Thanks for your response. I'm trying to understand your position here, and I'm really not getting it. Aside from the obvious problem of their being living peop

Thanks for your response. I'm trying to understand your position here, and I'm really not getting it. Aside from the obvious problem of their being living people who experienced the holocaust (so they still exist), this example seems to imply that I'm saying that there's no need for empathy and respect for the people who came before us. I don't think that anything I've said implies that. Instead what I'm saying is that the dead need no protection and can receive no pain or insult. Anything we do for "them" is really for "us", because they do not exist. >Because it’s a simple matter of recognizing other human beings and respecting their cultural achievements and desires. Just because they don’t exist anymore doesn’t mean they weren’t humans worthy of our empathy. You seem to be implying that not honoring the wishes of the dead is an empathic failure. How so? I can empathize with someone's wishes, understand where they are coming from, and even respect who they were. None of that implies that I owe their desires a place in the world now. And in fact as modern people we MUST make choices about what pieces of the past to revere, revise, or pave over. Otherwise the world becomes a mausoleum to the past.