Washington & Jefferson Statue Get Pulled Down

[Kowani]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGhJ5FuxUZU

Comparing yourself to the Joker does not really help with the whole "not evil" thing

Gonna be honest, if anyone links anything of Chris Nolan's Joker and you take them seriously, that's on you.

[Nobel Hobos 2]

Bruh if you think George Washington was bad you’re no better than people who think Fidel Castro was bad

Castro smoked tobacco, according to the applied ex post facto moral standards he's literally Satan.

He did give it up for a while.
At least he gave up smoking in public.
That's at least a bit not-evil.

[Nobel Hobos 2]

Comparing yourself to the Joker does not really help with the whole "not evil" thing

Gonna be honest, if anyone links anything of Chris Nolan's Joker and you take them seriously, that's on you.

No, no no. When people aren't getting your jokes you do more jokes.

Peevish honesty is no way out. Jokers get a laugh or they die on stage!

[The Two Jerseys]

Castro smoked tobacco, according to the applied ex post facto moral standards he's literally Satan.

He did give it up for a while.
At least he gave up smoking in public.
That's at least a bit not-evil.

Still gotta tear down all the Fidel monuments. There's no excuse for smoking, it's too terrible to dismiss or ignore.

[Baltenstein]

You literally just said that your goal is to watch the world burn.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGhJ5FuxUZU

"Come again? You burned down the forest?"

[The Alma Mater]

He did give it up for a while.
At least he gave up smoking in public.
That's at least a bit not-evil.

Still gotta tear down all the Fidel monuments. There's no excuse for smoking, it's too terrible to dismiss or ignore.

Indeed. Think of the children.

[Ifreann]

If the fixing part is not addressed, the tearing down solved little.

A system cannot be fixed until the rot is burned away.

More to the point, a situation cannot be fixed until people understand that there are problems to be fixed. But for these statues being torn down, we would not even be having this conversation.

---

He did own some of them, but regardless there's no excuse for having slaves. It's too terrible to dismiss or ignore.

Washington was a slaveowner.

Which as I'm sure has been explained to you....was not a big deal at the time.

On the contrary, slavery very much was a big deal. When they lived in Pennsylvania, the Washingtons had to move their slaves out of the state regularly, because the gradual abolition law there freed anyone held in slavery for more than six months. Abolition was already happening in the earliest days of America's existence. Abolition could have happened even earlier. A proposal was brought to Washington to free the slaves and add them to the ranks of the revolutionary forces, but Washington refused rather than undermine the basis of his own wealth.

---

Only it was till just as immoral and there was an anti-slavery movement then. Once again, there is no justification.

Not by a majority or large chunk of the population, no. You can't judge the past based on present beliefs, or beliefs a generation or two past their time. It doesn't work like that.

When you speak about popular support for slavery, are you counting the opinions of the slaves?

You have a very black and white view of this...and the world is much more grey on most matters.

Washington owned slaves, yes. Washington is also a hero and founder of this country, and was loved and respected in his day. He was a good man, and he is worthy of remembrance and praise.

Washington was widely criticised in his day, even by other Founding Fathers. He was publicly called out during his lifetime for ostensibly fighting for freedom and liberty for all men while he held men in chains and forced them to work for him.

---

He did own some of them, but regardless there's no excuse for having slaves. It's too terrible to dismiss or ignore. Washington was a slaveowner.

Blame the economics of the era more so than the people participating in it. Slavery was normal and accepted back then for the landed gentry or wealthy elites who primarily cared about staying rich or becoming even richer. Lets keep in mind that hard physical labor had much more value then than now. We have machines that can do a ton of work for us that simply didn't exist. We would probably still have slavery in the traditional sense if coerced manual labor still was more profitable than expensive.

Now it has evolved to wage slavery where people largely aren't free to spend their waking hours as they want to, people who aren't rich enough typically trade their time for money in the process of selling a service or skill they have. Nearly every method of generating income will have a downside in terms of what is required to bring about material gain.

