Slavery in and of itself is not wrong. The Bible had strict regulations on slavery but it was still condoned. It was even possible to buy your way out of slavery.
How can a slave get any money to buy himself out of slavery? If you think slavery isn’t wrong then why don’t you work for crappy food and water? Slavery is a horrible thing!
Slavery became wrong when it was based on genetics and not actions. Enslaving an enemy soldier as a servant is not wrong. Enslaving a person because they have more or less melanoma in their skin is wrong.
Melanoma is cancer. Pigment is the word. I guess enslaving enemies is better than sacrificing them to the gods. Oh, and guess how slave traders got slaves? Warring African tribes would enslave their enemies and then sell them to the slave traders! So technically, that slave trade was based on war, not race. It is ok now?
I think I’d have to put Alexander not dying near the top of the list. Then he could have come back and conquered Northern Europe…
I doubt if Alexander would have conquered Northern Europe. He probably would have gone after the Carthigians and/or Romans if he had lived longer.
I didn’t say life as a slave was great. I just said, in and of itself, slavery was not evil.
Joseph earned his way out of slavery and jail to rise into a very powerful positin in Egypt. For an example.
Families could raise the ransom to purchase loved ones out of slavery.
Gladiators could earn their freedom in the ring.
Some slaves were well loved and incorporated into families throughout ancient times. Where do you think maids and butlers came from?
It only became bad in the incarnation of the plantation slaves where slavery was based not on past deeds but rather on genetics and was inherited through many generations without any hope of escape.
However, don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating slavery. I’m just trying to shed some perspective on it.
I just said, in and of itself, slavery was not evil.
A serious question, although it may sound provocative:
How can one say “Slavery is not inherently evil” and “Bringing Freedom to the population of a country is inherently good”?
How can the second be good if the first is not evil?
I didn’t say life as a slave was great. I just said, in and of itself, slavery was not evil.
Wow… I’m at a loss… I am not sure what rational explination could exist to justify owning the life of another human. Wow…
I didn’t say life as a slave was great. I just said, in and of itself, slavery was not evil.
Wow… I’m at a loss… I am not sure what rational explination could exist to justify owning the life of another human. Wow…
maybe if they’re stupid enough . . . :lol:
@F_alk:
I just said, in and of itself, slavery was not evil.
A serious question, although it may sound provocative:
How can one say “Slavery is not inherently evil” and “Bringing Freedom to the population of a country is inherently good”?
How can the second be good if the first is not evil?
Good question. I don’t exactly have an answer to that, but I can speculate that freeing slaves is good, but being a slave is not necessarily bad anymore then being poor is bad, but it’s still good to give them money.
@cystic:
I didn’t say life as a slave was great. I just said, in and of itself, slavery was not evil.
Wow… I’m at a loss… I am not sure what rational explination could exist to justify owning the life of another human. Wow…
maybe if they’re stupid enough . . . :lol:
You borrow $5 million from Joe Blow. You can’t pay it back. Instead of going to jail or having your family impoverished you offer to be his slave until you’ve worked off the debt or he forgives it.
Just one, historically accurate, scenario when slavery is not a bad thing.
You don’t put women and children on the street, the bad man is punished, and it turns out to be a win-win in the end.
It may be a fine line but there is a line between Slavery and indentured servatude. That said, both are pretty f’d up.
It may be a fine line but there is a line between Slavery and indentured servatude. That said, both are pretty f’d up.
Isn’t the terminology a matter of semantics? Being required to work for no pay is slavery, regardless of the circumstances behind it. However, as I mentioned before, buying your way out of debt with enslaving yourself is a noble gesture and not an evil act, while, enslaving a man based only on the color of his skin is a hideious and heinious act.
That’s why I say slavery, in and of itself, is not necessarily evil. It’s more a matter of what is done to the slave, why the person is a slave and what the prospects of the slave is. That is, if the person committed a crime or became in debtted to the master or was captured on the field of battle, forced into a life of slavery (but family was taken care of and they were not slaves - if they existed) and they had the possibility (a hope) of eventual freedom, then that instance of slavery is not evil.
Can someone lock this so she doesn’t further expand on why killing the Jews wasn’t in itself wrong or something even more absurd?
Can someone lock this so she doesn’t further expand on why killing the Jews wasn’t in itself wrong or something even more absurd?
naaaa
She is providing bucketfuls of evidence to support some of my theories.
Isn’t the terminology a matter of semantics?
no. slaves are property, for no reason other than power. i.e. i have a big gun, and lots of other people with guns who support me, so i decide that i want you to work for me. without pay. forever, or until i get tired of beating you when you collapse from exhaustion. indentured servitude is a way of offering your physical labor to repay a debt. unfortunately, it is all too easily perverted by greedy people.
the major difference is choice. indentured servants choose to enter into their status, for a predetermined time. slaves dont have a choice.
Can someone lock this so she doesn’t further expand on why killing the Jews wasn’t in itself wrong or something even more absurd?
Janus: yes, indebted “slaves” can be abused by ruthless people. However, it isn’t the status of the slave that makes the function of slaves evil, but rather the status of the master that makes the function evil.
