[scottLobster]

So your idea of societal progress is one that believes all history is worth looking down on, that there's nothing in the past worth celebrating because every figure acted distasteful or had views distasteful to modern eyes?

I guess all of human civilization has just been a giant failure. The only chance we have is for us poor wretches to retroactively flagellate our ancestors and beg forgiveness from the gods of modern enlightenment, complete with the knowledge that we too will be flagellated in our own due time, and rightfully abhorred in the judgement of future generations, no matter our worldly achievements.

For all its supposed enlightenment, modern political correctness is really more akin to medieval Catholicism

[gumby]

I read Cato, but I have never respected him. I admire Churchill for his contribution to victory in WWII and his excellent playing of a weak hand, but he was a hideous human being for a lot to answer for. I have nothing but contempt for Jefferson Davis.

Yes, I even consider the Nazis terrible people no matter how widespread antisemitism was at the time and no matter how much public support they had. I have that view simultaneously with the understanding that there is no German my age who engaged in any of that.

There is nothing wrong with understanding and making moral judgements about people. I can look at a painting in a museum that has someone enslaved in the picture and both understand the context and be repulsed by the depiction.

It's proper for people to make moral judgements, and to understand both past injustices and contemporary injustices that one implicitly (one hopes not explicitly!) supports.

[Retric]

There is a great deal wrong with making moral judgments about people. People are complicated and you don’t have the full information to make an unbiased judgement.

The real issue here is it’s hard to revise such emotionally charged views in light of new information. Condemn people for murder and it will be harder for you to notice the innocent person on death row.

Worse, many people will try and influence your opinion via misinformation. Condemnation short circuits peoples ability for rational though and that’s exactly how normal people end up committing atrocities.

[scottLobster]

I guess you shouldn't go too far back in history then. If that's how you judge the average Nazi party member (as in the regular Nazi on the street at the time), I imagine you think every Swede during the time of the Vikings was correspondingly a terrible person. And every Frank, Mongol, Arab, Indian, Slav, and... yeah pretty much everyone back in the day. Cato included. With the whole world being so fundamentally morally terrible it's a wonder any good people managed to come into existence in the last 20 years to be the woke arbiters of morality for all past and future action.

The uncomfortable truth is that any of us, genetically unchanged but raised in post WWI Germany would most likely be Nazis during WWII.

[gumby]

> The uncomfortable truth is that any of us, genetically unchanged but raised in post WWI Germany would most likely be Nazis during WWII.

But of course: isn't that the important lesson? Most, but not all were; so is this knowledge an excuse to do nothing or is it a spur to look for the injustices one accepts today, and change one's position?

[wahern]

The Nazis party grew because so many Germans were looking for people to blame for the "injustice" of Germany's loss in WWI. You think your motivations are different than millions of people? It's the reduction of complex events and people that results in and excuses people doing horrendous things, because it permits them to see what they want to see and ignore the rest.

Beware anybody or anyone who seeks to erase the messiness and complexity of life. The pursuit of purity is the root of so much evilness. If you uncover the sordid past of a public figure, the right thing to do is exhibit that history alongside the better things they're known for, so that people learn and remember what real people look like; that nobody is a caricature; and that to avoid repeating the sins of history we must appreciate what we share with those who have committed those sins previously.