I would agree that we do not have the right to a specific job. Even a specific vocation is often a question of nature, talent and geography: you can't be a lumberjack in Death Valley, or a concert violinist if you are tone deaf. However, the Second Economic Bill of Rights of which President Franklin Roosevelt spoke on January 11, 1944, is still the minimum that every American should expect:
-
useful and remunerative employment, together with the potential to find an avocation and not simply a job;
-
wages that provide adequate food, clothing, opportunity for recreation, and decent shelter for themselves and their families;
-
adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
-
protection from unfair competition and monopolistic practices at home and abroad, for every business in America, large and small;
-
the ability of farmers and ranchers to raise and sell the the bounty of their lands at a return which will give themselves and their families a decent living;
-
protections from the fears attendant to old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
-
a good, quality education, sufficient for the needs of our modern society; an education that is ongoing if needed or desired.
No person should have to work two or more jobs in order to see any of these seven points achieved for themselves and their families. To require such, to limit other human being's lives to unceasing work, without hope for advancement, time with their families, or real stability; where a human being is required to live to work if they are to survive, is a form of slavery. To quote Georg F.W. Hegel (again from his Philosophy of Right , p. 42), "The slave knows not his essence, his infinitude, his freedom; he does not know himself in his essence, and not to know himself is not to think himself. The self-consciousness, which by thought apprehends that itself is essence, and thus puts away from itself the accidental and untrue, constitutes the principle of right, morality, and all forms of ethical observance. They who, in speaking philosophically of right, morality, and ethical observance, would exclude thought and turn to feeling, the heart, the breast, and inspiration, express the deepest contempt for thought and science." In other words, when a human being has no time to think, only to feel, and to react to base emotion, without consideration of consequences, he has been reduced to the status of slave.
This is one of the lessons that we see in the two Starz Original Series, "Spartacus: Gods of the Arena," and "Spartacus: Blood and Sand." The slaves have all been stripped of any ability to act except at a purely emotional level. And although the Romans would never admit it, their actions in the final analysis are also purely emotional. Their "rationality" is animal cunning, not critical thought, and by Hegel's statement above, this makes them every bit as much slaves as the gladiators and other servants beneath them.
And in this, they mirror modern American society to a very frightening degree.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).