The New York Times: Elections Are Bad for Democracy
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If a slave picks cotton, that is beyond his choice because he is a slave.
If a slave commits evil on his own volition, his slavery means nothing to that. A slave can still be capable of sin, he can still burn, vandalize, kill all of his own free will. He still has choices to make every moment of every day independent of his slavery. He may not have complete freedom or control of his life, but he also isn't literally strapped to a chain every hour of the day being controlled for every second of it like a robot.
All you are doing is dehumanizing them further, just so you can pretend they are blameless and push all responsibility onto their masters, as you always do. Because nothing is ever anyone's faults ever. They were forced to loot, rape, molest, kill because apparently their impulse control is so low that some stuffy elite somewhere offering them the choice to do that immediately forces them to do so. Little more than beasts at that point.
You see how that's worse right?
No. Welcome to Liberalism. Slavery is not compatible with Liberalism, as you are always your own property, and ownership of that property can not be transferred.
No slaves should be allowed to exist, nor any masters. Both must be abolished. The slaves have no agency because they have either had it stripped from them, or they are nothing more than the property of the masters. If it's stripped from them, then they will seek liberation, and we should afford it to them. If they gave it up willingly, then we must strip their masters from them, whether they like it or not, whether they materially benefit or not. As for the master, all the slaves must be stripped from him. If not, then he can face the total responsibility of the actions of the slave.
So, let's say a slave commits a rape & murder, and for some unknowable reason we haven't abolished slavery yet.
Then the slave is a beast of burden that is out of control, because he is property, and the master is 100% accountable for his property's actions. You execute the slave for being a threat to society. Then you execute the master for murdering the slave's victim.
Seems harsh, but what we should probably do is be utterly intolerant of slavery so that the slave can become a man and face the consequences of being a murderer on his own. Then and only then can the master be allowed to live, because he has no slaves. Again, this is required because you can't be someone else's property. You must be responsible and accountable to yourself.
"But the slave should have some agency! You can't just murder the master by proxy!" Sure we could, because slaves have no agency. He takes full responsibility of his property, which happens to be a man.
"But by your logic the slave is a beast of burden, like a dog! If a dog bites a kid, you don't gas the dog owner". Sure, but dogs are dogs. They are lesser creatures. They can never truly understand the world in human terms. The human could, and the master failed. So that responsibility, full responsibility of a human, is transferred to him.
Not that it matters, because no one should have, or be, a slave anyway.
"But he wasn't willingly a slave!" Then he should have been trying to escape instead of committing a rape & murder.
But I'm willing to compromise on this: we could abolish slavery so this situation can't happen in the first place.
As for the actual comparison: no one's a slave here. People are seduced by a socialist clarion call. You don't let them off the hook for their bad actions, but you don't let the socialists off either. Seduction is not slavery.
And I don't think they do. You brought slaves into this discussion, whereas I don't give them the excuse to blame other people for their decisions.
Being led astray isn't the same as being forcefully directed. As long as they can chose to not commit the actions in question, then they aren't slaves. They are useful idiots. I do not give them the easy out of claiming to be "slaves" when they are completely free to not be one.
You know I had typed this exact point out and then erased it for not fitting, but glad to see we agree on that point.
And I'd never say otherwise. Multiple people can be guilty for the same crime in different ways.
To use an example I enjoy a lot for upsetting women. A serial killer is guilty of his crimes and deserving of punishment, but in the vast majority of cases his mother is also completely on the hook for what he ended up being and doing. All of them chose to kill and give in to evil, but in many cases their mother's committed such evil against them that they are absolutely responsible for the carnage caused. Women of course love serial killers but hate responsibility so that will fry their little brains.
In all these discussions I've never discounted the elites culpability for what they direct people towards, I simply reject the notion that their peasant workforce is any less to blame for their choices because an elite pointed them that way.
Then I think we are arguing over an analogy and need to get back on topic.
I do do that sometimes.