PC Gone Too Far

Of course Europeans could have made "headway" in North America without slavery. It would just be a different place with different people. Not "likely", definitely. !!!!???? Unlike you, I'd always be in favour of the reality that includes me and the other current 7 billion.

Perhaps you ought to find out what they both actually are before discussing them in public.

All forms of existence are the opposite of non-existence. Enslavement and murder are not the same things, and slavery and genocide are far from being the same things.Still, it's interesting that you would perceive people who owned lots of slaves as being the equivalent of mass killers. As you're not advocating the removal of any monuments to people like Washington, Jefferson and Jefferson Davis, and you're not advocating the removal of the Louisville monument, it seems as though you don't perceive the ideology or actions of people being commemorated as a reason for you yourself to advocate the removal of any monuments. Something, then, that you wouldn't advocate the removal of, as you see it as akin to the Louisville monument and you are not advocating the removal of that.

I'd love to have been at the seance when you verified that! But "can be worse" doesn't mean that it's similar or the same. The first option isn't the definition of slavery, and sounds far more like the kind of act that can happen in warfare and is committed by conquerors. It would probably be better used in an argument against memorials to the winning soldiers in the civil war, not the losers.Surely you're not suggesting that Washington and Jefferson did such things to their slaves? Me, because I'm against iconoclasm when applied to anything that could be regarded as "historical".There's no way that I would approve of the beliefs of the Pharaohs, but I've enjoyed the remains of their culture and many others that I certainly wouldn't want to see revived. Someone further up the thread mentioned a monument to Attila the Hun in Hungary. Great, why not? We have statues to Henry VIII, and his murderous habits went way beyond merely decapitating a couple of wives.So, y'all should keep the Washington monument. We have one to the old slave owning traitor in Trafalgar Square, so if you find a George III statue, preserve it!And I don't think Bibles should be burned because the Bible supports slavery, and was the basis of the South's moral argument.Edited by bluegenes, : speling

I did. Slavery and genocide are far from being the same things, and certainly not similar. Domesticating wildfoul and exploiting them is in no way similar to wiping out the Dodo.Feel free to make a substantive argument to the contrary.At the time of the civil war, slaves in the United States far outnumbered the sum of those transported into the region from Africa between 1620 and 1825. The ratio may have been about 10:1. Good. The fact that you've been bending over backwards to portray the subjects of the Louisville monument in the worst possible light could be misleading to some, though, so I'm glad we've clarified that point.

Did you do either before making your claim? Had those you asked experienced death? And how would asking anyone change the fact that existence is the opposite of non-existence? It could do, and doing so could be misleading. You're the one making up your story of 19th century southerners. Claiming that slavery is similar to genocide is certainly not "straight".

You described a slave having a traumatic experience. Non slaves could have similar experiences, but corpses can't. Logic (the point about existence and its opposite) and reasoning from evidence. You can readily observe that slavery did not have the same or similar effects on the African American population that genocide would have had. Existing as a slave or anything else isn't similar to not existing at all.

Plenty of mistakes in your post, but that's not one of them. Well, that's one thing we agree on. Surely you can also agree that when you're a slave you're not dead, and when you're dead, you're not a slave. A terrible experience like having your family murdered in front of you isn't what's normally meant by the phrase "near death experience". No (to the second question). I'm saying that the state of being a slave and the state of being a non-slave are far more similar to each other than they are to not being at all. It's hard to tell whether that was an attempt to make the case for slavery and genocide being similar, or for them being very different.If someone wanted to point to things that are similar to the chattel slavery being discussed on this thread, then convict labour, bonded labour and workhouse labour are examples of reasonable suggestions. Genocide isn't. Have you been drinking?

Having a child forcibly removed (your example) isn't something slaves necessarily experience, and can certainly happen to non-slaves. I pointed out that: You don't appear to have grasped the point, but genocide is characterised by a marked reduction in the population of the group concerned, not by a marked increase.Slavery is certainly not similar to genocide. It was you who claimed that slavery was similar to genocide. Don't blame it on others who aren't known to have made the claim. You're wriggling around all over the place. If you mean by "living people" at least one (yourself) then I'll take your word for it. If you mean people living in slave systems in general, or in the American one in particular, then you seem to be implying that the "people involved" would perceive slavery as similar to existence in an afterlife. That's very different from claiming that slavery is similar to genocide.It's also wrong. If you read accounts of slavery by people who were actually slaves, there's no evidence for that at all. In fact, most of the American slaves certainly were religious, and the optimists among them would be looking forward to an afterlife that was radically different from the state of slavery.You've messed up that attempt to justify your "slavery is similar to genocide" line big time.Why not just admit that you were wrong?

