One man's extraneous fact maybe another's linchpin. Who are you to determine a hierarchy of facts for others to follow?
Who am I? Who are
you?
The anecdotes you mention certainly have not presented a coherent position, let alone one that disputes the ways that slavery betrayed the values of America, or how the legacy of slavery has caused so much damage to the nation and its people, or genuinely "corrects" any mainstream interpretations of history.
The topic is about erasing US history, the statues are part of US history, ergo their removal from public spaces is erasing history.
Or, not. Statues constructed in the 1920s by segregationists are not history textbooks; and it is an
awareness of history that prompts us to pull them down.
Arguing that critiquing the removal of statues is giving credence to the twisted ideals of White Supremacists and Neo-Nazis is absurd.
Nope, sorry, that does not follow.
We know
for a fact that white supremacists are using these statues as a
cause celebre -- are you really not paying attention? More to the point is that the history they want to preserve is one in which white men used the power of the state to segregate and/or enslave non-whites, and in which preserving slavery is the noble cause. Just like... who was it again... tip of my tongue... Oh yeah.
The leaders of the Confederation.
Critical mass in societies is relevant to ethical and social change.
Not always. But, if you're going to say that "there are no reasons to hold moral principles, so what is moral is a matter of majority opinion," then you're a relativist.
There is no one standard which spans centuries, national borders and continents.... etc
Again, I see no problems
temporarily suspending moral judgment to
understand a historical period. That doesn't mean the suspension must be permanent.
It's no different than learning about Christianity when studying the Crusades. We don't have to become Christian, but we also don't have to accept their rationalizations about sacking Constantinople.
As to morality, you're begging the question. Asserting universal ethics does not require that every single person, at every point in time, agrees on those principles. (I.e. Coming up with a wrong answer doesn't prove that there is no correct answer.)
And when you adopt relativist ethics, you basically can't apply moral judgment to... anything. E.g. what if X is classified as moral in the US, but not in China? Does China "win" because it has a larger population? What if there is no consensus? What happens when a minority tries to press its case, as we so often see with civil rights movements? What about the Tyranny of the Majority?
By the way, are you now going to impose
your morality on
me? Seems like that's the only way you will convince me to suspend judgment...
Majority consensus is the basis of a society's ethos unless that ethos is imposed by coercive diktat from a powerful, 'muscled' elite within the society.
Wow. I know there are character limits, but -- Oversimplify much?
Slavery has existed for more of the span of human history than individual liberty and natural rights have.... We may (and should) detest this today...
Why?
According to your own position, morality is merely a consensus, a convention. If a society legalized slavery, or abolished human rights, on what grounds would you oppose it? Majority opinion? That can change at any moment. Personal preference? Why is your preference more important than anyone else's.
You can't appeal to any intrinsic characteristics, like "causing harm is bad," because any such qualities opens the door to do what you say we cannot -- judge other societies, respect their values and so forth. The same for rights, for if there are any inherent rights, we could apply them to any society from any time period.
[The history of slavery] is the bird's eye historical perspective which seems to be lacking from some arguments here.
Or: We don't spend a lot of time chastising ancient Romans or European serfdom, because we aren't dealing with the direct consequences of those structures. Similarly, we don't see a lot of people denying Roman slavery, or using it as a justification for contemporary racism.
People who go along with flawed value systems are not necessarily evil, especially when resisting that flawed system would likely result in their deaths or their own slavery.
Hanna Arendt would like a word with you
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001RHOJSE/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
Even if we agree that the ordinary Confederate citizen or soldier is less culpable, that does
not justify honoring the leaders of the Confederacy.
