4 ms·

>It's no worse than the Romans, or Gauls, or Saxons, etc. Or the Nazis? If they had won WW2 I'm sure some people in Germany today would be calling the Holocau

>It's no worse than the Romans, or Gauls, or Saxons, etc. Or the Nazis? If they had won WW2 I'm sure some people in Germany today would be calling the Holocaust "an unfortunate but necessary part of human progress" and would tell us all about the backwardness of Jewish culture, I'm sure while also being "sympathetic to the plight" of those victims too. That doesn't mean that one group of people have the right to wipe out another culture to benefit their own, no matter what the consequences are. I'm really shocked by some of the comments here.

bokonist 17y ago
What's your answer to my question?
- arcadeparade 17y ago
  It's not a sensible question so I can't answer it. I just dont think that what happened to the Native Americans was right, it was genocide, and anything positive that came out of it doesnt excuse it.
  - bokonist 17y ago
    Let's try a similar, more realistic question. It's 2050. The U.S. has run out of oil, it only has enough to run farm equipment and food shipment trucks for another year. There is hope of converting everything to nuclear/electric power, but that will take a decade. In the meantime, the entire population, including your friends and family, face hunger or starvation. Nigeria and Venezuela have oil, but refuse to sell it at any price. The U.S. government is contemplating war to seize the oil. Do you support the war?
    - arcadeparade 17y ago
      Why dont they want to sell it? And how does that scenario compare to the invasion of the United States in the 1500s? It wasnt invaded to save the population of Europe.
      - bokonist 17y ago
        Americans have no goods that are as valuable to them as oil.
        arcadeparade 17y ago
        Ok, well let's compare that with a real life situation. Right now there are thousands of people dying from easily preventable diseases every day in Africa, which could be cured for a few cents each. American pharmaceutical companies have this medicine, and they are operating in one of the most profitable industries that have ever existed. Africans have no goods that are as valuable to them as medicine. Should African countries invade America to get this medicine?
        bokonist 17y ago
        No, because the invasion would fail. A good leader does not lead his troops on suicidal missions. But the oil example actually did happen in real life. You're the ruler of Japan in 1941. The U.S. has just cut off your oil supply. You have months left before your population faces severe hunger and deprivation. Do you invade Indonesia to take their oil? I think if I was ruler I would. How about you?
        arcadeparade 17y ago
        I dont know, but I think we should apply the same moral standards to ourselves that we appply to others. These questions echo the age-old maxim of Thucydides that "The strong do as they can, while the weak suffer what they must" but that doesnt mean that the actions on either side are just. There are fundamental questions to be answered here about the legitimacy of the nation-state, and what right one group has to natural resources over another simply because of their location on Earth, when the results of this unfairness are the strengthing of one group and the weakening of another.
      - bokonist 17y ago
        Probably about a third of the population of England at the time faced constant poverty and hunger due to there simply not being enough land to support the population. To the west is this wide open, un-farmed continent, with enough land to support everyone. Do you allow your subjects to settle this land? The point of these questions is that it is always easy to moralize when you don't have to make personal tradeoffs. And in real life, there are often hard tradeoffs to make. So I'm trying to figure out under what conditions, if any, you would make the choice to invade. So far, you've moralized, but you've still evaded the hard questions. What would you do in any of these scenarios?
  - mattmaroon 17y ago
    I was not attempting to excuse it. I was simply pointing out that it was part of something that United States of America, ended up being humanity's greatest achievement to date. Say what you want about America, but it pioneered most of the rights that the entire first world enjoys, and which are spreading throughout the rest to this date. Capitalism, civil liberties, social mobility. None of them were invented here perhaps, but the whole (which is far greater than the sum of its parts) was. There's a reason you've probably never seen a public hanging or a head on a pike. There's a reason wars victimize fewer and fewer civilians every decade. America's history is certainly not without blemishes, including this one, slavery, a few ill-advised wars, etc. But on the whole it's been an incredible windfall for humanity. So no, I wouldn't undo the whole thing. Nothing is perfect, and to take the view that we could have made the omelet we enjoy today without cracking a few eggs along the way is naive at best. It's hard to make any argument that the holocaust was part of a bigger package that benefited humanity, so the two are dissimilar and entirely unrelated.

