Justice as fairness: we can do better than we are

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by The_Lady_Snow

So one form of slavery out trumps the other? Really?

WOW they are selling GIRLS so men can dismember them for fun. You're right only one kind of slavery should count.

Wait, are people *really* going to put the *illegal* kidnapping of girls and the *illegal* selling of same in the same category as legalized slavery and then say that slavery is still LEGAL in the United States? Is that actually the argument you are making here, Snow? Because that sounds *precisely* what you are saying and I am absolutely stunned that any person intelligent or educated person--and I assume everyone here is both--actually thinks that legalized slavery and illegal sex trafficking are the same things. By this logic, the prisons are filled with people who should not be in prison because murder is still legal.

Here's the argument that is being made:

Me: Slavery is illegal throughout the Western world and also in most other nations (I think there's one or two laggards.

Others: Slavery is still practiced in the United State because sex trafficking happens *therefore* slavery is still legal in the United States.

Here's that logic applied to people in prison for murder:

Murder still happens. What happens is legal. THEREFORE, murder is still legal. By that argument--and not a single one of you can argue that this is not a logical consequence of your statements--we should free every single rapist and murderer held in prisons world wide because until rape doesn't happen, rape is legal. Until murder doesn't happen, murder is *legal*.

So let me challenge all of you arguing that slavery is still *legal* in the United States.

1) Find me a historically valid account of a slave ship captain being arrested for transporting slaves out of Africa. Not a slave ship captain who was arrested for some other crime, but for the actual act of taking captured slaves from Africa to America.

2) Find me a historically valid account of a slave taker who was charged with the crime of kidnapping for capturing blacks in Africa and selling them to the slave ship captain.

3) Find me a historically valid account of a slave owner who was prosecuted for EITHER murdering one of his own slaves OR for raping one of his own slaves.

4) Find me a state in the United States that still enforces slave return laws.

5) Find me a state in the United States where blacks can be summarily executed for learning to read or teaching others to do the same. Please provide the last known date, after 1865, that a black person was legally executed for the 'crime' of learning to read.

6) Find me a state in the United States where it is *legal* to own a person such that if that person is a woman, and that woman has a child, the person who owns the woman also *automatically* owns the child. Here, ownership means "that which you can dispose of as you please". If I wanted to, I could take a sledgehammer to my Audi and destroy it and as long as I did it on my property and disposed of the waste properly, there's not a damn thing anyone could *legally* do to stop me. IF slavery is still legal in the United States then one of you should be able to provide me with an example, within the living memory of at least one person on this board (so, within, say, 60 - 70 years) where someone was born in this nation, the child was immediately sold--at a profit--to another person and became that person's property such that they could *sell* that person to another human being. The example needs to be such that if our hypothetical person were to run away, they would have committed a crime. If someone aided them in running away they would have committed a tort OR a crime or both. Bonus points if you can, in your example, provide the trial transcripts of the fugitive slave.

Once again, the statement I made was NOT that there was no sexual slavery in the United States or any other nation. I said that throughout the world slavery is now illegal. It is most definitely illegal in the United States. A couple of people have now stated that slavery is still legal in the United States because of the presence of sexual slavery. The burden of proof is now squarely on your heads to provide a specific example where legalized, chattel slavery is being practiced in the United States and backed up by the force of the state.

If you cannot provide those examples (and I'm this side of certain you can't) please explain the logic where the presence of sexual slavery in the United States means that slavery is legal and explain why people here are not screaming to have *actual* murderers and rapists released since the logic being deployed leads to the conclusion that murder and rape are also legal and should not be punished since their practice means they are legal. Thank you.


Cheers
Aj