Quote:
Originally Posted by hipster duck
It may be coincidental, but I've noticed that you value following procedures and rules over adhering to some underlying morality.
For example, the white supremacists have the wrong morals: ultimately, they want to subjugate - and perhaps even annihilate - people of colour in the United States. But they applied for a marching permit, and the counter-protesters, whose position is that the white supremacists are wrong (their counter-position isn't to subjugate or kill white people) didn't, so, in your view, the counter-protesters were in the wrong.
Same with your position on the Confederate states. The Confederacy was all about owning human beings as property, not based on the traditional debt slavery with the right to manumission of ancient times (also morally wrong, but not quite so morally wrong), but a pseudo-scientific belief in racial inferiority that was already morally reprehensible in the 1850s. But, as you posit, because the North attacked them when they threatened to secede, they had the right to defend themselves, and the South had a legitimate fight on their hands.
If we try to be as objective (impossible, but we should try), certain human rights are universal and sacrosanct. Human beings are not inferior based on a pseudo-scientific concept; killing or subjugating other people based on your belief in that person's inferiority is also wrong. I don't think these things can be contested. If groups believe these to be true, they are wrong. Laws and procedures are supposed to exist in the service of preserving those human rights, not the other way around. So you are prioritizing the wrong thing.
That's a red herring. Judaism/anti-semitism isn't what's at issue in Charlottesville.
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Really good post, it took some thought and soul searching for me to reply. I will attempt to show you how I apply moral criteria to the issues you're describing.
I place higher value on actions than words and am a strong believer in freedom of speech exactly because it gives crazies an avenue to vent. What's more disappointing to an extremist is not when some shout him down or attack him - extremists thrive on that - rather when after they air their ideas, there are no new people that quietly join their cause, no-one to back them up. White Supremacists say that they hate jews and blacks and whoever, but they don't in fact do anything about it and when they do, they go to jail or are executed. Laws are in place to prevent their hateful words from turning into actions. The actual action we're talking about here (which, once again takes precedence in my books) is removing monuments, which I disagree with along with apparently 62% of US citizens. I think the melee was set up by the cops with the aim of finding a reason to cancel the lawful protest and no side is more at fault than the other. The car attack was horrific and the driver should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Regarding slavery, ancient slavery was by and large NOT debt slavery. It started with using prisoners of war as manual labour until peace broke out, when raiding parties would need to be organised precisely for looting and slave collection from neighboring tribes. Debt slavery was not uncommon as well and at times may have been a form of charity when the "slave" could no longer look after him/her self.
That having been said, I agree that the slavery practiced in the Confederacy was worse, precisely because moral judgement by then prevented most "others" from becoming slaves. In fact I agree with the North's reason for invasion as well as with the results of the war. The North's other justifications for war were not exactly justifiable but ending slavery was the deciding factor and the reprehensible practice of slavery was indeed ended. I see actions as needing to be balanced, overreactions will have negative consequences - there are many examples throughout history. In this case, the reconciliation was mostly amicable and the US of today reflects the shared culture of both sides. Reunification would have been impossible without this.
As for your last paragraph, I agree that we today can see clearly that this is true, but only a few centuries ago your life often depended on discrimination and being able to quickly tell who is different from you. This truth stretches back into evolutionary time and indeed animals discriminate this way. Getting past this is no small feat and slavery in the US was just one holdover.
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