PC Gone Too Far

I said: Rrhain asks: The LGBTQ sub-culture is still a minority culture, isn't it? The predominant culture of each of these different periods in history, including also the genocides of Indians and enslavements of Africans and all other oppressions of minorities, was sadly represented by the religious white man, whose 1% wealthiest controlled political offices, churches and schools. Perhaps today they will have finally been outnumbered. I should have said "today's predominant culture" rather than just "today's culture".Is a dirt-poor white 4-year old boy growing up in 1830's Alabama and being taught that slavery is "the way it is" and that blacks are inferior - is he evil? Is his family evil for bringing him up that way? No way. Is it wrong? Sure, by my standards today. Is a family evil for bringing up children in the Muslim faith? Certainly not. Are they wrong? Well, in my own personal case, all families who indoctrinate their children into some religion are wrong, but by today's standards, no they are not wrong. Are jihadists evil? Sure?Where does the evil actually occur? We can see from our vantage point in the context of today that it is all wrong, but is it all evil?Edited by xongsmith, : per Percy's perspectives

Good question, and one that provokes thought. It's one that I imagine that folks reach different conclusions about. I'm not sure I'd involve much energy in debating either characterization. Certainly I believe a family that brings up a child in such a way does the child an immense disservice, probably along the level of not sending their child to school. Whether you are willing to call either of those things evil might be a personal call.On the other hand, teaching your child to do the "right" thing back in 1830 most likely could not been easy, what with society doing the exact opposite right in front of the kids face. Perhaps that truth just means that both good and evil are in some ways self perpetuating. Slavery as practiced in the colonies was no accident. Its origins were deliberate and conscious. Folks engaging in the practice did so either with an absence or complete disregard for the humanity of others. Maybe you have a label that applies better than the word evil, but that word works for me. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

NoNukes writes: But wouldn't they have been thinking they were doing the best they possibly could for their child? And remember in those days even going to school took a 2nd seat to working for the family's agricultural income. Did his parents even go to school? There was this Bible that never said anything about slavery in a manner that would rule it out. Ah, but now we are talking about the 1%, the rulers of the lands. The bulk of any army is comprised of the other 99%, mostly the uneducated poor. Our 4-year old has grown up and is now in his 30's, working the land, possibly sharecropping and so on. He readily joins the Confederate Army, because his town is, his family is and his upbringing makes it easy to believe the evil Confederate leadership and their propaganda. So is he evil? See, I'm thinking no way.So is this particular Monument in Kentucky evil? I'm thinking no way. Stone Mountain? Yeah, blow that up, along with Mt. Rushmore. Or at least attach plaques that describe how wrong these things are.Aside: still a vivid scene from Scorsese's Gangs Of New York was his superb long shoot of the Irish arriving in NY and getting papers and being enlisted and armed with the regulation outfits and rifles and walking up the gang plank of another ship heading south to the Civil War fronts and the camera continues around to the other end of this same ship showing the cranes lifting the caskets of the dead, many the same Irish. See? The North could be very evil, too.Edited by xongsmith, : ClarityEdited by xongsmith, : fog

Of course. That kind of thinking would have been very attractive back then because it would be conforming thinking. But the fact is that such conformance required was devastating to millions of people. It is difficult to argue on a moral basis that slavery should continue even one second longer than it did.In short, their thinking was wrong, and their society was such that there was little way for those who understood that to even have a voice in expressing that or for even their children to escape being molded into people willing to continue the destruction. Abolitionist voices in the South were generally not welcome.Apparently, there is little, no matter how morally bankrupt, or evil, that you cannot rally a bunch of folks around if it works. Yes, folks might understandably find a cheap labor force an attractive thing to build around. Other folks have found piracy, kidnapping, pimping, robbery etc. similarly attractive, and have even gone so far as to involve their children into their lifestyles. In most cases, we would not excuse such behavior even if we do try to understand societal pressures which "forced" them into such endeavors. Yet slavery in the South gets some kind of pass because we want to understand history better? I just don't see that. If you need to hold your nose in order to peer into details or to examine things academically, I have no objection to you doing so. Right. My phrasing was meant to refer to compare the effect of raising a slavery loving child or a white supremacist to the effect of not schooling children in the present society.But with regard to making the trade-off of education to have people supply income, such trade-offs are being made today in other societies, and it is likely that such choices doom the society and the children to a poor future. In order for a society to advance there must be folks who are free from subsistence level existence, and for a society to be fair, we should not limit those folks to some elite class. I find caste systems to be in general undesirable, but I imagine that's a debate for another time.Generally speaking, folks who are trapped in such places where there are no alternatives for their children other than a farming existence are often best off finding opportunity elsewhere if they value such opportunities, even if that means illegally immigrating.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Folks like Jefferson Davis, for example. I'll note that I've consistently distinguished him from even soldiers like Lee and Stonewall Jackson. That's particularly the case, because for large portions of the civil war, folks who owned 20 or more slaves were exempt from having to fight at all. On the other hand, studies of civil war attitudes suggest that most Southern soldiers were in favor of slavery despite not owning slaves.Beyond that, I'd quibble with you over the numbers. My understanding is that about 1 in four folks owned slaves. 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. With respect to the monument in Kentucky, I'm okay with moving it now that folks on campus, who have to live with the thing, have asked for it. No doubt. I hope nothing I've said suggests otherwise.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

