The 13th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States recently came up for conversation in a group I was with. This is widely held as the anti-slavery amendment, and indeed that was its purpose.
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.(1)
This amendment has had a long history, especially for such a short piece of text. Today it is mostly accepted that slavery is a bad idea.
However, “slavery” in our media-driven world has become linked in many minds solely as a racial issue, which is quite unfortunate. Certainly “black slavery” existed and is something that this and the other countries which practiced it(2) will have to continue to pay a heavy price over. But slavery is not a racial issue. It was never limited to just one skin shade, but affected Whites, Latinos, Asians, everyone. It is, in fact, more a financial thing, a Neurotic Greed and a Psychotic Urge to Power.
There are many forms of slavery still practiced that haven’t been addressed by law or even by public awareness.
- Wage Slave. Believe me, that’s not an exaggeration, though I don’t think I’m going to expand on that idea here, in this posting. Another time. I do want to add however that this may be the biggest form of slavery currently being practiced in the world, under “Western Capitalism” and “Western Culture” (for want to better terms). Its “victims” mostly don’t even know they are slaves, though our culture and the compulsive advertising media work hand-in-hand to make sure most of you will never escape from the trap. (I doubt that most ad executives have any idea that’s what they are doing — though I am equally sure that a few of them do and even gloat on it.)
- Work Gangs formed from prisoners. Legal. Disgusting, but legal. That is not how you rehabilitate a criminal, by making him a slave for his term. That will only create serious resentments, as well as open the door for physical abuses of many sorts, among the prisoners, and among the guards and from those who benefit from this “free” labor pool. (I have solutions for this issue; but not appropriate in this posting.)
- Prostitution. Usually (not always) a forced arrangement, i.e., slavery. Our culture responds by making it “illegal,” but all that does is make it more profitable and impossible to regulate.(3)
- Addiction. Anyone who suffers from an addiction is a slave to that addiction. This is properly, however, a different matter, though it does have serious overlap with item #1, where our culture and the advertising system promotes and even creates this condition within the Herd. You want to stamp out slavery, then, among other things, you need to stop the hypnotic / compulsive advertising world-wide.
- “White Slavery.” A topic hard to find much about on the Internet except as a historical footnote, but how many people (especially young ones) disappear without a trace every year? Nor does this mean “white” people only; it’s just a term which tends to mean (something like) “people who could have lived a different life, could have supported themselves, but have been stolen and forced into slavery, probably never to see home again.” That’s what it means, and it’s unfortunately, very much alive today. The more general term is Human Trafficking. Yuck. What are we: scaly-skinned aliens from another planet harvesting the worker ants we found on this ball of dirt? How can we parasitize our own this way? Disgusting…
- Forced Labor exists in many countries. This is precisely what the 13th Amendment makes illegal in America. Or tried to make illegal. See item #1. Illegal or not, it’s practiced.
- Illegal Immigrants. Since being in America this way is illegal, the conditions under which such folks live and can be abused are unregulated. You can’t make it a safe place for such people until you acknowledge there’s even a problem, and you can’t make a nation safe for only some: it’s safe for all, or it’s safe for none.
- A judge who says “jail or military service.” This is slavery, either direction. But, under the 13th Amendment, it’s “legal.” It also usually makes for bad soldiers (but not always).
- Bonded Labor or Debt Bondage. You know all those phone calls you get where the caller has a thick accent and is trying to sell you / scam you / fear you? The real crime here is not that they are ripping you off, but that a lot of them — an unknown percentage of them, but probably high — are actually trapped in some form of bonded indenture. Their family might even be being held hostage (clothed, fed, housed, and totally trapped) against proper performance on the phones. How about all those (sort of) inexpensive clothes you buy and throw away at the first sign of wear? Or buy just for the heck of it, not because you actually need new clothing? Same foot note there: the majority of clothing on the planet right now is made by what any sane observer would call slave labor.
- Child Labor. Including child “soldiers.” They are too young to know what they are stepping into. Or they think they do know, but it’s only the propaganda that they are responding to. Or some adult eagerly and easily misleads them. A child can pull a trigger and (as Nicolas Cage said in his anti-gun-running movie Lord of War) “many do.” <Sigh>
- Peer Pressure. What?!? Yes, peer pressure. Many times people end up doing things they would never consider on their own just because of peer pressure. That, too, is a form of slavery. “Conform or else.” “We the Sheeple, in order to create a more uniform herd…” Baa-aa-aad idea.
