PC Gone Too Far

It's up to the people who have charge of those jurisdictions to make the decision. You're welcome to whine about it.

"We" - the people who are in charge of the monument - are apparently deciding to preserve it somewhere else. You are complaining that any change is an affront to history. I suppose you don't want the pigeon droppings removed from it either because they're also a part of its history. I am prepared to fight the Civil War all over again, though not necessarily by killing people. If you're not prepared to fight again and again for what's right, then you're doing exactly what Santayana feared.

You might say that. I am suggesting that we don't even know if that belief was sincerely held. My proposition is that the position that slavery was beneficial was formed in response to being bombarded with Northern attacks on the institution.So we probably do disagree. No problem with that. We won't be the first couple of folks who have disagreed about civil war history. For extreme example of folks disagreeing about this issue, I point to the story of the caning of Senator Sumner by Brooks.Caning of Charles Sumner - Wikipedia No, I would not say that.Unlike the situation in the article, I have no rationale to ascribe some motive to the folks for not expressing their sincere opinion. At best I can question the rationality of their opinion. But can you show me that these folks once expressed a different opinion prior to being hounded by the media? Perhaps you are simply ignoring my argument and making the assumption that my position is completely without basis. Perhaps that is because you so often make the accusation regarding non objectivity. In this particular case, I've provided an opinion, plus rationale, and made at least an attempt to tie my opinion to the reference you provided. That is not the same as me just assuming without reason that what folks are saying does not reflect a sincere opinion. I've gone back over my posts, and I don't see that I made the error you are accusing me of in any of them. I've always acknowledged that slavery being considered evil was the older view. However, the period of time during which slavery was described as beneficial was relatively short. There were several centuries of slavery prior to 1830 and only a few decades of slavery afterwards.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Hasn't the data gathering already been done? Nobody here is objecting to any study of history whatsoever. We've discussed and can continue to discuss what Southerners said, did, what they thought, and why they might have thought that. The literature is full of discussions of that type. Is there some discussion you feel is missing?I'm really not sure what your complaint is about. That we haven't examined all of those things thoroughly within this thread? That folks who want a monument moved, destroyed, never built, haven't thought through the history completely? None of those things are likely to be what you mean, but given that I've never objected to any data gathering, I don't understand your point.Gather away, brother.

In this particular instance, every poster here agrees that slavery is evil and was evil as practiced by the South. Nobody here believes that slavery is some kind of historical accident or that the South was an unwilling or unwitting participant in the enslaving of Africans. But some of us stop at that point and won't reach what I find to be a rather obvious conclusion. Surely the reason is not because of the number of folks involved?So, no the problem is not one of definitions or disagreement over what is and is not evil. The question is the application of the term evil to folks who managed to think of themselves as non-evil for one reason or another.I had thought that the question was about the utility of making a judgment or even about whether or not making a judgment interferes or does not interfere with evaluating history. At least those things are debatable. But as best as I can tell, no one here even questions whether slavery as practiced in the South was immoral. Even hinting that there is a question about that is something that you and others find insulting. So why are definitions even a subject of debate?ABE:By the way, the South was an entire nation? Well, yeah, after they formed the Confederacy which existed for the purpose of preserving slavery, thereby divorcing themselves from a bunch of folks who were not similarly minded. And of course, let's not count those colored folks who existed for the sake of counting as 3/5 of a person for determining Congressional representation, and as cheap labor. So yeah, an entire nation.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

This particular post is not a rebuttal to any particular post or an addressing of any particular position expressed herein. Please do not indict yourself. I do present one insight into slavery and its evil for consideration. This essay was written by a Northern Abolitionist who lived during the 18th and 19th century.I think one thing we can gather from this post is how similar this opinion and its reasoning as expressed by the 18th-19th century pastor might be to a modern opinion.SlaveryChapter IV. The Evils of Slavery. | transcendentalism.tamu.eduThe author undergoes an extensive description of the evils of slavery and of the merits of the Southern defense thereof. Of course there is no reason to expect that a Southerner would be convinced by this presentation. Instead the point is that almost anyone else, from either this modern era or the 19th century likely would be convinced.Example passage below. The complete writing is a fairly thorough, and to my mind engaging discussion of most of the differences in opinion over slavery between abolitionists and Southerners of the time.

