Comment by PostOnce | Hacker News Reader

Comment by PostOnce | Hacker News Reader

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But we do discuss those things... constantly. It seems to be all we talk about. America's wrongs.

To play the other half of this argument: America engaged in slavery, but also fought its bloodiest war to end it, played a major role in ending the Holocaust and freeing Europe from the Nazis, ended Japan's conquest of Asia, freed South Korea, and brought about through hyperpower probably the longest peace between major powers in millennia, among other notable counterpoints.

It's almost as if the world isn't black and white.

America and everyone else will continue doing both wonderful and terrible things, but we'll keep discussing only the half of those things we disapprove of, especially if it feels like it's helping us win an argument.

Hand-wringing over the past doesn't make tomorrow better, it's a distraction from doing things that will.

To be clear, basically the whole of human history is misery and privation, and only in this era of long peace under the aegis of American hyperpower have we witnessed a glimpse of lasting peace and prosperity.

So, no one will disagree that great wrongs have been wrought, but it seems intellectually dishonest to overlook the staggering good.

> To play the other half of this argument: America engaged in slavery, but also fought its bloodiest war to end it

It was only “its bloodiest war” because a sizable fraction of the country was fighting to protect slavery. Much of the rest of the world that had chattel slavery ended it without similarly bloody wars—and generally sooner. The fierce defense of chattel slavery in the US that produced its bloodiest war isn’t a positive.

It would have been bloodless had the Union just said "okay let's have slavery."

But they didn't do that. They laid down their lives instead.

Like I said before, picking out only the things we dislike and overlooking positives isn't productive or honest to ourselves.

> It would have been bloodless had the Union just said "okay let's have slavery."

No, because that’s what the Union said—that preserving the Union was more important than abolition. The South declared secession and attacked federal facilities anyway.

The South’s overweaning fear of the distant future possibility of abolition backfired and accelerated it.

The Republicans were only trying to avoid expansion of slavery, not elimination of it. They fought to maintain the Union, not abolition.

Only later did they free the slaves, and as an act of war more than freedom.

How about these 178,000 men, of whom about 35,000 died: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Colored_Troops

I don't think their primary motivation was preservation of the Union, I think it was abolition.

Let's not pretend preservation of the Union was the only major factor, or that abolition was entirely a back-burner concept, it had been building steam and popular support for decades.

Sure, preserving the Union may have been the main concern on a realpolitik level early on, but that doesn't change the fact that abolition was the writing on the wall and had been for decades.

It’s some hubris to think that America brought peace to a wicked world. Especially when at the same time we gloss over the millions of people killed directly or indirectly by American policies and actions during our time in power. We'll never know if the third world and non-aligned movements would have produced a stable alternative, since they competed with American capitalism and thus were destroyed by America.

We did some noble things in the 1940s for sure. Since then, what would you say has been “staggering good”?

History is told by the victors, but that doesn’t make their actions just.

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