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Author | Topic: PC Gone Too Far | |||||||||||||||||||
Percy Member Posts: 22508 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
NoNukes writes: and you prefer that Maryland is saddled with an almost un-singable anthem to remind you of something that you cannot seem to articulate.
What again is the history behind the adoption of the Maryland State Song? What history is it that you wish to preserve? Do you have any idea of the circumstances behind the adoption of the song in 1939-1940. Nope. You like the fact that it is the Maryland state song because otherwise you would not have heard of the song. Why are you quoting yourself and then debating with it? No, I don't know the history "behind the adoption of the song in 1939-1940." That might have been why I said, "My question about what was going on in Maryland in 1939 wasn't rhetorical - I'd really like to know."
I didn't say that - you made it up and put quotes around it. You are correct. It is my translation of the words that you did say. Namely that if a majority of folks wanted to change the song, that you would hope that a compromise would be reached with the minority whose claims I presume you are saying have legitimacy. However for a minority requesting to change the song, nothing but opposition as a matter of principle is to be the order of the day. You make no mention of any 'tyranny of the majority' in such a case. Instead you call their position PC. Naturally. I think my translation was apt. I'll note that in the actual post, I did include your words in a quote box above my translation. Your translation is crap, as usual. The only arguments you can seem to find answers for are ones you make up yourself. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22508 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
ringo writes: If any slave perceived slavery as akin to death, my point is valid. Actually, it's validity is proportional to the number of slaves for whom it was true.
Your insistence that something must apply to all slaves to be bad is not relevant. That's not what Bluegenes is saying. He's saying that the details of slavery and of the experience of slaves was and is (the practice still exists) highly variable, and that the judgment of "all evil everywhere throughout time" is far too overgeneralized and unnuanced.
Stop being so literal and try to understand that genocide is about destroying A people, not just destroying people. No - genocide is about killing people. Destroying a culture while letting the people live is different, such as suppressing religion in the former USSR. What the Nazis did to the Jews was genocide. You're misusing the term. You could instead use the phrase "cultural genocide." But I don't think cultural genocide is accurate historically. Taking slaves from Africa is not cultural genocide, because the culture still exists in Africa. And for slaves born in America, that culture grew and endured for a long time. If anything wiped out a culture, two cultures in fact, it was the Civil War and emancipation.
I'm just establishing that it's a fairly widespread concept. The concept of slavery as akin to death, or indeed any undesirable situation as being akin to death, is familiar and widely understood. Bluegene's point is that the equivalence isn't widely accepted in practice, while I think the idea that one must struggle against slavery is. Your slogans aren't suggesting an actual equivalence. They're dramatizing the seriousness of threats to liberty or freedom. --Percy
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1475 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Thank you for your compliment on my post.
It does sometimes seem like you're judging people. I can't point to any recent examples because we haven't been in discussion together anytime recently, but for example I do recall times that you seemed to be judging some people as not real Christians. I can't say I've NEVER judged anyone for personal sins and moral failures but I am so allergic to it I'd be very surprised to discover I'd done it. Judging that someone is or is not a Christian isn't a moral judgment, it's an objective judgment of fact. People often think they are Christians just because they grew up in a Christian society or go to church, but the test is their understanding of and adherence to the main Biblical doctrines and especially if they can avow that they are born again. It's not about their being good or bad people, it's about their standing on the historical Christian doctrines. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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1.61803 Member (Idle past 1535 days) Posts: 2928 From: Lone Star State USA Joined: |
quote:Fixed. Edited by 1.61803, : No reason given."You were not there for the beginning. You will not be there for the end. Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative" William S. Burroughs
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Percy Member Posts: 22508 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
NoNuke writes: What I'm saying here is that I believe we should include the views held by the people of antebellum America as part of critical analysis, the opposite of what you accused me of.
When I suggested that your view left out folks like Northerners and the slaves, your response was that those folks were in the same time but not in the same place. It is difficult to reconcile that response with your current insistence that you say you want to include everyone. You're confusing different arguments. I think your subconscious, slave to your need that there be no valid arguments against your position, must cause you to take very simple arguments and force them into confabulations that make no sense but are easy to rebut. You claimed Southerners should have known better because Northerners knew better, but most Southerners never came in contact with Northerners, and vice-versa. Naturally history should include everything that can be known of both Northern and Southern culture.
