Do you have a mind-reading device? He said it wasn't fair to judge individuals without understanding the mindset of their time. Imagining what people might have experienced or thought historically is not a thought crime. However the way you overlook how Alex qualified slavery in that post is pretty weak.

You are still the one creating and asserting a motive which is not indicative by that post, while ignoring what AlexM says about it.

Shame Trolly has engaged in similar posting bring up NeoGoreanism. Have you called him a racist slave apologist for it yet?

I have no problem with apologizing for great historic figures who have helped move our civilization forward, like Plato, Newton, da Vinci, Jefferson, Ghandi, Churchill, Chezlaw, all who are scum in their own ways, without apologizing for the mistakes they've made.

Understanding something is not equal to apologizing for it. And that is it. In fact, better understanding is how we form more correct judgements. That is assuming the knowledge is correctly applied and not filtered through one fallacious cognitive bias or another.

You flatter them

Disclaimer: I know more about the actual people then you might expect.

Certainly trying to understand it isn't.

Pointing out that many of us including wookie might have done worse than Jefferson given the circumstance might well be. But so what? if its true its true.

Disclaimer: I know less about the actual people then you might expect.

We have ways of understanding the mindset of their time, though. We don't have to imagine! Alex, meanwhile, ignores that, makes up his own historical context and mindset, and asks us to hold blameless people who we know for a fact had been presented with arguments against slavery and alternative economic models and yet chose slavery anyway. Saying "slavery was terrible" is completely hollow if we're not allowed to criticize its practitioners. Slavery wasn't at all like a hurricane that hit a city. It was the result of the conscious decisions of millions of independent actors.

we are allowed to do so and we do.

but even if we didn't it wouldn't be totally hollow. Even if it happened to be the case that everyone would have been as bad or worse than Jefferson in the circumstance we can still realise that slavery was terrible.

edit: go back as far as Athens and its probably true as well. Yet slavery was still terrible.

So your argument is AlexM tried to stop you from criticizing slave-owners because he was using his imagination? So you have called him a racist for years? LOL. I only LOL because it is so sad, it hurts and I need to cope.


You are possibly projecting that "completely hollow" business because your argument has a big echo inside. If you could cite where he said "...hold blameless people who..." that might put some weight into your "argument".

Otherwise I must conclude you are simply making up and interpreting what you want to read to justify exploiting AlexM and the word racist for the entertainment of the forum.

In fact, you maybe diminishing the actual impact of apologists such as Cliven Bundy and Duck Dynasty Phil.

lol

Ghandi was a real SOB. A real piece of ****. Genuine fartknocker. Maybe worse than Mother Theresa.

Wow, it's refreshing to see people actually take the correct approach to that nonsense rather going into denial mode.

Any of you eating a Hershey bar today are way more pro-slavery than spanky.

If the real Thomas Jefferson posted his views on this message board wouldn't he be personally attacked and harassed and "de-moded" until he was so fed up he no longer wanted to participate? I would think so. I for one would like to have a great man and a great thinker like Thomas Jefferson posting here but I can understand your desire to keep up 2+2's high reputation and not allow somebody like that to post here. I would also like Ghandi, Newton, DaVinci, Plato, and others to post here as well but I know their flaws would also be exposed and that they would also be driven out of this pristine group. You have got to keep up the high prestige of this board. You can't allow miscreants such as Jefferson to drag it down.

lol

Lol, I actually thought you were kidding. "Taxation is theft" was literally the textbook example of reductive fallacy when I took undergrad Logic. Of course this is the forum that once had a week long debate about whether the census is a form of slavery, so whatever.

You do realize that at least 50% of the idiots saying ridiculous things here are in agreement, right?

There is a HUGE difference between saying "they were evil and I'd never be like that" and "they were evil and holy **** I don't think I'd have done better."

The second is much more healthy and progressive.

You are drowning out the "holy **** it sucks that people x" part every time you hear some "well, x can be explained by y."

AN EXPLANATION IS NOT THE SAME AS AN EXCUSE!!!

I wouldn't call anyone an idiot outside of yourself.

There were more people in the world who didn't own slaves than did in the 18th and 19th century.

When historians talk about how the treatment of Germany under the Treaty of Versailles was one of the main causes of WWII, it should be obvious to anyone who wasn't raised by wolves that they're really just Nazi apologists.

Quoting people is sometimes useful to denote who you are talking to.

You need to buy apples tonight for the pig roast tomorrow.

Do you believe that the treatment of Germany under the Treaty of Versailles justified Germany's role in WW2?

No, it's really not. I mean, maybe it's more honest, but it's neither healthy nor progressive. As I have shown repeatedly, there were millions of people, people of that very day, who were doing better. There were founding fathers who were doing better! John Adams, like, actually opposed slavery and walked the walk. Abolitionism was neither new nor secret. So no, it's completely ridiculous to say that Jefferson was just a product of his time and place when people in his time and in his place and with whom he personally interacted on a meaningful basis did far, far better than him on the issue.

A coworker sent me this today and it reminded me of spank. (non-programmers will probably not get this)

git man page generator

Some of us fundamentally disagree with you. Honesty is a very good thing and in this usage is particularly healthy and progressive. Whenever we judge someone and something, decent people consider being in their shoes. I accept you are concerned this is cover for something else but that doesn't make it a bad thing to do when it isn't, it just means we need to be a bit careful in how we do it.

That is a perfectly valid thing to point as well and its the right approach.

You're not saying TJ is condemned just because he did something dreadful but because you think you can reasonably argue that we might have done better in the circumstances. That's true but it doesn't mean we all would have. This is what a consideration of the circumstances is about.

It's pretty clear who I was responding to.

I know you and the SMP posters itt are dumb when it comes to history. But lets spell it out for you to see why your post was stupid.

Yo, this **** ain't too hard to think about. A lot of us living in TJ's time and times of slavery wouldn't be part of the white privileged class and would only be a few steps higher in the social order from slaves. So, yeah, we probably would have done better than TJ.

Wow!

Don't know what else to say, just wow!

Exactly, and that is where the pond scum comes into play.