I could go on. Very few people are actually free, especially in the colloquial sense of the word.
Ok, I called this article “Voluntary Slavery.” Why? Little or even none of the above is voluntary. Some of it could be voluntary (or at least a matter of choice) if individuals were better educated and better trained with the skills that actually matter in our funky little world.
Look at articles about the 13th Amendment and you will find a lot of them explaining why indentured servitude is illegal under that amendment. Really? There’s an assumption in there, that indentured servitude is (was) involuntary. That was often the case, but not always. A person could choose to sell his indentures, or to voluntarily enter into a contract with another person or legal entity for a set term. That’s called the Right to Contract.
Oddly enough the 14th Amendment provides this “Right to Contract.” Under current rulings (interpretations of the week) this is held as a fundamental right provided by the Constitution (within the USA). So, by the 13th it is held to be illegal for me to chose to enter into indentured servitude. Under the 14th it is held that I have an inviolable right to enter into contract with another person.
Hmm… conflict! Ah, well… isn’t that odd now: a conflict in law? Who would have expected that?(4).
Really, I should stop the article right here, because some of the implications of where all this is going are very disturbing, and I’m sure the rest of this century (assuming Humans in their present culture have that long) will be terrible in some ways (and glorious in others, but that’s another discussion).
My points here are twain(5):
- We used to have a thing called debtors’ prison. This was abolished. (Yeah right. In actual practice many kinds of debt still result in prison or jail terms.) I have never understand how that is/was supposed to help the debtor pay off his debt(6). There are other ways of paying off a debt, surely, than just money. If I take a job with an employer and the contract includes a 1 year minimum, is that not a form of indenture? (Turns out it’s not, because in the US at least, such a contract must include a financial penalty for leaving the job early. That makes it not Slavery??(7)(8) Enough on this point; I’m skirting an issue I don’t want to get any closer to in this posting. You can imagine the rest of it for yourself(9).
- The second point: even in the Constitution the law and language are inexact, subject to conflict and impossible to adhere to 100%. Like the speed of light, you can only get so close. By the 14th Amendment I have the right to enter into voluntary servitude under terms that seem good to me. By the 13th Amendment, this is illegal.
Ok, ok, enough, already. Why did I write all the above?
- Slavery isn’t just a black and white issue. (Pun intended? Not sure.) There’s a LOT more to it than you might think. It’s not a thing limited to any one “race” either, though certainly whole-sale African slavery was crime of immeasurable proportions. Any slavery is an Evil Beyond Comprehension.
- Slavery is dependent on many things, many of them unfortunately encouraged and even enforced by our current society, culture and mass media.
- Even in the Law of the Land (that is, the Constitution) it’s impossible to be 100% sure what the text means. The 14th Amendment does not say “you can make a contract except where it violates the 13th or any other provision of this document.” It does not say that. So… um… yes? How do we unravel that? (This is why Constitutional Law is a 2-year program all in itself, and why all who pledge to uphold and defend the same should at least be able to pass a basic quiz on the document.)
- Debt is a complex issue and some of the ways and means where a person might choose to pay off a given debt have been deliberately (or thoughtless, at least) blocked off.
- Debt is also a powerful force that keeps Slavery alive. Forced Prostitution, forced factory work the world over. Debt or the threat of debt and a total ignorance of any other option: powerful combination. And an Evil one (no other word for it: Evil).
- Compulsory consumption is the most insidious form of slavery the world over (the Western world), and the implanted compulsion to own more, more, more is a powerful and deeply penetrating Evil in our world.
- Ignorance. Ignorance of possibilities, of abilities and of the ways and means of choosing one’s own life and life path is utterly necessary to the Way Too Many Things Work in our world today.
There’s the real point of this rant at last. Ignorance: the most powerful tool for manipulating the Herd and one of the corner stones of 21st Century Slavery.
By the way, That’s THE Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence. Some of you actually don’t know that, which is more enforced ignorance upon the Herd. Which is itself a kind of Slavery. Gah!
