Section 1 of the 13th Amendment reads:
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. [Emphasis added.]
Thus did America formally abolish slavery in the United States, with that one exception. Now some lawmakers want to amend the 13th Amendment to do away with that exception.
CNN reports that Democratic lawmakers introduce[d] a resolution to amend the 13th Amendment to end forced prison labor:
Congressional Democrats want to amend a section of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, to end what they refer to as another form of slavery -- forced prison labor.
Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Rep. William Lacy Clay of Missouri introduced a joint resolution this week that would remove the 13th Amendment's "punishment clause," or language that excepted convicted prisoners from the ban on slavery and involuntary servitude.
"Our 'Abolition Amendment' seeks to finish the job that President Lincoln started by ending the punishment clause in the 13th Amendment to eliminate the dehumanizing and discriminatory forced labor of prisoners for profit that has been used to drive the over-incarceration of African Americans since the end of the Civil War," Clay said in a statement.
CNN goes on to explain that the “punishment clause,” also known as the “exception clause,” was a loophole that created a pretext for the Jim Crow South to convict blacks on trumped-up charges in order to re-enslave them. Senator Jeff Merkley called the "punishment clause" in the 13th Amendment “indisputably racist in origin and in impact.” It’s doubtful the crafters of the 13th Amendment had racist motives. Perhaps some did. But the 13th Amendment was the culmination of the Abolitionist Movement, which was rooted in the Declaration of Independence’s Equality of Rights principle But the perverse incentives that the “punishment clause” introduced cannot be denied, in my view.
I am not well-informed on the pros and cons of eliminating the punishment clause. But my “instinct” is to lean toward supporting its removal, especially given that the architects of the new amendment would allow “work programs for prisoners [to] continue on a voluntary basis.”
However, the Democrats’ resolution raises wider questions. Why outlaw forced labor only for convicts? Why should not-for-profit forced labor be continued? Why should forced labor be legal for non-convicts? I have in mind two widely supported not-for-profit, non-convict examples of forced labor—one proposed, one already implemented; mandatory universal national service and mandatory community service as a condition for high school graduation.
No amount of mental acrobatics or rationalization can shroud the fact that both mandatory national service and mandatory community service is forced, and therefore slave, labor. Given that most states have some form of high school community service requirements, and that mandatory national service had wide support among the Democrats’ 2020 presidential nomination field, and that half of Americans support it, I’d like to know on what basis anyone can support the removal of the “punishment clause” of the 13th Amendement while supporting mandatory community service as a condition for high school graduation and mandatory universal national service.
There would seem to be an obvious element of hypocrisy here. But, on closer examination, perhaps not. Perhaps opponents of the punishment clause don’t like the fact that the forced labor appears to be mainly targeted against African-Americans. Since its creation in 1828, the Democratic Party has supported involuntary servitude. In the decades leading up to the Civil War, the Democrats defended Southern slavery against the Abolitionists. Furthermore, being democrats, they supported the right of majorities to impose slavery by popular vote. Afterward, they supported Jim Crow and lynching. In the 20th Century, the Democrats led the effort to legally segregate America. After that, the Democrats turned their attention to the systematic design to enslave America through step-by-step socialism, beginning with the welfare state and culminating in Democratic Socialism.
So maybe there’s no contradiction in eliminating the punishment clause while supporting mandatory community service for school children and mandatory universal national service for 18 year-olds. It seems that the Democrats can support slavery as long as it is not racially discriminatory.
Related Reading:
The Growing Threat of Mandatory National Slavery . . . Excuse Me, ‘Service’
General McChrystal’s Un-American Call for Universal National Service
The Creed of Sacrifice vs. the Land of Liberty—Craig Biddle
Democrats’ “National Service” Plans Immoral, Un-American—Ben Bayer
Pete Buttigieg's National Service Plan Is a Really Bad Idea Whose Time Might Have Come—Nick GillespieI
Presidential Candidate John Delaney Has a Plan for America's Young Adults. It's Called Forced Labor.—Scott Shackford
The "Community Service" Injustice
It’s MeFirst, or Slavery. Take Your Pick
No comments:
Post a Comment