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It is said, however, that the slave, if not to be compared to the free laborer at the North, is in a happier condition than the Irish peasantry. Let this be granted. Let the security of the peasant's domestic relations, let his church and his school- house, and his faint hope of a better lot pass for nothing. Because Ireland is suffering from the misgovernment and oppression of ages, does it follow that a less grinding oppression is a good? Besides, are not the wrongs of Ireland acknowledged? Is not British legislation laboring to restore her prosperity? Is it not true, that, whilst the slave's lot admits no important change, the most enlightened minds are at work to confer on the Irish peasant the blessings of education, of equal laws, of new springs to exertion, of new sources of wealth? Other men, however fallen, may be lifted up. An immovable weight presses on the slave.

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The subject of this section is painful and repulsive. We must not, however, turn away from the contemplation of human sufferings and guilt. Evil is permitted by the Creator, that we should strive against it, in faith, and hope, and charity. We must never quail before it because of its extent and duration, never feel as if its power were greater than that of goodness.

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Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Yes. In storage. A bit overstated but close enough, and I've also listed some valid reasons for altering the historical record in prior posts. Fighting again and again over the same things is precisely what Santayana warned against. History has taught you nothing. What you've learned is force and vengeance as a solution. Contrast the results of Reconstruction and WWI German reparations with the Marshall Plan and the Japanese treaty.--Percy

And my response is unchanged: views that slavery was beneficial pre-existed the antebellum South and did not originate there. Slavery proponents in Britain expressed the same views when Britain was going through the process of eliminating slavery.What changed was how the arguments came out in the balance. Northerners, horrified at the expansion of slavery, a monster thought destined to die, invented new arguments against slavery, such as that it denigrated manual labor. The South, witnessing the same expansion of slavery and seeing it accrue to their benefit, emphasized the benefits of slavery that they already believed, but with slave populations and the Southern economy growing, balancing all the factors delivered a different answer. The only truly new argument was that slavery was the foundation for a cultural elite dedicated to the betterment of mankind. Can you show me an example of Southern slavery proponents holding a different opinion prior to your year of demarcation of 1830 that slavery didn't bring Christianity to the Negro, protect them from dangers of rampant Northern-style capitalism (e.g., sweat shops, unemployment), and remove them from the dangers of tribalism in Africa? A Southerner of 1810 might likely say, "It's unfortunate we have to hold these souls in servitude, but they gain the blessings of Christianity, they're never destitute, and it's a big improvement from their situation in Africa." I so often make the accusation of biased thinking because you do it so often. There's nothing objective about "evil". 1830 wasn't some line of demarcation before which the South considered slavery evil and after which they didn't. It was a process of gradual change involving the economics of slavery and a changing of the guard. How both the North and South felt about slavery changed in reaction to changing circumstances. Prior to slavery becoming a foundation of the Southern economy both North and South viewed the practice as regrettable. With its expansion and its growing political power came an increase in the intensity of feelings on both sides, the North more intensely against and the South more intensely for.What's important to understand is that the nature of the argument over slavery didn't change suddenly. It was gradual. Just as the importance of slavery to the South increased gradually, so did the changes in how it was viewed changed gradually. The changes in opinion were a reaction to changing circumstances, just like what people do today and everyday throughout all the world and all time.--Percy

What on earth are you talking about? Where have I EVER advocated force or vengeance? YOU are the one who advocates forcing monuments on people who don't want them because you're afraid of "losing history".

I agree it is not a line of demarcation, but the fact still remains, that 1830 was by at least a couple centuries closer to the end of slavery than the beginning. So the idea that slavery was considered non evil is not part of the rationale for why slavery existed, unless you consider after the fact justifications that were not largely held at the time of developing a slave economy to be meaningful. Further, you are ignoring a fact brought out by the article. Namely that the change occurred during constant badgering from abolitionists over the issue of slavery. Again those things existed even at the time when Southerners agreed that slavery was evil. Accordingly, such factors were neither reasons for slavery nor did they formed the basis of Southern opinion on slavery prior to that point. Folks enslaved Africans for reasons that included a belief that blacks were inferior, and that the Bible endorsed folks (like the descendant's of Ham) as being so treated. Those ideas are not to be dismissed when considering the reasons why black folks were being enslaved.Beyond that, is the question of to what degree even a belief that you are not doing harm, offered by folks who are obviously benefiting from slavery, ought to color our opinion of those folks. Particularly when any objective view of the harm they were actually causing was quite clear. As Rrhain pointed out, folks do manage to be the hero in their own stories. The question is whether there is any reason whatsoever to give any weight to 'justifications' which can be pretexts just as readily as they can be honest feelings.What we do know about slavery is that a substantial number of folks carried out the practice despite knowing that they were harming black folks even if that understanding was largely gone after 1830.So we'll just have to disagree about this point. Again, that should be okay. Calling it gradual cuts both ways. But I think you miss a point brought out by the article. Namely the proposed cause for the change. There is no reason to believe that the impetus for change suddenly started in 1830. That too existed well before 1830. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Like the rest of your comments, that does nothing to support your view that the confederate soldiers were fighting to defend genocide (what ever they thought they were fighting for). Saying things over and over again doesn't make them true.The slave system was not genocidal.

