[hintymad]

Yeah, and so many people of color came to the US with a suite case and less than $1000 dollars, and then became a successful person in a few years. I certainly did. My wife certainly did. My team, my gardener, and my contractor certainly did. Some people who are from the same school as I went to have even become CEOs of big companies, and some have become famous professors or head of prestigious universities. If anything, I got help from people of all colors, and particularly from a great system that generations of people in the US have built.

Is the US perfect? Of course not! But everything in the US is worth hating? You gotta be out of your mind. Is the history of the US perfect? Of course not! That's why it's history! Human learn. Human improve. Human societies evolve from centuries of violence, prejudice, or pure cruelty. If we cancel them, we won't have a history.

In the meantime, the poorest 20% of the US population is probably better than 80% of the population in the world, and this is not great? The protestors can afford protesting full time for weeks, and this is not great? We have NBA who have more than 70% of black athletes. We idolize them. They make millions of a year. And this is not great? A long list of Hollywood stars are black and we love them and LinkedIn is full of Will Smith's inspirational interview, and this is not great? We have a black president in a white-majority country, and this is not great? We have black mayors, council members, senators, congressman and congress woman, and this is not great?

If we look at the US history, we have Charles Drew, we have Rebecca Lee Crumpler, we have Daniel Hale Williams, we have Marie M. Daly, we have Alice Augusta Ball, we have Katherine Johnson, we ave Dorothy Vaughaun, we have Christine Darden. The list can go on. Are they not great?

And if we follow the logic of cancel culture, we should cancel Rome, cancel Greece, cancel renaissance, cancel all religions, cancel Europe, cancel China, cancel India, cancel Africa. They all had their share of slavery, for centuries. They all had their share of atrocity, again for centuries. Then what's left? What's the point? And should we cancel our childhood? Should we cancel ourselves? Most of us, after all, did something stupid or horrible when we were young. Should our parents cancel us?

Some people are just sick.

[yongjik]

Focusing on the "cancel culture" is, IMHO, putting the cart in front of the horse. It is a by-product of a society where a cop can murder an African American in broad daylight and (in most cases) suffer no consequences. If you can't trust the society to not murder you, why would you refrain from tearing down anything you don't like?

When the society doesn't serve justice, people will implement "justice" with their own hands, with often bloody consequences. Thousands lost their heads during the French revolution: I'm sure many of them didn't deserve it. People died and lost their homes during the American Revolution, and during the Civil War: I'm sure many of them didn't deserve it, either.

I'm no big fan of the so-called "cancel culture", but justice is the only way I see that can rein it in.

[AnthonyMouse]

The probability for a black person of being killed by the police in the US is approximately 0.0005%. That's the probability of being killed (most commonly because you pulled a weapon on a cop), not the probability of being murdered, which is at least an order of magnitude lower than that.

There shouldn't be anybody getting murdered by the police. It's totally unreasonable. But it is in actual fact extremely uncommon.

[cookie_monsta]

It might be worth considering that murdered-on-tape-in-broad-daylight is at the extreme end of the spectrum of violence - both direct and indirect - that minorities experience throughout their lives. Otherwise you might end up with the belief that a black person's experience of the USA is only 0.0005% different to that of a white one's.

[darawk]

I think the point is that, though police violence is terrible and should absolutely be corrected, trying to summarize the United States with it is incredibly reductionist.

[cookie_monsta]

Maybe. Or maybe the point is that for some people systemic racism isn't just another abstract problem that doesn't really affect them every single day of their lives.

[darawk]

It seems to me that's what's happening in this thread is privileged people with no experience of systemic racism telling Filipino veterans how they ought to feel about the country they fought for. The people with the concrete experience are speaking, and HN commenters are telling them they're bad and wrong and should be more mad. Seems strange, in light of the prevalence of the word 'listen' of late.

[filoeleven]

What’s the probability of being killed in a terrorist attack?

It happened a handful of times before in the US, then in 2001 reaction one attack spawned whole new agencies, onerous airport security changes, etc.—not to mention the longest running war in the country’s history. And for the most part, Americans were cheering about it.

Why is 9/11 revered as a national tragedy while ongoing murders by racist police are being downplayed?

