No one is morally perfect. There are always flaws. You open the door to political control. Shall we teardown MLK statues because he was a womanizer/misogynist and possibly a rapist?
Who gets to make that call?
You’ve fallen for a trap. The simple rule is- we should adore ancestors who made our world better. Did MLK have severe flaws? Yes- but is the world on net better?
Under that rubric, all the people the woke want to teardown should be revered- and all the people they want to elevate should be reviled.
Disagree. Washington and Jefferson were massive positive goods for us and the entire world.
Disagreeing with that involves systematically misunderstanding human history and/or being motivated by status games (which is actually what’s going on).
There are more complicated cases- Columbus, Mandela- but by and large the people we revered in 2005 all pass this test easily
Agreed re Washington and Jefferson**, but they were not representative of the majority on this score at the time. That's the point I'm trying to make here.
Regarding who's a hero and who's not, skilled propagandists (and the science has never been so sophisticated) can make nearly anyone believe anything, given a monopoly platform and a little time. They have "accomplished" incredible and incredibly destructive things in recent times, not just in woke "education", but also the COVID "public health" campaign, the abolition of biological sex, ongoing American war justifications, etc. etc.
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**Although both slaveholders, Washington freed his slaves on death; Jefferson at times, and early on, argued for eventual emancipation despite owning slaves.
I don't believe anyone or anything should ever be canceled. They should forever be left visible with forever evolving commentary. We should consider perpetually both historical figures *as well as* our previous judgments of them.
I think this is the much better position. Sure everyone has faults and has done bad things, but what we put the statues up for is the exceptionally good things they did.
Don't forget the woke are blind to the moral atrocities committed by their past fellow travellers. White-washing socialism and communism, willfulling passing over suffering caused by bad governance. They honor their own villains and libel true heroes.
I hesitate to give them credit for this because they clearly only do it to certain people in the past. They don’t apply present moral standards to the Comanche, the Aztecs, or the Red Army. Only to people they view as pioneers of Western imperialism and/or Capitalism. I don’t think they have a disproportionate likelihood of condemning atrocities compared to the average person- they just use moralizing to attack figures they already hate.
Moreover, these moral standards simply do not apply to *groups* -- period. We supposedly learned this lesson in the color-'blind' sixties from MKL and RFK et al.
Accordingly, the white males who did atrocities were not "white males" per se. They were, generally speaking, young, attractive, intelligent, more or less sociopathic, and especially early on, rich, politically connected, and especially, *risk-prone*. NOT the average white male, and certainly not all white males.
This should be precisely the same anti-stereotype (remember that word from the 60s-70s? I do!) metric that the ("liberal") establishment applies -- and should apply -- to inner cities populated primarily by Blacks, Latinos, etc where crime rate is high and guns abound.
And our 'owners' clearly know all these things. So do the math as to what' going on.
This is a fair argument. I will emphasize though that wokeness doesn't consistently adhere to this moral universalism. Wokeness is characterized by a sacralization of certain minority groups, so they will engage in moral universalism when it comes to Europeans, but will not engage in it when it comes to other groups, where potential flaws can be seen as a product of culture or oppression.
Furthermore, even amongst people who will see past atrocities "in their historical context", as bad as such arguments can be, I don't think you would find any of them defending such atrocities if they were being done today. What I mean to say is that it isn't on any substantive level important to how we make moral judgments, and the position is likely adhered to more consistently than the woke viewpoint.
Perhaps it's a question of whether you prefer a consistent but incorrect worldview over a more correct but inconsistent worldview.
Yes. wokeness has moral standards that should be considered. But that’s not the wokeness that drives today’s progressive or young people. Their behavior is based on a strict set of good guys-bad guys, victims-oppressors, with the goal of overturning the white, European male power structure, and replace it with everyone else, regardless of merit. Their approach has been to seed doubt in our imperfect vision of the America dream as a land of opportunity. It’s about ideology, not morality.
We have no choice but to grade on a curve. By today's western liberal standards, everyone from the 1600s was a monster. Those the woke attack are typically much less so.
One other moral thinking trap along these lines is giving the losers/victims the benefit of the doubt. Just because one group succeeded in doing terrible things to another doesn't imply that the loser wouldn't have done just the same in reverse if circumstances had been different. I expect most times they would have.
“One other moral thinking trap along these lines is giving the losers/victims the benefit of the doubt. Just because one group succeeded in doing terrible things to another doesn't imply that the loser wouldn't have done just the same in reverse if circumstances had been different. I expect most times they would have.”
But, but, but… that’s just crazy talk.
When the nice folks that “Queers for Palestine” root for succeed, that part of the world will be much safer for queers and women and PoCs and Christians and both Shia and Sunni Muslims alike.
You’re just making shit up. You don’t know the counterfactual. The ones the woke deem oppressed are always better people.
