There has also been debt slavery in many areas of the world, and this often is inherited from generation to generation, unless the debt somehow be paid, with all the accumulated interest that usually keeps repayment out of reach.

In ancient Greece and Rome, a large majority of the human population were slaves, in which case, it was not the burden of a minority, but the order of society, much as Calhoun argued for. That did not seem to stop occasional revolts, e.g. Spartacus. Sparta’s helots were a classic example of racial slavery, perhaps the closest analog to what developed in the American south.

Some have pointed out that racial prejudices were somewhat different under Spanish and Portuguese rule, because the caballeros frankly didn’t give a damn about liberty of anyone, the strong ruled by right of the sword, and they didn’t have to justify enslavement by making up myths of fitness or inferiority.

Nah. All you’ve got to do is read her letters to be disavowed of that notion. She was wrong, I think, about TKAM but not about much else.

And I am proud to say that I think TKAM is a wonderful novel full of compassion, anger, tenderness, sadness and joy. If I manage to shuffle off this mortal coil having left behind such a legacy I will think my life well-lived and worthwhile.

‘Nuff said.

Here is O’Connor to “A” (Betty Hester), 1 Oct. 1960:

“I have a novelist friend in Smiths, Ala. named Caroline Ivey who wrote me about Harper Lee. She knew her father who was a lawyer. Apparently the people in her town in Alabama (Mayborough) think she shouldn’t have used the Boo Radley episode as there was apparently something like it in the town. Caroline Ivey was highly sympathetic to Miss Nelle Harper Lee and insisted on sending me the book … I think I see what it really is–a child’s book. When I was fifteen I would have loved it. Take out the rape and you’ve got something like Miss Minerva and William Green Hill. I think for a child’s book it does all right. It’s interesting that all the folks that are buying it don’t know they’re reading a child’s book. Someone ought to say what it is.”

As to the Bible being against hierarchical religion–surely this could be a reasonable debate between and among traditionalist Catholics, Anglicans, and the “lower” Protestant churches. One cannot justly be called a racist for believing that the Church’s growth and development into hierarchies and orders is consistent with Scripture, Tradition, history, and human nature. Can they?

Since when is a nonbelief in equality the same as racism? Equality as a general principle is silly and destructive. Rather than worship an abstraction, Dr. Fleming, so it seems to me, tries to point out the reality of human nature. That societies and civilizations always have hierarchies and some level of slavery and injustice. Rather than pretend that equality exists, the best we can do is to accept the realities of human nature as we know them from history, tradition, custom, and science; and to limit their tendencies toward oppression and evil through the Christian religion and with the aid of the political and legal systems devised in the classical world.

Whenever I have followed a discussion of slavery led by Dr. Fleming and Dr. Wilson, neither seeks to defend slavery as an ideal. They generally like to show that slavery in some form has always existed and that in many ways we moderns are the most slavish of all. If suggesting that the condition of modern blacks is more degrading, violent, and hopeless than the condition of southern slaves is racist, then count Orestes Brownson, Wendell Berry, and myself as bigots.

Perhaps Ms. Dalton could contribute to the discussion as she is well acquainted with Dr. Fleming and Dr. Wilson as people and writers. The “bad corner” (as she calls it) on the front porch is a lonely, tedious place these days.

On the other hand, you did have some of the radical abolitionists saying that if the Bible were found to support slavery, then the hell with the Bible.

He, Wilson, et al, may very well have a blind spot when it comes to race, and if so, that is problematic. On the other hand, is it not possible that they’re so anti-PC that it only appears that way? I wouldn’t go along with what he says about the CRA being “evil” but I do say that it was in many ways wrongheaded. Does that make me soft on race? I hope not.