Re: Do you support freedom or democracy?

Mel Rowing wrote:

Emancipation became a device to inhibit France and Britain from
supporting the Confederacy. The war was never fought to free the
slaves, as is shown by their rapid return to near slavery after the
post-war reconstruction. The beginnings of true emancipation only
started in the 1960s.

Slavery throughout the US was ultimately abolished by the 13th.
Amendment in 1865. It may well be that its abolition was to leave
behind it a legacy of civil rights issues that were not to be
addressed for another 100 years but that is a different question

You over simplify the issue of slavery as an issue within the Civil
war context. Slavery was certainly a consideration when several states
chose to secede from the Union though some states that had retained
slavery did not join the Confederacy. Secession was the primary
cause of the war.

I am surprised that you see slavery as a device to inhibit European
intervention. In fact Britain came within an ace of intervening on the
side of the Confederacy over the Trent affair in 1862. There were
close economic ties between Britain and the Southern States based on
the cotton trade and the Confederacy enjoyed much support within the
British aristocracy and ruling classes despite slavery having been
finally abolished in the British Empire in 1833.

Slavery was a major issue which provoked the war however the war was not
fought to abolish slavery. Lincoln was quite specific on this point: 'if I
could save the union by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; if I could
save the union by retaining slavery, I would do it; if I could save the
union by freeing some and keeping some in slavery, I would do it'. The
Emancipation Proclimation came into affect on 1st January 1863. Its primary
motives were to prevent France and Britain coming in on the side of the
Confederacy. It was quite a risky strategy as it alienated many union
generals and war-democrats. It specifically excluded the slave holding
states that had remained loyal to the Union, leading Palmerston to remark
that Lincoln had freed the slaves where he had not the power to do it and
retained slavery where he had the power to abolish it.

The US is not a free country in all respects.

It's about as free as it gets!

Tell that to a 'mixed race' couple in a rural town in the deep south!

We are back to civil rights. However, your mixed race couple enjoy the
same protection under the law as your middles class white couple in
Rhode Island. The state can do little more. You can't legislate to
make people nice to each other. You can legislate to stop a more
powerful group bullying a less powerful one.

However freedom is not just about what the state says are your rights, it's
about the way people behave. In 1968 a long haired man could probably walk
a street in San Francisco without incident. In Tupulo Mississippi he would
have ended up being violently assaulted. In Britain at the same time, even
in the most conservative areas, that would have been mostly unlikely to have
happened. The fact that a large proportion of the US population is so
reactionary means that the US in practical terms is far less free than many
European states that have fewer paper rights than a US citizens ostensibly
has.

You mention drugs. Most people don't use drugs. Most people don't
like the idea of drugs being freely available for all kinds of
reasons whether deemed valid by others or not. So long as this
remains the case, then the prohibition of drugs will remain a
political non issue.

And the crime that drugs prohibition causes will also remain
endemic. I suspect on the subject on drugs prohibition we are
probably a little like the early US on the question of slavery. A
number of far sighted individuals recognise the evil of it but the
legislature has not the will to do anything and there is a
substantial reactionary element that wants to cling to it for dear
life. I am sure that in 250 years our drugs prohibition laws will
seem as incomprehensible as witchcraft trials do to us today.

That may or may not be the case. We are only in a position to deal
with immediate issues. This is not one of them.

It is certainly the case that you can't have an a la carte system of
law where under the individual obeys only those laws he agrees with
and to hell with the rest. If this were the system then clearly
individuals would obey or rather disobey a different selection of
laws and ultimately law and order would become an irrelevance and
society with it.

Except that progress is often achieved by brave people disobeying
manifestly unjust laws. Disobeying (some) laws is a grease to
improving the world.

So we are told from time to time. The Tolpuddle Martyrs and all that.
The difficulty is of course that toleration of breaches of the law can
be seen as a recipe for anarchy.

Take animal rights issues for example. I'm quite sure that at least
most of those who pursue these objectives are well intentioned if
misguided. However, when it comes to pillorying legitimate business'
let alone those who own them, let alone those who work for them or
even those who associate with them, we begin to see the limits of the
above argument. Direct action goes back a long way in our society and
I don't think anyone can deny that some good has come from it.
However, much of this good came in times when freedom of expression
was not as easy as it is now. I suppose that what I am getting round
to saying is that I can't say absolutely that direct action/civil
disobedience is in all cases wrong but that its not right in every
case either. In fact all too often it would appear to be an excuse
for licentiousness. Should not be taken seriously and certainly
should not be tolerated.

Your point about 'animal rights' is a fair one. The idea of animal 'rights'
to my mind is fraudulent but many people have accepted the fraud and would
view vivisection as as wicked as I would view the holocaust. All one can do
is judge laws on their merits. But it is inevitiable that for social
progress some laws will have to be broken. But no one is going to agree on
which laws those are!


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