I could just as easily argue "If people aren't straight-jacketed by prevailing ideas, why did it take 450 years (give or take) to reach the first 30%?"
You could, but it probably wouldn't go well for you.
One key factor is that gay rights did
not have anything equivalent to the abolition movement until, at best, 40 years ago (after Stonewall). There wasn't a network of newspapers and touring speakers advocating for gay rights. There wasn't a huge number of out gay people, whose abusive treatment should be obvious with just a casual glance. Gays weren't regularly being beaten or lynched. There weren't dominant political figures who felt queasy about their own role in suppressing homophobia. It certainly wasn't the case that half of the US, or numerous European nations, legalized same-sex marriage.
I'd add that once those voices made themselves heard, things changed fairly rapidly in most of the US. The same cannot be said for the South, which continued its brutal oppression of African-Americans for over a century after the Civil War.
FWIW, I believe Pol Pot probably was deceived. I can't see him going to the lengths he did without a genuine fanatical belief that he was building a true agrarian utopia.
Pol Pot was deceived?!? In what way? By whom? About what?
Are you suggesting that we are judging him too harshly, by calling him a genocidal tyrant, because he was somehow "deceived?"
You're fixating on words and expressions (some of which aren't even mine), plugging them full of your own meanings and preconceptions, and ignoring the clear explanations and disclaimers I've provided. I don't know if it's a deliberate tactic or a comprehension issue but I can't debate you unless you focus on the totality of what I say rather than two-word bits and pieces.
Or, it's that your explanations and disclaimers are undermined by everything else you're saying. At
best, they are significantly weaker than you realize.
Let's put it a bit more directly:
• Did the typical poor white farmer, who did not own slaves but supported slavery, bear any moral responsibility for slavery?
• Did the typical middle class white antebellum Southerner, who owned a few slaves and supported slavery (and participated in brutal suppression, such as capturing or killing escaped slaves, or killing abolitionists), bear any moral responsibility for slavery?
• Did the typical wealthy plantation owner, who owned a large number of slaves and typically treated them brutally, bear any moral responsibility for slavery?
• Did the politicians, who advocated secession and war to ensure that slavery could continue, bear any moral responsibility for slavery?
• Did the generals, who supported secession and literally ordered his soldiers to kill people in the name of perpetuating slavery, bear any moral responsibility for slavery?
• Did any of those individuals, or Southern society as a whole, ever recognize the errors of its ways, and try to make any type of amends?
• Are the statements you've made in this thread more, less, or equally strong as the ones above?
I'd also really appreciate it if you stopped conflating the idea that we shouldn't judge evil with the idea that it's acceptable to say good things about evil people (or I should say "people who commit great evil").
Pass
Placing too much emphasis on the positive and too little on the negatives, and/or making excuses for immoral behavior, exculpates individuals and/or societies from committing horrendous crimes. Regardless of whether that is your intention, that's the result.
Context also matters. The South never seems to have truly accepted responsibility for slavery and the legacy it left behind. They fought Reconstruction tooth and nail; they fought against any sort of reparations; they did everything they could to disenfranchise, terrorize and impoverish blacks; they fought against integration; they fought against civil rights laws; they lynched blacks without regret; politely fanned themselves when white terrorists attacked civil rights activists, and so on. (We should note that other parts of the US haven't truly reckoned with
their past either.)
I'm certain some Southern whites do genuinely regret those events, many more now than in the past. But praising the perpetrators is, to put it mildly, not a strong indicator of regret.
Nor is my position in any way out of the ordinary. E.g. no sane person today would praise Jeffrey Epstein for his charitable donations; in fact, recipients of his charity are getting torn apart, even though those donations were not made with proceeds from immoral activity. Do you
really not see the potential problems of praising Epstein...?
