Rex Kerr
2 min readAug 14, 2022

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Whoa, whoa, whoa. You were initially making a lot of sense--yes, absolutely, humans are flawed and do evil all over the world and have done so all throughout history.

But at the end, you seem to leap to the completely unwarranted conclusion that the evil therefore doesn't have consequences and doesn't matter.

This is preposterous!

Actions do have consequences. The consequences can last for generations. For instance, it's the "United States of America", not "the United Native Nations of North America". The descendants of the people whose lands were taken are absolutely in a different situation now than they would have been if their ancestors had not been colonized, had traded and gained technology themselves and...well...probably fought vicious wars and murdered many of each other as part of the conquest because that's how these things go...and then the typical person of native ancestry in North America would likely be in considerably better financial shape than they are now. (There are lots of other ways things could have turned out, of course, some better, some worse.)

So, yes, humans commit evil, alas. But the evil matters. And because we maintain wealth and power and culture from generation to generation, the impact of the evil doesn't necessarily end with the cessation of the evil acts.

Once we recognize this, it doesn't follow that it's obvious what to do. One of the usual principles of fairness is that people aren't responsible for others' misdeeds.

But one still must recognize that slavery and then post-slavery racism have had major long-term negative impacts on the fate of black individuals in the United States.

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Rex Kerr
Rex Kerr

Written by Rex Kerr

One who rejoices when everything is made as simple as possible, but no simpler. Sayer of things that may be wrong, but not so bad that they're not even wrong.

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