Alan Keyes on Slavery

Interesting stuff here.

...I alluded to "the moral degradation that Frederick Douglass and others held to be the greatest misery of my slave ancestors." These words bring to my mind the deep humiliation of married women and mothers, forced to act as concubines to serve the lusts of their so-called masters. It brings to mind husbands and brothers forced to tolerate this degradation of their loved ones, or be subjected to the lash for fighting against it as God and conscience required of them. It brings to mind other enslaved people forced to inflict such punishment upon their fellows; or to give unwilling service to those who did so, even including forced labor to build the scaffolds from which apprehended rebels against slavery and degradation were hung by the neck to edify and terrorize anyone tempted to imitate their courage. Slavery to my mind has never meant only the spectacle of bodies bent to hard labor in the fields, for free men and women also must toil. That is the lot of all humanity. Rather it means the searing contemplation of souls tortured by burning anger and indignation against injustice, which they are helpless to act upon; of consciences racked by the defiling knowledge of their complicity with the very evil that abuses them, and shamed by the fear that deters them from rejecting it, until in all too many ways the habit of submission finally stupefies and deadens the pangs. It is the thought of anguished prayers raised up to the almighty God, that He would deliver them from their humiliating servitude to evil, until it seems the strength of faith gives out, and prayers are tempted to cynicism and despair.

Whatever you may think of Keyes, that passage is gripping.

HT: The Hatted One