[AnthonyMouse]

If you're looking for somebody to argue that the response to 9/11 wasn't an overreaction you're not going to get it from me.

[sdenton4]

The police murders are the most visible, egregious, tip of the iceberg. All the rest is all too common.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Jim_Crow

[pydry]

Imagine a gang running your neighborhood that has a 0.0005% of murdering you (but if they do they'll get away with it) and an even "smaller* chance of protecting you from murder (don't forget that gangs exist for protection as much as power projection) , but is likely to beat, coerce and steal from you with total impunity.

The gang is well stocked with small arms, helicopters, tanks, missiles and even anti aircraft weapons.

They view you as threat to be pacifier although they're unlikely to murder you specifically.

What's to be done with that gang?

[AnthonyMouse]

> an even "smaller* chance of protecting you from murder

Considering how much murder is happening there already, I wouldn't guess that the amount there would be if the police stopped investigating them would be smaller than the existing rate of murders by police.

Also, as already mentioned, 0.0005% is the approximate rate at which the police kill black people, not the rate at which they murder them. What do you propose the cops do when someone draws a weapon on them?

> What's to be done with that gang?

You're talking about the local police, in black neighborhoods, in cities with Democrats already in elected office. They've been able to pass whatever changes they want this whole time, so what's stopping them?

[jessaustin]

Please don't assume that Democrats ever consider the best interests of "black neighborhoods". There's very little evidence that's the case. The most they can really claim is that they are often less overt in their racism than the other face of the status quo party.

[AnthonyMouse]

> Please don't assume that Democrats ever consider the best interests of "black neighborhoods". There's very little evidence that's the case.

That's kind of my point. The black vote has gone disproportionately to Democrats for many years and what they get for it is not the change they're promised even when their party controls the government, it's lip service and rage propaganda like "police murders" which can't possibly be the most significant problem faced by black families, because it gets them to go out and vote for the same party again even as they don't fix the real problems -- because if they fixed the real problems they couldn't run on it again next time.

Why are cities burning over "police murders" and not the War on Drugs or school choice? Why are we de-funding the police and not de-funding the zoning board? A cynic could answer.

> The most they can really claim is that they are often less overt in their racism than the other face of the status quo party.

I think this is a trope. Democrats are desperate to paint Republicans as racists because they're so reliant on the black vote. Then we get many stories about "dog whistles" and comments taken out of context and maximally uncharitable interpretations of any linguistic ambiguity, meanwhile the biggest actual reason Republicans don't much court black people is that they don't vote for them regardless, because Democrats will spend all day telling everyone they're nothing but racists no matter what they do.

Republican President signs criminal justice reform into law and then a cop commits murder in a city controlled by Democrats and it's the Republicans who are down in the polls.

[thaumasiotes]

> It is a by-product of a society where a cop can murder an African American in broad daylight and (in most cases) suffer no consequences.

A cop can murder anyone in broad daylight and, in most cases, suffer no consequences; there's nothing specific about African Americans.

[specialist]

I honestly have no idea what "cancel culture" is.

I've been fired, expelled, shushed, shunned, ghosted, excluded, ignored, plagiarized, mocked, insulted, attacked, divorced, blocked. Publicly and privately.

Such is the life of the rebel, the truthsayer.

Every nail that sticks up is gonna get pounded down.

Daring to point out the emperor is naked is an unforgivable offense.

This is normal.

Receiving criticism generally means you're saying something interesting.

I'd hate to be so boring that I'm not even worth criticizing.

FYI, Socrates was "canceled", and we're still talking about him.

Further, society should "cancel" the trolls, heathens, hate mongers. That's what society is for. Filters are important.

--

Edit: Counterpoint's "Canceling" is a much smarter, useful, timely treatise https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjMPJVmXxV8

[refurb]

Similarly, my wife's family came from an oppressive SE Asia country. One of them escaped on a boat and spent 3 years in a refugee camp in a country that refused to admit them. They eventually made it to the US and survived on nothing but the generosity of Americans.

They are now firmly upper-middle class and consider the US as truly the land of opportunity and are grateful they had the chance to come here.

