PC Gone Too Far

Again, only some folks in the South thought that slavery benefited the Negro. If you want to claim that even most held that opinion, I'm asking for a source.

I'm not able to understand how your question fits into the discussion. I was referring to the lack of objectivity inherent in making modern judgments on history that include "evil" and "empathy", not to the objectivity of the people of 150 years ago. And they didn't *decide* to have slavery - slavery was already there or not there when they were born. I think if you read what I said again that you'll see I said something different than what you're responding to. While I didn't make the comment you thought I did, I certainly concede that if you wipe out a people you also wipe out their culture. That's axiomatic.But that has no bearing on your position that "slavery IS genocide", which is absurd. For other people to know you're talking about "cultural genocide" you need to actually say "cultural genocide," not just "genocide." Are you still using your own private definition of "genocide" where "slavery IS genocide"? If so then I think before we can converse about this that we need to agree on terms. I can agree generally with this. Even if you substitute "cultural genocide" for "genocide" this is still mistaken. Removing slaves from Africa did not wipe out a culture, because it still existed in Africa. I could agree that "beating the aboriginal culture out of aboriginal peoples" was cultural genocide, but equating it to "a form of genocide" is far too vague for my taste.Why is use of the word "genocide" as a synonym for slavery so important to you? Whatever purpose it had in making your original point, surely it is lost by now.--Percy

Slavery may well have destroyed cultures in Africa. Some slave-trading states in west Africa, like Benin and Dahomey, became quite wealthy and powerful off the slave trade (or the slave-trading aristocracy did, at least). The enormously increased demand for slaves due to the Atlantic trade incentivised continued wars of conquest of neighbouring peoples, and it seems quite plausible that many cultures which lacked centralised states and the ability to defend themselves could have been wiped out in the process.

I have already posted references. You can just Google "genocide in Canada' and you'll find that all of our major newspapers are calling our treatment of aboriginal peoples genocide. I'll go with them instead of you. You're missing the point. The slaves had their original culture beaten out of them, just like the aboriginal peoples in Canada did.

As I pointed out to bluegenes, the treatment of aboriginal peoples in Canada IS recognized as genocide in Canada. We'll wait for you to catch up.

And how do we do that without deciding whether something (like slavery) is good or bad? And yet you condone memorializing those who fought to preserve slavery on the same level as those who fought to end it. Evil isn't the only criterion but it has to be one of them.

It's a fairly simple and widespread concept: ignorance of the law is no excuse, "I was only following orders," is no excuse. We do hold people responsible for their evil actions. I think people who fight for an evil cause should not be memorialized alongside people who fought against it.

My argument isn't against having an opinion. It's against sitting in moral judgment of historical peoples and events. This is the false criticism we see you frequently make, that something unmentioned represents a twisting of the truth. Can someone not offer an opinion different from your own without being guilty of some moral lapse?I gave one reason for the North and one reason for the South, yet for you only Southern reasons needed further lengthy elaboration. Your biases are obvious, and your additional details don't change the point I was trying to make in a single sentence, that the differences between North and South were irreconcilable. You would be incorrect, I don't feel that way. That sounds like a valid avenue of inquiry, though not likely a fruitful one. I'm already on record as saying that the nature of people is to invent rationalizations for what they want to do anyway, but self-awareness of the rationalizing rarely occurs. That definitely is not in the nature of people, particularly when surrounded by people who believe the same. You're apparently determined to continue on the path of misrepresentation. There's rarely even the slightest nod toward an accurate portrayal of your opponent's views. Perhaps this is just an expression of your moralistic approach to things, that people who in your view are wrong just deserve whatever treatment you decide, such as the repeated distortions of their views that we see here.For the umpteenth time, I believe slavery wrong, I don't believe Southerners evil. Nothing I've said leads to this conclusion. Since I can't stoop to your approach of misrepresentation as a form of argument, and since this doesn't represent anything I said or believe, I have no reply. It's the reasoning you gave, not me. This is the exact opposite of what I've said a number of times. You obviously liked your answer to an argument so much that you decided to raise it yourself. There was no need to falsely claim the argument came from me. So you claim without ever providing any evidence. Yes, good summary, though I'd quibble a bit about the wording of the last part where you said slavery was dying out. I think it just referred to how it was becoming apparent to the slave states that as things were going they were losing and would continue to lose political influence at a national level, eventually putting them in a politically untenable position. As you alluded to, in the recent past they had expended much effort to expand U.S slave territory into regions south of the U.S., like Cuba, northern Mexico, and parts of Central America, but that had proved unsuccessful and available avenues to maintain the balance of power were becoming scanty. I didn't offer an analysis - it was a sentence. I don't think the specific rationalizations of either side are particularly important, as I've said previously more than once. That's what people do, invent reasons for what they want to do anyway and believe them sincerely.I understand you think differently, that the South was just making up reasons and knew it, but you haven't offered any evidence other than pleadings like, "They should have known better," and, "They were exposed to ideas they knew were right and rejected them," and so forth. You never turn the sights of your argument generator gun around to point at the North and argue things like, "They claimed they were fighting for union and against slavery, but in truth they had their eyes on economic exploitation of the South - Reconstruction is proof."The truth that I see is that the people inventing rationalizations can't recognize them as such, as anyone participating here for any length of time should recognize. Even overcoming the simplest of rationalizations is extremely difficult. Proving the South knew they were rationalizations and were lying seems an impossible task.--Percy

You're claiming that we should look at history objectively. I'm saying that we shouldn't look at slavery objectively; we should look at it empathetically. It's important to understand that slavery is a very, very bad thing, one of the worst things that can happen to a group of people, tantamount to murdering them en masse. I find it disturbing that you try to ameliorate the evil of slavery.

