I apologize, this is such a strange way to be positioned to all this. The point of bringing up something like the practice of slavery in early America is not about "blaming" people about anything. They are already dead! Many generations over. This conceit that the bare acknowledgement of history itself should merely serve to assign blame or culpability to certain people or another feels just so wrong.
The point is that it happened. It was determined and sustained by countless totally mechanical and impersonal conditions and tendencies. Just as the operative ideologies in play in the minds of all our fave founding fathers can only be viewed from our purview as some composite of factors, not as some collection of good guys and bad guys. To point out that maybe they should not be a moral compass to us today is not scapegoating them in some grand moral court of human existence! Its just making a point, and urging historical context as a tool to maybe be a little more rational about our world today. There is nothing at stake but that.
This whole thread is a bit weird now rereading it. My post was pushing back on the narrower idea that past folks' ideas in subject area A should be disregarded because they may have participated in now unacceptable subject area B. Also that Americans tend lack context around the subject.
The point is that it happened. It was determined and sustained by countless totally mechanical and impersonal conditions and tendencies. Just as the operative ideologies in play in the minds of all our fave founding fathers can only be viewed from our purview as some composite of factors, not as some collection of good guys and bad guys. To point out that maybe they should not be a moral compass to us today is not scapegoating them in some grand moral court of human existence! Its just making a point, and urging historical context as a tool to maybe be a little more rational about our world today. There is nothing at stake but that.