Kennedy: “No, it’s a contract for specific performance.”

Let’s say I sign a contract with you, selling myself into bondage as a farm worker for the rest of my life (in return, say, for an annuity given to my children). After a few weeks I realize that this really sucks, refuse to work, and when you threaten to whip me, I run away.

If human rights are inalienable (and they are), there’s no legitimate basis for you to send out the hounds and force me to come back. Most people would say that what you are doing is using force to keep me in slavery—even though I signed a contract for specific performance.

Is this relevantly different from the situation of a soldier being forced not to “desert” if he decides that he’s not going to fight anymore, such that one is slavery and the other is not? If it is, then how?

Kinsella: “it seems simply to express the view that political units have a right to secede; which of course was also Calhoun’s view.” Except for the “political units” that happen to be made up of Black people, of course. Oops!

Fulwiler: ‘Re: Calhoun’s views. Well, he obviously did not consider the master /slave relationship to be a “political” association.’ False. Here’s Calhoun, defending the freedom to beat, whip, or kill Negroes if they don’t do what you tell them to in “Slavery a Positive Good”: “But I will not dwell on this aspect of the question; I turn to the political; and here I fearlessly assert that the existing relation between the two races in the South, against which these blind fanatics are waging war, forms the most solid and durable foundation on which to rear free and stable political institutions. It is useless to disguise the fact. There is and always has been in an advanced stage of wealth and civilization, a conflict between labor and capital. The condition of society in the South exempts us from the disorders and dangers resulting from this conflict; and which explains why it is that the political condition of the slaveholding States has been so much more stable and quiet than that of the North.” (Bonus points for endorsing the Marxist theory of class when it comes to the Yankees!)

Fulwiler: ‘Do you? I don’t see that it is.’ Of course it was; slavery was a creature of the law—defended and enforced by agents of the government. Slavery as a political institution in the South was based on the claim that Black slaves were not citizens of the several states, and so not entitled to self-defense or help from the government in defending against abduction, assault, robbery, rape, murder, etc. The subordinate political status was the essential part of Southern slavery; without it, there could be no legal basis whatever for holding others in bondage.

(In fact there was no legal basis whatever, since there is no such thing as legitimate authority to make a law that enslaves other human beings. But it should be quite clear that Southern slavers claimed a political basis for their ability to keep black Southerners enslaved.)

… although Tom DiLorenzo and I would say the Southerners were right to defend themselves …

Throughout the Civil War, the Confederates were actually fighting a two-front war: about 1/3 of all Confederate military forces were continually held behind the lines in order to capture fugitive slaves and suppress slave revolts (which had been escalating for decades, and erupted across the South during the war).

I agree that Southerners had a right to defend themselves against aggression. Including the Black ones. Describing the Confederate war effort (1/3 of which was directed against Black Southerners seceding from their slave pens) as self-defense seems dubious at best.

I’m a bit baffled by the film, since, while it is an apparent attempt to rag on Michael Moore, it provides a much more devastating critique of the war and its supporters than it does Michael Moore.

If George Bush were personally going into battle to lead the fight against an army of vile, inhuman goblins directed by the unholy power of a Dark Lord bent on the desolation and domination of the whole of the Earth, and in the process of launching a massive assault on all the strongholds of the civilized world, then I don’t doubt that Michael Moore would not have had quite the same objections to his policies.

Do warhawks actually see the world like this? Much of their rhetoric outside of this silly little film seems to suggest it. If so, it would be funny, except for all of the people who have died because of their childish conception of the world.

This is good stuff. A couple of questions, though. You claim that “With all its warts, copyright was a system that filled an important role at a particular time and in the context of particular technological and social systems around the production and and consumption of a particular intellectual good: eighteenth century printed books.” This is a pretty common way that people arguing for a rollback on intellectual property restrictions talk about the history of IP. But I actually think it’s more rosy than IP deserves.

Here’s why. You argue: “Patronage was simply not an optimum compensation system for the production of the types of work that were demanded. Copyright stepped in because it worked to support publishers and authors in the production of content that was desired but that was not being produced in adequate quantities under patronage, etc.” But in fact copyrights (and patents, too, for what it’s worth) originated protected markets granted by royal mandates—a given printing house would be given a “copyright” in a particular region, which allowed that house and only that house to print books and newspapers in the area. There was no presumption that copyright originated from the perogatives of the author of a work (which could be copied freely by anyone the King authorized to print).

Second: I think you make a really important point, which ought to be underlined, when you say ‘Quite reasonably, people want to know what this replacement or parallel system will be before we rush off eliminating the companies currently paying the people making the music most of us have in our CD players. This is where I start sounding a lot less prepared. Ultimately, I don’t have the “this is the system we’re looking for” answer that people want. Unlike most people I talk to, I’m alright with not having that answer.’

I think there is a certain amount that we can say about how the world will look with certain changes (e.g., without copyright restrictions). But one thing that a lot of people don’t seem to get about freedom is that you don’t have to have everything worked out ahead of time. Five Year Plans are for Stalinists and corporations; if your goal is just to let people decide what it is best for them to do, then you can usually trust them to come up with something creative, worthwhile, and powerful. Not always, of course—people are anything but perfect—but you can get it a lot more often from many people working freely than from one person’s grand scheme for how to organize society.

So while I’m interested in talking about ways the world might turn out without copyright protectionism, or suburban zoning laws, or corporate union-busting, or any number of other things, I’m quite happy to leave a lot of spaces open. The ethical issues are clear enough: people should be free wherever they can be. And the practical issues of what people will do with their freedom are interesting and difficult, but I don’t need to know the answers to all of them. Musicians can figure out how to make music; authors can figure out how to write books; and I’m sure that they’ll come up with much better answers than I will.