Mistaking cruelty and mistreatment for the loss of freedom that slavery really is, allows us to accept some forms of slavery while we revile others.

Most people mistake the cruelty of shackles and whips, poor lodgings, scarce rations, and forced labor as the things that make slavery abominable, and as usual, most people are wrong.

How do I know that most people mistake cruelty for slavery?

Because they condone some forms of slavery, just as vehemently as they condemn others.

If I took you captive and said, “You will write beautiful poetry for me. Other than that, you’ll never have to work again. You will live in luxury, eat your fill of the finest foods and have the best health care available. Only you cannot refuse me and you cannot leave,” you are just as much a slave as the man taken from his home and forced to toil long hours in a field and live in a shack.

In fact, you probably need liberating more than the man who knows he’s a slave!

In fact, we all embrace a slavery far more insidious and personally less satisfactory than the first example above. We embrace it when we support the military draft, mass taxation and accept the peer pressure that values conformity because conformity is more comfortable.

In short, slavery has nothing to do with cruelty and everything to do with losing our liberty or our responsibility for ourselves.

Once we understand what slavery is (the loss of our personal responsibility), than we can understand why every form of slavery is an abomination, that political slavery is every bit as repugnant as chattel slavery. Every true abolitionist understood this intuitively.

The great New England abolitionist, Lysander Spooner (1808 - 1887) put it into perspective best in 1866 when he wrote;

 

"On the part of the North, the war was carried on, not to liberate the slaves but by a government that had always perverted and violated the Constitution, to keep the slaves in bondage; and was still willing to do so, if the slaveholders could be thereby induced to stay in the Union.

"The principle on which the war was waged by the North, was simply this: That men may rightfully be compelled to submit to, and support, a government that they do not want; and that resistance on their part, makes them traitors and criminals.

"No principle, that is possible to be named, can be more self-evidently false than this, nor more self-evidently fatal to all political liberty. Yet it triumphed on the field and is now assumed to be established. If it really be established, then the number of slaves, instead of having been diminished by the war, has been greatly increased; for a man, thus subjected to a government that he does not want, is a slave. And there is no difference, in principle - only in degree - between political and chattel slavery. The former, no less than the latter, denies a man's ownership of himself and the products of his labor."

[Lysander Spooner, 1866]

Today we hear people lament liberty, saying things like, “Here in the states, people are given so much freedom that there seems to be a catch in the law somewhere.”

In truth, freedom is not the problem it’s the lack of accountability that political slavery brings that’s the problem. As government has done more and taken on an increasing share of our responsibilities at the expense of our own liberties, criminalizing more and more consensual acts, we have seen more problems and an increasing degradation of our culture.

You’ll hear some folks point out, "children used to dread facing their parents spankings, now children don’t have to fear that any longer." That may be true , but arguing for freedom/liberty for children shows a complete lack of understanding of just what liberty is.

People who aren’t self-responsible cannot, by definition, be free. They are obligated by the rules of those they depend upon.

What restricting parental discipline has done is to give the government power over raising our children. It is a "TAKING" of liberty, from individuals (in this case parents) by the parental state.

Liberty and slavery are so misunderstood today that many contemporary people confuse work with slavery. Most of us must labor to make ends meet and those with limited skills often must work very hard to eak out a rather meager existence.

As unfair as this might seem, that predicament is our own responsibility. We are responsible for ourselves and for expanding our skills and making ourselves more economically viable.

Bondage or slavery is forced, while work is voluntary. We cannot refuse the state, but we can refuse our employer by changing jobs or just quitting outright.

Government = force = negative reinforcement; “I get a third of what you produce or you go to jail.” It’s a win/lose proposition. The government wins and we lose.

Free enterprise = voluntary cooperation = positive reinforcement; “I’ll sell the highest quality goods at higher prices and still make cheaper quality goods available for the cost conscious...so long as I can get my raw materials and labor at low prices.” OR “You work for me and get this salary, vacation & benefits, etc” – we can accept that offer or look elsewhere.

There is only one purpose of community and that is to serve each of us as individuals. Community can only do this if it is totally voluntary.

Once force (government) is introduced, the purpose of community is turned on its head. Instead of the community existing for the benefit of individuals, the individual is seen as existing for the good of the community – that is the essence of slavery, one individual being forced to toil for the good of others.

All of us want to benefit the community so long as the bulk of the glory (recognition) and rewards (financial gain) we create, goes to us.

When that rightful recognition and reward is denied us, or “shared” with others who didn’t produce it, we have been enslaved, and all of us who claim that society or the community has benefited from this, have endorsed and accepted the political slavery of our neighbors.