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Author | Topic: PC Gone Too Far | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
bluegenes Member (Idle past 2477 days) Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined: |
NoNukes writes: If you prefer that the slave trade did happen, why don't you express that here? I prefer that it happened (although I'm accepting of it, not "glad" about it). Like my own ancestral slave history, I wouldn't have it any other way.
NoNukes writes: For the record, I would prefer that it not have happened. Even if you yourself have no ancestry from those particular slaves, that doesn't just mean that you've willed the descendants of those slaves who live around you out of existence, you have willed yourself out of existence too. None of which means we can't take down monuments. It just means that we should be clear that, in doing so, we are making the history of tomorrow (as with all our actions) not changing yesterday's, however despicable we might consider aspects of it to be. We're all stuck with our history, all 7 billion of us, whether we like it or not. It is our parent.
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ringo Member (Idle past 412 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Percy writes:
So it's to the ones who risked dying as well as the unlucky ones who actually died.
If the monument in question is still the one from the OP, the one at the University of Louisville, then it's also to all those who served in the Confederate armies. On one side it says, "Our Confederate Dead, 1861-1865," and on the other, "Tribute to the Rank and File of the Armies of the South."
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bluegenes Member (Idle past 2477 days) Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined: |
ringo writes: The monument in question is to dying in support of slavery. If there were monuments to writing a letter to the editor in support of slavery, your question would have some relevance. There are monuments to people who were leaders of the confederacy, and who owned many slaves, bought and sold them, and made speeches in favour of the institution. They are unequivocally supporters of slavery. Their monuments are relevant. Surely you're not going to exempt the southern ruling class from responsibility while blaming the masses?
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ringo Member (Idle past 412 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
bluegenes writes:
I don't know what point you're trying to make. I'm just pointing out the difference between the Washington Monument and the monument in the OP.
Surely you're not going to exempt the southern ruling class from responsibility while blaming the masses?
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Percy Member Posts: 22392 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
ringo writes: So it's to the ones who risked dying as well as the unlucky ones who actually died. That's the way I interpret it, though I'd add that many were wounded, including wounds that left behind lifelong handicaps. You were saying that you're drawing a distinction between those who died for slavery and those who merely supported it, which I think would be all supporters of slavery who didn't die, whether combatant or politician or plantation owner or blacksmith or whatever. I understand the distinction but don't see how it fits into your position. You were also saying that you draw a distinction between monuments to individual people and those to entire groups of people, but there are so many examples of both for both the North and the South that I can't tell where you're going with this. --Percy
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bluegenes Member (Idle past 2477 days) Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined:
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ringo writes: I don't know what point you're trying to make. I'm just pointing out the difference between the Washington Monument and the monument in the OP. Try the Jefferson Davis obelisk, also in Kentucky, and definitely a confederacy monument. I agree that the Washington monument and monuments to Thomas Jefferson are different, but if support for slavery is considered the central ideological crime of those commemorated in Louisville, George and Tom can't escape the discussion, along with many other historical figures all around the world. We can point to Pharaohs, Roman Emperors, Chinese Emperors, Shah Jahan and his Taj, British Monarchs, Louis XVI, for whom Louisville was named, and many more as being supporters of slavery. If we start judging monuments built in the past by modern ideology, we could end up behaving a bit like iconoclastic religious fanatics. The past is like a foreign country. People did things differently there, and we can't actually change what they did. People waving confederate flags and putting them on government buildings right now is a different question. The guy mentioned in the O.P. who is campaigning for the removal of the 1895 monument thinks they are the same.
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Percy Member Posts: 22392 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Words of Lincoln from James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom:
quote: If Lincoln would not judge the South, how can we? This is from a debate with Stephen Douglas in 1854 - not the Lincoln/Douglas debates, which didn't take place until 1858. --Percy
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Rrhain Member Posts: 6351 From: San Diego, CA, USA Joined: |
Percy writes:
quote: Because we know better. Lincoln was not infallible. He was not god. Indeed, the South didn't invent slavery and its abolition was not going to be easy. But we still blame those who carried it out (and profited from it) because it is evil. And thus, we do not glorify those who would champion it and declare that their entire reason for existence is to perpetuate it. Because we know better. It seems we need to learn this lesson over and over again. We come to a point where we realize that something we used to do was monstrous and needs to stop...and then we pull up short and try to allow those who wish to continue to do so to save face, to allow for "differing opinions," to allow people to feel that they're not responsible rather than standing up for what's right and insisting that know, you're not allowed to do that anymore. Because we're supposed to know better.Rrhain Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time. Minds are like parachutes. Just because you've lost yours doesn't mean you can use mine.
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bluegenes Member (Idle past 2477 days) Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined: |
Rrhain writes: Lincoln was not infallible. He was not god. Indeed, the South didn't invent slavery and its abolition was not going to be easy. But we still blame those who carried it out (and profited from it) because it is evil. And thus, we do not glorify those who would champion it and declare that their entire reason for existence is to perpetuate it. The first three sentences are spot on. In the fourth, "we" presumably means "right thinking living humans" or something similar, and would make a group of people putting up a statue in 1895 into "they". How much and to what extent "we" are blaming people like Washington and Jefferson makes for interesting discussion. The last sentence would leave us free to glorify pretty much anyone, because it'll be hard to find people who are known to have declared "that their entire reason for existence is to perpetuate it" [slavery]. I don't think there were many suicide bombers fighting for the Confederacy.