[EdwardDiego]

When writing this, did you consider that most African Americans are descended from people who didn't get to bring a suitcase? That they were still fighting to be treated as equal citizens a century and a half after no longer being considered property?

And that the fact that they're over-represented in basketball doesn't mean that inequality is solved?

[olivermarks]

@edwardDiego there are sadly currently 9 million+ slaves in Africa and slavery and people trafficking is a huge trade worldwide today.

"According to the U.N.'s International Labor Organization (ILO), there are more than three times as many people in forced servitude today as were captured and sold during the 350-year span of the transatlantic slave trade", Time Magazine March 14, 2019. https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16152/modern-slavery

The USA is a nation of immigrants. Look at the incredibly diverse people seeking a better life as they came through Ellis Island just over a century ago and where America is today.

https://www.nps.gov/media/photo/gallery.htm?id=6529EB6C-155D....

Also take a look at the great work by Charliebo313 documenting ghetto realities in the US today for black people. https://www.youtube.com/user/CharlieBo313

Even though I feel black north american culture is foundational to the American experience, and a major reason why I emigrated from England to California, the current era of people speaking on behalf of 'BIPOC' people is mildly insulting to those people given the internal dialogs within that culture around who is helping and who is hurting. The reductionism of black and white (sic) simplistic thinking isn't helping anyone.

[tathougies]

Yup. My mom and dad came to this country with nothing. My mom had $30 and a husband, who, she didn't even know, was 'employed' by her brother-in-law but not paid wages. They managed to escape virtual slavery at age 30, have two kids, and achieve the American dream. Mom even went to school again while putting both her kids in private school (didn't live in a great school district).

America's been pretty great to us. Both my brother and I married outside our race. My brother and I are all American. My daughter and my nieces and nephews are literally the most american story you can make. Their existence is only made possible by a place such as America. The melting pot still exists, and it's amazing.

Cancel culture seeks to destroy that which makes America great. Is it perfect, no... of course not. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. For all their failures, the various figure in American history often also have views and attitudes worth remembering, and that's what they're idolized for. And good for them... their ideals are better than the alternative. Without these imperfect individuals holding on to their -- sometimes even hypocritical -- ideals, stories like my parent's, my wife's parents, and my sister-in-law's parents would never happen.

Happy Independence Day!

[rayiner]

We cancelled the melting pot: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...

[tathougies]

Yeah I'm familiar. Was told i was white by my history professor because I believed in american ideals. Academia is the source of the worst ideas

[vinay427]

This seems like a rather extreme conclusion to draw from your anecdote. Academia is not a single entity, and it is far from "the" source of bad ideas.

[tptacek]

Where by "we" you appear to mean "The University of California" and by "cancel" you mean "didn't cancel".

From the same article, in its update:

Contrary to what has been reported, no one at the University of California is prohibited from making statements such as “America is a melting pot,”

[tathougies]

> Contrary to what has been reported, no one at the University of California is prohibited from making statements such as “America is a melting pot,”

Simply being discouraged from saying something is scary enough. Look at the UCLA professor who didn't give his students extra time on the tests and received death threats. The silencing is deafening. Maybe you should try to hear it.

This is what I refer to: https://nypost.com/2020/06/10/ucla-suspends-professor-for-re...

[geofft]

This is attacking a straw man. There is no (serious) argument to "cancel" America wholesale (well, apart from the anarchists, but they'd agree with you about all those other countries too). There is a serious argument for holding America accountable for the things she has done wrong. You only hold people accountable whom you believe are actually trying to do good and whom you actually think can do better. People talk about the world's dictatorships and ongoing crimes against humanity with a tone of resignation because nobody really expects them to decide to be better; they talk about America with a tone of correction because they believe America can improve. Your parents didn't "cancel" you for each childhood mistake, but I certainly hope they asked you to demonstrate that you understood what you did wrong and asked you to make amends if possible - that's how you grow.

That's what Popehat's story is about, I think. The story is poignant specifically because America broke a promise to these soldiers - and finally acknowledged and remedied it. The author makes it clear that these soldiers had every right to be hurt, but they loved America anyway - which is very different from ignoring the mistake. The author calls it a "stain on out honor" because we have honor.

