PC Gone Too Far

The whole point of the thread seems to be that they "shouldn't".

On the contrary, it's letting people get away with evil that brings more conflict. Are you suggesting that we should have just let the fascists run wild? Are you suggesting that we should think of fascism as something that "just happened", something that "could have happened to anybody"? I'm suggesting that we stomped the fascists because they were doing evil and we should never forget that what they did was evil. We should never set them up on a pedestal as equal to every other soldier. If we don't learn from history, the eventual result is that people like you "objectively" decide to bring back slavery. If we can prevent that from happening by branding slavers as evil, then we can avoid having to kill slavers in the future.

Good grief, you're getting as bad as NoNukes, just making things up when you have no argument. I can't even find a post where I used the word "controversial", let alone in reference to genocide, and I have made abundantly clear in this thread that you're fairly determined in your confounding of language. You like words with emotive power and use them without regard to their actual meaning.Why don't you respond to what Bluegenes actually said?--Percy

Since evil has no objective meaning, what you're really saying is that when people do evil in your eyes it justifies violence against them. Who here wouldn't trade an Iraq still under Saddam's thumb for the current situation with American troops in harm's way and ISIS suicide bombing civilians across a broad swath of world? I'm suggesting that evil is a subjective criteria that will much more often lead you astray and away from sound decisions. That was one of the puzzling questions after WWII: How did fascism and Hitler happen to the German people? Are German people different from people elsewhere in the world, or could what happened in Germany happen anywhere? It's a current topic of presidential politics here in the States: If Trump is elected, will he be a Berlusconi or a Hitler? Hey, yah us, we're the evil stompers!What actually happens in the real world is that sometimes you stomp out evil and sometimes you're the evil. And people like you will accuse other people of things that are untrue. What's with the attack on objectivity? You're learning the wrong lessons from history. History isn't a sequence of morality plays. It isn't a battle between good and evil.--Percy

The book excerpt (not "the article") was quite explicit about what was driving change:

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But the sense of evil had faded by 1830 as the growing world demand for cotton fastened the tentacles of a booming plantation economy on the South.

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Yes, of course change was occurring before 1830. The excerpt says it, I've said it, welcome to the party.I understand you see the world in terms in good and evil, and Southerners as some kind of aberration of human nature, but if history teaches us any lessons it's that moralistic and subjective approaches do not lead to better outcomes, and that people are the same everywhere.--Percy

In Message 525 you said:

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I haven't read any Canadian articles about this....

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I have.You went on to say:

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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.

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"Little support", not none. "Most of the links", not all. "Attempt to distinguish", not distinguish. "Some links", not all.I'm gonna stick with controversial, not absolutely carved in stone as you claim.We need to broaden our understanding, not narrow it.

What I'm really saying is what I'm really saying, not what you make up. And I'm saying that slavery is as goddamn close to universally evil as anything you can think of. There are no "sound decisions" that support slavery. Since we're drawing a parallel between slavery and Nazi Germany in this thread, why do you support monuments to the Confederacy but (presumably) not to the SS? Aren't you afraid we're "losing history" when we take down the swastikas from every building in Germany? I'll continue to attack objectivity in this context until you can show us the objective criteria that would justify re-instating slavery. All of life is a battle between good and evil.

Ringo writes: You still miss. An objective description of history NEVER would get into justifications. BY DEFINITION, any objective criteria that would justify anything would be a non-sequitur.

