he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life &liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating &carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought &sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, &murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.
Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think that 'twixt the negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this here talking about?
That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?
Then they talk about this thing in the head; what's this they call it? [member of audience whispers, "intellect"] That's it, honey. What's that got to do with women's rights or negroes' rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?
Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.
If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back , and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.
Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain't got nothing more to say.
I do remember, however, a certain episode in the West Wing which referred to one of the amendments to the constitution counting a black person to be 3/5'ths of a white person.
And as a champion of liberty, do you share the opinion expressed by some others, that drug prohibition is the worst abuse of freedom in the US since slavery and the treatment of Native Americans?
He then concludes with what could have been a paean to the Internet and other liberating technologies:If this could be a pean to the Internet or other "liberating technologies," it would be a grossly misguided one. Technology did not end chattel slavery in the U.S., and it is not ending slavery across the world today. This kind of attitude is a dangerous complacency.Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably work The downfall of slavery.
Bravo. And as a champion of liberty, do you share the opinion expressed by some others, that drug prohibition is the worst abuse of freedom in the US since slavery and the treatment of Native Americans?
Technology did not end chattel slavery in the U.S., and it is not ending slavery across the world today. This kind of attitude is a dangerous complacency.
And we still don't have the same rights to job protection that straights do.
Don't quite see the equivalence, RKV. Also note, many people discount and denigrate the service (as president) of the current president.
Karl: "I'd agree that taking a view that new technology will automatically solve all problems rather than proactively trying to solve them is foolish."
Even when that "proactivity" costs almost 620,000 lives, and the destruction of an entire society?