Tuesday, May 14, 2024

CORRUPTION CRISIS AND THOREAU

 

 

 

"Much has been said about American slavery, but I think that we do not even yet realize what slavery is. If I were seriously to propose to Congress to make mankind into sausages, I have no doubt that most of the members would smile at my proposition, and if any believed me to be in earnest, they would think that I proposed something much worse than Congress had ever done. But if any of them will tell me that to make a man into a sausage would be much worse — would be any worse — than to make him into a slave — than it was to enact the Fugitive Slave Law, I will accuse him of foolishness, of intellectual incapacity, of making a distinction without a difference. The one is just as sensible a proposition as the other.

(…)

The foul slime stands for the sloth and vice of man, the decay of humanity; the fragrant flower that springs from it, for the purity and courage which are immortal. 

Slavery and servility have produced no sweet-scented flower annually, to charm the senses of men, for they have no real life: they are merely a decaying and a death, offensive to all healthy nostrils. We do not complain that they live, but that they do not get buried. Let the living bury them: even they are good for manure."


Slavery in Massachusetts
 
by Henry David Thoreau

 

La esclavitud y la servidumbre no han producido ninguna flor de aroma dulce anualmente, para animar los sentidos del hombre, porque no tienen vida real: son meramente un decaimiento y una muerte, ofensivas a todos los orificios nasales sanos. No nos oponemos a que ellas vivan, sino a que no sean enterradas. Permitamos que los vivos las entierren. Incluso ellas son buenas como abono.


HDT (Esclavitud en Massachusetts)

 

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