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NoNukes Inactive Member
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If Lincoln would not judge the South, how can we? This is from a debate with Stephen Douglas in 1854 - not the Lincoln/Douglas debates, which didn't take place until 1858. We are not politicians who might be seeking a vote or three. Isn't this speech the very definition of politically correct? Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions? Scott Adams
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
Even if you yourself have no ancestry from those particular slaves, that doesn't just mean that you've willed the descendants of those slaves who live around you out of existence, you have willed yourself out of existence too. Except that I don't have super powers? And if I did, I might be able to come up with something better than what I erased. Perhaps a world with a few less murdered Jews, and few less folks who arrived in America chained into the bottom of a boat. Maybe manifest destiny plays out a bit differently too. There are no such things as time machines. Your argument about willing myself from existence is from science fiction, but only from those butterfly effect type stories where nothing good ever happens from tiny amounts of human meddling. I just don't see the relevance to the current discussion. Jefferson Davis is an essential element of our current history, as ar Benedict Arnold and Al Capone. So let's carve statues of all of those folk and put them into the town square because they are someone's heroes? No, not buying that.
None of which means we can't take down monuments. It just means that we should be clear that, in doing so, we are making the history of tomorrow (as with all our actions) not changing yesterday's, however despicable we might consider aspects of it to be. Of course! Couldn't agree more with the sentiments expressed above. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions? Scott Adams
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
You are not responding to a suggestion anyone made. The actual suggestion was that you set your emotionalism aside. What you call emotionalism, I call objectivity. There is nothing particular objective about pretending that slavery was not evil, or that the judgment of folks from the time period about slavers is not relevant, or that our own judgments are similarly wrong.
The key question is why the South embraced and defended slavery so vehemently. That's not the key question. It is a question, and one on whose answer I doubt any of us would find much reason to debate. The difficulty is your insistence that those reasons do not reflect badly on the South or that they would of necessity moderate an objective opinion about either the institution, or Jefferson Davis. I don't believe that to be the case. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions? Scott Adams
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Percy Member Posts: 22392 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Rrhain writes: quote: Because we know better. Isn't this "we" really just you and NoNukes? In any case, no matter your numbers, you have to *show* you know better, not just declare it so.
Lincoln was not infallible. He was not god. No one claimed he was, least of all him. But during the nation's most difficult time neither did his words resonate with hate.
But we still blame those who carried it out (and profited from it) because it is evil. Yes, I know, so both you and NoNukes say. But when asked for objective analysis there are only sputterings of how horrible slavery was and so also its defenders. As one Civil War webpage says:
quote: That outlines precisely the problem we're experiencing here, the unwillingness by one side to go beyond kneejerk emotional judgments. The defense so far offered ("So what's wrong with that?") is dismaying.
And thus, we do not glorify those who would champion it and declare that their entire reason for existence is to perpetuate it. No one in this thread has argued that we should "glorify" (or "celebrate" in NoNuke-ese) Southerners for embracing, defending and perpetuating slavery. What we're seeking is understanding. Why did Southerners behave the way they did? As Lincoln said, "They are just what we would be in their situation." --Percy
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
That outlines precisely the problem we're experiencing here, the unwillingness by one side to go beyond kneejerk emotional judgments. The defense so far offered ("So what's wrong with that?") is dismaying. That's not what is being asked here or debated here. What is instead being insisted on, and what is instead the subject of this particular thread is whether or not our judgments should affect whether we move monuments or not. Nobody is trying to tell you how to study history or to insist after having made judgments that you do not explore in detail the motivations for what those folk did. Perhaps in the midst of your complaining about being misquoted, you should also consider how you are representing the positions of others. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions? Scott Adams
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Percy Member Posts: 22392 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
NoNukes writes: What you call emotionalism, I call objectivity. Oh, bravo, emotionalism masquerading as objectivity. Good show.
There is nothing particular objective about pretending that slavery was not evil,... You're mischaracterizing my views again, a choice constantly forced on you by the lack of objective support for your position. Rejection of "NoNuke" terminology does not equate to lack of recognition of slavery's moral wrongness.
...or that the judgment of folks from the time period about slavers is not relevant,... I never said that, either. Will you ever make it possible for our dialogues not to force me into constant declarations of, "No, I never said that"? When you have no good answer then remain silent - don't invent fantasies.
The key question is why the South embraced and defended slavery so vehemently. That's not the key question. For *this* discussion? Most certainly it is a key question.
It is a question, and one on whose answer I doubt any of us would find much reason to debate. I can see why *you* wouldn't have much reason to discuss this question, given that your views will suffer at the hands of information and analysis.
The difficulty is your insistence that those reasons do not reflect badly on the South... I never said this, either. What I *would* say is that looking at the Civil War in terms of good and evil is beyond simplistic into the adolescent. --Percy
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