In praise of abolitionism

[Friday]

(someone may have posted this here before, but what the heck, I just read it for the first time and found it very inspirational)

... Thus, William Lloyd Garrison was not being "unrealistic" when, in the 1830s, he raised the glorious standard of immediate emancipation of the slaves. His goal was the proper one, and his strategic realism came in the fact that he did not expect his goal to be quickly reached. Or, as Garrison himself distinguished:

"Urge immediate abolition as earnestly as we may, it will, alas! be gradual abolition in the end. We have never said that slavery would be overthrown by a single blow; that it ought to be, we shall always contend."[3]

Actually, in the realm of the strategic, raising the banner of pure and radical principle is generally the fastest way of arriving at radical goals. For if the pure goal is never brought to the fore, there will never be any momentum developed for driving toward it. Slavery would never have been abolished at all if the abolitionists had not raised the hue and cry thirty years earlier; and, as things came to pass, the abolition was at virtually a single blow rather than gradual or compensated. [4]

But above and beyond the requirements of strategy lie the commands of justice. In his famous editorial that launched The Liberator at the beginning of 1831, William Lloyd Garrison repented his previous adoption of the doctrine of gradual abolition:

"I seize this opportunity to make a full and unequivocal recantation, and thus publicly to ask pardon of my God, of my country, and of my brethren, the poor slaves, for having uttered a sentiment so full of timidity, injustice and absurdity."

Upon being reproached for the habitual severity and heat of his language, Garrison retorted: "I have need to be all on fire, for I have mountains of ice about me to melt." It is this spirit that must mark the man truly dedicated to the cause of liberty.[5] 

http://mises.org/story/ 2993

William Lloyd Garrison... poisoning the well since 1831 

[William]

Off topic - Heinlein rocks!

[Pat K]

Off topic - Heinlein rocks!

[Russell Kanning]

good article