Asklemmy

1452 readers

65 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

Was banning human slavery an authoritarian decision? (monyet.cc)

submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by DragonWasabi@monyet.cc to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

59 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Obviously it was a good thing that it was banned, but I'm just wondering if it would technically be considered authoritarian.

As in, is any law that restricts people's freedom to do something (yes, even if it's done to also free other people from oppression as in that case, since it technically restricts the slave owner's freedom to own slaves), considered authoritarian, even if at the time that the law is passed, it's only a small section of people that are still wanting to do those things and forcibly having their legal ability to do them revoked?

Or would it only be considered authoritarian if a large part of society had their ability to do a particular thing taken away from them forcibly?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] socialpankakemix@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

if you don't believe they had the right to own slaves, then they had no rights taken away, if your saying they did have rights taken away then you are saying they had a right to own slaves.

[–] DragonWasabi@monyet.cc 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Do you agree that someone can theoretically have a legal right to do something bad (as in, be legally allowed to do it) without that being a good or moral right for them to have?

I think you're only believing "right" to mean one thing and one thing only, when I'm using it in a sense where legality and morality don't necessarily coincide (even if they do in other contexts, conditionally).

So when I say they had the legal right to own slaves, and that right was taken away from them, that isn't a matter of opinion/belief because that's factually what happened, but that doesn't mean that I think they had the right morally speaking, which is a different concept.

I hope this makes sense.

[–] socialpankakemix@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 5 months ago

any authority has no incentive to make laws that are moral, only to make laws that maintain the system. rights are not given to you by an authority they are something you have as a person and cannot be taken away only violated.