Too many of you are stuck with the mindset of the black slave trade as your only reference to slavery without even looking into history to see instances when slavery saved the lives of hundreds of thousands.
The israelites were slaves to the egyptians. In response, they were fed during the famine, they were sheltered from teh elements and were allowed to live until they were released by the Pharoh.
The soldiers of conquered armies, conqured by the Romans, were normally turned into slaves. These slaves then traded the use of their bodies for food, lodging and training in various aspects of life from building roads and aquaducts to military training to knowledge of books and bathes.
Joseph was sold as a slave in the Bible and was awarded the privelage of saving his family from death and rising to power in the local government.
And yes, there were also the evil practices of slavery when women were forced into harems, men beaten for pleasure, long hot days in the sun harvesting cotton.
When you take away someone’s free will it is not a good thing. If someone wanted to work for room and board that’s fine. Also, people could have gotten food, shelter and training without being a slave. Why would Moses struggle so hard to have his people freed if the Israelites were happy?
Cuz slavery isn’t in itself evil man, haven’t you been reading all this?
The israelites were slaves to the egyptians. In response, they were fed during the famine, they were sheltered from teh elements and were allowed to live until they were released by the Pharoh.
no they weren’t. Stop quoting the Bible until you’ve actually read enough of it.
Exodus 1:8 Then a new king, who did not know about Joseph, came to power in Egypt. 9 “Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelites have become much too numerous for us. 10 Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.”
11 So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. 12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites 13 and worked them ruthlessly. 14 They made their lives bitter with hard labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their hard labor the Egyptians used them ruthlessly.
15 The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, 16 “When you help the Hebrew women in childbirth and observe them on the delivery stool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.” 17 The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live. 18 Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, “Why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live?”
19 The midwives answered Pharaoh, “Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive.”
20 So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous. 21 And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own.
22 Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: “Every boy that is born **you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.”
so yes - slavery was good here because he let the girls live and had the baby boys killed? Is that what you are trying to tell us? Please. Do you even know why the Pharoh “let them leave”? Do you know he tried to stop them?Joseph was sold as a slave in the Bible and was awarded the privelage of saving his family from death and rising to power in the local government.
This was after he was thrown into a prison after being falsly accused of sexual impropriety. Also - being a slave had nothing to do with his saving his family etc. How can you use this example to justify slavery when all it does is demonstrate God’s ability to work with anyone - “even slaves”?**
These slaves then traded ….
traded?
Can i trade with you?
I give you a small whipping, you give me your car?
Desertfish writes:
“World War I ended in a German victory and Germany now dominates the world (like the U.S. does in real life) and stretches from Alsasce-Loraine to the Pripet Marshes in the east. Russia never grew powerfull, communism never spread. Germany eventually became a democracy with the Kaiser and his family in a position similar to the British monarchy.”
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In a way, this is a more interesting hypothesis than the more commonly related comments on how the world would be better if say the Muslims or Communists had taken over power or the Spainish Armada didnt get wrecked by a storm before it was used to invade England.
As a preliminary matter, we should note that the actual outcome of the First World War was a near thing, a far nearer thing than was the outcome of World War II after 1941. While it is true that the United States entered the war on the allied side in 1917, thus providing vast new potential sources of men and material, it is also true that Germany had knocked Russia out of the war at about the same time. This gave the Germans access to the resources of Eastern Europe and freed their troops for deployment to the West. The German Spring Offensive of 1918 actually succeeded in rupturing the Allied line at a point where the Allies had no significant reserves. (At about this time, British Prime Minister Lloyd George was heard to remark, “We are going to lose this war.” He began to create a record which would shift the blame to others.) The British Summer Offensive of the same year similarly breached the German lines, but did a much better job of exploiting the breakthrough than the Germans had done a few months earlier. General Luddendorf panicked and demanded that the government seek an armistice. The German army did succeed in containing the Allied breakthrough, but meanwhile the German diplomats had opened tentative armistice discussions with the United States. Given U.S. President Wilson’s penchant for diplomacy by press-release, the discussions could not be broken off even though the German military situation was no longer critical. While the Germans were not militarily defeated, or even economically desperate, the government and general public saw no prospect of winning. Presented with the possibility of negotiating a settlement, their willingness to continue the conflict simply dissolved.
The Germans were defeated by exhaustion. This could as easily have happened to the Allies. When you read the diaries and reports of the French and British on the Western Front from early 1918, the writers seem to be perfectly lucid and in full command of their faculties. What the Americans noted when they started to arrive at about that time was that everyone at the front was not only dirty and malnourished, but half asleep. In addition to their other deleterious effects, the terrible trench warfare battles of that conflict were remarkably exhausting, and the capacity of the Allies to rotate out survivors diminished with the passage of time. Even with American assistance, France and Britain were societies that were slowly falling apart from lack of ordinary maintenance. Both faced food shortages from the diversion of farmers into the army and from attacks on oceanborne supplies. Had the Germans been able to exploit their breakthrough in the spring, or if the German Empire had held together long enough for Luddendorf’s planned autumn offensive to take place, its quite likely that either the French or British would have sued for peace. Had one or the other even raised the question of an armistice, the same process of internal political collapse which destroyed Germany would have overtaken both of them.
