DaveP said:
Exactly, this was the point I was making.
It is ridiculous to blame people now for what their ancestors did,
Nobody's doing that Dave, that's just a tedious strawman.
DaveP said:
It is part of the guilt trip that many indulge in today. When you read history, you find that they had an entirely alien way of thinking back then, but as our moral code has evolved from those times it is senseless and counter productive to try and overlay that history with revisionism.
DaveP
What on earth does that mean, "overlay that history with revisionism"? Are you saying it was NOT immoral enslave black people because of their skin color, simply because that historical revisionism using our moral code overlaid on the people of that time? That's absurd.
Look, this is all perfectly simple Dave;
Our ancestors did things and their actions had consequences. If we want to improve society, the world actually, then we need to learn from their mistakes. This line of reasoning you appear to be embarking on now only seems to serve to sweep the dirt under a rug; "Yes, I see the bump, I know what that used to be, but let's just see a carpet now. No sense to dwell on the past"....
And the danger here is not only obviously repeating the mistakes of the past, but in addition to that also not correct mistakes and not create new ones which follow those earlier mistakes.
Secondly though, and I sort of bypassed this because I honestly think you don't want to talk about it but I feel it needs to be restated: You have to decide what sort of conversation you want to have and if you want to view human beings and our activities and advocate the principle of universality or not.
The way that applies to this conversation can be exemplified using Iran as an example. Iran is thought to be a "bad" and "dangerous" nation, as a whole, by mainly conservatives here. So, let's look at a couple of arguments, obviously paraphrased;
1: It's a bad nation for what it did in the past
2: It's a bad nation for what it currently does
So, if you want to be fair, then for #1 you'll have to look at the timeline of history and make a choice as to how far back you want to go. If you want to say that Iran is bad because it sponsored war for example, but don't want to go as far back as the 50's when the US threw out their leadership, then that's what we do, always. We go back to that certain period of time and no further. I think you mentioned going back through W's presidency in the US. Fine. So if we discuss the situation in Israel / Palestine we don't have to talk about the war in '48, we don't have to talk about the war in '67, and we don't have to talk about the war in the 70's. If you ever feel the urge to say "But the Arabs attacked..." that's now an invalid argument, because apparently back then things were different (morally) and we don't dial our history back that far. In other words if you want to be fair
when discussing this and when viewing the world then you need to apply the same principle equally.
And for #2 you're still presented with a problem. I believe you said something along the lines of Iran being bad because it sends arms to Hezbollah. Ok, so sending arms to an aggressor apparently makes a nation bad.... or does it Dave? If that's your argument, is it fair to say that ANY nation that provides arms to an aggressor state or sub-state actor is a bad nation? I'm willing to bet that the answer is "no", because we all know who the biggest weapons exporters on the planet are, and at least a couple of them by definition can't be "bad" because of it. But if you want to be intellectually consistent you
have to acknowledge that the principle you use as an argument applies to a lot more countries to a lot higher degree than just Iran.
So perhaps my question to you should really be if you actually believe in the principle of universality at all (?). I don't think you do, and that's a shame.
