~ For nearly 25 years now I’ve loosely used human slavery as a reference or analogy to what exists now in terms of statism, because I would prefer that people get a brain and dump all allegiance to all states worldwide. But it’s imperfect, and I always use it tongue in cheek because I hate diluting the meaning of true slavery.

Even the name of my blog, Free The Animal, contemplates this in a way. The distinction is that these are cages of human, voluntary design and it doesn’t require much overt force when human beings will willingly walk in, close and lock the door, and toss the key out of reach.

They don’t know anything different and reminiscent of Stockholm Syndrome, they’ll keep their cages nice & tidy, and will jeer and laf at all who point out that they’re not only living in a cage, but are keeping it clean and tidy for their zoo masters and love compliments: Why We Couldn’t Abolish Slavery Then and Can’t Abolish Government Now.

Slavery existed for thousands of years, in all sorts of societies and all parts of the world. To imagine human social life without it required an extraordinary effort. Yet, from time to time, eccentrics emerged to oppose it, most of them arguing that slavery is a moral monstrosity and therefore people should get rid of it. Such advocates generally elicited reactions that ranged from gentle amusement to harsh scorn and violent assault.

When people bothered to give reasons for opposing the proposed abolition, they advanced many different ideas. In the first column of the accompanying table, I list ten such ideas that I have encountered in my reading. At one time, countless people found one or more of these reasons an adequate ground on which to oppose the abolition of slavery.

In retrospect, however, these reasons seem shabby—more rationalizations than reasons. They now appear to nearly everyone to be, if not utterly specious, then shaky or, at best, unpersuasive, notwithstanding an occasional grain of truth. No one now dredges up these ideas or their corollaries to support a proposal for reestablishing slavery. Although vestiges of slavery exist in northern Africa and a few other places, the idea that slavery is a defensible social institution is defunct. Reasons that once, not so long ago, seemed to provide compelling grounds for opposing the abolition of slavery now pack no intellectual punch.

…Except when precisely the exact same arguments are always used by 100% of people all the time to mock people like me who’ve been calling for the abolition of state “slavery” for 25 years, now.