The problem with these types of arguments is who is missing. Slavery was practiced in Africa and in the Americas long before the White Man showed up. The only ones who didn't seem to do it were the Incas and that might be in dispute The beginning of Roots it shows white men running through the jungle after back boys. In reality most of the time they were already captured by other black tribes who were more than willing to sell them. Africans resisted attempts by the British to end internal slavery in Africa well into the 20th Century. The Moors captured white people as well as black and sold them as slaves. Any discussion of slavery in the western world seems always based on what white people did to non white people. Not what non white people did to other non white people and to white people. If slavery of a black person by a white person is wrong isn't slavery of a white person by a black person also wrong and isn't slavery of a black person by another black person also wrong? Slavery was a universal practice for centuries. The great pretense is that it was always done by "others". Now move on to Child sacrifice.
I am quite sure that Bryan Caplan, if he had grown up in a society in which slavery was the norm and his people were enslavers, would not regard slavery as immoral. Therefore Bryan Caplan must be an evil, immoral person and judged accordingly.
How about trying to understand our ancestors instead of judging them? They're dead, after all.
Universal moral standards are fundamentally stupid, unless you believe in God. If you believe we, including our morality, are the product of natural selection, they make no sense.
Morality is socially constructed and is not universal. Granted, as a matter of genetic survival there are several things pack animals have to agree on--don't sacrifice babies to Moloch, for example--but moral precepts vary wildly in application depending on the sociology and circumstances, and vary wildly by individual opinion.
On the other hand, do we want to teach the lesson that slavery was wrong only because certain racial groups were underrepresented among the masters and the overseers?
"Murdering and enslaving fellow human beings really are evil, and you don’t have to be a moral visionary to realize it."
So you agree with woke perspectives and positions on Gaza?
"When confronted with these harsh realities, most thinkers try to weasel out with a variation on, 'It was a very different time.'"
So you believe a healthy majority of 18th century European immigrants, never mind the thought leaders of the time, believed that full equality between races was the 'natural order' of things, and simply lacked political power to overturn the existing evil powers?
Slavery started becoming obviously immoral when technology started replacing slave labor. I'm surprised an economist, of all people, doesn't recognize the effect of economics on ethics.
And how does that help us move forward from where we are today? We cannot change the past, the best we can do is to improve in the future. So i ask how this changes our path forward.
No one is morally perfect. There are always flaws. You open the door to political control. Shall we teardown MLK statues because he was a womanizer/misogynist and possibly a rapist?
Who gets to make that call?
You’ve fallen for a trap. The simple rule is- we should adore ancestors who made our world better. Did MLK have severe flaws? Yes- but is the world on net better?
Under that rubric, all the people the woke want to teardown should be revered- and all the people they want to elevate should be reviled.
"The simple rule is- we should adore ancestors who made our world better."
Sure. But it is not at all a simple thing for a majority to recognize and agree to what has made the world better.
Disagree. Washington and Jefferson were massive positive goods for us and the entire world.
Disagreeing with that involves systematically misunderstanding human history and/or being motivated by status games (which is actually what’s going on).
There are more complicated cases- Columbus, Mandela- but by and large the people we revered in 2005 all pass this test easily
You are, of course, both correct.
It should be easy to agree on almost all of the historical figures who should be (net) revered.
But it is not because leftists gonna leftist.
Agreed re Washington and Jefferson**, but they were not representative of the majority on this score at the time. That's the point I'm trying to make here.
Regarding who's a hero and who's not, skilled propagandists (and the science has never been so sophisticated) can make nearly anyone believe anything, given a monopoly platform and a little time. They have "accomplished" incredible and incredibly destructive things in recent times, not just in woke "education", but also the COVID "public health" campaign, the abolition of biological sex, ongoing American war justifications, etc. etc.
--------------
**Although both slaveholders, Washington freed his slaves on death; Jefferson at times, and early on, argued for eventual emancipation despite owning slaves.
Who are you thinking of that has been properly cancelled? Columbus is the only one I can think of that I maybe agree with?
Are you thinking at Confederate memorials?
I don't believe anyone or anything should ever be canceled. They should forever be left visible with forever evolving commentary. We should consider perpetually both historical figures *as well as* our previous judgments of them.
I think this is the much better position. Sure everyone has faults and has done bad things, but what we put the statues up for is the exceptionally good things they did.
Don't forget the woke are blind to the moral atrocities committed by their past fellow travellers. White-washing socialism and communism, willfulling passing over suffering caused by bad governance. They honor their own villains and libel true heroes.
I hesitate to give them credit for this because they clearly only do it to certain people in the past. They don’t apply present moral standards to the Comanche, the Aztecs, or the Red Army. Only to people they view as pioneers of Western imperialism and/or Capitalism. I don’t think they have a disproportionate likelihood of condemning atrocities compared to the average person- they just use moralizing to attack figures they already hate.
Moreover, these moral standards simply do not apply to *groups* -- period. We supposedly learned this lesson in the color-'blind' sixties from MKL and RFK et al.
Accordingly, the white males who did atrocities were not "white males" per se. They were, generally speaking, young, attractive, intelligent, more or less sociopathic, and especially early on, rich, politically connected, and especially, *risk-prone*. NOT the average white male, and certainly not all white males.
