So I was thinking about the story of the slavery of the Jews in Exodus, and how that might be reinterpreted in a modern context.
The first thing that came to mind (and this might be why we should usually disregard the first things that come to mind) was the issue of illegal immigrants in America.
Here we are, building our vast American enterprise with what is essentially slave labor.
But then I gave it a second thought.
There are some problems with the analogy: illegal immigrants choose to stay with the Egyptian fleshpots rather than leave. The Egyptians don't get a bad rap in the Bible for trying to escort the Hebrews back to their homeland: they get in trouble for exterminating the Jewish infants and then denying the survivors free exit.
The modern problem is that we in America have a population of people that are actually sneaking into the country, begging to be enslaved because they can evidently make more money as a modern slaves in America than they can as free persons in the desert of Mexico.
It actually reminds me of another major text in Western Lit: More's Utopia, where the Utopians' neighbors would rather be slaves in Utopia than live in their homelands.
It's funny how half the world seems to want to blow us up because they think we treat them unfairly, and the other half of the world is clamoring to get in the U.S. because they think that our brand of unfair treatment is better than anything they would get in their native country.
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