It wasn't their responsibility to criticize America for failing them - but that means it was someone else's responsibility. Part of what makes the nation great is that in 1990 people did care enough to grant then citizenship, finally.

"America! America! God mend thine every flaw! Confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law!"

[rayiner]

There is a serious attempt to cancel America, that goes beyond holding America responsible for its past wrongs. Someone posted a link to this tweet elsewhere in this thread: https://mobile.twitter.com/arlenparsa/status/116818940954980...

I think this is not an uncommon opinion and it’s becoming more and more mainstream. And that sort of thinking is an attempt to cancel America. It’s not just saying that America has done certain bad things and we need to fix them. It’s saying that the founders were bad so we get to relitigate everything. America can always be improved, but you can’t just slap the label “America” on whatever grab-bag of ideas you want. America is an opinionated nation (in the sense of “opinionated software”). And there is an ongoing movement to cancel those opinions.

[lm28469]

> There is a serious attempt to cancel America

_links to a random post on twitter_

See, this, right there, is the root of the majority of our problems. The world isn't twitter.

Twitter is majoritarily left leaning, middle class, white, US male, millennials [0] stop making it sound like the world is out to cancel the US. It's a tiny minority of the world on a big website, a big fish in a small pond. Don't shape your view of the world through twitter.

It's like going to a KKK rally and being upset everyone is racist.

[0] https://www.omnicoreagency.com/twitter-statistics/

[tptacek]

Can you see how a reasonable person might read this as catastrophizing? The tweet you linked to is pretty banal, and appears factual. I'm having trouble even connecting the dots from "many of the founders were slaveowners" to "let's cancel America". The nuns taught me the same thing in 1980s Catholic grammar school.

[rayiner]

It would be a perfectly fine observation if that was all. But it goes further and says that “the next time someone says we can’t question their judgment on guns or whatever, show them this image.” That logic—or lack thereof, it’s an ad hominem—can be used to put all of our founding principles on the chopping block. It’s an attempt to delegitimize the animating principles of our country.

[tptacek]

I'm having trouble with this, because it implies pretty directly that Lincoln betrayed the founding principles of the country when he abolished slavery. Obviously, you don't mean that. But how does your argument square with it? Or with women's suffrage? Is it just that Lincoln was nicer to the founding fathers?

[rayiner]

How do you reach that conclusion? Lincoln believed that he was vindicating the founding principles. From the 1860 Republican platform: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/republican-party-p...

> 8. That the normal condition of all the territory of the United States is that of freedom: That, as our Republican fathers, when they had abolished slavery in all our national territory, ordained that "no persons should be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law," it becomes our duty, by legislation, whenever such legislation is necessary, to maintain this provision of the Constitution against all attempts to violate it; and we deny the authority of Congress, of a territorial legislature, or of any individuals, to give legal existence to slavery in any territory of the United States.

[geofft]

It is an attention to argue that the founding principles of this country are open to legitimate debate and that people who love America can hold that some of them were simply wrong without loving America any less.

What I don't get is this newfound attempt to argue that what we once called the Great Experiment is immune from criticism, to portray the success of America as an inevitable result of the holy prophets who gave us the Constitution on stone tablets and not the work of men who made mistakes and learned from them.

[rayiner]

> It is an attention to argue that the founding principles of this country are open to legitimate debate and that people who love America can hold that some of them were simply wrong without loving America any less.

So you agree that it's an attempt to attack the founding principles.

> What I don't get is this newfound attempt to argue that what we once called the Great Experiment is immune from criticism, to portray the success of America as an inevitable result of the holy prophets who gave us the Constitution on stone tablets and not the work of men who made mistakes and learned from them.

Nobody is saying that the founding principles are "immune from criticism." But they are the bedrock on which our country is built. And they warrant more deference than the kind of arguments Parsa is making. Parsa's ad hominem is not a logically valid basis for criticizing the founders' principles regarding gun rights: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem. The founding principles deserve better than that.

