Do you like politics?

[Sheilbh]

Yes and no. I find the method quite interesting - Alastair Campbell's and Damian McBride's blogs, or Mandy's autobiography for example.

A lot of the rest I just find boring. I could never find the energy to care about the Blair-Brown arguments, or any of the fall-out. I don't get the articles that basically seem to assume everyone follows Westminster as obsessively as the journos.

I don't have the sort of relish for a lot of that though.

[Phillip V]

"All see, and most admire, the glare which hovers round the external trappings of elevated office. To me there is nothing in it, beyond the lustre which may be reflected from its connection with a power of promoting human felicity."

– George Washington, letter to Catherine Macaulay Graham, New York, January 9, 1790

[The Brain]

"PS I picked up some fine strong Negroes at the market today. Working them to death will surely land me a couple of bucks."

[Phillip V]

Keeping them alive was much more profitable. Washington grew them and kept the families intact, even keeping the elderly and infirm. He freed them in his will (as well provisioning education and pensions), an act few others followed.

[Valmy]

Keeping them alive was much more profitable. Washington grew them and kept the families intact, even keeping the elderly and infirm. He freed them in his will (as well provisioning education and pensions), an act few others followed.

Some of his slaves were his wife's property though and they went back to her family when he died.  But still I thought it was better than nothing of him to free them when he died...granted a factor in that was that he had no heirs.

[Barrister]

Keeping them alive was much more profitable. Washington grew them and kept the families intact, even keeping the elderly and infirm. He freed them in his will (as well provisioning education and pensions), an act few others followed.

Freeing slaves in your will is a quite curious act.  It seems to show that you knew owning slaves was wrong.  Which of course begged the question of - why didn't you free them sooner?

[Phillip V]

Keeping them alive was much more profitable. Washington grew them and kept the families intact, even keeping the elderly and infirm. He freed them in his will (as well provisioning education and pensions), an act few others followed.

Freeing slaves in your will is a quite curious act.  It seems to show that you knew owning slaves was wrong.  Which of course begged the question of - why didn't you free them sooner?

Washington was no ideologue. He was pragmatic, and part of that pragmatism was economically accepting slavery as necessary to his life and station while morally and intellectually detesting the practice. He "hoped" that slavery would become obsolete in the "near future."

[Jacob]

Freeing slaves in your will is a quite curious act.  It seems to show that you knew owning slaves was wrong.  Which of course begged the question of - why didn't you free them sooner?

"It's wrong, but my way of life depends on the wrong being perpetuated. I'll do the right thing once it won't impact my way of life appreciably."

... doesn't seem that uncommon an approach.

[mongers]

Freeing slaves in your will is a quite curious act.  It seems to show that you knew owning slaves was wrong.  Which of course begged the question of - why didn't you free them sooner?

"It's wrong, but my way of life depends on the wrong being perpetuated. I'll do the right thing once it won't impact my way of life appreciably."

... doesn't seem that uncommon an approach.

Damning with faint praise ?

[Admiral Yi]

Freeing slaves in your will is a quite curious act.  It seems to show that you knew owning slaves was wrong.  Which of course begged the question of - why didn't you free them sooner?

It's defensible if you start from the assumption that slavery in and of itself is not evil, but rather contains the potential for great evil.  Therefore I, knowing I am a benevolent slave owner, will know my slaves are well looked after in my life time, but can't be sure after I'm dead.

[mongers]

Freeing slaves in your will is a quite curious act.  It seems to show that you knew owning slaves was wrong.  Which of course begged the question of - why didn't you free them sooner?

It's defensible if you start from the assumption that slavery in and of itself is not evil, but rather contains the potential for great evil.  Therefore I, knowing I am a benevolent slave owner, will know my slaves are well looked after in my life time, but can't be sure after I'm dead.

So contrary to much of what you've said here, you're in fact in favour of the 'Nanny State'.

[citizen k]

So contrary to much of what you've said here, you're in fact in favour of the 'Nanny State'.

In this scenario, the Admiral is not a public entity, i.e. a "state", so, no.

[Admiral Yi]

So contrary to much of what you've said here, you're in fact in favour of the 'Nanny State'.

Did any of your teachers go over the concept of "if" with you? 

[mongers]

So contrary to much of what you've said here, you're in fact in favour of the 'Nanny State'.

Did any of your teachers go over the concept of "if" with you? 

Yes, and I don't believe your assumption would have been valid even at the time, Washington and his fellow slave owners might have regarded them as inferior men not worthy of the 'rights of men' or knew they themselves were being hypocritical and so engaged in a great evil. That's how I'd like to re-frame the question. 

But looking at the institution of slavery, I cannot see how a great champion for democracy and liberty, would not know it was an evil thing; he and his fellow revolutionaries were in part attempting to overthrow a slave-owner, a King with subjects, not citizens, who they said denied them their inherent rights. 

Yi, leaving aside, the hypotheticals I assume you regard slavery as a great evil, in all of it's real manifestations ?

[Admiral Yi]

If you understand the usage of "if," how did you infer from my post that I'm in favor of a nanny state?

Slavery is a great evil.  Coercion of any kind is an evil.  One of the main reasons I'm a supporter of the market.