Why can't you see past that and remember him for his positive accomplishments?
Stalin? I don't have a huge amount of respect for the man. You'd perhaps have more luck with me if you were talking Lenin.
You don't seem to have similar issues with Julius Caesar, who only escaped accusations of war crimes because he toppled the legal order that would have put him on trial, and who boasted in his own propaganda that he had murdered hundreds of thousands of Gallic people.
It depends what you mean by 'issues'. Statues don't interest me much either way, and I spend an inordinate amount of time reading history, although obviously it's not possible to focus on 'all' history.
Personally, I don't have a particularly high opinion of Caesar. I wasn't really talking about my personal opinion though.
Why do whatever positive aspects Washington may have possessed, outweigh the fact that he kept human beings in chattel slavery?
Because you're applying a modern sensibility to it. I'm not suggesting past actions are unimportant, but judging them via modern laws and moral standards is pretty daft. There is a line there somewhere, and I get that it's somewhat grey. But Washington, Lincoln and Franklin all made large positive contributions to the United States of America. Robert E Lee...not so much.
Why is it so easy for you to ignore the massacres that Julius Caesar ordered against Gallic townspeople, yet you cannot stomach the thought of venerating Joseph Stalin or Adolf Hitler in the same manner?
Part of the reason is time, pure and simple. Part of it is that certainty around what occurred has grown through time, and that the lessons of what happened were not as immediately accessible to me as the evils of the Nazis, for example.
Part of it is consideration of society at that time, how the world was viewed, and what society rewarded or punished people for. Not just the Roman society to which Caesar belonged, but the very Gaulish and Germanic peoples he was interacting with.
Could it be because the latter two are associated with "evil" in Western capitalist culture, and the former two are not?
Or perhaps because of the greater historical distance?
Whilst it's true that I've become more capitalistic over my life (for various reasons I could go into in another thread if you have a spare hour you'd like to waste) I read more than my share of socialist writings in my formative years, have biographies of Stalin, Lenin and Trotsky on my shelf, and generally have a pretty nuanced view of the historical figures we're discussing in this thread.
I can also blabber on about socialist revolutionaries, or the impact of Marxism on the IRA. There are plenty of people who know more about these figures than me, no doubt, but I'm not doing the parody evil villain thing with them.
But yes, I do believe historical distance plays a role. Whether it should or not is an interesting question, but I think for me it is.
I don't think that owning slaves and cheating are even in the same ballpark, morally speaking, and I hope that neither do you.
I wasn't suggesting that. I was suggesting that even great men (and I have a generally high opinion of MLK) have faults and flaws. Personally I think he's an important figure to remember, and think we should celebrate his accomplishments. Statues are horribly simplistic, in a lot of ways. Reductionist, really. But if you see a statue of MLK, you're probably reminded that he had a dream....not that he broke his marriage vows. And indeed, that was the intent of the statue, and the reason it was placed there.
If you see a statue of Washington, I would think you'd be reminded of the first President of the USA, or perhaps his role in the war of Independence.
Some, such as the Iroquois, remember him in a different manner. For whatever reason that didn't seem to matter too much, but now his owning slaves does. I wonder how many have much idea about what his views on slavery were, or how supportive of Lafayette he was, for example? In the same breath I can decry slavery as a disgusting trade that lowers humanity and also realise that people...in the main...are products of their time. And if anything, Washington was a progressive voice. That he didn't achieve much in that particular realm is somewhat understandable when considering what he did achieve.
People have decided now to look at everything through a lens of 'Black Lives Matter'. I completely...and I can't state this clearly enough...completely support reform in the police departments, and in many touchpoints of modern society. I am also completely understanding why there is action to remove Confederate statues.
But the phrase 'Give a man a hammer, and everything becomes a nail' comes to mind.
That seems more sensible to me as well.
It strikes me that humans don't work that way. We've always had our heroes, be they worthy or not.
If we can't accept someone like Washington as worthy of praise...even whilst acknowledging faults...I think we're misunderstanding what people are, or what is possible in ones life.
