• bigFab@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    As a non american I’m curious about these events. I see it as a fact the war ended slavery, but isn’t anyone bothered about the winning heroes having used slaves themselves their whole life up until then? More than heroes I see them as ‘‘I’m not bad anymore’’ and demonizing their foes as a very hipocrite act.

    If I was dealing drugs my whole life I wouldn’t raise my voice too high to condemn other dealers just because I recently quit myself, although seems like for some works pretty well.

    • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      If you do something bad, and then you stop doing something bad, it’s not hypocritical to tell others to stop doing the bad thing. It’s hypocritical to not stop, and then tell others to stop.

      • bigFab@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        We agree on that ethically it is right to ask others to stop doing wrong like you did. For me it’s different though asking while pointing with a gun. That is hypocrite.

        • m_f
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          1 month ago

          If someone is doing something really bad to you, and someone else came over with a gun to stop them, would you stop the person saving you and purity-check them first?

          Slavery was also much less prevalent in the North, and abolished completely ~55 years before the civil war. It’s not really equivalent. To borrow your drug dealing analogy (though it’s a loose one at best), it’s kind of like your local weed dealer helping to remove an unabashed fentanyl dealer from the community

          • bigFab@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            Ofc I would let him save me first. It’s what happens after being liberated that concerned me. Before calling him a slave liberator I would definitely make that backgroud check. If i was to find he once dismissed his own slaves without proper compensation based in human rights and equality, then my next moral task would be to prosecute him.

            I mean, please correct my lack of american history knowledge if necessary, but the way I see it is really easy to dismiss slave labour only once you get the industrial machinery.

    • piccolo@sh.itjust.works
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      1 month ago

      Many states has abolished slavery decades prior. It was highly debated at the formation of the country. It gets weirder that Thomas Jefferson was anti slavery while owning 600 slaves and as president, he abolitioned the international slave trade and advocated to end slavery all togather, but was against voluntary manumission. People are… complicated, often self serving but can recognize how the system is horrible…