You just said:

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I would not advocate blowing up the mountain, I'm just arguing that folks who ask for such things have a legitimate beef, and don't deserve insult or dismissal as mere PC.

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And you've made this complaint to me before. So if not me, who are you accusing of insulting you and dismissing your arguments as mere PC? You pretty much just make up whatever you think you need to say at the time. I only made clear how I was defining PC. You were the one who pretty early on complained that even just the very title of the thread somehow precluded debate:

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NoNukes in Message 46:

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I don't think OPs that the describe opposing positions as 'PC Gone Too Far" leave much room for entertaining any disagreement.

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And there were other more specific complaints you made to me, despite the complete lack of any personal accusations of PC. I can't take the time to sift through your 126 messages. Oh, give it a break, you were not speaking for others. Your words are right there quoted above. You were referring to yourself, let me boil down the grammar for you: "I'm just arguing...and don't deserve insult or dismissal as mere PC." You mean about misrepresenting what I say? If you weren't so determined and persistent about it I wouldn't mention it. And now you've begun misrepresenting even what you yourself say. What "statute"? Given that the comments of the people in Brandenburg precisely echo my own comments in this thread (see Message 498), what on earth about this good news could possibly change my mind? But given the tininess of the town (population around 2000, I think), I'm concerned budget might become an issue.--Percy

No, that's not accurate. I argued it wasn't relevant and that it read like an attempt to distract attention from the main point. You're just making more clear how irrelevant your argument is. People sincerely believe many things, some right, some wrong, some with positive consequences, some with negative. You're arguing that if people act on a sincere belief but encounter negative effects that they weren't sincere? How does that make any sense?I quoted Lincoln's words not blaming Southerners for being the products of their time and place in history ("They are just what we would be in their situation," and there was another quote I'll not include now) because they were better than mine. I'm startled to learn that people don't think Lincoln believed what he said, but whether he believed it or not isn't the point. My point is that people's beliefs are influenced by circumstance, and if my words weren't clear enough then I supplied Lincoln's, too.People's nature can be inborn. We know this is true for qualities like extroversion and introversion and so forth. But people's beliefs are not inborn. Belief systems are the products of people, not genetics, and they become ingrained during upbringing. If you were raised in a Catholic country you would very likely be Catholic, and if you were raised in a slave country then you would very likely believe in slavery. There's no escaping this.--Percy

Regarding the science fiction time travel discussion, there's also the multiverse approach to time travel. In that view when you go back and change the past, you're actually just shifting to a different multiverse branch or universe. The old universe still exists and no one was destroyed.--Percy

The impressions I've received from what I've read is that it was a frequently expressed defense of slavery, but I'm not aware of any polls from the antebellum South. I cannot reasonably be asked to enumerate all the reasons Southerners thought themselves good every time I mention this, and so I mention what seems to me the most common one. If you feel differently you're welcome to reply with your own reasons, though if you could keep it neutral rather than accusatory that would be welcome.But I don't think the specific reasons the South thought slavery good are worth much to this discussion, at least not from where I sit believing that both sides in any dispute engage in, from a more distant perspective, what is obviously rampant rationalization.Though I should add that I think the North had by far the easier and more honest path to justifying their position than the South. The Declaration and the Constitution and general humanity argued for their position. If the North's position had a weakness it was, in my view, that they by and large shared the South's belief in the inferiority of the negro.The legal justifications for each side probably hold greater interest for you than for me, though again, the North's position seems much stronger to me. The argument I like best is that there were no States' Rights outside the union because it was the Constitution and the Union that brought the concept of states into existence.--Percy

Excellent point. Thanks for the information. If Ringo's point is that the demand for slaves in the Americas (both North America and South America) drove the annihilation of some entire cultures in Africa, I concede.--Percy

I haven't read any Canadian articles about this, but I would note that newspapers tend to use language that draws attention. Possibly politicians are describing such treatment in the same terms?But entering "Canada genocide" into Google provides little support for you. Most of the links on the first page use the term "cultural genocide" or attempt to distinguish between that and actual genocide. And some links point to discussions about whether it's appropriate to refer to what happened as genocide. The situation in Canada seems much more equivocal than you characterized.But the real problem for me is now doubled. You apparently not only believe "slavery IS genocide," and you also believe that "cultural genocide" and "genocide" are the same thing. I don't see how we can have a conversation if we don't agree on terms, and the terminological disagreements seem to be getting worse.--Percy