At best, the rule of law is amoral; at worst it is immoral, destructive of the human psyche. The framers of the Constitution got around the problem by exempting natural persons from the law and, to be consistent with social practice, categorizing youths, women and captives not as persons, but as property, which is to be protected and regulated by the state. The result is that no natural male person is under the law, but women and children are.
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So, the U.S.Constitution was initially friendly to commerce. Why? because trade was relied on to bring in the money that was controlled by foreign banks. The federal corporation took possession of the land and natural resources that had been stolen (or bought for a pittance) from the natives and then proceeded to sell it or give it away (to the railroads) to make it productive of money. Western expansion was financed with the gold Spain and Portugal had stolen from the Americas and handed over to the Dutch for “safe keeping.” The Dutch invented the promisory note that was easier to pass around than gold. Also, the soft metals turned out easy to shave and reduce the quantity of metal in the coin.
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Listened to an Al Franken podcast with Dahlia Lithwick and got introduced to Pauli Murray, an early civil eights activist. The Wikipedia entry focuses quite extensively on Murray’s apparent gender confusion. She was successful in getting gender included in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 but, as I would call typical, her role as a woman is downplayed in favor of her race and ambiguous gender identity. That the resistance to equality for women has been a constant motivator for half a century is still being ignored. Would we have to agitate for supremacy to get equality or, at least, free ourselves of repression?
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For at least two hundred years, U.S. commercial interests enjoyed a special relationship with federal and state governmental entities. After all, the colonization of the Americas was primarily a commercial enterprise–taking free goods to market for a profit. Some would call that thievery. But, whatever.
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It has occurred to me and I am fairly convinced that the overt antagonism towards brown/black/foreign people is a cover for the real issue, antagonism towards female authority. Given that Christianity, Islam and Protestantism and other “improved variants of monotheistic religions are all patriarchal, I was led to wonder whether about the attitude of Judaism towards woen.
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Has anybody considered what a dangerous concept this is, given that laws are not only man-made but can be changed in a matter of seconds? Sen. Cruz tried it on the floor of the Senate recently and was only deterred by another Senator objecting. Who crafted those ridiculous internal operational rules? Never mind that slavery was/is entirely legal.

How do we define slavery? Is it involuntary servitude (labor) or a person being owned?

I am to the point where showering and washing my hair and cooking dinner is enough productivity for one day. Maybe tomorrow I will run the vacuum for an hour.

The U.S. legal system’s fixation on property rights and ownership, as opposed to personal or human rights, can be identified as a cause of the informal elevation of personalities to prominence. However, the emphasis on ownership can prove a disadvantage for the simple reason that it requires external validation. That is, unlike personal attributes or talents (natural properties), which are obvious and observable, a right to material property depends on external assent and recognition. In other words, a slave, be it male or female, is not recognized as such, unless socially certified.

I suppose that is what makes slavery a societal and, in the case of the U.S., an institutional sin. Never mind that it is merely an extension of categorizing progeny as chattel.

The ideologues are in favor of privilege for the chief executive or “commander in chief,” as a shield for subordinates. They do not consider it as serving to protect any particular person. In other words, executive privilege goes with the job, not the person. That idealists are impersonal or even immoral is difficult to understand.

If this interpretation is correct, then poor Donald was particularly unsuited to the job he got.