Get Your Slave License

During the movement to abolish institutional slavery, there were those who wanted to improve the institution of slavery, to regulate it, to establish rules for the humane treatment of slaves, to limit the number of slaves, to tax slavery and so on. But what the abolitionists knew is that human slavery is intolerable as an idea, that the very root of slavery is wrong.

Improving slavery was not wrong—improvement in the human condition is good.  But imagine if every slave master had to have a government-issued photo ID Slave License and be regulated and inspected by the State Slave Health Committee to verify that he or she is treating slaves humanely—does that sound like a country you want to live in?

There are those who try to improve war, to conduct war with minimum civilian casualties, to make sure that wounded humans have access to medical care, to prosecute those who break the rules of war with systematic rape and torture. These people are doing needed work in our present system that allows war–but does that sound like a world you want to live in?

We found ways, even much better and more efficient ways, to get the work done that the slaves were doing before they were freed. We already know ways to resolve political conflicts much more cheaply and permanently than war can ever do. With peace safety practices, with a changed world system that takes war off the menu, we can abolish war.

Peace is the safe practice of political conflict. If there is no political conflict, there is no possibility of war. If there is political conflict, where there is a direction taken by a political leader or entity toward violent conflict, then it is the responsibility of the rest of the world to effectively intervene for the safety of the whole world.