speaking as a professional historian, lebel, let me tell you that this sentiment is just a sentiment: it has no relation to how histories are produced, what they do, etc.
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Most if not all wealthy Southern landowners held slaves, as has been pointed out numerous times.
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so therefore slavery was fine.
sorry, my mistake: i foolishly thought that people in 2005 were in a position to evaluate actions undertaken in different contexts along lines particular to 2005.
this question of slavery, its ethical implications, its history and the effects of that history--all of this should not be addressed.
to do so is an exercize in "self loathing"?
what are you actually advocating, lebel?
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European countries ruthlessly exploited the "new world" territories discovered even as many of the indiginous tribes exhibited their own forms of brutality, such as human sacrifice.
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so are you saying that this exploitation was ok because lots of people indulged it?
is this how you make evaluations of what came to be the early phases of a genocide?
is this how you think about genocide in general--everything is ok if enough people go along with it?
wait--the question involves self-loathing--genocide is carried out by other people--when the americans do it, it is manifest destiny--which is ordained by god--so therefore the repeated massacres of native americans from the 18th century through wounded knee--all ok.
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Do we stop admiring Jefferson or Columbus or the Native Americans because of it?
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no obviously not--not for you at least--because you have no interest in history--you prefer nationalist mythology. your choice, of course.
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But many on the left insist we do (except it is ok to admire the indians because they aren't white).
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because you prefer nationalist mythology to history and its messiness, but cant really defend the position (how would you?) it follows that you would find a way to posit "your history" (of "white people"------do you really believe this?) as some kind of victim (of what?)
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Seriously, I am tired of this freudian exercise in self loathing.
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because confronting an often appalling history is not helpful for the mission of moral uplift that history should serve?
i do not see how this position, lebel, which often wafts from conservatives from gingrich onward--those masters of the history as national bildungsroman--behind which there hide so many conceptual and political problems that it is hard to know where to start even--is defensable at any level.
if you can run away from the past, it must be easier to run away from the present.
maybe that's it.
what matters is that conservatives can anchor their sense of being in the present by linking it to a wholly fictitious account of the past. that way they feel good about themselves--an emphasis that you hear criticized continually on conservative talk shows etc. as an element of "liberal educational philosophy"--which is presumably, following this same logic, tied to weakness of character.
how to you justify mapping this onto history? or the heroic myth of national construction undertaken by a series of decontextualized white men (which would perhaps for you be the same thing)?
how is this any different?