bokonist 17y ago

What's your answer to my question?

arcadeparade 17y ago
It's not a sensible question so I can't answer it. I just dont think that what happened to the Native Americans was right, it was genocide, and anything positive that came out of it doesnt excuse it.
- bokonist 17y ago
  Let's try a similar, more realistic question. It's 2050. The U.S. has run out of oil, it only has enough to run farm equipment and food shipment trucks for another year. There is hope of converting everything to nuclear/electric power, but that will take a decade. In the meantime, the entire population, including your friends and family, face hunger or starvation. Nigeria and Venezuela have oil, but refuse to sell it at any price. The U.S. government is contemplating war to seize the oil. Do you support the war?
  - arcadeparade 17y ago
    Why dont they want to sell it? And how does that scenario compare to the invasion of the United States in the 1500s? It wasnt invaded to save the population of Europe.
    - bokonist 17y ago
      Americans have no goods that are as valuable to them as oil.
      - arcadeparade 17y ago
        Ok, well let's compare that with a real life situation. Right now there are thousands of people dying from easily preventable diseases every day in Africa, which could be cured for a few cents each. American pharmaceutical companies have this medicine, and they are operating in one of the most profitable industries that have ever existed. Africans have no goods that are as valuable to them as medicine. Should African countries invade America to get this medicine?
        bokonist 17y ago
        No, because the invasion would fail. A good leader does not lead his troops on suicidal missions. But the oil example actually did happen in real life. You're the ruler of Japan in 1941. The U.S. has just cut off your oil supply. You have months left before your population faces severe hunger and deprivation. Do you invade Indonesia to take their oil? I think if I was ruler I would. How about you?
        arcadeparade 17y ago
        I dont know, but I think we should apply the same moral standards to ourselves that we appply to others. These questions echo the age-old maxim of Thucydides that "The strong do as they can, while the weak suffer what they must" but that doesnt mean that the actions on either side are just. There are fundamental questions to be answered here about the legitimacy of the nation-state, and what right one group has to natural resources over another simply because of their location on Earth, when the results of this unfairness are the strengthing of one group and the weakening of another.
    - bokonist 17y ago
      Probably about a third of the population of England at the time faced constant poverty and hunger due to there simply not being enough land to support the population. To the west is this wide open, un-farmed continent, with enough land to support everyone. Do you allow your subjects to settle this land? The point of these questions is that it is always easy to moralize when you don't have to make personal tradeoffs. And in real life, there are often hard tradeoffs to make. So I'm trying to figure out under what conditions, if any, you would make the choice to invade. So far, you've moralized, but you've still evaded the hard questions. What would you do in any of these scenarios?
- mattmaroon 17y ago
  I was not attempting to excuse it. I was simply pointing out that it was part of something that United States of America, ended up being humanity's greatest achievement to date. Say what you want about America, but it pioneered most of the rights that the entire first world enjoys, and which are spreading throughout the rest to this date. Capitalism, civil liberties, social mobility. None of them were invented here perhaps, but the whole (which is far greater than the sum of its parts) was. There's a reason you've probably never seen a public hanging or a head on a pike. There's a reason wars victimize fewer and fewer civilians every decade. America's history is certainly not without blemishes, including this one, slavery, a few ill-advised wars, etc. But on the whole it's been an incredible windfall for humanity. So no, I wouldn't undo the whole thing. Nothing is perfect, and to take the view that we could have made the omelet we enjoy today without cracking a few eggs along the way is naive at best. It's hard to make any argument that the holocaust was part of a bigger package that benefited humanity, so the two are dissimilar and entirely unrelated.