Saiwania, as usual, says the quiet part loud. The elites of American society, and plenty of other countries, attained and maintained that position by the use of slave labour, and thus they supported the practice, simple as.

[Northern Davincia]

Washington was widely criticised in his day, even by other Founding Fathers. He was publicly called out during his lifetime for ostensibly fighting for freedom and liberty for all men while he held men in chains and forced them to work for him.

Criticism against Washington was largely drowned out by the overwhelming praise for him. Still, he corrected that inconsistency as best he could.

[Ifreann]

Washington was widely criticised in his day, even by other Founding Fathers. He was publicly called out during his lifetime for ostensibly fighting for freedom and liberty for all men while he held men in chains and forced them to work for him.

Criticism against Washington was largely drowned out by the overwhelming praise for him.

Pay no attention to the rebellion against his whiskey tax.

Still, he corrected that inconsistency as best he could.

The double think that emerges from the worship of Washington truly is something to behold. On one day he is single-handedly defeating the one of the most powerful empires the world had ever known, on another there is simply nothing he can do about all the slaves he owns except continue to grow rich from their labour.

[Purpelia]

People must be judged solely based on the morals of their time. We can not impose modern morality on them. The reason is extremely simple. Morality is NOT ABSOLUTE. It CHANGES with every generation. The good of today is yesterdays evil and might be evil again tomorrow. And if we were to apply our morals to men of history than we must also be judged by the morals of those that are not yet born. Which is utterly insane of a proposition since we can obviously not be expected to behave in accordance to rules that have not been written yet.

[The Emerald Legion]

People must be judged solely based on the morals of their time. We can not impose modern morality on them. The reason is extremely simple. Morality is NOT ABSOLUTE. It CHANGES with every generation. The good of today is yesterdays evil and might be evil again tomorrow. And if we were to apply our morals to men of history than we must also be judged by the morals of those that are not yet born. Which is utterly insane of a proposition since we can obviously not be expected to behave in accordance to rules that have not been written yet.

Morality is absolutely absolute. Today's social norms are deeply immoral.

[Northern Davincia]

Criticism against Washington was largely drowned out by the overwhelming praise for him.

Pay no attention to the rebellion against his whiskey tax.

Still, he corrected that inconsistency as best he could.

The double think that emerges from the worship of Washington truly is something to behold. On one day he is single-handedly defeating the one of the most powerful empires the world had ever known, on another there is simply nothing he can do about all the slaves he owns except continue to grow rich from their labour.

The Whiskey Rebellion was very small and almost no one died. It was basically a footnote that tested Washington's authority.
Victory in the Revolution, however, would have been impossible without France. A civil war early in the republic's history would have destroyed it.

[Kowani]

People must be judged solely based on the morals of their time. We can not impose modern morality on them. The reason is extremely simple. Morality is NOT ABSOLUTE. It CHANGES with every generation. The good of today is yesterdays evil and might be evil again tomorrow. And if we were to apply our morals to men of history than we must also be judged by the morals of those that are not yet born. Which is utterly insane of a proposition since we can obviously not be expected to behave in accordance to rules that have not been written yet.

Why care about what people 4 generations down will say? You'll be dead. Do what you think is moral, and don't worry about the moral predilections of the future.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGhJ5FuxUZU

"Come again? You burned down the forest?"

Ah, I've missed these.

[The Reformed American Republic]

Those two beliefs coexist. Communists too want us to reach full automation, but they believe that worker ownership of the means of production is the only way to advance technology to the point of full automation due to contradictory forces in capitalism caused by commodity production (assigning quantitative value to inherently qualitative goods and services).

...Except for the fact that communists think that the people should control and own the automation, and I don't. I...also don't think that worker ownership is the only way to achieve automation, though it is a way.

