I think that some people who lived off the cattle they worked all day caring for had no moral qualms about hanging cattle thieves. Steal someone’s horse, you take away their ability to make a living, you may leave them unable to travel to purchase necessities, you may leave them stranded in the middle of nowhere and in danger. I doubt people had any moral issues with hanging horse thieves.
When I was a kid this is the common sense way lessons about the past were explained and introduced: “back then this was considered normal and OK. Today, we no longer think that way but it doesn’t make those people bad, wrong or right. It just makes them different because things were different.” Because the reality is, if conditions change, our morality will adjust accordingly or at least we’ll find a way for our morality to accommodate an exception.
Because education is failing to educate. It emphasizes narrative and binary thinking that completely lacks nuance. This is why we read the works of writers like Shakespeare. At the end of Julius Caesar, Antony remarks that Brutus, one of the conspirators who killed Caesar, was the noblest Roman of all, and Octavius agrees. These were two men who loved Caesar yet they could feel that way about one of his murderers. But this creates real discussion about the concepts and themes the play addresses. It creates opportunities for interpretation and this is what they don’t want to cultivate in kids. They want them to repeat the simple narratives and slogans that are imposed upon them. It’s fundamentalism.
I have been trying to say that when judging people of the past that legality of the action isn’t the end all be all. There have been things that were seen by society as wrong, but were also legal. In that case, I don’t have an issue saying a person from the past that did a legal action that was viewed then as well as now as wrong was in the wrong.
This is fair. You are challenging my assumptions on what I thought society’s views of the time were. I fully admitted that I could be wrong on what I thought those views were.
I do get what you are saying because in order for us to find something no longer acceptable we need to judge it. We don’t accept slavery because we look back and see it was wrong. In fact, people at the time needed to find it unacceptable in order to change things. I just believe that we need to be careful when judging people vs judging what were once acceptable cultural norms.
It’s getting worse because one group, Europeans, is judged by today’s standards whereas everyone else not only doesn’t get judged by those same standards, their “bad” deeds aren’t even mentioned. So it’s OK to call white people evil because of slavery, which no longer exists here, but even mentioning that it still exists in Africa is considered racist. You can call the Spanish conquistadors greedy, racist, murderous colonizers but don’t call the Aztecs bloodthirsty (literally), cannibal, murderous, slave owning conquerors and colonizers.
So those civilians you mention, what became of them and the area you mentioned?
Civilians evacuating an area expecting to return and being prevented from returning - the way you describe it sounds like theft. Yet it seems that you find it funny.
Well I saw two or three interviews of mainstream media sources interviewing Hamas spokesmen about a month ago. I don’t remember the details of those interviews perfectly, but I think they denied rape or torture and they defended the killings. So to my recollection there is some overlap with what Hamas has said in the past and what you’ve said. Hamas may have changed their position since then, I don’t know. Aside from that I haven’t seen anyone say what you said, at all. That’s partly why I asked you who - I doubt that you have either.
No, a person’s position is how they call it, which is hopefully a reflection of how they actually see it. Be honest, be sincere.
You might think that the position is so naive that it may as well be, or hateful, dishonest, easy from behind a keyboard a thousand miles away, something along those lines. Regardless there is a world of difference between working with (or against) a person or group of people from where they’re at vs where you think it will lead, would lead, or even where you think they want it to go
The problem with Alex Jones isn’t that he went mainstream. The problem with Alex Jones is that the mainstream went him.
That’s not the position of the average Palestinian sympathizer, even if you think they are overly willing to risk it - and you should develop the habit of making such distinctions.
I fear that free speech won’t last much longer unless the common man values their own words enough to improve them