The other day Mike Huckabee, who still wants to be president last I heard, joined a conservative Iowa talk show host, Jan Mickelson, in supporting the idea that instead of putting so many criminals behind bars, we should go biblical on them and sell them into indentured servitude.
They were specifically talking about criminals caught stealing money, and Mickelson suggested the whole indentured servitude business as a way of recovering the stolen money from the criminals.
This isn’t the first time I ever heard someone quote the Bible in support of slavery. Back in the ’80s, I had a lot of fun chatting with a young man who dreamed of the day that the U.S. Constitution could be replaced by one which declared biblical law supreme, so we could get back to stoning adulterers and enslaving thieves like the good people of old did.
He also believed the Universe was created in six days about 6,000 years ago and wanted to explain the light coming from distant galaxies as having been created in the first instant, already en route. That being part of what “Let there be light” meant. It included that light. I think it’s wonderful when people hang on so tightly to their beliefs. If you can’t be loyal to ideas, you won’t be loyal to friends and family either.
My friend said that a constitutional change would seal matters, because liberals and progressives like me, who would ordinarily oppose such things, would fall in line for sure. Us liberals eat up that whole constitutional BS, and would do what the piece of paper told us to do, because we don’t have any principles of our own apart from what the constitution tells us. We had some special fun when I told him that, no, I would not do what the new constitution said to do, and we talked about some of my alternatives, which involved my imagining various implements of a projectile or incendiary nature.
Similarly, Huckabee and Mickelson had interesting perspectives regarding opinions of progressives. It’s progressives who have ruined the criminal justice system by doing away with indentured servitude and such, and replacing slavery with what Mickelson referred to as the pagan concept of prisons.
Now, I know a lot of people are going to be hard on Huckabee for saying we should re-institute slavery in this country. So let’s be clear. He’s not saying let’s enslave a whole race of people. He’s just saying, let’s enslave all the criminals. There will be a mix of races, don’t worry.
An interesting question is whether the indentured service industry that Huckabee and friend want, if set up, would end up being run pretty much the same way that prisons are currently run. Of course, the whole idea is sell the criminal, which means at the outset, privatizing. The criminal becomes a commodity for a private owner or corporation.
My guess is that Corrections Corporation of America (cca) would handle the sales because that’s what they already do.
And if it works the way it does now, they’ll get the money to operate the slave dealing from government contracts. Governments won’t be bothered to warehouse unsold slaves and find buyers for them. cca will lead the industry in doing that for the governments, in return for expenses and profit.
It could be an improvement. Today, the license plate on your car is courtesy of prison labor. Tomorrow, you yourself could buy your own prisoners and keep them in a shed in the back yard until you needed them.
How would you work your slaves? Would they walk the dog? Do your laundry? Drive the kids to school? Carry the kids to school in a litter? Bring you iced tea and fan you on hot summer days? Back rubs? Bear your children?
What’s not to like about any of that?
And if they bear you a child you don’t want, you can sell the kid off to recover some of the money you paid for the parent.