No it isn't. Because some sailors drown doesn't mean that sailing is the same or similar to drowning. I don't insist that "something must apply to all slaves to be bad." Something must apply to all slaves to be part of the definition of slavery. Chattel slavery is about owning people and exploiting them for profit, not about destroying them. Genocide is the destruction of a population with intent. What sentiment? Henry is distinguishing liberty (from the British), non-liberty (British rule) and death, stating his preference for the first and third over the second. He is not saying what you want him to be (that life under British rule was death-like). If you want to push the idea that life under British rule for the wealthy slave owning Patrick Henry was similar to death and therefore similar to your view of life as a slave, go ahead. Give us all a good laugh. You are making Henry into one of your fantasy zombie slaves, or similar!Of course you can compare things that aren't similar. You can compare the state of slavery to the state of freedom. If your point is that slavery is similar to genocide because slavery is "like death", then a death-like experience should be an inevitable part of slavery.Have you grasped the point that the southern slaves were many different people with many different experiences? They were not the uniform cultureless zombies that you seem to want them to have been. Meaning "slavery is genocide" is "fairly widespread"? Young earth Christianity is fairly widespread. I'm not sure how many people are ignorant enough to believe that slavery is genocide, and whether it would be regarded as a widespread belief. Why do I object to your claim of slavery and genocide being the same? Or why do I object to your earlier one that they are similar (which contradicts the later one)?The ownership and economic exploitation of individuals or a group isn't the same as the deliberate destruction of a group. The motives aren't the same, and the results aren't either.

You seem to have forgotten how this started. You kept repeating various forms of , "*We* know better." I was only pointing out that "we" is just you and NoNukes. If there's an aArgumentum ad populum it started with you. You're not replying to the argument I made. It's a distraction for "divining the fundamental causes of of the Civil War" for those who become all caught up in the moral aspects and want to see the Civil War in terms of good and evil. Modern moral judgments have no place in historical analysis. They're irrelevant. The players of history had no knowledge of the moral values of the future, and those values can play no role in analysis. What can play a role are the moral values of the players of history themselves. So you say, but the monument in question says only that it's to the Confederate dead and to the members of the armies of the South. I provided another example from one of the monuments to Jefferson Davis, it has a very noble quote, see Message 302.From where I sit, you guys are creating very undiscriminating criteria that are obvious in their intention to rule all Confederate monuments and memorials objectionable. You're confusing "slavery is evil" with "Southerners were evil." Clearly both Lincoln and myself think slavery wrong. We just don't think Southerners evil. And we *would* be just like them in their circumstances. Well, yes, I agree, but that's just what you're doing. You're denying the South shared basic humanity with all other peoples - because in your judgment they were "evil". I understand your argument that they were evil because they embraced slavery, but that blocks you from any meaningful analysis. The nature of people is to rationalize what they want to do, both North and South. The particulars of those rationalizations are important only for the hints they provide of the true motivations, which were to maintain livelihood and culture. This and the three paragraphs it begins are just a copy/paste from your Message 351. Again, no it is not a theist argument against atheists. No. What you're doing is the opposite. Imposing your own moral judgments on history is wrong and of no value. Lincoln's words were based upon heartfelt principles. Whether you believe them or not, they still express what I've been saying, only better.--Percy

The intent is irrelevant. Slavery does destroy cultures whether anybody wants it to or not. He was saying that he'd rather be dead than a "slave" to the British. How can you claim he's not comparing liberty with death? Yes - and you can also compare the state of freedom with the state of death, which is what Patrick Henry was doing. Freedom is preferable to life without freedom. Lack of freedom is akin to lack of life. One is not truly alive unless he is free. The forcible removal of a people's identity is the same, whether the people are dead or not, whether the perpetrators do it out of lofty motives or not.See the treatment of aboriginal peoples.

