... if one of us is chained.
The great Solomon Burke, who died back on the 10th of this month, from his 2002 album Don't Give Up On Me.
Today's video got pushed forward a few days. What brought this one up was Ranger mentioning the attitude of both Europeans and Americans towards their immigrant populations. He goes into some detail but my point is simple: Slavery is toxic to democracy. Slavery makes nations weaker, not stronger. The South lost the American Civil War because of slavery, pure and simple -- it was slavery that kept their society sick and weak, and as soon as the North found competent generals capable of taking advantage of the North's superior robustness, the end was swift -- the untold story of the end of the Confederate States of America is that the majority of their soldiers deserted before the end, armies that had over 100,000 soldiers on paper had fewer than 15,000 on the ground. The rot at the heart of the Confederacy, the black pestilence of slavery, simply caused it to collapse from within. Similarly, slavery ended Greek democracy. Sparta was destroyed by slave revolts, not by invaders, and slavery weakened the remainder of the Greek city-states enough that they were easy pickings for the Macedonian invaders of "Alexander the Great".
So go read Ranger's post for the other observations that he makes, which are important ones. But what I have to add is that we must do something about the fact that we have 20,000,000 slaves-in-all-but-name amongst us... or our own democracy is guaranteed to go the same way as Greek democracy. That is what history tells us.
-- Badtux the History Penguin
A video with the Blind Boys of Alabama -- good onya! When I was still living in Florida in the 1990s, there was an alternative radio station in Tampa (WMNF, 88.5 FM) that would play the song a lot. Not this Solomon Burke version -- it's been recorded a lot, even by Lynyrd Skynrd, apparently, since Ray Charles did it in 1963. (The trivia one can learn from teh Internets tubez...)
ReplyDeleteI got to see the Blind Boys at a cool Tampa club called Skipper's Smokehouse, where the stage is right outside under a roof of moss-festooned live oak trees. I detest religion almost as much as Christopher Hitchens, but those guys are powerful and moving. If there were more Christians like them, then "Christian" might not be such a disgusting term to so many of us.
But on to what I really wanted to say beside commenting on music...
ReplyDeleteIn addition to the 20 million illegal immigrant slaves, don't overlook the 20 million un- and under-employed Americans. They are slaves to poverty. Their ranks will be swelled by the coming collapse.
When the maggots take control of one of the reins of government on Tuesday, and use their regained power with all the stupidity of a angry teenager with a shotgun at the prom he couldn't get a date for, you're going to see America smack into the brick wall of fiscal collapse.
All it's going to take is one refusal to raise the federal debt ceiling -- even if it's just for a week or two, done for show to prove to the mouth-breathers that "See? We're DOING something about runaway government spending!" -- and that will set off the avalanche of monetary collapse. It's gonna happen that the rest of the world is going to reject the U.S. dollar, because the American system is too unreliable and crooked.
I aree with you that America will be destroyed from within, like Sparta, by chaotic, angry slaves. It's going to take a lot of good people down with it, probably including Canada. Mrs. Bukko, who still dislikes Australia, is already talking about how we might go back there if the U.S. goes down hard enough and takes this decent, and mostly successful at multi-culturalizing, country with it.
I have one wish for the Teabagging ball-lickers who intend to destroy the U.S. -- DO IT QUICKLY! I only have unlimited ins-and-outs privileges to Australia until January 2014. It's going to take some time to organize a move, unless we flee with just the stuff we can carry in suitcases, so you rightwing bastards need to start the assassinations and anarchy by the 2012 presidential elections. I know can can do it!
I'm about as free as anyone can get on this rock. Mostly cuz everything is free and clear and I do as I damn well please.
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