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Notes -
Below, there is a discussion of the civil war due to Robert E Lee statute being torn down. The other main event of the day is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
I would say as a general matter the biggest supporters of Palestine in the US are progressives. Progressives also hate the confederacy.
Question is can you separate them? The south was arguing for their right of self determination? Of course, imbedded within that is they wanted to savagely deny that right to blacks held in chattel slavery. Likewise, the Palestinians claim the right of self determination but their stated intention is to kill the Israelis (from the river to the sea has a meaning).
So in both cases there is a legitimate claim to right of self determination. But that claim is bloodied by what those people would do with such right and at least in the confederacy context that “bad thing” was enough to invalidate their right to self determination.
My question then is whether the right to self determination is properly thought of as as a right? If so, it seems at best it is a contingent right. If it is a contingent right, what contingencies are unimportant enough to “trump” the right?
Wanted to quickly ask: How common is the knowledge that Lee 1. was offered a position among Union command when hostilities broke out, 2. himself held a desire for the states to remain in a union, and 3. ultimately chose to follow wherever his home state decided to go. It seems not very common.
Does that sound like someone solely motivated by a desire to keep Africans in the fields of the South for the express purpose of agricultural productivity? Sure he chose the side that ultimately lost, but it seems that this attitude of "throw him in with the rest" is novel, historically.
That was the "Lost Cause" Confederate apologist narrative widely taught at tons of southern US public schools up to at least the 2010s, including my own.
His home state had split between pro-US and pro-Confederate halves. That's why there is now a Virginia and a West Virginia. Even from a perspective of turning off your morals and going for state alignment, when given a choice of which Virginians to side with he chose to help the slavers kill the loyalist half. I am glad his personality cult's statues are being removed and melted down.
I'm sure it was a binary choice for him too.
It speaks to his failures as a human being that he chose so poorly. Being uncommitted to the Confederate cause would honestly make it even worse that he chose to help them kill hundreds of thousands of people anyway.
This is year zero thinking. You are applying your 21st century morals to a guy who lived in practically a different universe. Who do you think were the failures as human beings of covid - the vaccinated or the unvaccinated?
No. I am applying the morals of his own time. Lee knew that slavery was evil, and fought to defend it anyway out of a misguided sense of patriotism. Given the many positive aspects of his character, I hope he gets to spend eternity slightly further away from the Fire than, say, Jeffrey Epstein.
What seems more likely to you - that Lee proudly fought to protect his evil empire that did heinous things he knew would put him in hell, or that maybe slavery wasn't considered so uniquely evil that it superceded every other consideration? That's the year zero thinking here, you treating it like a settled subject, like Lee's conception of slavery as evil was the same as a 21st century conception of slavery as evil, instead of say how blasphemy is evil.
Which side of the covid vaccine belongs in hell with Epstein, Lee and me? The pro or the anti? Is it more evil to force someone to surrender bodily autonomy or to put your health and comfort before the welfare of the sick and injured? Or am I missing fricking light years of nuance by reducing it to a binary like that?
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