Did I claim that my statement was a definition Percy? You claim that the definition of evil is too nebulous to apply to southerner slaveholders. My rebuttal is that everyone here agrees that slavery was evil. That is an argument that the term evil is not nebulous in any meaningful sense; at least for the purpose of this discussion.Beyond that, haven't I already, repeatedly offered you a definition? Except that I have offered definitions, Percy.I will repeat what I believe is sufficient definition here. Evil are acts that impart substantial harm to humans without adequate justification. I leave open the question of whether there are acts performed not against humans might also be evil. Yes there are times when applying that definition will raise controversy, because we might question harm and justification. But with regards to slavery, those sometimes difficult questions are settled issues in the minds of everyone here, including you. I gave you a reason why the definition is not an issue in this particular debate; namely that there is no disagreement among us whatsoever that the treatment received by Africans under slavery was morally unsound. If I am wrong about that absence of disagreement, then please just say so. Ouch.I am attaching a stigma to slavery? Is that really what you are claiming? You don't think slavery is already a stigma permanently attached to the history of the antebellum South? Isn't that stigma already there first and foremost due to the actions of slaveowners? If not, then please deny that the stigma existed long before you begun this discussion.I have to admit that I find the idea that I am responsible for a stigma attached to slave owners to be facially ridiculous. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Really? Isn't it only via an investigation of motives and justifications that there is anything really to discuss here? One man deprives another of his freedom and we just state that as fact? We don't inquire into whether the deprived person was a criminal, or just another human being treated as an animal? I don't think much of your version of an objective study of history. Because surely those things matter to me.

Here is an excerpt from another book. Any typos are likely mine.The Ideology of Slavery: Proslavery Thought in the Antebellum South, 1830–1860 - Google Books

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Current scholarship regards the change in southern writings about slavery in the 1830s as more of style and tone than of substance. Southerners did not move from an anti- to a proslavery position. Slaveholders were less troubled about whether slavery was right than precisely why it was right and how its justice could best be demonstrated. Unsympathetic to the Perfectionism embraced by many of their abolitionist counterparts, proslavery advocates always saw evils in slavery, as they were sure they would in any terrestrial system of society and government. All earthly arrangements they believed, necessarily required men to cope as best they could with sin; it was the relative merits of social systems, their comparative success in dealing with inherent evil that should be discussed. As William Harber explained in his Memoir on Slavery, "the condition of our whole existence is but to struggle with evils--compare them--to chose between them, and so far as we can to mitigate them. To say that there is evil in any institution is only to say that it is human." With the intensification of the slavery controversy, however, apologists began to acknowledge the institutions short comings less openly and to consider only the positive aspects of the system. "I see great evils in slavery." George Fitzhugh confessed to a friend, "but I think in a controversial work I ought not to admit them."

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Here then is an example of exactly the sentiment I proposed being openly expressed by a southern writer. Also we can see the open admission of balancing of good an evil.From another post. I've acknowledged that the change was not sudden, so I am curious as to why you continue to say otherwise. None the less, the "views" of the South are based on expediency. The cotton gin creates a situation where the slavery generates profits, and then a trend builds under which slavery is non-evil? Connect those dots to show me that the belief that slaves were benefiting is more rational under those circumstances?Your argument does nothing to convince me that slavery was not a self centered exploitation of Africans without regard for the lives and family of an entire segment of humanity.

NoNukes writes: For the 1% who actually owned slaves, YES, you are correct. But for the average infantry man in the Confederate army it was not self-centered. This monument is NOT to these 1% (they have Stone Mountain for that), but for the poor uneducated whites who died nameless there.

Your numbers are off a bit.My understanding is that one in four families owned slaves. So, no not just the 1%. And of course others who owned no slaves but simply were the agents and overseers working for slave owners also have culpability. And of course lots of folks were complicit in other ways other than as owners and have varying levels of culpability for being complicit in perpetuating the institution. There are some Northerners with equal culpability or more culpability than some Southeners, but their guilt is not the issue here.And of course there were folks who never had anything to do with slavery at all and who have clean hands despite volunteering for or being drafted into fighting for the confederacy. I have no idea the size of that contingent. That said, the Confederacy itself was formed for the expressed purpose of continuing slavery. Thanks for that at least. I'm having some difficulty convincing folks that Stone Mountain has any opprobrium attached to it. With regard to the monument in Louisville, I believe I said early on that this particular monument is among the least offensive in my own opinion. However, I am also not willing to say that opinions differing from mine on the issue of the Kentucky monument are not worth listening to. Beyond that, I have no idea what roles the folks celebrated on that monument played with respect to slavery.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

So they were altruistically fighting for slavery?

Well duh the only way a black man could go to heaven is as a slave so they where doing the right thing when they where fighting for slavery.