Judging History (branch off from election thread)

[a completely inoffensive name]

Let's say we have X amount of hatred for someone who owns slaves today. That's "based on our modern ideas". Would you have the same of hatred for washington? No, because of the times he lived in.

But I do. In fact, I have even more disgust in him for this particular aspect of his life because of the movement in which he was involved in and the language in which it utilized. Simply because most people either don't put 2 and 2 together or are scared of making the argument due to various reasons (public deification of Washington) does not mean they are correct in viewing Washington differently.

He also treated his slaves much better than other people and refused to break up families. He kept slaves because his entire livelihood and social standing was based on it. What new, unfavorable light does that shed on him?

It simply means that he was not above the social standards of his time which makes him a weak and wrong man in that aspect. It does not mean that we must accept his circumstances as an excuse for his behavior. By the time the Revolution ended, Washington was already a God in the public view. He could have made the decision to free his slaves then, but he didn't.

Washington signed the first Fugitive Slave Law, did social standing force him to do that?

You guys are on tricky ground here and don't quite realize it. People today who are brought up in poverty in are likely to be less educated and more ignorant than middle class people. Wouldn't you agree though that our judgement should be influenced by the circumstances in which they grew up? If not, what do you think about black people compared to white people?

No, circumstances should not alter our view on a man's actions. By allowing this, again, we risk letting people slip through the cracks of a well deserved critique and lose opportunities to improve ourselves. What we should get out of the fact that the poor are less educated and more liable to make bad/ignorant decisions is not to give partial forgiveness but to criticize even further the fact that such disparity has happened and to resolve ourselves to make sure the education gap today between the income classes shrinks through reasonable means.

Don't quite understand what you are saying about black people compared to white people.

If you straight up judge people from the past by our standards you will most likely judge them too harshly out of ignorance of the times. Also I don't get this suggested dichotomy between saying everything was ok back then and simply using modern standards.

Ignorance of the times is a weakness on both arguments. What if you didn't know that a certain action was frowned upon by society and that the individual got away with it simply because he was powerful? You might think that society approved or was neutral to said action and make a wrong judgement yourself based on the times in which he lived.