Perhaps the difference is just that after looking at all views, we arrive at a different conclusion. If so that is for good reason. That reason being that the South's excuses don't amount to a justification, but simply an explanation of why the embraced slavery. Those justifications amount to a pretext. Why do you feel the need to pass judgment on the peoples of history? Your choice of words ("excuses" and "pretexts") makes clear your assumption that the South knew better and was just inventing justifications for the "evil" they knew they were doing. You're failing, over and over again, to consider the actual reality that they truly believed in their cause. They were not inventing excuses and pretexts but were, just like you, products of their time and place in history.
What I stated was my impression of your view it was not a quote of anything you've said. It is a summary of what your statements convey. I reach that summary based on your failure to include any opinion in your analysis that is not sourced from southern pro-slavery sentiment. You're becoming despicable. I have no "pro-slavery sentiment", Southern or otherwise. How dare you.
Modern moral judgments made by us upon the peoples of history: not relevant or useful That of course is an opinion we don't share. Those judgments are our conclusions after our analysis of history. Well, finally, an accurate statement. Yes, obvoiusly we don't share this opinion. You have yet to give any justification for imposing contemporary moral judgments on the critical analysis of history. You say you've read a lot about the Civil War - whose examples are you following in your approach? It's clear why you're so amped up to do this. You think that moral deficiencies justify your negative treatment of Southerners.
Moral judgments held by the peoples of history: very relevant and useful But apparently, those judgments reached in opposition to slavery count for naught or something close to that. You've been expressly dismissive of Northern and even Southern abolitionist opinions while silently dismissive of the effects of slavery on the slaves. So I'd like to see your work here. I want to see where you weigh anything other than what slaveholders and their sympathizers expressed. Because I have not seen you mention anything else other than in passing. No, I have not been dismissive. I know the best defense is an offense, but you might at least try saying something true. The experience of most Southerners (and that experience would grow stronger the more South of the Mason-Dixon line) was that criticisms of slavery did not stand up to scrutiny. The arguments against seemed false and spurious and uninformed. This is not dismissive of abolitionists or slaves or anyone. It is the reality of what happens for any position in the vast majority. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22508 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
The important concept was "simple", not "don't". You're playing terminology games again. If you're sincerely interested in discussion, here's my answer again:
That imposing your will upon another people is extremely difficult and often counterproductive. Despite our experiences in Central America and the Caribbean nations and Cuba (there's a reason "gringo" is an epithet) and Korea and Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan, we haven't learned the lesson yet. The WWI and WWII experiences were great victories (both militarily and, especially for WWII, morally), but with the unfortunate consequence of providing examples where interference and imposition of our ways had positive consequences. --Percy
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1475 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Number Man altering my statement writes: It's not about their being good or bad people, it's about their standing on the historical Protestant doctrines according to Protestant zealots. Historical doctrines are historical doctrines, that too is an objective assessment. However, I don't want the point to be missed that any such judgment is not a MORAL judgment of personal sins and moral failures, it IS an objective factual judgment whether you agree with it or not.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Percy writes:
It isn't the same thing. We don't take people to court for doing good deeds either. Judgement is for the evil.
"In other words, nobody should be judged as good for doing good deeds. Their good deeds should only be compared with the good deeds of the other people around them." Does that sound like history to you? Percy writes:
On the contrary, one of the main reasons - maybe the most important reason for remembering history - is so that we don't make the same mistakes over and over and over again. How can we avoid making the same mistakes if we don't judge the good and evil of the outcome?
It makes no sense to impose moral judgments of good and evil on history. Percy writes:
Of course. They learn from history - and the only way to learn from history is by judging the good or evil of the outcome. The outcome of slavery is evil, no matter how you slice it. People's sense of good and evil, of right and wrong, are influenced by daily experience, starting at birth and continuing all the way through childhood into adulthood. Those growing up and living in a place reflect the opinions and attitudes native to that place. That's what happens to people everywhere, throughout all times and places of history. The only value of objectivity in history is in determining what happened. The only way to prevent it from happening again is by judging the results according to our standards, applying them to our situation. The raw facts of history can be determined objectively but the lessons of history must be learned subjectively.
