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Well that's pretty much the crux of the whole conservative/progressive debate isn't it? So handwaving that away is basically the (so to speak) ball game. How much benefit of the doubt old things should get just because they are old is a huge sticking point.
Segregated sports had been a thing for a long time, should they also have had the benefit of the doubt for example? Once pride flags have been in the NHL long enough do they count as well?
Segregated sports are politics which is about sports, not sports being used to promote politics about something else. If someone was prohibited from playing sports because he was gay, then sure, protest it.
If pride flags have been in the NHL for a long time without controversy, including external controversy, then sure,
That just doesn't seem like a great way to decide whats actually good to me (which is probably why I am not a natural conservative). It's just a form of status quo bias.
My view is that in deciding if something needs to change, both the status quo and the change should be analysed under the same lens.
If being expected to be standing for the anthem is a political act (and i think it is) then whether politics should be allowed has already been decided in the affirmative. We're just arguing over which politics get included. Which is fine to be clear. Its a reasonable position to hold that "good" politics should be in and "bad" politics be out. Its probably yhe most common position i wouod say.
And if standing for the anthem becomes controversial then would your logic indicate it should then be stopped because it is now controversial?
If playing on artificial grass is a political act, then....
Everything is political, if you ask the right person. "Keeping politics out" doesn't mean "keeping out everything that is political, if you ask the right person".
If it started as controversial and there was a substantial, continuous, controversy between then and now, yes. If it started as mostly uncontroversial and a couple of loud agitators made noise about it, no.
Again though that is just a history bias. Why does the controversy have to be continuous to count? What dead people think about today is irrelevant, they aren't here to experience it. So if enough people right now think it is a problem (whichever way!) that should outweigh whether people did or did not think it was a problem 250 years ago.
Because that prevents people from Goodharting the "is this controversial" criterion.
Because that has bearing on who is considered to have brought politics in. If it was like that all along, and if it wasn't controversial, then the politics was brought in by the people who objected to it, not by the people who put it in, because it wasn't political when they put it in.
But my whole point is that whether it was political or controversial when they put it in is irrelevant.
That is privileging historical people and judgement over current people. And that is already deciding the argument between conservatism and progressivism. The question is WHY should that previous judgement get that benefit? When current judgement does not?
What previous judgment? It wasn't controversial. No judgment was needed, any more than it was needed for the plastic grass, unless you're going to say that everything is a judgment.
There was presumably a point where slavery and child sacrifice was uncontroversial. A judgement is still made controversial or not. Maybe its just a rubber stamp if no one is complaining about it back then sure.
But if the San Diego Aztecs were defending their wearing child sacrifice ribbons then "Well it wasn't controversial when we started doing it 200 hundred years ago" isn't (to me!) very persuasive. The fact everyone loved child sacrifice then has no bearing on if it is ok now. Maybe it was an easy decision by the ancients because everyone "knew" it was ok.
But the ancients are dead and gone. What they judged to be uncontroversial doesn't really matter.
If plastic grass is controversial now, then it is controversial now. That generations of plastic loving supporters thought it was great isn't as important as what people now think.
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