Although today it is reasonably clear that Germany fought the war with the general aim of transforming itself from a merely continental power to a true world power, the fact is that at no point did the German government know just what its peace terms would be if it won. It might have annexed Belgium and part of the industrial regions of northern France, though bringing hostile, non-German populations into the Empire might not have seemed such a good idea if the occasion actually arose. More likely, or more rationally, the Germans would have contented themselves with demilitarizing these areas. From the British, they would probably have demanded nothing but more African colonies and the unrestricted right to expand the German High Seas Fleet. In Eastern Europe, they would be more likely to have established friendly satellite countries in areas formerly belonging to the defunct empires than to have directly annexed much territory. It seems to me that the Austrian and Ottoman Empires were just as likely to have fallen apart even if the Central Powers had won. The Hungarians were practically independent before the war, after all, and the chaos caused by the eclipse of Russia would have created opportunities for them which they could exploit only without the restraint of Vienna. As for the Ottoman Empire, most of it had already fallen to British invasion or native revolt. No one would have seen much benefit in putting it back together again, not even the Turks.
Communist agitation was an important factor in the dissolution of Imperial Germany, and it would probably have been important to the collapse of France and Britain, too. One can imagine Soviets being established in Glasglow and the north of England, a new Commune in Paris. This could even have happened in New York, dominated as it was by immigrant groups who were either highly radicalized or anti-British. It is unlikely that any of these rebellions would have succeeded in establishing durable Communist regimes in the West, however. The Soviets established in Germany and Eastern Europe after the war did not last, even though the central government had dissolved. In putting down such uprisings, France might have experienced a bout of military dictatorship, not unlike the Franco era in Spain, and Britain might have become a republic. Still, although the public life of these countries would have been polarized and degraded, they would probably have remained capitalist democracies. The U.S., one suspects, would have reacted to the surrender or forced withdrawal of its European expeditionary force by beginning to adopt the attitude toward German-dominated Europe which it did later in the century toward the victorious Soviet Union. Britain, possibly with its empire in premature dissolution, would have been forced to seek a strong Atlantic alliance. As for the Soviet Union in this scenario, it is hard to imagine the Germans putting up with its existence after it had served its purpose. Doubtless some surviving Romanov could have been put on the throne of a much- diminished Russia. If no Romanov was available, Germany has never lacked for princelings willing to be sent abroad to govern improvised countries.
This leaves us with the most interesting question: what would have happened to Germany itself? Before the war, the German constitution was working less and less well. Reich chancellors were not responsible to parliament but to the Kaiser. The system could work only when the Kaiser was himself a competent executive, or when he had the sense to appoint and support a chancellor who was. The reign of Wilhelm II showed that neither of these conditions need be the case. In the twenty years preceding the war, national policy was made more and more by the army and the bureaucracy. It is unlikely that this degree of drift could have continued after a victorious war. Two things would have happened which in fact happened in the real world: the monarchy would have lost prestige to the military, and electoral politics would have fallen more and more under the influence of populist veterans groups.
We should remember that to win a great war can be almost as disruptive for a combatant country as to lose it. There was a prolonged political crisis, indeed the whiff of revolution, in victorious Britain in the 1920s. Something similar seems to be happening in the United States today after the Cold War. While it is, of course, unlikely that the Kaiser would have been overthrown, it is highly probable that there would have been some constitutional crisis which would have drastically altered the relationship between the branches of government. It would have been in the military’s interest to push for more democracy in the Reich government, since the people would have been conspicuously pro-military. The social and political roles of the old aristocracy would have declined, since the war would have brought forward so many men of humble origin. Again, this is very much what happened in real history. If Germany had won and the Allies lost, the emphasis in these developments would certainly have been different, but not the fundamental trends.
The big difference would have been that Germany would been immensely stronger and more competent by the late 1930s than it was in the history we know. That another war would have been brewed by then we may be sure. Hitler was only secondarily interested in revenge for the First World War; his primary goal had always been geopolitical expansion into Eastern Europe and western Asia. This would have given Germany the Lebensraum to become a world power. His ideas on the subject were perfectly coherent, and not original with him: they were almost truisms. There is no reason to think that the heirs of a German victory in 1918 (or 1919, or 1920) would have been less likely to pursue these objectives.
These alternative German leaders would doubtless have been reacting in part to some new coalition aligned against them. Its obvious constituents would have been Britain, the United States and Russia, assuming Britain and Russia had a sufficient degree of independence to pursue such a policy. One suspects that if the Germans pursued a policy of aggressive colonial expansion in the 1920s and 30s, they might have succeeded in alienating the Japanese, who could have provided a fourth to the coalition. Germany for its part would begun the war with complete control of continental Europe and probably effective control of north Africa and the Near East. It would also have started with a real navy, so that Britain’s position could have quickly become untenable. The coalition’s chances in such a war would not have been hopeless, but they would been desperate.
