Please keep fiery denunciation off HN, regardless of how good you are or how bad someone else was. It helps nothing, and adds to the toxic fumes already poisoning this place.
I was responding to someone who wrote "It seems to me that our society is too focused on condemning historical persons for their flaws than celebrating them for their noteworthy deeds." That comment seems to imply that we should forgive (or forget) the sexual assault of a slave because she was assaulted by someone who deserves to be celebrated "for their noteworthy deeds". Since you flagged my comment, will you also flag that other comment? Surely that other comment is more offensive than anything that I wrote?
> That comment seems to imply that we should forgive (or forget) the sexual assault of a slave because she was assaulted by someone who deserves to be celebrated ...
I don't think it implies any such thing. It's a reminder that our standards of morality can change a lot over time, so we shouldn't be surprised when some historical figure who is usually praised for their positive accomplishments turns out to have very severe moral flaws from our own POV. It's not exceptional, it's what we would expect to see in the first place.
Morality does not change over time. You are confusing power with morality. Please read Elaine Pagels and her history of the emergence of the Christians during late Roman times, she makes clear that one of the reasons why slaves flocked to Christianity is because the Christian church took a defiant stand against slave owners raping their slaves:
Where did such ideas come from? During the Roman period it was taken for granted that slave owners would sexually assault their slaves. And yet the slaves knew such behavior was immoral, and the slaves were ready to give their loyalty to the first movement that avowedly took a stand against the slave owners and their sexual practices.
We can and should denounce ancient figures against the immutable and unchanging facts of morality.
About this:
"we shouldn't be surprised when some historical figure who is usually praised for their positive accomplishments turns out to have very severe moral flaws"
I don't think anyone is surprised. Certainly, I am not surprised. I'm simply pointing out that Thomas Jefferson committed a grievous crime and he must be denounced for such a crime. As I said before, for the sheer horror of his immorality, I hope he is burning in the hottest rings of hell.
Continuing flamewar after we asked you to stop is really not ok. If you want to denounce someone for the sheer horror of the immutable and unchanging facts of their grievous criminal immorality, please find some other place for it. Hacker News is for intellectual curiosity, which is totally different.
When the path from another comment to fiery rage is as weak as "seems to imply", that's a good occasion to check one's angrier impulses. The site guidelines include one for just this case: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
Even if you're right about another comment being bad, it doesn't entitle you to break the guidelines yourself. Nor is there any promise of consistency in moderation. There's much too much content here for us to even see it all, let alone read closely and weigh on the scales. If you run across something that should have been moderated but wasn't, the likeliest explanation is just that we didn't see it.
Your comment was flagged by users. They were right. High-indignation, low-information comments are what we don't want here. Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the spirit of this site?