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Percy Member Posts: 22508 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
NoNukes writes: In fact, I have encountered far more sympathetic opinions regarding slavery than are expressed here. No one in this thread is expressing sympathetic opinions of slavery. Bluegenes is trying to place slavery in a broader perspective, while me and Cat Sci are arguing for objectivity in historical analysis.
If the current discussion is supposed to be a judgment free analysis, the discussion from some folks seems particularly concentrated on only a particular view of slavery. But perhaps you can point to some meaningful discussion provided by yourself or Percy that would provide a balanced view? I don't seem to see much of that. I do see some dismissals where I've raised the issue, but essentially no balanced discussion from you or Percy. The misrepresentations continue. It's not supposed to be a "judgment free analysis" but an objective critical analysis. That includes not letting your personal biases and opinions influence that analysis. Another misrepresentation is seen in the two main views of slavery in this thread:
Where we truly differ isn't on slavery but on your insistence that antebellum Southerns were evil, and that that justifies lording it over people who cherish that heritage.
Of course, having already formed my impression, I might reasonably be considered biased. So please provide a pointer or two to some balanced discussion. Let's focus on this thread. How about some accurate discussion here in the form of replying to things actually said. --Percy
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Percy writes:
Don't be so quick with your "we". We don't all condone either capital punishment or war. More and more people are recognizing that capital punishment is evil, just as more and more people realized at one time that slavery is evil. The same goes for war.
... we condone the taking of human life under some circumstances and refuse to call it murder. Capital punishment is one example, war is another. Percy writes:
Ditto.
Self defense is another example of the accepted taking of a human life. Percy writes:
We know that people are capable of evil. It's true that some people would behave evilly in the same circumstances. It's also true that some didn't. If nobody had thought slavery was evil, do you really think it would have been abolished?
What we can say with absolute confidence is that the South was people like people anywhere, and we can try to understand how people would behave when faced with their circumstances.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Percy writes:
You're letting "nuance" get in the way of empathy.
That's not what Bluegenes is saying. He's saying that the details of slavery and of the experience of slaves was and is (the practice still exists) highly variable, and that the judgment of "all evil everywhere throughout time" is far too overgeneralized and unnuanced. Percy writes: No - genocide is about killing people.quote:Hmm. Doesn't mention killing at all. Percy writes:
The African culture was destroyed among those who were forced to come to America. People are naturally social so a new culture naturally developed. That doesn't preclude the destruction of the old one. Taking slaves from Africa is not cultural genocide, because the culture still exists in Africa. And for slaves born in America, that culture grew and endured for a long time. An analgous destruction of culture was forced on aboriginal people in Canada and, as confirmed by Rrhain, in Australia and the US. Yes, those aboriginal people still have A culture but they don't have THEIR culture.
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Percy Member Posts: 22508 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
NoNukes writes: I'll note that even after the correction, you don't have any response to my point. Except that you didn't have a point and I did respond. I've been saying that the nature of Southerners was no different from anyone else, and I brought Lincoln into the discussion because he said it better. You dismissed it as campaign rhetoric, and then you tried to divert discussion onto "Lincoln leniency". Discussion of the actual point I was making you haven't tried at all.
And seriously, Percy, you make errors of your own. If you make a correction, at least when I can tell that you've actually dropped some point, I consider that to end the matter. Is that an unreasonable policy on my part? Of course I make mistakes - we all do. I didn't let it go because it was generally reflective of two things:
I didn't say it did. What I did say was that since the latter half of your post was all excerpt and almost no description, I wasn't sure what argument you were making, so I asked what your argument was. The misstatement was called to your attention without further comment. Still no addressing of the argument. Can I call your attention to where I said, "I asked what your argument was"? Sorry if I missed it - what was it?
I believe that there is definite value to calling Southerners evil, and that the question is not whether that value is objective, but rather on whether there is an objective basis for making that judgment. Well, that's clear as mud. Why don't you describe for us the objective definition of evil and its value in judging history? Perhaps you can explain for us this time what insights this yields about Southerners vis-a-vis Romans or Athenians or modern India (18.4 million slaves, apparently, according to Wikipedia).