Societies need shared principles. When I became a U.S. citizen, I took an oath to "support and defend the Constitution." What does that mean? To me, that means buying into the basic premises of our republic. Free speech, freedom of religion, protection of private property, equality before the law. And yes, also the right to bear arms. Those principles aren't immune from criticism, but to make society workable the burden for doing so must be high. A functioning society can't relitigate its founding principles with every routine policy debate. But that's exactly what Parsa's argument invites. If we shouldn't give full effect to the second amendment because many founders were slaveholders, we can cast aside every constitutional principle for the same reason. Federalism, private property, free speech--we get to relitigate everything on a blank slate.

[jariel]

Colin Kaepernick Tweeted today that 'July 4th is a Celebration of White Supremacy'.

This is an existential attack on the nation by a popular figure defended and support by most of the press and major international corporations.

I don't have the reference, but yesterday, in response to an arguably racist Tweet about a white person doing something within the range of normal, but being interpreted as negative, the top Tweet response from a Black woman with over 10K likes was simply 'White people are a disease'. Nobody though to take this down as 'hate speech it seems'. This is definitely an 'existential' statement about the system, not just the narrower BLM ideal of rectifying police injustice etc..

There is a legit movement to rectify past wrongs obviously, but there are definitely existential aspects to this that cannot be ignored.

So those are very populist examples, but there are definitely more foundational intellectual movements afoot as well.

'Cancel America' is sadly, a thing, mixed in with all the other things.

[1] https://twitter.com/Kaepernick7/status/1279463720318570497

[tptacek]

I'll debate existential attacks with people who know what the word "existential" means, but not with people who think the term could apply to a Colin Kaepernick tweet.

[jariel]

So I'll ignore the ugly ad-hominem and spell out in very basic terms why Colin's words are very powerful and such narratives will have 'existential' consequences, so that a child could understand.

Colin is a very popular figure in America, far more so than most politicians or news anchors, for example. Celebrities such as him have quite immense power to influence popular opinion, if they chose to.

If you have a look here at Google Trends, he's not quite as popular as 'the brand that defined brands' - Coca-Cola - but almost [1]. Right now he's in the same 'league' as Coke. That's a big deal.

He took a 'bold' statement some time ago and was a global lightning rod for the press, he's now a 'known' figure in many places even outside America.

When he 'took a knee' to take a stand against police brutality, there were some who took umbrage because he was standing against the flag, which is a national symbol, not really a symbol of policing. At the same time he courted obvious controversy, though in support of a legitimate cause, he could plausibly defend his actions as merely just antagonising against police brutality. I'm a little bit cynical, but it's definitely reasonable.

Culture wars ensue.

The debate, to the extent that it's about the nature of police fairness, or police aggression, or even possibly the nature of policing - is all within the framework of normal concern. It's big, but it's the kind of things nations deal with.

However - making a statement such as 'July 4ht is a Celebration of White Supremacy' is obviously a statement of a completely different order.

Colin is saying the National Celebration of the USA is a Celebration of White Supremacy - which implies very directly that the state is, promotes, and defines White Supremacy.

This rhetoric isn't really about 'police brutality' anymore - it's a fundamentally different way of perceiving America. And since he's not some random Tweeter - he has a huge following, a lot of people hugely sympathetic all over the world esp. in the press, and major brands that support his cause, namely Nike, Netflix, and probably others - his views will resonate.

That major industrial constituents, popular brands and sports figures, and most of the media apparatus are willing to go along with his statements, which as a reminder, cast America as state of 'White Supremacy' - definitely implies have 'existential' consequences for America.

FYI 'existential' as it relates to the very nature or 'existence' of a thing, in this case 'America'.

When Nike, CNN, and Netflix are 'ok' with 'July 4th is a Celebration of White Supremacy', we have evidence of a very broad movement by some to completely dismantle the nature of what America is. I believe it's mostly on the fringe, and that most people sympathetic to issues such as 'police brutality' are not really interested in a fundamentally new America, but nevertheless, their acquiescence to radical positions such as 'America is a state of White Supremacy' is obviously going to embolden more of this.

The rhetoric is all over the place including important institutions ostensibly defending Truth.

Near where I live, Concordia University has this new program to 'decolonize light' [2]. Yes, you read that correctly. Millions of dollars of tax money, at a respected institution to decolonize the very idea of light as in 'light waves' and 'physics' because the objective reality in which we use to try to understand the material world is 'Colonialist'.

So let's compare to the Colin scenario.

