RR, Glad to know you and Cliven are so tight that you know what is in his mind.I forgot that a slave in a free society could become free. And I didn't know that free societies
had slaves. If that is so then are free societies really free? You might have missed this post from DT on 4/28/14.The *treatment of slaves in the United States <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slaves_in_the_United_States>* varied by time and place, but was generally brutal and degrading. *Whipping, execution and sexual abuse including rape were common.*
Slaves were usually prevented from becoming literate to hinder aspirations for escape or rebellion. In response to slave rebellions <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_rebellion> such as that led by Nat Turner <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nat_Turner> in 1831, some states prohibited slaves from holding religious gatherings for fear that such meetings could facilitate communication and lead to rebellion.
Medical care to slaves was usually provided by other slaves or by slaveholders' family members. Some slaves possessed medical skills, such as knowledge of African folk remedies <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_remedies> and midwifery <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwifery>.^[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treatment_of_slaves_in_the_United_States#cite_note-Burke.2C_p_155-1>
*Slaves were punished by whipping, shackling, hanging, beating, burning, mutilation, branding and/or imprisonment. Punishment was most often meted out in response to disobedience or perceived infractions, but slaves were also sometimes abused to assert the dominance of their master or overseer. Pregnant women received the most horrendous lashings; slave masters came up with unique ways to lash them so that they could beat the mother without harming the baby. Slave masters would dig a hole big enough for the woman's stomach to lay in and proceed with the lashings.^[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treatment_of_slaves_in_the_United_States#cite_note-2> *
*The mistreatment of slaves frequently included rape and the sexual abuse of women. Many slaves were killed as a result of resisting sexual attacks. Others sustained psychological and physical trauma <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trauma_%28medicine%29>. The sexual abuse of slaves was partially rooted in the patriarchal <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriarchy> nature of contemporary Southern culture <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_the_Southern_United_States> and its view of women of any race as property.^[3] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treatment_of_slaves_in_the_United_States#cite_note-Moon.2C_p_234-3> After 1662, when Virginia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia> adopted the legal doctrine /partus sequitur ventrem <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partus_sequitur_ventrem>/, sexual relations between white men and black women were regulated by classifying children of slave mothers as slaves regardless of their father's race or status. After a few generations, numerous slaves were mixed-race (mulatto <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulatto>) offspring of such unions, although white Southern society abhorred sexual relations between white women and black men as damaging to racial purity <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_purity>.*
Frederick Law Olmsted <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Law_Olmsted> visited Mississippi in 1853 and wrote:
*A cast mass of the slaves pass their lives, from the moment they are able to go afield in the picking season till they drop worn out in the grave, in incessant labor, in all sorts of weather, at all seasons of the year, without any other change or relaxation than is furnished by sickness, without the smallest hope of any improvement either in their condition, in their food, or in their clothing, which are of the plainest and coarsest kind, and indebted solely to the forbearance or good temper of the overseer for exception from terrible physical suffering.^[4] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treatment_of_slaves_in_the_United_States#cite_note-4> *
RG On 5/9/2014 2:35 PM, Ron Ristad wrote:
RG,You really are obsessed with that statement I made. I ask again whatconnection does it have with the Keystone pipeline?BY DEFINITION a slave is not free. But a slave in a free society at least has a chance to become a freeman. On the other hand no person, black or white, has freedom in a repressive society. This is what I meant and I'm pretty sure this is what Cliven Bundy meant.-RR -----Original Message----- From: R George Sent: May 9, 2014 11:15 AM To: sparkscoffee@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [sparkscoffee] Re: Opinions vs. Facts RR, Would this come under your heading of Facts or Opinions? "I agree with Bundy that blacks have less freedom under socialism than they did as slaves." 04/24/2014 RG On 5/9/2014 9:40 AM, Ron Ristad wrote:Opinions are beliefs people hold. They can be based on truth or they can be based on lies. They can be based on the latest information or they can be based on outdated information. Opinions can be changed. I change my opinions all the timewhen new information arrives. If I have an opinion about something and somebody presents information thatcontradicts my opinion and the information is credible then I changemy opinion. Simple as that. Facts are real and not subject to opinion. That being said, some "facts" can be manipulated, such as the unemployment rate or the rate of inflation. The U.S. Government is famous for this. They simply change the way they calculate these things. In this case they aren't really lying but Iwould call it deception. Many people believe things they read on the Internet that are just somebody else's opinionand in some cases are half truths or outright lies designed to manipulate public opinion. Governments lie all the time. All you need to do to verify this is to read the official news stories in different countries. They often have completely different versions of what transpired. One or the other has to be lying. -RR "When you believe in things that you don't understand, then you suffer" - Stevie Wonder "Superstition"...
