Slavery, Yesterday and Today

I was just reminded about Irish slavery, something about which history rarely speaks. Slavery is alive and well in today's world. We all know about Uganda slaves, but the largest slave market might currently be the one for women and children. This is typically known as the white slave or sex trade.

I can never forget the tale of a Russian teen during the 90's. She had dreams of being a European model. The young beauty signed with some company and managed a visa to leave Russia. She arrived at the address given to her and was immediately taken into captivity. For some time she was used as a prostitute in Europe. She was eventually sold to someone in the USA. Her captives planned to bring her through the southern border with fake documentation. She sat nervously in the back seat as they were questioned at a border checkpoint. Finally, one of the border guards looked at her paperwork and ask the Russian captive a question. Despite speaking fluent English, she decided to reply in Russian. The cold war was still fresh enough in everyone's mind that this made them look more closely at her and the paperwork. The guards took her from the car to some place where she could be questioned alone. It was then she revealed to them who she was and that she had been kidnapped. The kidnappers were arrested and and she was given asylum in the USA.

Inspiration for this article came from the photo above. It says that, “blacks should stop whining over slavery.” This seems to have created a firestorm of controversy. There has been a long history of slavery of people of all races. We all know about the Jewish history of slavery. From 1641 to 1652, over 500,000 Irish were killed by the English – 300,000 more were sold into slavery. During the 1650's, over 100,000 Irish children between the ages of 10 and 14 were ripped from their homes and sold as slaves to the West Indies, Virginia, and New England.

I could go on and on about how people of all colors have been persecuted or sold into slavery. The hard part is lifting ourselves out of a repressive history and making sure it never happens again. No particular slavery was worse than that of another. What is important is living in a country being torn apart by two very different ideologies. Those ideologies are made up of people with a history of slavery and that of the slave owner.

Everyone is grasping for leverage. They yield their history like a sword in defense of a government that was once the slave master. No government is innocent when it comes to slavery. In some ways, government is still trying to be the slave master. It wants to control people and the wages they earn. That government imports illegal labor to work fields and to manicure the lawns in front of their mansions.

Slavery would have never existed in the USA and much of the world, save for one thing – government. Think of any ill in the world today or in the past and you will find government in the picture. Sometimes government is heavily involved, or it simply turns a blind eye to evils done by the favored.

Cronyism is out of control in the USA. No matter if that government is a majority of Democrats or Republicans. Today the Affordable Care Act is the most important topic of the century. The ACA is also the biggest act of cronyism the country has ever seen. When government mandates a citizen buy a product from a private company we have truly become an Oligarchy, or at least a fascist nation.

Unless we can stop arguing over history and try to fix the world around us, we might all become slaves. When government decides what we eat, what we must buy, and decides how much we are paid – when government controls every aspect of our lives, we have become slaves and Washington the slave master. It seems staggering that people can actually elect their own slave masters, yet we may be doing just that. When government can be sold to the highest bidder, those doing the buying become the slave masters.

You can place all your faith in Democrats or Republicans, but both seek to be the slave master. Our founders feared a central power. All we have to do is look at the history of slavery to see why that fear was well founded. Because states were allowed to self govern there were free states to which slaves could flee.

In states that allowed slavery the owners were the rich and influential. They controlled government for their own financial gain. It was cronyism that allowed slavery to exist. As long as we side with acts of cronyism we are once again risking the possibility of slavery. We might receive a weekly check, but that doesn't remove the possibility of being a slave to government. It's time to stop being a slave to the two main political parties. Have courage and remove them from power. We must never forget that the only person who can allow us to become a slave is our self.