The morality of slavery

I trust you will have seen the response from Prime Minister Cameron to the charges from Archbishop Nicholls that cuts in social security are creating hunger, poverty and despair. Cameron tells us that the Archbishop is wrong, that the cuts he is implementing are giving people hope and that they are an integral part of the government's moral mission. So, on one side we have a man who has been gathering empirical evidence from sources all around the country and relating the experiences of thousands of people who are living below the poverty line, using foodbanks and part of the 860,000 people who have been cut off from all social security because they have been excluded by the government's ferocious targeting of the weakest elements in society, and on the other side we have a pathological liar, a millionaire who exudes a hatred for the poor and the disadvantaged and the leader of the movement to reduce the working people of this country to modern forms of slavery.

Now, the last politician who claimed to be on a moral mission was Mad Tony, whose moral drive claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis. We should be deeply alarmed when we hear our politicians claiming the moral high ground because morality is none of their business. Government is an administrative and decision-making function and its relations to morality is only concerned with establishing, upholding and maintaining the rule of law. As the philosopher John Locke tells us

"The whole trust, power and authority of the civil ruler is vested in him for no other purpose but to be made use of for the good, preservation, and peace of men in that society over which he is set. The civil ruler hath nothing to do with the good of men's souls or their concernement in another life, but is ordained and entrusted with his power only for the quiet and comfortable living of all men in society, one with another".

In addition, morality is a relative thing and differs widely between and within societies and groups. In this instance Cameron is using the concept of morality as a weapon of propaganda, to give the demonization of the poor and disadvantaged and their continuing pauperisation the appearance of respectability and to present government spite and malice as good and necessary. These people have absolutely no shame, never mind a sense of moral conscience. If there is one thing you can be certain of, it is that I do not even recognise what Cameron describes as morality. As far as I am concerned, Cameron represents moral degeneracy and blatant class values. Now, I have no particular truck with the Roman Church but in this instance the Archbishop is simply highlighting a national scandal, a scandal that only a scoundrel or an imbecile would deny.

Cameron's Tories remind me of the American slave owners who subscribed to a theory known as 'drapetomania'. In the 19th century, an American surgeon and so-called psychiatrist (note, another professed moralist) a Dr Samuel Cartwright from Louisiana in the American south, describes a form of mental illness he calls ‘drapetomania’  which is an uncontrollable urge to escape from slavery. Such slaves were irrationally ungrateful for all that their white masters had done for them, and therefore to desire freedom from slavery must be a form of insanity. He described the black race as natural submissive knee-benders. That is exactly how the Tories see the working class and the poor, and their moral mission is to put them back in their rightful place.

I am going to address the problem of how the government has systematically dropped the reference to social security and adopted the American expression of calling it welfare. This is done deliberately and for a purpose, but this post is long enough for the moment.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat