PC Gone Too Far

Anybody who has "slave-like experiences" is effectively a slave. No such evidence has been presented here. And no such evidence is possible unless you can rewind history and play it again with different parameters. (Now that would be a great ride at your Historyland.) You're conflating death with "non-existence", which is just your personal philosophical slant. The people involved, both slave and "non slave", most likely believed in life after death, so "non-existence" has no relevance.We are not talking about what death actually "is" at all. We can only talk about how living people perceive death. I maintain that living people perceive death and slavery as very similar.

On the contrary, we don't seem to be learning even those simple lessons. Here in Canada we're only just beginning to learn that our paternalistic treatment of aboriginal treatment was a form of genocide. In the US you haven't learned yet what the long-term costs of slavery and/or segregation and/or racism really are.Don't look for complex lessons before you learn the simple ones.

Did you mean to distinguish that statement a little Ringo ? I perceive death as an inevitable and natural process that often brings a welcome end to a life of increasing pain and suffering due to old age and disease. I'm not exactly looking forward to death, but I don't hope it will never happen.On the other hand, slavery is not inevitable, is far from natural, and I fervently hope never to suffer from it (as well as hoping that we can eradicate its existence).

I perceive death as an end to the good things in life: watching children and grandchildren grow up, walking in the park, having a beer if I feel like it, etc.I perceive slavery as the lack of those same good things: not being able to watch my children grow up because they've been sold, never knowing if I have grandchildren at all, not being able to move an inch without Massah's permission or do anything just because I feel like doing it.I bet you do too. I think those perceptions are pretty universal. You have to go through some pretty wild contortions to miss the similarity.

Yes, it's an end to the good things, but an end to the bad things too. I've seen relatives suffer through dreadful pain and heartache before they passed away, and death isn't an unwelcome end to that.And it's not an end we're around to regret either.It's natural, a part of human existence and is universal. These are features I don't see when I consider slavery.

Which is why I said SIMILAR, not f**king IDENTICAL.We have physician-assisted death legislation pending in Canada for cases such as you describe. Let me know when people start clamouring for physician-assisted slavery.

Ok, touched a nerve there, which was not my intention. My apologies.I'm not invested enough in the issue to get anyone het up over this, so I'll not come back on it.

You should visit Monticello...

So can you admit that you, yourself, are evil? And that everybody today is evil?You're certainly doing things today that future generations will consider evil.Evil is as evil does, you're doing evil things today, therefore you are evil. And so is everybody else.When everyone is evil, it really looses its utility.

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?

Yes, you were confused. Here it is again, there's no ambiguity, you thought the passage you quoted was saying that Lincoln compared Davis to "the radicals": I already backed up my argument, time to back up yours, and not with diversions into how plans for reconstruction revealed Lincoln's true thinking. Lincoln spoke clearly and plainly and more than once on human character.I cited Lincoln because his views align with my own and he said it better. I thought the silliness of casting accusations of evil at entire cultures would quickly become self-evident, but that doesn't seem to be the case, and now it's gotten to the point were even honest misreadings are denied.--Percy

Not "complex" but profound. The lessons of history are not a bunch of simple "Don't do this's" and "Don't do that's" and "Don't be evil". They're embedded in human character and conduct, virtue and vice.--Percy

After being challenged on that point a couple of times, it ought to be obvious that your point is not self evident, and requires some support. Citing Lincoln simply resulted in the raising of additional arguments, which you cannot be bothered to address.I cited references that supports a position that Lincoln's policy of non-judgment and leniency lead to attempts to reinstall slavery and to continue to treat their former slaves as much like slaves as the thirteenth amendment would allow. Eventually it became required to force a couple of more constitutional amendments down the South's throat and to put federal troops in each of the Southern states just to protect the new citizens.I also cited the politics of the time in an attempt to show what Lincoln's motivation of the time might have been. All points, provided with support, which you continue to deny without any argument. All you've done here is cite Lincoln and then leave rebuttals unanswered. Ah, yes that was a mis statement on my part. However, that particular note was not the main thrust of my argument, was it? As I indicated, the policy of leniency was begun by Lincoln, and continued through the Johnson administration, and a cited a couple of passages linking the two administrations.But you are correct, I did attribute a Johnson remark to Lincoln. Does that address the rest of my argument. No. That is not anyone's argument. Your claim, which you seem here to be backing away from slightly, was that slavery was a distraction from an understanding of the causes of the civil war. Wrong. Slavery is just fine for divining the causes and outlining the fundamental disagreements. What slavery does not work so well for is justifying a benign view of the South or of its most fervent champions of slavery and secession. No, slavery is not a distraction from divining the fundamental cause of the Civil War. The refusal to give up slavery was the fundamental reason that areas of disagreement became intractable. And the failure to resolved those problems led directly to the civil war.Yeah, I understand that the cotton had to be picked, the houses needed cleaning, the children needed nannies, and the black woman needed raping, and that attempted runaways and disobedient men required beating/maiming to prevent recalcitrance, and that it was vital that the children be enslaved and separated from their families in order to protect the Southern industry and genteel way of life. But in my mind, none of those 'requirements' justify or excuse what was done to folks by the slavery. So yeah, morally bankrupt, evil, or despicable seems to apply just fine.Not saying being evil was the cause, but the South's running an economy relying on enslaving and mistreating folks certainly was the cause, and plenty of folks of that era, in both the North and the South recognized that fact. Parsing out that difference does not change what I think of Davis in any way. And my opinion is completely justified objectively and factually.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

That conveys less than a bare link. What's your point?

Cat's Eye writes: or "could consider evil".Reading lately that stands of trees communicate through their interconnected root structures, one might allow for the possibility of sentience. In fact I have read stories in Analog magazine of sentient trees.====> Therefore cutting down trees could be evil.Preposterous, some might say??? I think this gets at what Percy is arguing - the splitting of objective history from subjective history...?Yes, slavery is evil, but in order to understand how the Confederacy came into being, the evilness is a subjective distraction.Ivory hunting
Dolphin killing
Chimpanzee experiments
and on and on....The other direction is also pertinent. The LGBTQ movement is trying to get today's culture to remove the historical "evilness". So what used to be evil is no longer so.