Increases in technology are limited by demand, of course. If I own a business that produces 10 commodities with $1 profit per commodity, and you offer me technology that would allow me to produce 100 commodities with $0.10 profit per commodity, but there's only, say, 50 consumers in the market, I would lose profit by switching to your technology.

This is not only untrue, it's bad analysis from any perspective.

Civic religions keeps society together. Your post modernist agenda will atomize society.

...What, did you think I didn't have an idea of what to fill in the blanks with?

Multivac or Skynet ?

Neither. It cannot be all-knowing, and deliberate mass murder is...not really my goal.

What you propose would probably be some half baked idea that left-wing sociologists came up with, like seeing who can grandstand the most.

[Kowani]

What you propose would probably be some half baked idea that left-wing sociologists came up with, like seeing who can grandstand the most.

He says, knowing absolutely nothing.

[Philjia]

People must be judged solely based on the morals of their time. We can not impose modern morality on them. The reason is extremely simple. Morality is NOT ABSOLUTE. It CHANGES with every generation. The good of today is yesterdays evil and might be evil again tomorrow. And if we were to apply our morals to men of history than we must also be judged by the morals of those that are not yet born. Which is utterly insane of a proposition since we can obviously not be expected to behave in accordance to rules that have not been written yet.

The slaves knew slavery was immoral. Multiple European nations knew slavery was immoral. William Wilberforce knew slavery was immoral. John Adams knew slavery was immoral.

[Ors Might]

People must be judged solely based on the morals of their time. We can not impose modern morality on them. The reason is extremely simple. Morality is NOT ABSOLUTE. It CHANGES with every generation. The good of today is yesterdays evil and might be evil again tomorrow. And if we were to apply our morals to men of history than we must also be judged by the morals of those that are not yet born. Which is utterly insane of a proposition since we can obviously not be expected to behave in accordance to rules that have not been written yet.

Homeslice, refusing to judge people by your own moral standards is moral cowardice. If you have convictions then you wouldn’t drop them the moment someone disagreed with them, right? So what does it matter if those naysayers are a bunch of long dead dudes?

I value the Founding Fathers, particularly Washington. They laid down the framework of my homeland and in a way have influenced my own values. But they were not perfect. In fact, many of them were complicit in acts that, by my own previously mentioned values, I have no choice but to condemn wholesale. I might disagree with removing Washington’s statues but to refuse to judge his more immoral acts is reprehensible.

[Auze]

Anyways, here's my (bad) idea on what to do: Replace the statues with those of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general and founder of the KKK who later became disillusioned with white supremacy groups, ordered the dissolution of the Klan, and spent the last years of his life advocating for racial harmony. Put up two bright signs on opposite sides, with one sign displaying only the first part of this and one sign displaying only the last part. I have no idea what will happen, but I figure it will be entertaining.

Edit: removed tangential part of post

[Ifreann]

People must be judged solely based on the morals of their time...

By the morality of the day, slavery was immoral. For one there are all the slaves, who very obviously did not think it moral that they were property and subject to the whims of their owners. Further, there were abolitionist movements even at America's founding, and some states had gradual abolition laws in place. Further, the foundational principles of America are plainly incompatible with slavery. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain rights, among these life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Even at the time George Washington was criticised for continuing to own slaves despite fighting for those principles of liberty and equality.

But what people tend to mean when they talk about judging historical figures by the standards of their day is that we must judge them by their own morality, by the morality of the powerful at the time, by the morality of those we now know would go on to be the victors. When people talk about judging historical figures by the morality of their times, they want us to pretend that slavery was moral in America up until the moment Lincoln, with a mighty pen-stroke, shifted the world around him and made it immoral by signing the Emancipation Proclamation. Never mind all the people in America who had been saying that slavery was immoral for a hundred years. Never mind that any slave, if they trusted you not to rat them out to their master, could have told you at length and in gruesome detail what is wrong with slavery.

