PC Gone Too Far

What you said before seemed the opposite, but this seems more like what I originally thought you believed. Not sure where the misunderstanding lies. Well, we definitely disagree about Stone Mountain and Mount Rushmore, and I guess about use of the term "evil", too. Yes, precisely. If one is going to insist on using the term "evil" then one has to apply it fairly to both sides. I don't know how accurate the portrayal in Gangs of New York, but there was Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus, Northern actions to guarantee Maryland remained within the union, and Sherman's March to Sea.--Percy

No one's arguing that "slavery in the South gets some kind of pass because we want to understand history better." Though I've explained my position many different ways (I'll call it "my position" because it seems to be just me right now), I have never said anything that resembles what you claim. I've talked about the inappropriateness of judging the peoples of history according to contemporary views of good and evil, and about its lack of value in understanding history. What's important to understand is the attitudes and motivations of the players in history. Your personal moral judgments don't come into play.--Percy

You were never insulted or dismissed for PC. Is that what's behind the thread-long series of misrepresentations? Not "moving" the monument, *removing* the monument. No new site has been chosen, so the current plan is to place it in storage. Brandenburg, KY, has expressed interest in hosting the monument. Their comments are instructive (Brandenburg to Louisville: Give us the monument):

quote:

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"Celebrate is not the right word. We honor our history - good, bad, win, lose, draw, we honor history."
Steve Robbins, WMMG Program Director and host.

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"I think that it is perfect to have a balance between the story of slavery and the fight for freedom and the story of the soldiers who died for the Confederate cause."
Beverly Furnival, president of the Meade County Historical and Archeological Preservation Society.

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"Hopefully we learn more from the bad things that happen than the good things. If we do, then we are not likely to repeat them."
Gerald Fischer, local historian.

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--Percy

Percy writes: But what I wrote was : SORRY - i left out a "NO" just before "Is it wrong?"

Did I say that you called me PC? Just who is misrepresenting who here?You did apply that term to the folks at the university who requested that the statue be moved, and you made similar labelings of other folks at various points of the discussion. I have to admit to finding such things incongruous with a position that others not be judged.I don't recall, or at this point care whether I managed to say enough to get lumped in with those others. But I'm referring in to comments you addressed to others. I made similar comments in one of my earliest messages to this thread in my 'devils advocate' post.I do seem to recall some insults, but I'll take your post as a reason to put those recollections aside rather than as an opportunity to dig those things up again.Has the fact that the statute has an apparent invitation for a new home changed your mind at all?Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

So you simply dismissed the point without addressing it. Whether or not Lincoln's supposed non-judgmental position actually produced negative effects is of no consequence, according to you, because Lincoln was sincere. Is that about right?

Would you like to give me a list of historical examples in which slavery destroyed "a race of folks"? But existing people who have been conceived would be destroyed if you got hold of a time machine, wouldn't they? So, if you now realise that, and still want to alter history, it would be reasonable to say that you have genocidal desires (and suicidal desires)!

Write to the dictionaries and tell them, as I suggested before. No. I'm saying that, while slavery could conceivably involve the complete death of a culture, that's certainly not part of its definition.Do you know of any examples of cultures being actually destroyed by slavery?If it has happened, and the intent was profiteering rather than cultural death, it still wouldn't be a culturecide. He certainly saw freedom and death as two possible alternatives to his actual state at the time. He wasn't saying all three or any two were the same or similar. Would you like to give us some examples of a known groups of slaves who were all identity-less?Could you also describe the process by which all slaves predictably lose identity?Why is it that you seem to want to view the Afro-American slaves as culture-less zombies?

