This is the kind of rhetoric which seriously undermines the history of American philosophical thought. The things you mentioned are found in the history of every nation. It's important to keep track of what should be improved, while also acknowledging what worked well and why.

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tomrod 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

> This is the kind of rhetoric which seriously undermines the history of American philosophical thought.

Hard disagree. Ignoring it is what allows systemic injustice to persist -- why do we care, today, what Eugenicists in the early 1900s had to say? Jim Crow implementers and supporters? Daughters of the Confederacy?

If the reality of history undermines your respect for American philosophical thought, then perhaps the American philosophical thought is not quite worthy of the pedestal it was placed on.

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nis0s 5 days ago | parent [-]

You’re right that it’s important to acknowledge the pain and suffering caused by bad policy and practices, and it’s important to examine what went wrong so we don’t repeat those mistakes.

That said I think it’s important to separate good ideas from their troubled past and use them where they still apply. People are not perfect, but a good idea is good no matter where it comes from. Those good ideas shape culture and shape the destiny of nations. That’s what happened in America, and there’s a lot to be learned from the past. Unless the point is to undermine the recipe that made America into what it is today, then it doesn’t make sense to measure people who didn’t live in our time by our sensibilities, morality or ethics.

We can learn their good stuff, and improve on what they didn’t do well.

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tomrod 5 days ago | parent [-]

Maybe it would help to pluck out the few good ideas from the bad slop. What do you consider specifically unique in the American experiment that transcends the toxic swamp of suppression of freedoms America often engages in?

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nis0s 5 days ago | parent [-]

> the toxic swamp of suppression of freedoms America often engage

Seems extremist to take that view, especially when all nations have just as bloody or dark histories.

But a lot of what shaped initial American thought were Enlightenment ideals, primarily the works of John Locke. So the foundation is solid enough, but is there more that can be done to produce effective implementations? Definitely.

It’s important to note that there are good ideas everywhere, and no one culture or nation has had hegemony or monopoly on producing the best works over time.

I personally also like the fact that the way the American revolutionaries thought shaped the progress of American science up to the 20th century. Here’s a recent lecture on this, but there’s no recording that I can find.

https://www.sciencehistory.org/visit/events/americas-scienti...

https://www.usahistorytimeline.com/pages/the-impact-of-the-r...

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tomrod 5 days ago | parent [-]

First off, not extremist. Let's give you the benefit of the doubt there, perhaps you simply didn't recognize you undercut your credibility in a discussion when you dismiss people having a different view of history by assigning them to an extremist bucket -- nowhere left to learn or discuss when you start there. Further, mild whataboutism doesn't support your case either.

Second, the Scottish enlightenment wad wonderful! Not unique to America, so recognizing that the darkest parts of our history are decidedly not representive of the Enlightenment, my classical liberal ideals, and I suspect yours too, does nothing to the case that America did a good job adopting some of the ideals of the Enlightenment in the constitution. We could have gone the French route with the horrors of Robspierre, but we didnt, whether due to lack of population density, aristocracy, or any number of factors.

We agree completely that cultural differences, known as diversity, have outsized benefits.

I'll review the science idea.

Thanks again for sharing your thoughts. We really aren't far apart. I simply see slavery, genocide, and other horrors of the American past as necessary to recognize in order to set context, and in no way does that diminish the astonishing success of our American experiment. Indeed, in spite of these stains on our history, we remain a nation that does the right thing, as Churchill puts it, after exhausting all other options. And that's a uniqur thing to history.

In my view, if we can't acknowledge our past deficits, in no way can we comprehend the present flaws sufficiently to motivate action and collaboration.

	▲	nis0s 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		Genocides are a human problem, and not distinct to any one particular culture or people, they’ve occurred everywhere and across all times. https://casbs.stanford.edu/genocide-world-history It’s better for people to acknowledge that such a problem can span all types of people and cultures, so we can perform root cause analysis without being biased or disingenuous. There’s also the question of when we classify group killing as a war vs. as a genocide. There are schools of thought on this https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623528.2020.1.... For example, see the hesitation of scholars in classifying Mongol invasions as a genocide. Is it the case that only white settlers committed genocide across history? If we think of it that way, then we’re ignoring atrocities committed by inter-group violence (war crimes), or same ethnicity violence. The goal should be to prevent violence between groups of people. Regarding slavery, again it’s a problem that has occurred across time and cultures. Why were different ideologies and cultures unable to prevent slavery? It’s a disgusting stain on human history. https://historycollection.com/the-evolution-of-slavery-from-...

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mike_d 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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tomrod 5 days ago | parent [-]

> Fascism has never in history been stopped by scholars. It is uncomfortable to directly acknowledge "what worked well."

Your comment maps precisely to: we've had zero network intrusions, why are we paying these cybersecurity professionals?

So much fascism and authoritarianism was blocked since WW2 because scholars called it out early.

Guess what scholars called out in the US in 2016, but most politicians put party over country? "We scaled back our cybersecurity professionals and saved a ton of budget! On an unrelated note, do we have data breach insurance?"

There is certainly room to punch fascists in the face when hostilities are hot. We can't start there and remain a tolerant society dealing with the paradox of tolerance. The first steps are shunning and ceasing support, isolating the infected into appropriately deprived states of resource loss, and not political violence.

There is a great case study in Daryl Davis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Davis

	▲	mike_d 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		I agree that civil debate and cooler heads deterred and delayed fascism in many cases. I was referring specifically to when it has taken hold and needs to be stopped. An apt comparison would be instituting mandatory cybersecurity training for employees as a direct response to a breach. That is a great step to take post-cleanup but does basically nothing to address the issue at hand.

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halico_chops 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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	▲	dang 5 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		We've banned this account. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
	▲	5 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[deleted]

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deadfoxygrandpa 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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	▲	nis0s 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		Civil wars have often occurred with war crimes (like killing non-combatants) with the purpose of performing ideology annihilation. At least one example is here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torre%C3%B3n_massacre Creating distinct categories (ethnic cleansing or genocide etc.) of terrible things is an important exercise, but it can also dilute our overall understanding of human behaviors. The categories are useful for geological or historical analysis, but not for understanding baseline human behaviors.