Slavery

A slave by law is a person unjustly enslaved; a natural slave is a natural slave. Aristotle would view anyone captured in war who does not fight to the death to preserve their liberty as a natural slave. This has no modern analogy, but his idea that men who are no better than beasts mentally are natural slaves does: They exist in large numbers in America. There are a great number of people who through lack of appetite control have failed to maintain their physical form and thereby cannot participate as free-laborers in the mixed economy system that modern democratic republics follow. Compulsory education engenders a state of mind which does not value reason; philosophy is not taught at any level below the university and no high school geometry teacher is going to bother backing up their unit on proofs with one on syllogisms. In a mass-media society where consumption of entertainments equals most peoples use of their free-time, the populace cannot be said to be doing anything but depending on their base appetites to drive them. This would make them barbarians fit to be ruled by Hellenes in Aristotle's view. In addition, there is movement in all democratic republics to overturn that system and replace it with a police state oligarchy. So this would mean that those people who are still aware of their natural rights would be forced to lay them aside in a state of slavery by law, imposed by the greatest number against the interests of this minority. Since the use of reason is regarded by most as something they would rather not do, and actively destroyed in a process of bad diet, entertainments, and narcotic induced fogs, this would mean that a great number of modern citizens are putting themselves in the position of natural slaves.