Having a Uni. program to try to get a better understanding of Aboriginal history and culture, and maybe to perceive how they thought about the world, is interesting. Controversial maybe, but definitely within the bounds of academic thought. This would be Colin 'taking a knee against police brutality'.

But starting a program to very literally put 'Aboriginal Wisdom' and their 'interpretation of light' on equal footing with what is just an objective, material view (and has nothing to do with 'Western' or 'Colonial) - is an existential challenge to the institution itself.

Concordia University is now promoting completely arbitrary 'make believe' as of equal merit to objective science, physics no less, obviously for political and social reasons, having nothing at all to do with any kind of Science, in any meaning of the word.

So an institution designed to help bring forth the Enlightenment, is now chartered to do literally the opposite: promoting made up rubbish as 'Truth'. I'm fully supportive of cultural and religious studies, in their place. But this would be like having the 'Biblical Study of Physics' as in 'How Noah's Ark Was Able To House All The World's Animals' - and post that up as 'Science' on par with 'Colonial Science'.

Finally, I will add as another little example, of which there are many: "Faith in Whiteness: Free Exercise of Religion as Racial Expression Khaled A. Beydoun*" [3]

So this is a deeply bigoted and racist rant, passed off as academic material, and published in a respected legal journal, that attempts to conflate the challenges of the justice system in the 1950's, with - you guessed it - White Supremacy.

Were 'respected' academic to point out that people of different racial backgrounds faced challenges in American courts, and by the way, courts all over the world, and that this is worthy of consideration - this would be like Colin 'taking a knee' to draw attention to some special cause.

But it's not. The racist author, who ironically labels himself an export on Islamophobia, writes mostly about a vague and evil concept of 'Whiteness' as the 'root cause' of the issues. In a paper with quite a number of references, he doesn't ever bother to try to define what 'Whiteness' really even is (other than that it's vile and evil), and of course, completely ignores the fact that racial inconsistency is not an American, or even 'White', phenom. And of course he doesn't bother to indicate that Justice Systems of European nations tend to actually have a considerable degree of integrity with respect to most other parts of the world. But that's nit-picking.

His treatise is not like 'taking a knee' or 'BLM', it's more akin to saying that 'America is a state of White Supremacy' - again, an 'existential' re-articulation of what the nation is. He is a tenured prof, this is published in a respected legal journal.

So there are a few examples of forces promoting a fundamentally different, antagonistic view of America, backed by highly 'legitimate' institutions, credentials, governments, major brands, popular figures, the press, and considerable budgets - all the while leveraging the goodwill of a lot of regular people who would be happy to support more classical progress, but who wouldn't otherwise agree with statements like 'America's National Holiday is a Celebration of White Supremacy'.

That almost nobody would agree with Colin's bigotry, and that obviously quite a substantial number would be truly offended, and that he faces absolutely no consequences, is a good measure of where the balance of popular power on such issues currently resides.

This is not about taking down Confederate Statues - that's a normal 'debate' if you want to call it that. It's about taking down George Washington, then Lincoln, the Flag, and everything else.

[1] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=Colin%20Ka...

[2] http://decolonizinglight.com/

[3] https://ilr.law.uiowa.edu/print/volume-105-issue-4/faith-in-...

[thinkingemote]

The terms are getting diluted to meaninglessness.

For many, just recently "White Supremacy" now equates to "Western Supremacy" which is left to the readers imagination. I suspect that, for example, advocating for democracy, defending the idea of innocent until proven guilty, criticism of repressive regimes, promoting free enterprise or espousing about the sanctity of the individual, or perhaps just Christianity could be seen as promotion of western standards and therefore a supremacist. Where before a white supremacist was just literally a neo nazi, now they might or might not be any politician from 30 years ago.

No one knows anymore.

[jrmg]

You are appearing as weirdly absolutist as you perceive those you are railing against to be.

[jrmg]

The questioning of opinions in the service of building a nation in which everyone has equal opportunity is one of the most American opinions there is.

If that’s gone then all is lost.

[Edit: and I don’t believe it’s gone!]

