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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 14, 2023

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Can you clearly state what you think the Church did bad? Kid dying of disease and being buried doesn’t strike me as bad. The mass grave thing seems to be a desire to associate this with far worse things. Are you accusing the church of executions? Otherwise why does this matter.

Complicit in the abduction of children by the Canadian Government, subjected them to emotional and physical abuse, often looked after them pretty poorly, and as a result many children died of preventable diseases. and of course, the whole point of the exercise was to expunge their culture from them. Which is, uh, bad.

I mean, is it really that difficult to see where the natives are coming from?

I think if I kidnapped your child, took him half a world away to learn Swahili and African culture and have that dumb Christianity beaten out of him, and then sent you a letter saying 'Sorry, young Mswati (that was his new name) died of malaria.' I think you'd probably feel a tad aggrieved.

  • -11

We do this every single day in America. What do you think schools in America do? Expunge bad culture teach good culture. The deaths honestly just sound like poor people deaths.

I’m fairly certain the people upset about this incident are the same people shoving pride and blm flags down people’s throats. The problem here just seems to be Christians = bad.

I have no issue with teaching poor people higher culture. Perhaps, I’m not being fair here but I don’t see anything obviously wrong with taking an outgroup and trying to incorporate them into your civilization.

Whether the conditions were particularly bad I don’t know. Would take a lot of study to differentiate.

Expunge bad culture teach good culture.

We used to that. Do you have children in school? We're homeschooling, now.

The view now is that previous attempts to inculcate native peoples with the mindset and skills necessary for survival in western civilization is genocide.

I don't know what definition of genocide was available to them at the time.

I suspect the alternative was a more immediate form of genocide.

The deaths honestly just sound like poor people deaths.

They weren't Poor People deaths though were they? They were Ward of the Church deaths. When you steal children away from their parents you get to take responsibility for what happens to them.

I have no issue with teaching poor people higher culture.

it was hardly """just""" that. If they had managed to do so without kidnapping, abuse, beatings, and deaths by neglect they'd have far less of a case to answer today, eh?

Whether the conditions were particularly bad I don’t know

Bad compared to conditions back at the tribe? Probably unknowable. They were certainly worse than they could have been. And like I said, when you steal children away from their parents you get to take responsibility for what happens to them. If you find that too burdensome feel free to not do it. Or engage in apologism for those that did.

I disagree. I don’t think you would be responsible for every death. You would have resources and technology level of the time and place. I would agree they are responsible for deaths from beatings (murder is a crime) or from neglect (if they withheld food). I’m not entirely sure of the exact time period for this but if they died of 19th century diseases or I believe it included the time period of the Spanish flu (which did kill younger people) then they were not responsible.

There is a bit of cultural relativism going on here. I don’t believe that is true and we have forgotten this. I think it’s a good thing to provide these children with a better education. Something feels wrong to me with NOT trying to educate these kids because of who their parents were.

Certainly if this happened today you would have a standard of basically zero deaths. But that is because we solved a lot of disease.

Whether the conditions were particularly bad I don’t know

Bad compared to conditions back at the tribe? Probably unknowable.

Well, there you have it. You don't even know if these schools had worse or better conditions for the children than they would have had at home, yet you're willing to blame the church for the deaths.

They were certainly worse than they could have been.

Perfection is never an option nor a reasonable standard.

And like I said, when you steal children away from their parents you get to take responsibility for what happens to them.

OK, suppose the state finds a cult who rape their children and sacrifice half of them to dark gods on their 16th birthday. The state takes all the children away to a group home, where a few of them die of ordinary accidents. Do you blame the state? It's the same principle.

Perfection is never an option nor a reasonable standard.

'better' is always an option. 'better than shit' is certainly a reasonable standard.

  • -10

'better' is always an option.

I would disagree; constraints exist. And for obvious reasons, it cannot be a standard.

'better than shit' is certainly a reasonable standard.

"Shit" here is rather poorly defined. You've already admitted that you don't know if the conditions the children were subject to were better or worse than they would have had at home.