OK, reading your last post I think I have been mistaken. You truly don’t get it. So no insults, no rants, I will take one attempt to see if I can get the message across:No, you're the one who doesn't get it. What the Nazis did in the Holocaust was morally wrong by contemporary, 20th century European (Western) standards. It was never acceptable.
You say, relative to slavery:
However y also say (essentially) that relative to Nazis:
21st century values and beliefs have everything thing to do with the way people of previous eras viewed their world, if it was only 75 years ago
Just to be clear, I completely agree with you about the Nazis. I too had my father and uncles serve in WW-II, though mostly in the Pacific. 70 years is not enough for me to absolve the Nazis from what they did. They were wrong. I do not believe those basic morals change in 75 years.
I apply the same logic when I say 150 years is not enough for me to absolve the slave owners from what they did. They were wrong. I do not believe those basic morals change in 150 years. Originally Posted by Old-T
Conversely, what the South was doing in 1860 was still accepted as the moral norm by both Southerners and many if not most Yankees. Mr. Lincoln was a minority president, almost no one in the South voted for him. While he disliked slavery, he wasn't an radical abolitionist when he took office. Furthermore, Mr. Lincoln was a racist by today's PC standards.
Contemporary, Britain and France didn't end slavery in their respective empires until about the 1840s and 1850s, and slave owners were, for the most part, somewhat compensated for the economic costs of emancipation.
Despite this mid-century shift in Western morality, pseudo-slave conditions in the Belgian Congo up through the beginning of the 20th century were notoriously atrocious. Plus, the ivory trade in East Africa, which was subsidized by some New England businesses, helped perpetuate the slave trade and misery in East Africa into the late 19th century.
Hindsight now shows that slavery as a socially accepted institution was on its way out in Western society by 1860. Nevertheless, at that particular time, it was still widely tolerated and practiced around the world, and contemporary 19th century men and women knew that.
Slavery preexisted the Confederate States of America by thousands of years, and 150 years after the end of the American Civil War and ratification of the 13th Amendment in the USA, slavery continues to exists. It is still widely practiced in Africa and other regions despite being totally abhorred by the rest of the civilized world.
