Growing up in America in the last 25 years I have never legitimately come face to face with fighting for the most basic freedom—the right not be owned by another person.   When I hear “human resources” I automatically think 401K, COBRA, and dental coverage. Certainly, in America, humans are no longer treated as resources to be bought, traded, or used as property.  Slavery in America was abolished with the 13th Amendment in 1865, relegating the ghastly stories of the infamous African slave trade to the pages of history books.

Hasn’t slavery has been relegated to the dustbin of history?  The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares: “No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.” Spain appears to be so satisfied by the state of freedom for people that they are moving their efforts on toward the rest of the animal kingdom. Spain’s parliament went so far this past Wednesday as to support the right to freedom to great apes, as close genetic human relatives.

But what if we look beyond the declarations?  How is the “human freedom project” working out?

The shocking truth is that an estimated 27 million men, women, and children in the world are in slavery right now. More than two million children are exploited each year in commercial sex trade, despite international protocols and covenants.  We look back with horror on the days when slavery was common and accepted.  But in reality there are more human beings in one form of slavery or another than ever, and with the population boom "human coin" has never been cheaper.

I live near San Francisco, a socially conscious city known for its political activism.  If I take a turn past the Neiman Marcus at Union Square, and keep driving just a mile or so, the world morphs with chilling abruptness into the streets of the Tenderloin, named years ago for the choice cuts of meat that officers working the area could afford.  Facing the danger of working here demanded extra compensation.

This is where You Mi found herself after being “lured from her home in South Korea by international sex traffickers, who had tricked the debt-ridden college student with promises of a high-paying hostess job in America.”  You Mi is just one young woman who fell into the bondage of sex slave hell—in modern day San Francisco.  She is not alone; in the U.S. an estimated 200,000 children are exploited in commercial sex trade each year.  If sex trade thrives in a country that proclaims liberty and dignity for all, a country that champions emancipation and equality, a country that emphatically bans slavery and prostitution, then what of the rest of the world?

In Thailand alone there are an estimated 20,000 street children who represent ready targets for sex traffickers and perverted pedophile “sex tourists.”  According to a special report by Yeni and Sai Silp, published in “The Irrawaddy: Covering Burma and Southeast Asia,” for Burmese youngsters in a Thai border town, a day of grueling work hauling goods across a bridge earns them about US $1.00.  “Small wonder that some succumb to the temptation of taking money from pedophiles,” who may offer $0.50 to $0.75 for an “assignation.”  With no resources, protection, or recourse, tragic numbers of these “lost children” will suffer sexual abuse, contract sexually transmitted diseases, or lose their lives.

This is not cause for despair, but for action.  The groundwork is laid and progress begun in a global fight for freedom. We are in a new phase of a mission, articulated before the House of Commons in 1791 by William Wilberforce, leader of the movement to abolish the African slave trade: “Never, never will we desist till we have wiped away this scandal…and extinguished every trace of this bloody traffic, of which our posterity, looking back to the history of these enlightened times, will scarce believe that it has been suffered to exist so long a disgrace and dishonour.”  Today governments are (at least officially) in agreement that slavery is unacceptable, and many organizations and individuals work every day to help spread liberty further.

So this 4th of July towns across America will be full of songs with lyrics telling our national legacy: “I’m proud to be an American where at least I know I’m free, and I won’t forget the men who died, who gave that right to me.”  Most of us are able to depend on basic freedom as easily as we depend on the oxygen that fills our lungs to sing.  There is no doubt that we love freedom.  Let’s remember that this “land of the free” is also proud to be “the home of the brave.”  Let’s remember that we are citizens of a world where the fight to “let freedom ring” is far from finished.

Ape Rights and the Destruction of Universal Human Rights

“We hold these truths to be self evident,” Thomas Jefferson confidently claimed in the most important sentence in support human rights and freedom ever written, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Would Jefferson have ever included animals in his clarion assertion of man’s intrinsic right to liberty? The very idea would have been considered ridiculous. Yet today, powerful social forces are pushing for that very inclusion—beginning with great apes.

And now that once unthinkable idea is literally coming to pass. Spain is about to enact the Great Ape Project by which apes, chimpanzees, bonobos, and orangutans will be declared—along with human beings—to be members of the “community of equals.” Yes, by year’s end, Spanish law will almost surely accord the same rights to apes that Jefferson claimed were self evidently intrinsic to the human condition.

Apes, of course, are and ever will be utterly oblivious to the rights that they are about to receive. And indeed, normal animal welfare protection statutes could protect these animals from abuse.

So what is really going on? The apes are being used as the wrecking ball to demolish Judeo/Christianity as the reigning cultural value of society by obliterating its foundational premise that man is a creature of unique value and inestimable moral worth.

Make no mistake: Spain’s adoption of the GAP—only 15 years after its inception—is a very big deal. The moral and philosophical bases of Western society are teetering on the precipice. As the Spanish point man for the GAP in Spain acknowledged, the GAP will “break the species barrier.”. “We are just the point of the spear,” he told the Times of London. And that point is aimed at the heart of Judeo/Christianity, the intellectual foundation of human freedom.

Wesley J. Smith

David Batstone reveals the story of a new generation of 21st century abolitionists and their heroic campaign to put an end to human bondage.

In his accessible and inspiring book, Batstone carefully weaves the narratives of activists and those in bondage in a way that not only raises awareness of the modern–day slave trade, but also serves as a call to action.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/product-description/0061206717/ref=dp_proddesc_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books

President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation will be on display at the Reagan Library for four days in September.

President Lincoln issued the proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of the civil war. In it, Lincoln declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free."

For preservation purposes, this original document is only allowed to be on display for four days each calendar year. This is an extraordinary opportunity for the southern California community to view this national treasure, officials said.

Ventura County Star

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