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Oxford Dictionary.

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Genocide.

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The deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular nation or ethnic group.

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http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/...nition/english/genocideThe "deliberate" in that definition doesn't imply that they do.You seem to be claiming that a rapidly expanding population group of slaves were the victims of a genocide. Instead of saying that over and over again, try to support it with data from history.

Has anyone suggested otherwise? How generous of you. You're presumably "welcome" to whine about evil without applying your whining consistently as well.

That's not a definition. That sounds like the Supreme Court in the 1960's telling us that they can't define pornography but they know it is when they see it. Well, good luck with that. Your emphasis on evil as a criteria is surprising given your legal background. How often do you see the term "evil" in a legal ruling? That you won't even define "evil" tells us that your interest is to denounce, not describe, to stigmatize, not characterize. Generalized, your position is that the memories of peoples you despise are less worth preserving than those you admire. But it's all part of history, all deserving of preservation. Modern emotional reactions have no place.The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has an article on The Concept of Evil. In one section it describes some of the same problems with the term that I have:

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Another reason that ascriptions of evil can be particularly harmful or dangerous is that it isn't always clear what people mean when they use the term ‘evil.’ As Eve Garrard puts it the general obscurity surrounding the term makes some thinkers very reluctant to appeal to the idea of evil(Garrard 2002, 322). For instance, some people believe that to say that someone performed an evil action implies that that person acted out of malice (see e.g., Kekes 2005), while others believe that evildoing can result from many different sorts of motives, even good motives (see e.g., Card 2002). Given this ambiguity, it might be unclear whether an attribution of evil attributes despicable psychological attributes to an evildoer, and this ambiguity might result in an overly harsh judgment.

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Other ambiguities concerning the meaning of the term ‘evil’ may be even more harmful. For instance, on some conceptions of evil, evildoers are possessed, inhuman, incorrigible, or have fixed character traits (See Cole 2006, 1—21; Russell 2006 and 2010; Haybron 2002a and 2002b). These metaphysical and psychological theses about evildoers are controversial. Many who use the term ‘evil’ do not mean to imply that evildoers are possessed, inhuman, incorrigible, or that they have fixed character traits. But others do. If evildoers have these traits, and thus will continue to perform evil actions no matter what we do, the only appropriate response might be to isolate them from society or to have them executed. But if evildoers do not have these fixed dispositions and they are treated as if they do, they will likely be mistreated.

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I've quoted a philosopher and an encyclopedia about problems using the term evil, and the best you can do ask why we should debate definitions? It isn't like your agenda isn't clear. You want to stigmatize portions of history and then use that as a criteria for deciding which portions of history deserve preservation, or more specifically, you don't like the South and prefer its history not be remembered. I forget which historian said it, and even how he put it precisely, but it was something like, "If you destroy a people's history then you destroy them." Oh, poking about I guess I must be thinking of this George Orwell quote: "The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history."--Percy

I'm talking about how your tactic of demonization brings more conflict, not less. Do you think hate brings peace? Just as the Treaty of Versailles held within it the seeds of Nazism, your approach holds within it the seeds of future conflict. You say, "I am prepared to fight the Civil War all over again, though not necessarily by killing people," but that's the eventual result if we don't learn from history. They say the passage of time brings perspective, but for some of you here it's as if the Civil War and all the passions it inflamed happened yesterday.--Percy

Percy has admitted that the definition of genocide is "controversial" - i.e. not as simplistic as you insist. We'll wait for you to catch up.