And I've been replying along the lines of, "Yes, go on." That's up to you. You seem to like declaring and claiming things as well as the literary device of varied repetition, but explanation not so much.--Percy

You did not just use the same rhetorical device yet again, did you? It looked to me like Xongsmith was trying by way of examples to bring some clarity to what is evil and what is not. Evil hasn't been defined in this thread by those so determined to apply the term. You're judging things good and evil without a definition, and definitely without a justification that imposition of such judgments on the peoples of history are appropriate.--Percy

This sounds like Ringo's argument, that slavery destroys cultures. What culture is being destroyed by enslavement? Certainly not the one in Africa. Removing people from their homes no more destroys their homes than removing people from their culture destroys their culture. Emigration doesn't destroy cultures, how so forced removal into slavery.So you must mean something else. Is the enslavement you mean being born into slavery? I'm not sure that's really enslavement, but in any case, that's not destruction of culture, either. And being sold or moved is not enslavement, so you can't be referring to being sold or moved from one part of the South to another.What cultural destruction are you talking about?Just to be clear, because it apparently isn't to some here, no one is justifying or defending slavery. It just seems that in trying to make slavery seem as terrible as possible (something that was never at issue in this thread) some people have, let's say, overextended their arguments.--Percy

Yep, just as predicted, doubling down and refusing to give it up, but providing no rational answer, or as here, no answer at all.Repeating myself I know, but while we don't understand why you feel the need to emphasize the evils of slavery (because we already agree slavery is wrong), we do understand that that's what you're trying to do. However, slavery is no more the same as genocide then it is the same as massacres, carpet bombings or gas warfare. If you'd like to claim parallels in some way then that would probably fare better.--Percy

Good question. Rephrasing, if the lessons of history do not tell us what is good and evil, what do they tell us?The inclination to view history in terms of morality plays is understandable but misplaced. I don't think history tells us what is right and wrong. Of course what came before creates the environment that forms our beliefs, but that's different from the study of history. I'm not a historian and feel I couldn't do justice to the task of characterizing the general nature of history's lessons, so I'll just say that I think we want to use history to inform our decisions going forward to do the most good for the most people while guided by important underlying principles or imperatives. Maybe "productive" wasn't the best choice of words, because I didn't mean just economically. Maybe I should have said "advantageous" or "beneficial" or "rewarding." But anyway, I meant across all spheres of human aspiration, not just economic. The U.S. Declaration of Independence includes "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," and the U.S. Constitution includes "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity."So in case it wasn't clear earlier, by "doing the most good" I did not mean just economic good. Slavery does ill to people and can't be condoned. Any system that enslaves, no matter how few, is not serving its people. God is just a proxy for how they describe their own value judgments. The point is that different people have different ideas of who and what are evil. If evil is to be your criteria for deciding what we do today with monuments, then how are you to deny other people who cite evil for what they want to do?--Percy

You're evading my question, and your own question just makes clear the inherent ambiguity that has been allowed to persist in this thread. What exactly is evil? How does one know who is evil? Does evil entail just doing what is evil, or does it require knowing what is evil and doing it anyway?These questions should sound familiar, as I'm sure they come up in religious discussions all the time. My own position is that they have no place here. Evil is a subjective moral term with no place in historical analysis. Good question. "Evil" is the term you and NoNukes and Rrhain prefer, not me. I'm just reflecting it back to you trying to get you to see the inherent conflicts. The North thought slavery evil. The South thought slavery a blessing. You think slavery evil. I think slavery wrong. Some in the North thought Southerners evil because of slavery. Most in the South thought themselves good because slavery benefited both the benighted negro people and their owners alike. You think Southerners evil because of slavery. Who's right, and more importantly, why are you the judge?You (the collective you I'm arguing against) think you're right because of the conceit that modern analysis trumps any opinions that went before. That doesn't mean you're wrong, it's just the only argument mustered so far. The rest of the arguments have all been misemployed characterizations of how horrible slavery was, even though no one's disputing this (though, again, Bluegenes is trying to interpret slavery in a broader context).--PercyEdited by Percy, : Word typo: "Who does one..." => "How does one..."

My point was strictly regarding your definition of intent. You and ringo can argue about the rest of the question. Time travel is a pretty funky idea. Those folks you are claiming would be destroyed would actually have never existed. They would not have died or have been destroyed. You could not even say that they were changed into any other people. Their ancestors up to the time of whatever change occurred would still exist and would have different destiny's children etc.Not a single person would have been destroyed. You are going to have to hunt for a better verb to explain exactly what happened to a person who was never born.Of course that's assuming that my wishing worked anything like time travel. There is no reason why it should.