I think such an explanation would illustrate the shift in world view that happened around the 1800′s. ‘Master and servant’ today is a rather mercantile affair. I eat out one night, I don’t expect the waiter to care about me, just bring me the food I order. Likewise I don’t care about the waiter. Aside from being polite and tipping respectfully, I have no obligations to him as a fellow man. Likewise I check into a hotel, the staff is there to clean up after me and answer my questions and that’s it.

I think the previous worldview was more along the lines of a family relationship. The master just didn’t ‘own’ the servant but was also responsible. He was obligated not just to feed and house the servant but also ensure a ‘good life’ was possible for him. Not a perfect analogy but sort of like your own children. You can give them directions, even order them to do choores, but they aren’t just there for your amusement and ease….you’re obligated to them beyond just giving them enough food to prevent them from starving.

Now theory and reality can be far apart. I think slavery was horribly cruel and could never give someone a ‘good life’. But the lies people tell are often the most useful thing for finding truth. The ‘myth’ of the happy slave or house servant was clung too intensely by the south and slavery’s defenders (see Gone with the Wind). Slavery’s supporters wanted very much to believe that not only did they benefit from slavery but their slaves did as well. This desire to believe that indicates that they felt they were obligated somehow towards their slaves as fellow humans.

I think if we could bring slavers back from the grave and interview them they would probably be angry at some of the ideas presented about them. For example, I think they would have rejected the idea that slave holders could stage ‘fights to the death’ for their own sick amusement and viewed such a slaveholder as a psychopath rather than just a ‘man disposing of his property’.

The South, I think, did have a point in noting that the North was presenting a different type of relationship between people. It was advocating the disconnected market based relationship of free labor where each person was on his own and there was no loyalty between employee and employer beyond honest pay for honest work. By itself this relationship can be quite cruel leaving those who are sick or old with nothing to fall back on.

The South’s response was elitism where the elites did have the right to exploit others but had a moral obligation to take care of those under them. Hence the desperate attempt to paint slavery and later Jim Crow as some type of benign paternalistic system where everyone was happy provided outside ‘agitators’ didn’t stir things up.

In short a really challenging movie would be one that depicted a slave owning white who was really committed to the view that he was not only doing well by his family but also by his slaves while blind to the cruelity and evil he did. Such a depiction would be very challenging because it would illustrate evil as it is at work in people like you and me rather than with cartoon villians who are evil simply for its own sake. I believe Lincoln did once say don’t hate slavery supporters as if he had been born in slightly different circumstances he very well could have been one.

Tarantino makes pretty impressive films IMO. Esp. since the operate on so many different levels including their ability to reference so many other films and genreas. I thought Kill Bill was a fascinating study of the merits and drawbacks of revenge by creating a character who had been so outrageously wronged that one almost had to support her quest for vengence. But in terms of moral reflection I’m not sure either of his last two movies help us much.

I think the empirically weakest claim of the Bible is that turning the other check changes hearts why can’t we throw that overboard and keep Leviticus.

It is a moral question that seems to have divided the Christian community since the founding of our nation.

John MacArthur, though critical of the excesses and racism present in America’s use of slavery, says:

“Although slavery was carefully regulated under Mosaic law, neither the Old nor New Testaments condemns slavery as such. Social strata are recognized and even designed by God for man’s good. Some people will be served and some will serve others. That is the nature of human society.”

Yet, how can one not see the buying and selling human beings as if they were cattle anything but an affront to basic human dignity? Yes, the Bible nowhere condemns the practice as such (and even affirms its use in instances) … but I must concede the point to people like Dan Savage who insists that this is one issue where “the Bible got it wrong”.