I don’t think the Confederates were all thoroughly evil people (hold on, I’m not some scumbag apologist. I’m going somewhere with this). I’m sure many of them loved their families, and were kind to other white people. It’s not like there were millions of people drowning puppies for fun and burning each other’s houses down.
What made the Confederates villains was that many of them didn’t think Black people deserved basic human rights. To me, that’s the evil part.
Where did Vance get that “ten years ago” shit, though? There have been abolitionists for as long as there’s been slavery.
From 1865 to 2015 only five confederate monuments / statues were removed, while in 2015 eight were brought down, and by 2018 over 110 monuments were removed.
So about 10 years ago the Confederacy went from having a random statue in town and became a big rallying point and arguably started the “culture war.”
I don’t think the Confederates were all thoroughly evil people (hold on, I’m not some scumbag apologist. I’m going somewhere with this). I’m sure many of them loved their families, and were kind to other white people. It’s not like there were millions of people drowning puppies for fun and burning each other’s houses down.
I mean, the distinction here between “evil” and “thoroughly evil” isn’t covered in Vance’s statement, at least as clipped here.
Every single person who fought for slavery and didn’t regret it and reform later in life was an evil person. Full stop.
I generally try to be lenient with regards to time and culture in terms of moral differences - but when you willingly take up arms in the name of defending race-based chattel slavery against those whose only real wish is to prevent it from spreading - with preserving that form of slavery in perpetuity, in and of itself, as the goal of shedding the blood of your fellow men - you’ve crossed the line into evil. You may not understand it immediately. It doesn’t mean you start kicking puppies for fun. But plenty of Nazis were ‘nice’ people too.
Yeah, in these cases I like to point out that the confederate constitution explictitly spelled out that black chattel slavery would be a permanent, unalterable part of their nation four seperate times, while stating the inherent, god appointed superiority of the white race.
I doubt every solider read it, but it was far from secret what the founding principle of the nation state was.
