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Week five has two main topics, slavery and women’s rights. Slavery had some interesting conversations. Some people made the claim that slavery was wrong because Christianity says it is. I really hated having to correct that statement over and over again. You see slavery isn’t like polygamy, in that polygamy isn’t really addressed in the new testament. Slavery is. Slavery is never condemned. The mistreatment of slaves is condemned, which would have still condemned the vast majority of American slavery, but the ownership of slaves is not. Slaves are actually told to be content in their Early situation. This is one of those things I wish was different, but its not.
Enough of that, as I will cover it more later, lets get onto a review of the readings.
First up to read was Present and Future Condition of the Negroes from Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville. An interesting quote from this came near the end when he said, 36 years before the Civil War:
Whatever may be the efforts of the Americans of the South to maintain slavery, they will not always succeed. Slavery, which is now confined to a single tract of the civilized earth, which is attacked by Christianity as unjust, and by political economy as prejudicial; and which is now contrasted with democratic liberties and the information of our age, cannot survive. By the choice of the master, or by the will of the slave, it will cease; and in either case great calamities may be expected to ensure. If liberty be refused to the negroes of the South, they will in the end seize it for themselves by force; if it be given they will abuse it ere long.
Next we had to read What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July by Fredrick Douglass. Fredrick Douglass was a former slave who fought for freedom of all slaves. Most of what he wrote was very standard for what you’d expect. Then he turned his frustration on the church. I thought he was a bit unfair on the church considering my opening statements. However I do understand his frustration as he said that if Christianity means acceptance of slavery then “For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! welcome atheism! welcome anything! in preference to the gospel, as preached by those Devines.” I do understand his frustration, but this seems to be a bit unfair to men and women who were just trying to follow God to the best of their ability. We can’t expect that they all knew the things we now know about the abuses in slavery. These were farm communities that didn’t have the internet, the phone, or television. They just went on what they were taught. But again, I understand (and largely agree) why he said what he said. Just in hindsight, a bit unfair.
Next it was reading Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address. The best quote from it, is well known. When talking about both sides of the civil war he said:
Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully.
Then it was onto reading about women’s rights. Let me be clear… I just don’t understand. In an election year where Sarah Palin was the only reason a large part of the Republican base voted for him. In an election year when Hillary Clinton came within a hair of being the democratic Presidential nominee (and minus some democratic stupidness regarding Florida and Michigan… she would have been). In an environment where the secretary of state over the past 8 years + has been a women, I don’t get it. Some will point to the fact that men make more money than women as the reason. But to me that has less to do with sex and more to do with the fact that men are generally more aggressive in asking for raises and reviews. Then you take into account the part time women who focus more on child bearing than the work force and you see the income levels separate. So this was just something I didn’t understand.
Now an update to this topic. Since my original writing and this update, Barack Obama signed into law the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. The main provision of this act is that it extends the time frame one can sue in. Initially it was ruled that you can sue from six months past the initial decisions. Honestly that’s a bit of hogwash. It does take more than six months to discover stuff like this. So now it is six months past the last time you were affected by this decision. I’m OK with that.
But I don’t think this will help because I think true sexual discrimination based pay is a very limited event today. I’ve just not seen any women ‘held down’ on the job in my entire working life (1995 till now). And since 1995 I have had many female bosses (one of whom was a ‘out’ lesbian). So I don’t think it will help. And while I don’t agree with their final conclusions the San Francisco Chronicle exposed the facts (which I pointed to in a prior paragraph) well:
It's a familiar fact that women working full time earn 78 cents for every $1 earned by men. But this wage differential looks very different for women with and without children.
Single women with no children working full time make 96 cents for every $1 earned by a similarly situated man.
A married woman with children working full time earns only 69 cents for every $1 earned by her male counterpart.
And a single mother working full time earns 58 cents on every $1 earned by a married man with children.
Finally we had to read Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson. It was an interesting read, this is what many use to justify their, “only what I think matters” attitude in life.
All of the quotes build on each other.
To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart, is true for all men, –that is genius.
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Trust thyself:
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Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
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I suppose no man can violate his nature.
You see, nothing matters outside of one persons thoughts. To me this is the ultimate arrogance. How can you be so sure of yourself that you don’t rely on anything else for wisdom?
I’ll close with the ‘best’ quote from this reading that again shows what is ultimately wrong with the thinking of this world.
Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it.
[Initially Written 1.27.2009]
[Updated 2.8.2009]