The very word "slave" comes, I believe, from "Slav" since to the Romans and the Germans, Slavs were slaves by nature.

It's not even just slavery. The German Nazis killed hosts of Jews, Poles, Russians, Gypsies, and others. Did they do it because they were blood-thirsty, ravening beasts? Not to hear them tel it.

They were purifying the race and getting rid of disgusting sub-men for the benefit of true humanity. I'm sure they thoroughly expected the gratitude of al decent people for their noble deeds.

And we Americans as well, there is a story that the Turkish sultan, Abdul Hamid II, a bloody and villainous tyrant, visited the United States once and was tackled over the matter of the Armenian massacres.

In response, he looked about him calmly and said, "Where are your Indians" Yes, indeed, we wiped them out. It was their land but we didn't enslave them; we killed them. We kil ed them in defiance of treaties, we kil ed them when they tried to assert their legal rights under those treaties, and we killed them when they submitted and did not defend themselves. And we had no qualms about it. They were "savages"

and we were doing God's work by ridding the Earth of them.

There is a (possibly apocryphal) story that after Custer's Last Stand (the Massacre at Little Big Horn, it's only a massacre when white men get kil ed) a Comanche chief was introduced to General Sheridan (a Northern hero of the Civil War). The Comanche said, "Me Tach-a-way. Me good Indian.

" To this General Sheridan is reported to have replied, "The only good Indians I ever saw were dead.", A very nice genocidal remark.