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-...