Of course we could judge slavery solely on whether it was profitable or non-profitable, or on whether it accomplish or did not accomplish goals that Southerners considered essential. But the reality is that slavery should be rejected regardless of the answers to those questions. It's only your opinion that Southerners should have rejected slavery regardless. You're forgetting that the North never rejected slavery. Slavery originally existed in both North and South, but the economics for slavery differed between the two regions. Slavery withered away in the industrial North but enabled great profits in the largely agricultural South. It definitely was not a case of "Northerners good, Southerners evil."
You seem to keep forgetting that our disagreement about slavery is not qualitative but terminological. Is that really the case? It appears to me that no terms having a negative connotation are appropriate in describing the Confederacy. You're doing it again. I was not talking about the Confederacy (or the South or Southerners) - I was talking about *slavery*. You call it evil, I call it morally wrong. Our disagreement is about whether it makes sense or has any value to apply contemporary and subjective moral judgments like good and evil to the peoples of history. Would you for example agree to deem both North and South evil because they were insufficiently accepting of homosexuality? Your convoluted analysis that Southerns should have known slavery was wrong or did know that it was wrong but were just inventing excuses and pretexts is just that: a convoluted analysis. It's driven by your need to judge the events of history in moral terms, or at least the Civil War.
Well, the North wasn't making sincere offers of shared sacrifice, and since you probably disagree therein lies an interesting discussion, but we'd be wandering even farther afield from the topic. That's an excuse for dismissing their opinion? That's not the point. No one's dismissing the North's opinion. The point is that only the South was being asked to make an extreme economic sacrifice, and in the years leading up to the war the North never offered to share in that sacrifice. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22508 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
Rrhain writes: Percy writes:
quote: (*blink!*) You did not just say that, did you? I already went through this with NoNukes. As I went on to say in that same message, "Slavery was a political, social and economic issue on which two halves of the country could not agree. Why? The answers transcend slavery, and only in seeking these answers can we begin to approach the true lessons of the Civil War." For those to whom slavery is evil and Southerners were evil for embracing it, slavery can be a distraction from the true causes of the Civil War. The Civil War did not come about because Southerners were evil. That's both superficial and wrong. The lessons go deeper than that to the roots of human nature, as I've been saying for quite a while in this thread, and as Lincoln said, too. --Percy
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
Except that you didn't have a point and I did respond. Actually, you have not, and apparently will not respond to my point regarding the results of Lincoln's leniency towards the South. The result was more suffering for Africans. I suppose in the end, African Americans should be grateful for the Southern response because the result was the enactment of the 14th amendment which made them citizens, and the 15th amendment which granted them the right to vote. Absent Southern Recalcitrance, there is no telling how long overt, state enforced racial suppression would have continued. I believe I did raise a substantive issue, and your response, which is essentially, that "Lincoln agrees with Percy's platitude" does not really address my point. You and Lincoln can agree, but history suggests that you and Lincoln were wrong, and that continued leniency towards the South would likely have been disastrous for civil rights and the fate of Africans.
Can I call your attention to where I said, "I asked what your argument was"? Sorry if I missed it - what was it? Well, there it is again in this message. Let's see if you can find it this time. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given. 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 |
NN writes: When I suggested that your view left out folks like Northerners and the slaves, your response was that those folks were in the same time but not in the same place. It is difficult to reconcile that response with your current insistence that you say you want to include everyone. Percy writes: You're confusing different arguments. I respectfully disagree. You also said this about the meaning of judging Davis in context.
Davis's context was not non-slave owners and non-white supremacists. The fact of the matter is that I see in your posts absolutely no weighing of contemporary opinion regarding slavery other than to dismiss the opinions of abolitionists and slaves who were adamant about the evils of slavery. For that matter even some slave owners referred to slavery as a "necessary evil". Beyond that, most of the West had figured out that slavery was an abomination even while the South was forming a Confederacy for the express purpose of protecting the institution. We can quibble about whether than means they seceded because they were evil. I would not use that phrasing anyway. However saying that they seceded because they would not stop abusing Africans for profit, and remaining meant that slavery would eventually die out, I'd say that you were getting closer to being correct. So, no I don't think I am confusing your arguments.
Naturally history should include everything that can be known of both Northern and Southern culture It does not seem as if you include much of anything other than slave owner justification in your arguments or calculations, so your comments about including everything ring particularly hollow. 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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