
Except it been shown we did have enough money for this plan....also the whole smuggling of new slaves bit