Cynthia wrote:
>
> > So here's the conundrum:
> > should a subset of your population be free to the extent that they are
> > allowed to oppress and enslave another subset?
>
> Who put the North in charge of telling the South what it is ALLOWED to do?
While any population of individuals whose society is based upon voluntary association should be allowed to do as it pleases within that society, societies which are not based on such a premise should be opposed on an active basis by societies that are based on that premise. While no society is based on what I would call an optimum of Unlimited Individual Freedom, there is a spectrum of societies which are more free and societies which are less free. It is a matter of simple objective morality that more free societies should be active in trying to not only make their own societies more free, but to help members of less free societies who are not less free on a voluntary basis to escape or change their situation.
That history has shown that technology is the best means by which individuals can increase their individual freedom. This is an extropian principle.
As for the north telling the south what to do, that is not what started the civil war. Lincoln was against allowing slavery in the new western territories and states, even though such policies were properly decided, according to the Constitution (via the tenth amendment) by these new states themselves. It was much like the abortion issue is today. Its an issue that must be decided by individual states until such time that a Constitutional Amendment is passed that decides it on a national basis. Lincoln had little political desire to interfere with the continuance of slavery in the South until the war had already started, and it was a matter of good military tactics to inspire a slave revolt. There were a few states that still permitted slavery but who had remained with the Union, such that they still had a few slaves after the Emancipation Proclamation (although many slaveowners in these Northern states manumitted their slaves as a matter of patriotism). It was not until the 14th Amendment was passed that the remaining northern slaves were free.
>
> > I don't think so, but
> > it's a hard question, and it comes up all the time.
>
> The decision to resort to violence should always be a 'hard question'.
No, I don't think so. So long as there are opressed individuals, there will be circumstances where use of violence is the correct and immediate choice that an individual must make to preserve their freedoms or their lives. Refusing to make such a choice merely results in the further opression of that individual, or their deaths. Granted such circumstances are more rare the more free a society is, although less free societies can repress the frequency of such circumstances until they blow up into widescale violence and revolution or war, thus creating the illusion of 'peace', while the overall long term level of violence is actually greater than a more free society (which is why the more free but supposedly 'violent' US society actually has less violence over the long term than other similarly developed but less free societies like Europe).
Anyone who feels that this discussion is skirting off into the banned G** issues is welcome to take the conversation over to the exi-freedom@egroups.com list. Is the moratorium over yet?
Mike Lorrey