Look it was a different time. Most every German thought it was a good idea to eliminate the “Jewish Problem”. We can’t judge those people by our modern standard of morality.
I’m pretty sure the slaves in 1860 considered it wrong.
This is why you are being accused of moral relativism. That statement is reprehensible. Instead, try “what is considered wrong today, wasn’t CONSIDERED wrong yesterday”.
Slavery was always wrong, even if human societies weren’t enlightened enough to see that.
Great analogy. Smoking was bad for you even before we knew it was bad for you; it was always a carcinogenic poison. By that same token, racism was wrong, and bad for our society, even when all the white men on top of society considered it right, and didn’t ask anyone else.
Really? Presentism is just as wrong as racism? I’ve never known “presentism” to cause a genocide, but maybe it’s just because we haven’t invented time travel yet.
“It seemed like a good idea at the time” is the new “I was just following orders”
In 1860, slavery was widely considered wrong, so slaveholders of that period can have that held against them. But racism was normal.
…
Whereas the slaves in 1776 were happy to do their part for the future US of A?
Why do you pick one word out of the post (the year 1860) and respond only to that, instead of to what the other poster is actually saying?
Haven’t you heard? Political correctness grinds everything to a halt while half the population finishes clutching their pearls until they’re ground to dust. It’s a pretty labor-intensive process.
Uh, yes it was seen as wrong by many back then. The growth of Abolitionism showed that.
Despite its brutality and inhumanity, the slave system aroused little protest until the 18th century, when rationalist thinkers of the Enlightenment began to criticize it for its violation of the rights of man, and Quaker and other evangelical religious groups condemned it for its un-Christian qualities. By the late 18th century, moral disapproval of slavery was widespread, and antislavery reformers won a number of deceptively easy victories during this period. In Britain, Granville Sharp secured a legal decision in 1772 that West Indian planters could not hold slaves in Britain, since slavery was contrary to English law.
In the United States, all of the states north of Maryland abolished slavery between 1777 and 1804. But antislavery sentiments had little effect on the centres of slavery themselves: the great plantations of the Deep South, the West Indies, and South America. Turning their attention to these areas, British and American abolitionists began working in the late 18th century to prohibit the importation of African slaves into the British colonies and the United States. Under the leadership of William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson, these forces succeeded in getting the slave trade to the British colonies abolished in 1807. The United States prohibited the importation of slaves that same year, though widespread smuggling continued until about 1862.
This thread is serving as a great demonstration of this process.
Sad but true.
Because that is what they were saying.
In 1776 slavery wasnt widely considered as wrong, in fact the few Abolitionists were considered bonkers.
Sure, the slaves weren’t happy but that wasnt a common concern.
What bearing does that have on whether slavery is right or wrong, or was right or wrong in the past? Unless, of course, you ARE a moral relativist, despite your earlier protests?
Indeed, as i said Slavery was widely considered wrong 100 years ago by many.
But racism wasnt. “it” in the quote you cite from me, referred to racism, not slavery.
So, you cites just prove that i said- 100 years ago, racism was the norm, but slavery was considered wrong by most people.
When you can show that slave owners would have been happy to become slaves then you’ll have a point.
No, as i said “presentism” is judging the people of the past by the standards of today.
It is perfectly Ok to judge the people of the past by the standards then.
Me, too.
Also, is Galileo on the list? I lived in San Francisco one summer decades ago, and I was young enough to pass for high school age. So, I got a high school bus pass, and the people I lived with said, if challenged, to say I went to Galileo (the school I would have gone to based on my address). All I knew about it at the time is that OJ Simpson went there.
That… is the definition of moral relativism. Which means we have nothing left to debate, because by your logic, if Hitler conquered the wrong and created his Third Reich, it would be wrong to judge its citizens for their genocide and mass murder. Because that’s the prevailing attitude of their time.
So yeah, I have nothing to debate with someone who subscribes to moral relativism.
I would say that would be on other places, in the USA slavery came to be considered a condition applicable only to black people some other minorities.
The school names are in use today, so judging the appropriateness of the names should use today’s standards, no?
Obviously this is what we are discussing. You’d almost think we are putting Lincoln on trial here.