[geofft]

Like software, America is not the set of opinions it happens to have today but the process for changing those opinions. A healthy software development project has leadership that feels comfortable changing the software as they learn more about how people are using it. If, say, Kubernetes adds support for adding containers to an already-running Pod, that's not an attempt to "cancel" Kubernetes, it's an attempt to improve it.

The founders were, in fact, people who made serious errors of moral judgment, in the way the tweet you link points out. That's a reason we shouldn't, in fact, trust every opinion they had. We can still follow their opinions on process and principles - we can believe that all men were created equal, and take it to the logical conclusion that they didn't. We can believe in a representative democracy with certain features. We can believe in the various branches of government. We can believe, as they did, that people with their facilities of reason can govern better than any king with divine right.

If you really think that admitting that the founders owned slaves is an attack on the heart of America and that you cannot love America without agreeing with the founding fathers about slavery, well, that's the first good argument I've heard for canceling America - but you're the one making it.

[rayiner]

> The founders were, in fact, people who made serious errors of moral judgment, in the way the tweet you link points out. That's a reason we shouldn't, in fact, trust every opinion they had. We can still follow their opinions on process and principles - we can believe that all men were created equal, and take it to the logical conclusion that they didn't. We can believe in a representative democracy with certain features. We can believe in the various branches of government. We can believe, as they did, that people with their facilities of reason can govern better than any king with divine right.

Agreed. Add to that separation of powers, federalism, limited government, protection of private property, gun rights, free speech, religious freedom, etc. Because those are also principles that the country is built upon.

> A healthy software development project has leadership that feels comfortable changing the software as they learn more about how people are using it.

Your software analogy is very good, but it supports my point, not yours. Software, like our country, is built on structural principles. Kubernetes is built on containerization. UNIX is based on exposing everything as a file. L4 is based on various principles associated with microkernels. Those principles transcend any specific features. For example, you can argue against systemd on the basis that it contradicts the UNIX principle of having small, independent programs that each do one thing. We shouldn't be able to attack those principles through ad hominem attacks on the people who articulated them.

> If you really think that admitting that the founders owned slaves is an attack on the heart of America

That's not what the tweet is doing. Read the whole thing. The tweet is invoking that fact to attack one of the founding principles, specifically gun rights.

Apply your software analogy to the logic of the tweet, say in the context of ReiserFS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReiserFS. ReiserFS has a design principle that various kinds of metadata are stored in a "single, combined B+ tree keyed by a universal object ID." That principle permeates the structure of the whole file system. Is it proper to attack that principle by saying "Hans Reiser murdered his wife?" That's exactly the sort of reasoning in the tweet.

[tptacek]

Agreed. Add to that separation of powers, federalism, limited government, protection of private property, gun rights, free speech, religious freedom, etc. Because those are also principles that the country is built upon.

The framers didn't believe in limited government. They didn't even incorporate their own bill of rights into the states! Their successors had to do it for them! The framers were concerned about limiting the federal government. And the people concerned about making sure the Constitution affirmatively protected religion? Yeah, those'd be the antifederalists. The only thing the Constitution says about religion is that the government should be kept the hell away from it.

These are nitpicks, but I think they're important, because the argument you're constructing uses terms that are used by American conservatives, and in that context they mean very different things. The American right seeks to limit all government, laboratories of democracy be damned. Would the framers wouldn't have batted an eyelash at the idea that a state constitution might impinge on the second amendment? Was it unusual for locales to prohibit firearms at the time?

[camgunz]

Gun rights aren’t a founding principle; the second amendment only applied to militias. Previous drafts of it, as well as the Federalist papers make this clear.

[lm28469]

Your argument reads as a convoluted form of "I have a black friend so I can't be racist". I've never seen so many straw men in a single post.

The US has problems that are nowhere as bad in other first world countries and people seem to not even be able to acknowledge that. They're 2 steps ahead on some aspects and 10 steps behind on many more. Yes some people have it real good in the US, but many other have it real bad too, and the ones who have it bad have it worse than in most first world countries. That you and your friends are successful doesn't change that fact.

When people go in the streets, weeks after weeks, risking to get maimed or killed, you have to ask yourself why. If you stop at "Uh I don't like that", "they're just thugs" you haven't done your job as a citizen. Talking of history, people going in the streets and making things change is a pretty big part of almost any countries' history. If anything they're writing history right now.

