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I don't understand your point. How far along the reductio ad absurdum should we go? You described the holdouts of the 1950s era of American culture. Suppose th

I don't understand your point. How far along the reductio ad absurdum should we go? You described the holdouts of the 1950s era of American culture. Suppose there was a holdout from the 1850s era of American culture. Should we give deference to their cultural preferences which include all of the following: ownership of human beings as property (only if they have dark skin, though), subjugation of women who are legally disenfranchised, and enthusiasm for genocidal military actions against indigenous people. so...where do you draw the line? by what means do we determine by what means, and under what circumstances, people might express their cultural preferences? I think there is a difference between a "media firestorm" (emergent phenomenon) and the directed effort of an eccentric billionaire.

defen 10y ago
> Should we give deference to their cultural preferences which include all of the following: ownership of human beings as property (only if they have dark skin, though), subjugation of women who are legally disenfranchised, and enthusiasm for genocidal military actions against indigenous people. We do give deference to that, as long as they are our allies and not actually within our borders. More seriously though, there is no means by which we can determine how people might express their cultural preferences. I simply believe (unprovable) that the elite / bourgeois / urban class overreached (by creating a situation allowing those emergent phenomena to happen), and there was a reaction. If there were a critical mass of people who did believe in slavery, then I guess there would have to be a civil war or something to settle the issue. There is no way around the fact that public morality is enforced socially / by other people.