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One should also not pretend that, because both sides did bad things, that automatically makes them morally equivalent. Bad things happen in war. German troops

One should also not pretend that, because both sides did bad things, that automatically makes them morally equivalent. Bad things happen in war. German troops committed war crimes in World War II; so did American troops. That doesn't mean they committed the same number of war crimes, or crimes on the same scale, or that the American cause was therefore morally equivalent to the German. Volume matters. Scale matters. Intent matters. Your logic leads inexorably to false balance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_balance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_balance), where anyone who isn't perfectly pure is therefore completely impure and therefore all sides are always the same. That's not how the world works. Even the best-hearted people make mistakes and do bad things. Saying one crime is morally the same as many crimes, or one small crime is morally the same as one gigantic one, or one accidental crime is morally the same as one committed on purpose, only serves to give the worst among us a free pass. > prove me wrong otherwise. Spare us the Ben Shapiro posturing, please.

aaron-lebo 6y ago
I don't believe any of his statements imply moral equivalence. I can believe (using your example of WW2) that on the whole, Imperial Japan was a more evil system (rape of Nanking? unprovoked attacks?) but still see Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the murder of Japanese prisoners of war as evil acts of their own. That's not the kind of slippery slope you are describing, it's just how history works I really think bringing in the rhetorical attacks and the references to Shapiro and modern politics (nobody wass taking about that guy) is disingenuous and takes the discussion out of the historical and into today's politics, which isn't useful and distracting.
nudpiedo 6y ago
I never said there was a balance, just that none of the sides deserve any praise or romanization when the other to gets the sole attribution of any evil acts. Both sides performed mass murders of civilians. Stop praising people who did that just because an even more depictable side won that conflict. > Spare us the Ben Shapiro posturing, please. Maybe that's your issue, you are projecting your frustrations on me and answer things I never said.

aaron-lebo 6y ago

I don't believe any of his statements imply moral equivalence. I can believe (using your example of WW2) that on the whole, Imperial Japan was a more evil system (rape of Nanking? unprovoked attacks?) but still see Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the murder of Japanese prisoners of war as evil acts of their own. That's not the kind of slippery slope you are describing, it's just how history works I really think bringing in the rhetorical attacks and the references to Shapiro and modern politics (nobody wass taking about that guy) is disingenuous and takes the discussion out of the historical and into today's politics, which isn't useful and distracting.

nudpiedo 6y ago

I never said there was a balance, just that none of the sides deserve any praise or romanization when the other to gets the sole attribution of any evil acts. Both sides performed mass murders of civilians. Stop praising people who did that just because an even more depictable side won that conflict. > Spare us the Ben Shapiro posturing, please. Maybe that's your issue, you are projecting your frustrations on me and answer things I never said.