This should be precisely the same anti-stereotype (remember that word from the 60s-70s? I do!) metric that the ("liberal") establishment applies -- and should apply -- to inner cities populated primarily by Blacks, Latinos, etc where crime rate is high and guns abound.
And our 'owners' clearly know all these things. So do the math as to what' going on.
You know, I gave this a Like, but they're going to tear down my statues some day (well if I ever get any statues).
Because I ate meat.
People everywhere have the morality they can afford.
This is a fair argument. I will emphasize though that wokeness doesn't consistently adhere to this moral universalism. Wokeness is characterized by a sacralization of certain minority groups, so they will engage in moral universalism when it comes to Europeans, but will not engage in it when it comes to other groups, where potential flaws can be seen as a product of culture or oppression.
Furthermore, even amongst people who will see past atrocities "in their historical context", as bad as such arguments can be, I don't think you would find any of them defending such atrocities if they were being done today. What I mean to say is that it isn't on any substantive level important to how we make moral judgments, and the position is likely adhered to more consistently than the woke viewpoint.
Perhaps it's a question of whether you prefer a consistent but incorrect worldview over a more correct but inconsistent worldview.
Yes. wokeness has moral standards that should be considered. But that’s not the wokeness that drives today’s progressive or young people. Their behavior is based on a strict set of good guys-bad guys, victims-oppressors, with the goal of overturning the white, European male power structure, and replace it with everyone else, regardless of merit. Their approach has been to seed doubt in our imperfect vision of the America dream as a land of opportunity. It’s about ideology, not morality.
We have no choice but to grade on a curve. By today's western liberal standards, everyone from the 1600s was a monster. Those the woke attack are typically much less so.
One other moral thinking trap along these lines is giving the losers/victims the benefit of the doubt. Just because one group succeeded in doing terrible things to another doesn't imply that the loser wouldn't have done just the same in reverse if circumstances had been different. I expect most times they would have.
“One other moral thinking trap along these lines is giving the losers/victims the benefit of the doubt. Just because one group succeeded in doing terrible things to another doesn't imply that the loser wouldn't have done just the same in reverse if circumstances had been different. I expect most times they would have.”
But, but, but… that’s just crazy talk.
When the nice folks that “Queers for Palestine” root for succeed, that part of the world will be much safer for queers and women and PoCs and Christians and both Shia and Sunni Muslims alike.
You’re just making shit up. You don’t know the counterfactual. The ones the woke deem oppressed are always better people.
The problem with these types of arguments is who is missing. Slavery was practiced in Africa and in the Americas long before the White Man showed up. The only ones who didn't seem to do it were the Incas and that might be in dispute The beginning of Roots it shows white men running through the jungle after back boys. In reality most of the time they were already captured by other black tribes who were more than willing to sell them. Africans resisted attempts by the British to end internal slavery in Africa well into the 20th Century. The Moors captured white people as well as black and sold them as slaves. Any discussion of slavery in the western world seems always based on what white people did to non white people. Not what non white people did to other non white people and to white people. If slavery of a black person by a white person is wrong isn't slavery of a white person by a black person also wrong and isn't slavery of a black person by another black person also wrong? Slavery was a universal practice for centuries. The great pretense is that it was always done by "others". Now move on to Child sacrifice.
I am quite sure that Bryan Caplan, if he had grown up in a society in which slavery was the norm and his people were enslavers, would not regard slavery as immoral. Therefore Bryan Caplan must be an evil, immoral person and judged accordingly.
How about trying to understand our ancestors instead of judging them? They're dead, after all.
Universal moral standards are fundamentally stupid, unless you believe in God. If you believe we, including our morality, are the product of natural selection, they make no sense.
Columbus and Hitler in the same breath!!???
Morality is socially constructed and is not universal. Granted, as a matter of genetic survival there are several things pack animals have to agree on--don't sacrifice babies to Moloch, for example--but moral precepts vary wildly in application depending on the sociology and circumstances, and vary wildly by individual opinion.
On the other hand, do we want to teach the lesson that slavery was wrong only because certain racial groups were underrepresented among the masters and the overseers?
"Murdering and enslaving fellow human beings really are evil, and you don’t have to be a moral visionary to realize it."
So you agree with woke perspectives and positions on Gaza?
"When confronted with these harsh realities, most thinkers try to weasel out with a variation on, 'It was a very different time.'"
So you believe a healthy majority of 18th century European immigrants, never mind the thought leaders of the time, believed that full equality between races was the 'natural order' of things, and simply lacked political power to overturn the existing evil powers?
Slavery started becoming obviously immoral when technology started replacing slave labor. I'm surprised an economist, of all people, doesn't recognize the effect of economics on ethics.
And how does that help us move forward from where we are today? We cannot change the past, the best we can do is to improve in the future. So i ask how this changes our path forward.
Well, the woke have an answer for that.
Woke leftists take power and make the world a better place for the oppressed.
Because if we condemn Columbus and Jefferson, but not Lenin, Stalin and Castro, obviously the world will be a better place.
Duh!!
I wonder how much they know much about any of those people beyond what was spoon-fed by the New Left.