Intent is certainly relevant. Genocide requires intent, and you're claiming that slavery is genocide.Slavery can destroy and create cultures, but doesn't necessarily do either. Comparing apples to oranges doesn't mean they are the same. Choosing one over the other recognises the difference. But I'm amused that you see Patrick Henry as a "slave". That's not what Henry was saying, but it doesn't matter. So, you see Patrick Henry's situation under the British as similar to death, and slavery as similar to death. Therefore, you must see slavery as being similar to being a wealthy slave owner under British rule.That doesn't sound too bad! Slavery doesn't require the forcible removal of a people's identity, and the intent is central to the concept of genocide.Edited by bluegenes, : addition

Fascinating. Did you not claim that when I wished that slavery had not happened that I was being genocidal? Where was the need to establish my intent when you wanted to apply the term genocide to me?

Percy responds to me:

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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.

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Completely backwards. To deny the evil of slavery is superficial and wrong. And why? Because:

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The lessons go deeper than that to the roots of human nature

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Evil is more complex than you are making it out to be, as I've been saying for quite a while on this thread.Shall we spin the merry-go-round again?

xongsmith responds to me:

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The LGBTQ sub-culture is still a minority culture, isn't it?

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What does that have to do with anything? Even if there were only one gay person in the world, don't you think you should ask that person what they think before declaring them to be sub-human and treating them like property?

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Is a dirt-poor white 4-year old boy...

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Hold it right there. A four-year-old? Are we about to get into a discussion of being of age and the ability to give consent?

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Is his family evil for bringing him up that way?

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Yes. The slaves clearly don't like what it is you're doing to them. To continue in that practice is evil. To teach others that they should continue the practice is evil.

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Is a family evil for bringing up children in the Muslim faith?

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(*blink!*)You did not just say that, did you? Did you just compare being Muslim to imposing slavery?

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Where does the evil actually occur?

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In the embrace of evil. Is that really so complicated to understand?

You seemed to establish it. You expressed the desire to actually change history, which would mean the eradication of modern populations whose existence depends on it.Of course, if you genuinely didn't realise what the effect would be, then you wouldn't have been expressing genocidal desires.I may have made the mistake of assuming that the fact that changing history would eliminate the present population would be obvious to anyone.Looking at something in history, describing it as bad, and declaring that we shouldn't do such things again is absolutely fine. We all do it. But actually changing the history that has produced us is something we cannot do and shouldn't want to do.

I don't think the point is what I realised. My intent was not that people died. In fact, in the scenario in which you applied to me, nobody died. Instead those folks were never even conceived. Instead, other folks were conceived, under the scenario you insisted on.The problem is that people who enslave folks do in fact, intend to do just that, and they should reasonable understand that they are harming folks and destroying their culture. We don't need the specific intent that they deliberately intended to kill folks. Instead they committed deliberate actions which could reasonable result in the harm that they did cause. The destruction of a culture under slavery was not an accident.Criminal intent is can involve specific intent, which in this case would be aiming to eliminate a race of folks. On the other hand, deliberately engaging in actions which would reasonably be expected to accomplish the same things also constitutes intent.

In whose philosophy of history are conclusions that peoples of history were evil a part? You and NoNukes apparently have this need to pass moral judgment on the Southern people, and you think you're doing history. How could your belief that Southerners were evil, besides being moralistic and ill-defined, play any role in historical analysis. Those who want to see human nature in terms of good and evil should join a religion. They can even have evil spirits and the devil.Philip G. Zimbardo mentioned a New Yorker cartoon in his TED talk that put it well: "I'm neither a good cop nor a bad cop, Jerome. Like yourself, I'm a complex amalgam of positive and negative personality traits that emerge or not, depending on the circumstances." Further, concepts of good and bad, right and wrong, are not fixed and timeless. They are personal moral judgments of a particular time and place, often of a particular person. Of what value is today's opinion of slavery as a timeless wrong to analysis of the motivations of the North and South? No one's denying facts, but your personal judgments have no business being set alongside facts. Almost everyone North and South was white supremacist. Northern empathy for the plight of the negro did not generally extend as far as equality.But anyway, I notice here that you refer to the "evil of slavery". I prefer "morally wrong," but except for terminology we're in pretty close agreement. And you said "the South embraced it," which they did, in fact, I think I've said exactly that. What we're disagreeing about is whether that made Southerners evil. I think you have a hangup with "evil." Well, yes, you do appear to be reacting to evil in just this way. You and NoNukes and Ringo are making emotional appeals about the evils of Southern slavery as if it were a point of contention. It's not. We all agree slavery is wrong. The question is whether those who embraced it were evil. My own position is that once characterizations of evil begin that the realm of valid historical analysis has been abandoned. If I'm wrong then it should be easy to find plenty of books about the Civil War where historians have characterized the Southern people as evil. You keep saying that but never provide any details. What is your objective definition of evil?--Percy