Okay, fella - take a few breaths and relax. People are products of their times. The better ones fight for virtues and values they see as better at the time. They see an opportunity others do not and rally people around those.
Others they don’t see and continue wi5h those norms, or they see the wrongs but don’t believe they can rally people around fixing them.
Do not demonize people in the past who do not meet current norms. There will never be anybody who will meet those standards.
Judge them against the standards of their peers.
What if MLK did not support feminists? Would he now be considered scum, thus negating everything good he ever did?
Heck, i don’t know if he had a stance on women’s rights explicitly. Maybe he didn’t. Is he evil if he didn’t?
What if MLK did not support feminists? Would he now be considered scum, thus negating everything good he ever did?
he literally addressed the national organization for women in 1966 and espoused their ideals.
giving a pass to the people from history is problematic because the same ideals of progressiveness that we pride ourselves on today were present in the past and people knew that it existed; they simply weren’t as popular back then as they are now and anyone espousing them back then were treated like tankies of their own time.
giving them a pass only helps to excuse regressivism and anti-progressive sentiment like both the republicans and democrats (respectively) practice today; this is a key reason why we have trump as president today and probably jd vance tomorrow.
Excellent job taking what I wrote and reframing it to make it appear i asserted something I did not.
Reading the room, I can see this forum is filled with people who have an axe to grind and have already decided I am a “part of the problem” because I had the audacity to suggest that we should not demonize the American founders.
Good luck finding a nation that has any redeeming qualities, given that no founders are unimpeachable for anything.
you’re missing the point and no nation’s founder’s character is unassailable.
we give grand canyon sized passes to these specific founders to white wash their truly horrific behaviors (that we know about); but don’t do the same thing for founders that we consider our enemies and that’s indicative of the propaganda that we keep perpetuating when we repeat this whitewashing to each other; as well as the reason why we’re descending into fascism.
no one is immune to propaganda so, yes, you are part of the problem like i am; the only difference is that me along with most of the people commenting on this post are aware of this specific propaganda and you’re not; hopefully unwittingly so.
I find it ironic that you think I am unaware of some propaganda, presumably related to this thread.
I learned about the imperfect personalities of our founders and their peers in elementary school. No passes were given. I also learned that many of the founders sought to explicitly outlaw slavery, but compromised in order to get unity vs. king Charles and a viable nation.
Had they not done that, we would have been divided against an overwhelmingly powerful existential threat and probably would have lost. It is an example of making incremental progress and postponing a conflict until later so that there will be a later.
You are missing my point. “Canceling” historical figures or rewriting history because “bad” is a disservice to everyone. Acknowledging both the good and bad is the better approach. We learn by studying history, identifying the failures and successes precisely to learn from them and hopefully do better.
Our current president is an example of what happens when we don’t learn from history. I don’t know any reasonable person who whitewashed our founders. For those people, you need to look at movements that seek authoritarian control over a population, the people who follow them, and their victims who were denied the necessary education in history and critical thinking.
Additionally, I think most on this thread need to brush up on logical fallacies. Even the best of us forget some of them, but it is endemic in these forums.
Do not demonize people in the past who do not meet current norms. There will never be anybody who will meet those standards.
“Nazis were just a product of their time!”
So you believe the entirety of the United States’ existence is an affront to humanity as it’s very foundation is as evil as Nazism, right? Nothing America ever stood for was any better rhan the worst of humanity.
It is telling that you can so lightly equate my comment to waving off Nazism as if across the developed world Nazism was the norm of the time. Yes, most peoples in the European culture were naturally Nazis, and only a few morally sound people were against it. I see your troll… And I set your straw man on fire.
So you believe the entirety of the United States’ existence is an affront to humanity as it’s very foundation is as evil as Nazism, right?
considering that
- it was founded on genocide
- it was built by slavery
- it still has not completely outlawed slavery
- lebensraum was explicitly based on manifest destiny
- it has killed far more people than the nazis ever managed
yes, the usa is an affront to humanity and is on par with the third reich