Make this your mantra: The Possibilities are Endless. This goes against the main-stream training so thoroughly that many of you reading this are already searching in your minds for examples “proving” that Possibilities are never endless. Sorry, but in spite of what you’ve been so thoroughly lead to believe:
The Possibilities are Endless
Freedom Comes from Within — Never from Outside
There is always a Choice
And: it’s up to each one of us to make things better for all of us. In every action you take, every moment of the day. Whether writing a Great Speech for some Distinguished Person, or in washing your own dishes: what you do — how you do it — always matters.
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(1) This is section 1 of that amendment. There is one more section which says simply that Congress can pass legislation as appropriate to enforce section 1. Seems like that should go without saying, doesn’t it? Apparently not. Does any amendment specifically say that Congress may not do so? If a particular amendment fails to specifically say Congress can or that Congress can not, where does that leave that Amendment? What is the default (i.e., otherwise unspecified) rule? Where is that stated? If that’s not part of the Constitution itself (the default around passing laws to enforce) then is that not a law modifying the Law of the Land? Which is illegal? Lawyers…
(2) Another false idea planted by the media is to imply (without saying) that wholesale slavery is solely an American crime. No, we got it from Britain, brought it here with the rest of the package, the culture that came along with the people. In time, the Americans outgrew it, at least in law, at least in the Bleets the Herd tells itself.
(3) If you really want to control something, to improve it, correct it, make it safe, or even just keep it out of the public eye — what ever your agenda is — you must start by making it legal. At least under the current system. The moment you make it illegal, you have created a profitable industry that is beyond legislative control. One of those things that is not obvious until you have seen it; then it’s one of those things impossible to not see.
(4) That’s sarcasm, in case it isn’t obvious 🙂
(5) Twain: obsolete language for “two” or “having two parts.” Obsolete language: what a concept! Up on the internet I have even seen the use of such words labelled as arrogant or deliberately flashy or showing off. Piffle. Such words have a flavor to them that is often missing from the very limited vocabulary of main-stream speak. I note that those same sites don’t mention that it might be a word my audience wouldn’t know… if it’s a word they know, and it fits what I’m trying to say, why can I not use it? Why would some one else even attempt to control what words I use or have available? In the words of Clarence Darrow (under the fictitious name “Henry Drummond” and played by Spencer Tracy in the movie Inherit the Wind) “language is a poor enough means of communication as it is. Besides there are damn few words anybody understands!” Ah well… rant, rant, rant.
(6) That’s sarcasm again. Obviously it wasn’t intended to be of help to the debtor, not was it of any use to the holder of the debt. It was a threat that was supposed to make the debtor look harder to his resources. But really it makes zero sense to this mind. Like taking away the driver’s license of a “Deadbeat Dad,” particularly when he’s not a Deadbeat, but is instead Dead Broke. How does that help? Is it going to make him suddenly cough up the money he’s been secretly hiding all this time? Will it help him get a better paying job? Let’s not be silly here. All these so-called “punitive” actions serve only to make it more likely the debt will never be paid. That’s just plain meanness. Nothing else.
(7) And here is a very interesting point. The idea that a financial penalty clause means the contract is not indentured slavery. Wow. That you can buy off the indenture. That if you can afford the payment, you can buy your freedom. Woof. Is this not the law and the society both enforcing the Slave Concept? Like the draft for the Union Army during the American Civil War, where you could buy your way out of it for $300. That was a fabulous amount of money then, and that meant only the Rich and Privileged could buy their way out. So, a clear statement, yes? Money can buy you out of Indentured Servitude, what ever it’s formally called, and the Great Masses really are just Cannon Fodder. Gah!
(8) Oops… but what about that contract you make with the military for a term of service? Under the Law of the Land there ought to be a way to get out of that contract, a financial penalty. But there isn’t one. Actually, there is no way out, and even trying to get out of it can land you in a great deal of trouble. Does this not qualify as indentured servitude? Isn’t that illegal by the 13th Amendment? (Is there a constitutional lawyer in the house?) — Ok, answer: the military is not subject to either statutory nor constitutional law. True, but not a good answer. Really, a very bad answer when you think it through. Again, Gah!
(9) What I’m really doing here is planting a seed for later expansion. This seed has to do with making proper restitution for debts of all sorts, and the ways our society might encourage, allow, and aid such restitution. But this leads us toward a total revamp of our current legal system, not just a vague and in-obvious rant about what Slavery is and what it isn’t. That is, we’ll discuss it further another time…