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Sunday School September 27th 2026
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Reg:
The past is not a defendant. Criticizing earlier cultures is lazy and useless, we should learn from them instead.
Actually we can criticize and learn from history at the same time. And people could and did also condemn and resist slavery and imperialism during the times when they occured.
Just to cite the example of the United States experience with slavery: Defenders of slavery like George Fitzhugh defended slavery in Utopian, almost Communistic terms, saying that all the needs of slaves were provided from womb to tomb unlike Northern industrial workers, who had to struggle for every crumb and morsel they had and every square inch they stood on.
Yet, despite this Golden Age rhapsody, no Northern industrial workers were lining up for a place in a Mistah Candie’s Candy Land.
People knew deep down that there was something wrong with this arrangement.
In fact, people with the misfortune to be on a Mistah Candie’s Candy Land would maim, dismember, cripple, even blind themselves to keep from being worked to death in this proported Paradise.
People would commit suicide to avoid this fate.
Mothers would wrongheadedly commit both suicide and infanticide to avoid this date for themselves and their children, wrongheaded because they could have used their lye pots on their tormentors instead of their children as a last great act of defiance.
For all their condemnation of Federal power during the Civil War and Reconstruction, the Slave States sure loved to use Federal power to retrieve fugitive slaves and to prosecute harborers of fugitive slaves with The Fugitive Slave Act.
The Federal Government even stopped having jury trials for cases involving The Fugitive Slave Act because they couldn’t find jurors who would prosecute fleeing slaves and their allies.
For all the horrors of the Civil War, the Slave States didn’t hesitate to use Federal powers of war to extend slave Territory during The Mexican War, which Henry David Thoreau defied by refusing to pay his poll-tax and risking prison.
And just why would slavers need more land if slavery was really an efficient way of producing human needs?
And why would the majority of humans throughout history have to live on less than $2 a day if slavery was so effective and benificial?
All of this is a testament that people back in the day knew deep down that “The Peculiar Institution” was peculiarly wrong for human life and flourishing.
Even Lincoln used over two millenia-old Socratic and Euclidian logic against Slavery: “If two things are equal to the same thing, they are equal to each other.”. And if whiteness, strength, intellect, justifies enslaving others, what’s to keep someone more white, more strong, and more intelligent from enslaving the slaver?
History may be written by the victors, but it’s written for people who want to be victors and not be vanquished by failed ways of living.
Fellow Unbelievers:
And speaking of enslavement:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/trump-s-wild-offer-to-chinese-leader-revealed/ar-AA2d4TnI
Whatever the Orange Emperor sells to Emperor Xi will be augmented and passed on to The Mullahs, Putin. Kim, then from there used against Israel, Ukraine, South Korea, Taiwan, and freedom-loving people everywhere!
Stay safe and free,folks!
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