> Hmm.. if you really look at the big picture here, and imagine > an America that never had African slaves, I doubt the south wouldve > had any substantial wealth to lose. Certainly nothing like it was.
I find it difficult to imagine an America without slaves without also imagining a British Empire for whom the sun may have never set. Truly. The harm done to slaves, and to Native Americans, can be seen as a cause in the ultimate dissolution of the British Empire, the nation which is most largely responsible instituting the practice in North America. The continuance of it, led to economic prosperity in the States, and also civil war, and a recession that was termed the Great Depression, until that term was recycled for use to refer to the recession of the 1930s. But you're right, and I'm not looking to play games with alternate history. The point that I was making is that the harm you do will result in negative consequences for yourself.. this operates at a personal level, social level, and yes.. a historical level. I find it obvious, and I suspect the Indian people did as well, and that this observation was the seed for their idea of karma. A notion that expands this basic observation into the unobservable "spiritual realms", with all the hokum and hand-waving that necessarily entails.