> And if we follow the logic of cancel culture, we should cancel Rome, cancel Greece, cancel renaissance, cancel all religions, cancel Europe, cancel China, cancel India, cancel Africa. They all had their share of slavery, for centuries. They all had their share of atrocity, again for centuries. Then what's left? What's the point? And should we cancel our childhood? Should we cancel ourselves? Most of us, after all, did something stupid or horrible when we were young. Should our parents cancel us?

What logic ? Come on, stop playing dumb, no one ever made these points, ever. Go outside, out of your echo chambers, in the real world, talk to people. What you're describing doesn't exist outside of twitter fringe communities.

> That's why it's history! Human learn. Human improve.

And that's exactly what people are trying to do when they tell you to stop flying the confederate flag and having statues of people with dubious past in front of their town hall.

> We have NBA who have more than 70% of black athletes. We idolize them.

Right, "shut up and dribble". https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/02/19/587097707... also https://youtu.be/DMUVeMmyFxk?t=115. Racism in sport has always been there, it's painfully obvious as soon as you start digging.

[hintymad]

> you have to ask yourself why. If you stop at "Uh I don't like that", "they're just thugs" you haven't done your job as a citizen. Talking of history, people going in the streets and making things change is a pretty big part of almost any countries' history. If anything they're writing history right now.

What kind of straw man is this? In which part of the comment did I complain about peaceful protesting? Huh? In which part of the comment did I say US does not have flaws? And in which part of the comment did I say "they are just thugs"? Since you're talking about it, let's be specific: those who tear down statues without city's permission are thugs. Those who burned down buildings are thugs. Those who shoot innocent people are thugs. Those who spray graffiti on private properties are thugs. Those who carry out the plan of "if we don't what we deserve, we will burn the system down" are thugs. Those who looted business are thugs. Those who shot people in CHAZ are thugs. And let's be clear, any one, be it left or right or moderate, does any of the above is a thug. Oh, and the reporters who told audience that "the protest is largely peaceful" while standing right in front of a burning building while thugs were looting? They are thugs too because they are willing to sacrifice other people's rights to advance their own political ideal.

> What logic ? Come on, stop playing dumb, no one ever made these points, ever. Go outside, out of your echo chambers, in the real world, talk to people. What you're describing doesn't exist outside of twitter fringe communities.

I'm not sure who's playing dumb here, and who's in an echo chamber. Are you saying "cancel culture" does not exist? 'Cause I was specifically criticizing the cancel culture and particularly the support it gets from MSM like WaPo and NYT. Are you saying WaPo or NYT didn't publish articles that support "cancellation" of Mount Rushmore just because its lead sculptor was a racist? Are you saying WaPo didn't publish another article that argues "It is time to reconsider the global legacy of July 4, 1776", which argues that "American independence helped further colonialism and white supremacy"? Are you saying the congress didn't condone the cancel culture? Are you saying that a professor in Oxford didn't say "white lives do not matter", and the university didn't stand behind it? Are you saying that WaPo didn't publish an article yesterday that specifically argues that "Both namesakes of Washington and Lee University perpetuated racial terror. The school should be renamed"? Are you saying that no one was yelling "Burn the system down" in protest? Are you saying that no one burned the flag of the US? No one flashed middle fingers to the fireworks yesterday? And no one got beaten for waving a flag of the US? Are you saying that statues are not toppled, schools are not renamed, or Gone with the Wind were not taken offline?

> And that's exactly what people are trying to do when they tell you to stop flying the confederate flag and having statues of people with dubious past in front of their town hall.

This is such a straw man. Shame on you. Both far right and far left are dangerous. Why do I even need to mention such common sense to you?

> Right, "shut up and dribble". https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/02/19/587097707.... also https://youtu.be/DMUVeMmyFxk?t=115. Racism in sport has always been there, it's painfully obvious as soon as you start digging.

Of course racism exists. In which part did I say it did't? I bet there are more racism in people's private conversation. NBA is really just one example that the system in the US is not rigged by racist. Of course I don't know what I don't know, hence I was honestly asking what policies are racist policies, and what prevents us from changing them.