Oscar Wilde

He also said human slavery was wrong. Are we even sure that the quote given above was accurate? We should all be so erudite as Oscar Wilde.

-- salvatori

The Wilde quote is accurate. It's also part of a much more extensive essay, and taken grossly out of context.

Some of the wider context supplied by the rest of the essay-- which I've also excerpted: this time around, it's widened to include the words immediately before and after ronaldraygun's excerpting of Wilde on page 11 of this letters thread, which appears in the middle of the passage (and which I've italicized in full, as it appeared in his post):

...Misery and poverty are so absolutely degrading, and exercise such a paralysing effect over the nature of men, that no class is ever really conscious of its own suffering. They have to be told of it by other people, and they often entirely disbelieve them. What is said by great employers of labour against agitators is unquestionably true. Agitators are a set of interfering, meddling people, who come down to some perfectly contented class of the community, and sow the seeds of discontent amongst them. That is the reason why agitators are so absolutely necessary. Without them, in our incomplete state, there would be no advance towards civilisation.Slavery was put down in America, not in consequence of any action on the part of the slaves, or even any express desire on their part that they should be free. It was put down entirely through the grossly illegal conduct of certain agitators in Boston and elsewhere, who were not slaves themselves, nor owners of slaves, nor had anything to do with the question really. It was, undoubtedly, the Abolitionists who set the torch alight, who began the whole thing. And it is curious to note that from the slaves themselves they received, not merely very little assistance, but hardly any sympathy even; and when at the close of the war the slaves found themselves free, found themselves indeed so absolutely free that they were free to starve, many of them bitterly regretted the new state of things.To the thinker, the most tragic fact in the whole of the French Revolution is not that Marie Antoinette was killed for being a queen, but that the starved peasant of the Vendee voluntarily went out to die for the hideous cause of feudalism.

It is clear, then, that no Authoritarian Socialism will do. For while under the present system a very large number of people can lead lives of a certain amount of freedom and expression and happiness, under an industrial barrack system, or a system of economic tyranny, nobody would be able to have any such freedom at all. It is to be regretted that a portion of our community should be practically in slavery, but to propose to solve the problem by enslaving the entire community is childish. Every man must be left quite free to choose his own work. No form of compulsion must he exercised over him. If there is, his work will not be good for him, will not be good in itself, and will not be good for others...

The full essay is much longer, but I think I've supplied sufficient context to put the initially quoted remarks in a more accurate perspective.

The full essay: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_Man_Under_Socialism

[linked at my signature, "cabdriver"]

According to my own readings on the subject, Wilde is downplaying (or arguably even dismissing) the role played by the diaspora Africans in resisting their bondage.

But Oscar Wilde's wider intent is clear from reading the surrounding text, and the essay in its totality. He's a pro-abolitionist, pro-dissident, pro-agitator, not a reactionary nostalgisc for the antebellum American South.

ronaldraygun...be more diligent with your scholarship next time around, willya?

Oh yeah- one more thing, ronald...your point?

However, the drawing shown in conjunction with the animation voiceover of Judy depicts a 3rd trimester fetus.

An embryo is not a fetus. The developmental change occurs in the first trimester.

For those of use with an interest in this debate who aren't "human DNA = human life" absolutists, that's a crucial distinction, blurred by the confused and unscientific terminology in the ad.

is to this book

http://openlibrary.org/b/OL1425593M/Critical_mass

I invited you to reply to the other part of my post regarding "Bush Derangement"- the part you didn't address:

I doubt that you're ready to acknowledge that George W. Bush at one time explicitly requested the power to detain American citizens solely on his personal command, or on the authority of his "deputies", either. If George W. Bush had obtained that power, nothing would have restrained him from turning this country into Dirty War-era Argentina.

I'm not saying he would have done it- although his family and allied political connections to historical neofascist elements in the Southern Cone of South America are easily traceable. The point is that you- and all of the other Bush followers- would have trusted him with that power, in the year 2002.

That makes how many times that the Bush crowd has "changed narratives" on you?

We also had our German and French "allies"--or at least their nationals, supplying him with all kinds of stuff, enabling him to get funds for something while his people were going hungry.

Go check out a couple of books on the BNL affair, the Banco Nazionale Lavoro scandals. A good idea to read Critical Mass, too. Read them with discernment..oh yeah, that means you'll have had to have read other stuff, too. I hope you haven't started your quest as an autodidact as late as Glenn Beck appears to have done.

Then get back to me.