"12 Years a Slave" -- Life, Liberty and Property

As a SAG member, I have the honor of being on the nominating committee for awards for this year's crop of films.  Last night, I pulled out the DVD screener sent to me of 12 Years a Slave and was blown away by its power, hard-hitting historicity and story of human survival amid what's arguably the greatest national crime and shame of USA.  Like Amistad, Glory and other films documenting that particular era, it was clearly well-researched and I can only imagine the brutal intensity of being on that set.

So when I subsequently read a Regressive review of the film, deriding it as "abolitionist porn" -- as if the abolition of the forcible enslavement and debasement of human beings was somehow a bad thing --  I was understandably taken aback.  The writer of the article downplays the horrors of human slavery as if it was merely "business as usual", no different than the requirements of any job and where slaves were considered as "family" by their benevolent owners -- completely ignoring account after account of former slaves of their more-often-than-not inhumane treatment, not to mention the inherent inhuman brutality of owning another human being.  To me, this attitude shows an appalling lack of basic human decency, but upon examination is very enlightening to the state of mind of so many in this land.

It's long been a rallying cry among Regressives that our founding principle of "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" was originally conceived by philosopher John Locke as "Life, Liberty and Property", with "property" often given the most emphasis.  Under the banner of "property", for the first half of our nation's history, the Fugitive Slave Laws defined all slaves as chattel -- no different than farm animals -- to be legally returned to their owners, no matter where they went to when escaping their bondage.  Hefty bounties were awarded to those enterprising individuals who returned escaped slaves to those who enslaved them, and eager hunters often didn't particularly care whether or not they returned the right person when profit was on the line.  Kidnapping of free people of color was highly commonplace and most were not so fortunate as the film's protagonist, Solomon Northrop in regaining the Liberty that was rightfully theirs.  


Now, as then, the Regressive camp places higher emphasis on "Property" rights over those of "Life and Liberty".  It is upon that basis that the cries against the Taxation of Corporate Profits and the statements "Corporations are People" and Citizens United's "Money = Speech" come into play.   Once again, we're faced as a nation with the promotion of Property and Profit over People.  Whether we're talking about the current trend towards a second era of Robber-Barony or the Prison-Industrial Complex,  this continued insistence by the Right is the dark heart of all that's ever been wrong with the USA.  


Regressives continue to flinch under the moniker of "racism", claiming that it's an overplayed hand in a proverbial poker game, but the far greater shame which they fear to face is the one of simple inhumanity towards their fellow creatures.  It would be interesting to see their reaction were our nation's history reversed and the proverbial shoe on the other foot, where whites were suddenly less-than-human under a powerful black community.  It's a shame that the Regressive community lacks the necessary imagination and empathy to be decent.