That doesn't contradict what I said, and the abduction of the children of non-slaves isn't only in custody issues. In some areas of the world, it was a common source of slaves (the Ottoman Empire was one). It is also done for adoption, now illegally but not always so, and for forced marriage, as well as the rare cases of rape/murder, which are probably the most harrowing.Most of the accounts of individual American slaves that I've read do not include they themselves being sold away from their parents or having their own children sold away or being raped or being regularly or severely punished, although all those things were far more likely than they were for non-slaves. Even in one particular slave system in one country, there is not a standard experience, let alone for slavery as a whole throughout history. There are different people with different lives, not non-people. If you're using a term in a way that differs from the standard dictionary definition, you should have made it clear. The phrase "cultural genocide" is used, but I think "culturecide" (still rare) would be much better.There are forms slavery that don't involve significant loss of culture, both when it happens within ethnic groups and between different ones. Sometimes a conquered culture exists as a slave group amongst the conquerors with cultural independence (Hebrews in Egypt, for example).Culturecide certainly wasn't the motive for transatlantic slavery, but considerable rapid cultural change was inevitable, and some of it (conversion to Christianity for example) would certainly have been pressed or forced at times. The slaves ended up as English speaking Christians, but lots that related to western Africa remained, and some does today. The slaves evolved a interesting and vital culture which ended up being very influential in America and the world. We wouldn't be the same without them! You couldn't be more wrong. Even culturecide is not an inevitable part of it. My Saxon ancestors enslaved each other happily without culturecide!Actually, you've said that slavery is similar to genocide earlier in the thread, so it's interesting to see that it has now become genocide. Why don't you write to the dictionaries and tell them they should be treating the words as synonyms instead of something completely different, as they currently do? I pointed out that your claim is very different. The [unsupported] claim that other people perceived a similarity between their lives and an afterlife is not the same as the claim that slavery is actually similar to genocide, or that you think so.As for your question, I've no idea what effect being dispatched to an afterlife would have on a society. Perhaps you should ask an expert, like Faith. No. You were claiming that their lives were like death, which no life is, and now you seem to be claiming that they perceived their lives as being like Hell, a claim about the perception of others that you haven't supported.As I pointed out above, there's no standard slave experience, and the southern slaves were many individuals with many different life stories, and many different perceptions of their variable circumstances.Edited by bluegenes, : tpyos

Which is nothing to do with my point. Your imagining that all the slaves perceived their lives as slaves to be like death or like hell assumes an imaginary group of people who all had the same terrible experiences. It doesn't fit the varied personal accounts that real slaves actually gave of their lives.Why are you making things up about other people's perceptions? As you like. A group with a ten fold increase in population during the period, much faster growth than the world average, and who were certainly not the victims of genocide. A group that you seem to want to think were culture-less zombies. Ah yes. "Give me liberty or give me death", by Patrick Henry, a famous hypocritical owner of slaves. Firstly, neither of those quotes mean what you seem to think. Someone stating a preference for death over non-freedom certainly is distinguishing the one from the other. Secondly, I doubt if Patrick Henry perceived his slaves to be dead or in an afterlife. Thirdly, someone else making something up doesn't give it any more authority than you doing so. You aren't the first person to claim that slavery is genocide, either, just as our pet young earth creationists on this board weren't the first YECs.

No it isn't. Because some sailors drown doesn't mean that sailing is the same or similar to drowning. I don't insist that "something must apply to all slaves to be bad." Something must apply to all slaves to be part of the definition of slavery. Chattel slavery is about owning people and exploiting them for profit, not about destroying them. Genocide is the destruction of a population with intent. What sentiment? Henry is distinguishing liberty (from the British), non-liberty (British rule) and death, stating his preference for the first and third over the second. He is not saying what you want him to be (that life under British rule was death-like). If you want to push the idea that life under British rule for the wealthy slave owning Patrick Henry was similar to death and therefore similar to your view of life as a slave, go ahead. Give us all a good laugh. You are making Henry into one of your fantasy zombie slaves, or similar!Of course you can compare things that aren't similar. You can compare the state of slavery to the state of freedom. If your point is that slavery is similar to genocide because slavery is "like death", then a death-like experience should be an inevitable part of slavery.Have you grasped the point that the southern slaves were many different people with many different experiences? They were not the uniform cultureless zombies that you seem to want them to have been. Meaning "slavery is genocide" is "fairly widespread"? Young earth Christianity is fairly widespread. I'm not sure how many people are ignorant enough to believe that slavery is genocide, and whether it would be regarded as a widespread belief. Why do I object to your claim of slavery and genocide being the same? Or why do I object to your earlier one that they are similar (which contradicts the later one)?The ownership and economic exploitation of individuals or a group isn't the same as the deliberate destruction of a group. The motives aren't the same, and the results aren't either.

Intent is certainly relevant. Genocide requires intent, and you're claiming that slavery is genocide.Slavery can destroy and create cultures, but doesn't necessarily do either. Comparing apples to oranges doesn't mean they are the same. Choosing one over the other recognises the difference. But I'm amused that you see Patrick Henry as a "slave". That's not what Henry was saying, but it doesn't matter. So, you see Patrick Henry's situation under the British as similar to death, and slavery as similar to death. Therefore, you must see slavery as being similar to being a wealthy slave owner under British rule.That doesn't sound too bad! Slavery doesn't require the forcible removal of a people's identity, and the intent is central to the concept of genocide.Edited by bluegenes, : addition

You seemed to establish it. You expressed the desire to actually change history, which would mean the eradication of modern populations whose existence depends on it.Of course, if you genuinely didn't realise what the effect would be, then you wouldn't have been expressing genocidal desires.I may have made the mistake of assuming that the fact that changing history would eliminate the present population would be obvious to anyone.Looking at something in history, describing it as bad, and declaring that we shouldn't do such things again is absolutely fine. We all do it. But actually changing the history that has produced us is something we cannot do and shouldn't want to do.

Would you like to give me a list of historical examples in which slavery destroyed "a race of folks"? But existing people who have been conceived would be destroyed if you got hold of a time machine, wouldn't they? So, if you now realise that, and still want to alter history, it would be reasonable to say that you have genocidal desires (and suicidal desires)!