Lebell

From this and the other thread, this seems to be the recurring theme and basis of your arguement, roachboy:

"i think this position as shallow as that of the Heroic Narrative--it uses the same arguments, is embedded in the same logic."

What I and I think Pan are trying to say is it is not a Heroic Narrative or Myth that we are advocating.

Rather it is recognizing the whole of history, which I believe you are also advocating even while I believe you are not practicing it yourself. (I am not trying to be insulting, but that is how I see it from your posts.)

The other thing which I think ties in is this:

"history is not made by Great Men. it is made by masses of people, every day"

While I understand what you are saying, I disagree with it.

It was not the everyday man that conquered most of the Ancient world, it was Alexander the Great. It was not the average man that killed over 6 million people in WW2, it was a fanatic who could inspire fanatics, Hitler. The same for Lenin, Benjamin Franklin, Bill Gates, Napoleaon, Patton, Elizabeth I, etc.

It is men and women who have exceptional drive and vision that become "heros", but it is not the "hero" label that got them there.

It is their deeds that those average men and women recognize as "greatness". I posit that the fact that the average man and woman have created so many "heros" directly contradicts this basic argument of yours, that they recognize what you do not.

That is not to say that it is real people that don't help make history. Alexander could not have conquered without his armies and Elizabeth could not have reigned without subjects. But if there had not been an Alexander, could the same leaderless army have gone on to such conquests? If there had not been a Franklin, could a conglomerate of independent commonwealths come to see themselves as a nation or would Europe support the fledgling nation?

Columbus's sins are real. But so was his drive to sail west when no one else wanted to, as was his skill at finding passages and currents and collecting information from various sources as to how to proceed. So too was the reality of what the discovery of the New World meant to Europe (and yes, to the Natives in America). In Europe, it can easily be claimed that this new discovery was one of the final nails in the feudal system and helped usher in the Renaissance as well as creating the fledgling nations that we know today.

But back to what I also see as guilt peddling.

My honest view is that the negativity (as eloquently expressed in Pan's posts) is one of the fundamental sins of the Democratic party, intentional or not. IMO, it helps foster the victim culture that keeps too many down.

Indians can fail because the White man stole their land and forced them on reservations and made them drunk.

Blacks can fail because they were slaves and they never got the hand up they needed and because there is still prejudice.

To me this is exactly identical to Pan's addict that continues to blame his current failure on the past. It is identical to the convict/criminal that continues to blame his drunk dad or the boss that hated him, or the other bad breaks for the fact that he is a criminal.

In reality, I want EXACTLY what you want. I want personal responsibility and recognition of the evils that we perpetuate on each other. I also want guys (white, black or purple) who hire based on race to be punished. But you want the sins of the past to perpetuate through things like Affirmative Action, making discrimination against another group ok because of the sins of the father.

And this victim mentality that I believe is perpetuated by things like vilifying Columbus or Jefferson or whoever enables those who buy into it agree that this discrimation is OK.

"Hey, whitey took my great great great grand-daddy away from africa, so it's ok that he get's his now."

I've seen this very sentiment expressed on these boards, but by (presumably white guys.)

This is what makes me believe that it is not equality that you (collective "you") are interested in, it is guilt, but this time, guilt for the sins of your fathers (and the source of my self flagillation comment in the other post.)

But I refuse to buy into it.

Life is complicated, but I continue and will always maintain that there are somethings that can be expressed simply, in a "Things I learned in Kindergarten" way and one of them is that discrimination against someone based on the color of their skin is wrong.

You can dress up your argument (and indeed, many here have) all you want. You can post numbers on University enrollments. You can post surveys and studies on how minorities benefit from AA, but two wrongs don't make a right.

Oh yes, it's simplistic and I think it is a major source of conflict between the intelligentsia of academia and the heartland of America, as aptly demonstrated in the last election.

Middle America is not interested in feeling guilty about what Columbus did 500 years ago. But they ALSO would not support someone who enslaved someone and stole their gold. They know, perhaps too simply for some here, that it was a hell of a feat sailing across the Atlantic when you didn't know what you would find and that someone who did it deserves some kudos. For those who know about the bad things Columbus did, I would conjecture that they can say what some here have been saying, which basically, yeah, that's a shitty thing that he did.

So I see this discussion tying in to many discussions that we have had on these boards, ranging to what is wrong with the Democratic party, why did they lose the last election, Affirmative Action, and revisionist history.

I sincerely doubt you will magically see my point and change yours, but this is an honest attempt to post my own view of what I see as wrong with what you are espousing and how it relates to the mind set that I and many others fundamentally reject and the reason why the Democratic party is in trouble.

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"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." – C. S. Lewis

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