You say that it is insane to expect people to behave in accordance with rules that have not been written yet. But they have. The rules that you would seemingly have us apply only in the late 19th century were written long before that. The rules that a 31st Century Purpelia would say should be applied to historical figures of the 22nd century have probably already been written today. They may well have been written in the 20th Century. The first steps towards our modern scientific understanding that some people are transgender and the best thing to do is help them transition were taken in the 1930s in Weimar Germany. Transgender people have probably existed forever. When did transphobia become immoral? Is it immoral now?

If we analyse history with the understanding that the only valid morality from which to judge historical figures is the dominant morality of those in power, then we open ourselves up to believing that dominance is validity, that the morality enforced and exercised by those with power today is the valid morality today, that to dissent from their dictates is immoral. And if we think that then how can we ever criticise those in power? How can we ever exercise moral reasoning ourselves? Morality is what Donald Trump does, what Jair Bolsonaro does, what Xi Jinping does, what Vladimir Putin does. Right up until they lose power, then we must all spin like a weather vane and align with the new morality. Is that a sane expectation?

[Esotyrica]

People must be judged solely based on the morals of their time. We can not impose modern morality on them. The reason is extremely simple. Morality is NOT ABSOLUTE. It CHANGES with every generation. The good of today is yesterdays evil and might be evil again tomorrow. And if we were to apply our morals to men of history than we must also be judged by the morals of those that are not yet born. Which is utterly insane of a proposition since we can obviously not be expected to behave in accordance to rules that have not been written yet.

this is a stupid take

the only morality that matters is the popular morality of the moment as that is what defines everything

[Cisairse]

People must be judged solely based on the morals of their time. We can not impose modern morality on them. The reason is extremely simple. Morality is NOT ABSOLUTE. It CHANGES with every generation. The good of today is yesterdays evil and might be evil again tomorrow. And if we were to apply our morals to men of history than we must also be judged by the morals of those that are not yet born. Which is utterly insane of a proposition since we can obviously not be expected to behave in accordance to rules that have not been written yet.

But we're not applying modern morality to historical figures. We're applying modern morality to inanimate statues that exist in modern society.

[The Black Forrest]

A system cannot be fixed until the rot is burned away.

More to the point, a situation cannot be fixed until people understand that there are problems to be fixed. But for these statues being torn down, we would not even be having this conversation.

Hopefully there will be action; talk is always the easiest of the two.

[The Reformed American Republic]

People must be judged solely based on the morals of their time. We can not impose modern morality on them. The reason is extremely simple. Morality is NOT ABSOLUTE. It CHANGES with every generation. The good of today is yesterdays evil and might be evil again tomorrow. And if we were to apply our morals to men of history than we must also be judged by the morals of those that are not yet born. Which is utterly insane of a proposition since we can obviously not be expected to behave in accordance to rules that have not been written yet.

But we're not applying modern morality to historical figures. We're applying modern morality to inanimate statues that exist in modern society.

By refusing to recognize their contributions to our republic by taking those statues down, you are judging them by modern standards, especially when you are doing it for reasons that were fine back then.

[Cisairse]

But we're not applying modern morality to historical figures. We're applying modern morality to inanimate statues that exist in modern society.

By refusing to recognize their contributions to our republic by taking those statues down, you are judging them by modern standards, especially when you are doing it for reasons that were fine back then.

The idea that removing a statue is "refusing to recognize their contributions to our republic" is laughable.

[Asle Leopolka]

By refusing to recognize their contributions to our republic by taking those statues down, you are judging them by modern standards, especially when you are doing it for reasons that were fine back then.

The idea that removing a statue is "refusing to recognize their contributions to our republic" is laughable.

It can be interpreted as "we don't care about your contributions to this country, you had slaves so everything else is irrelevant." Just trying to empathize here. I still think that the people knocking those statues down (as well as Grant's and other non-political figures) are not part of BLM or any other legitimate group but are instead dickbags using the movement as a cover.