My Last Name Means "Slave"

My last name, Wallace, is generally considered to be a Scottish name, yet it means “Welshman.” So, then, it is originally a Welsh name (it's related to such names as Walsh, Welch and Wales, as in the movie, The Outlaw Josey Wales).

The name is derived from is “walcea,” which is the Old English word for “slave.” The English used to kidnap the Welsh and sell them as slaves in the Dublin markets. In the long ago and far away I had ancestors who where slaves.

But then, who hasn’t had ancestors who were slaves? Slavery was a very common thing in the past.

The word “slave” itself comes from “Slav,” from Slavs being kidnapped and sold into the slavery. By Muslims, by the way, who were slavers a few thousand years before Europeans - and even today, still are.

The fact my ancestors were slaves means nothing to me. When people whine about how their ancestors were slaves - the way some blacks do - I dismiss them as self-pitying fools not taking responsibility for themselves and blaming their problems on others.

Most people don't know it, but the reason Moses wandered in the desert for desert for 40 years is so that all the former slaves would die off. Don't believe me? Ask any Jew.

Many white people were slaves in the past. Many of them came to America as indentured servants, and were treated horribly.

I personally don’t understand slavery, but then, I wasn’t raised with it. Would I have approved of it if I had been raised in such an environment? I have no idea. I like to think I wouldn’t.

When it comes right down to it, people can only enslave others if they don’t consider them quite human. It’s our inborn narcissism, actually, that turns other people into things, “things” we can use as slaves.

Slavery can only exist if it’s legal. When it’s illegal, then there can be no slavery. In fact, it being legal, in other word being lawful through the power of the State, is as big, if not a bigger problem, than our narcissism.

I make a distinction, as do any people, between government and the State. Government should be as small as possible. The Founding Fathers, influenced by John Locke, said its purpose was to protect “life, liberty and property.” If it goes beyond that it turns into the State.

The State these days doesn’t protect life, liberty and property. It intrudes on all three. It takes people’s lives away, their liberty, and their property. It enslaves (even if it calls it conscription), it murders (including mass murder through war) and it takes away property (and your life and your body are your own property).

With the growth of the Corporate State (which is how Mussolini defined fascism) Americans have in a sense been turned into indentured servants. When a child is born it is automatically in debt to - how much? $70,000? If that's not being an indentured servant, what is? The only choice you have is to leave the country.

I’ve always been amazed at people who think the State can do Good Things. Some realize the awfulness of the State when it comes to war, but then they turn around and think it can provide us with health care. They can’t seem to comprehend it’s the obverse and reverse of the same coin.

People who support universal health care – socialized health care – don’t realize they want to be slaves of the State. They will not get to choose their doctors or dentists; bureaucrats will. The same bureaucrats will choose their treatment and if they live or die.

Without choice people are slaves.

I’ve had people tell me socialized health care works in Canada. No, it doesn’t. People up there with serious problems come to the U.S. A woman in Canada who thinks she might have ovarian cancer can’t get diagnosed up there for two or three months. That’s why they come down here.

Without us to fall back on, Canada’s health-care system would be in a lot worse shape than it is. In a sense it’s a parasite on ours.

People also claims socialized health care works in northern Europe. No, it doesn’t. With socialized health care there will always be shortages, so the question is, who is not going to be treated, and who is going to die?

In the Scandinavian countries they very rarely attempt to save premature infants. They put them off the side and lie them die. Unlike us, who make very effort to save them, no matter how much money it takes.

In the rest of Europe, you don’t get treatment after a certain age. You get painkillers until you die.

Those governments and their socialized health care programs – which should be called “slave non-health care” – are nothing the U.S. wants to emulate. If we do, perhaps it should be called the Walcea Health Care System. Very few would get the irony.

Our health care system certainly needs to be overhauled. Actually, it needs to go back to the free market, and right now it’s anything but.

The State does not consider people to be quite human. In fact, people with great wealth and political power rarely consider us quite human. We are concrete to be shoveled around, checkers to be move as it sees fit. What the people want does not matter. It never has. That’s been the history of the world without exception.

There is something in people that wants to be both free and slave. Norman Mailer, in fact, said he considered the natural state of humanity to be fascism. There is something in people that wants to be a slave. Why?

A false sense of security, perhaps. But the truth is what Ben Franklin noticed: "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

He's not the only one who's noticed that. I prefer what Jesus, Plato and Aristotle observed: All Tyrants Call Themselves Benefactors.