Are Americans Morally Superior?

[Debater Slayer]

Oh, I don't think it's possible. Certainly not in any useful way.
I was just having fun with a question it's hard to take seriously.

I agree on the impossibility of such a ranking.

At best, most people I have seen try to "rank" regions or nations in terms of morality end up overgeneralizing, oversimplifying, and sounding like an Internet Age version of ethnic supremacists. (Sam Harris comes to mind here, for example.)

 

[Revoltingest]

The point of that post is fundamentally different from condemnation: I meant to suggest that in hindsight, it appears to me that there were understandable reasons to view Hillary Clinton as more hawkish and therefore hesitate to vote for her given the record of each candidate until 2016.

That Trump turned out to be similarly warlike is a different and later issue, which was a factor in 2020 but not yet in 2016, since Trump hadn't had a political record before then.

Still no argument.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

I agree on the impossibility of such a ranking.

At best, most people I have seen try to "rank" regions or nations in terms of morality end up overgeneralizing, oversimplifying, and sounding like an Internet Age version of ethnic supremacists. (Sam Harris comes to mind here, for example.)

I'm kind of okay with people doing that, it seems pretty normal.
Not useful, but normal.

What I mean is, I think of myself as a moral person. Beyond that, I think I have a decent set of moral values, so even where I fail to live up to my own standards, that doesn't change my basic assessment of my moral values as positive, and 'better than many'. Otherwise I'd change my value set, at least over time.

So...if I start judging people's morality, what I'm actually doing is judging how closely their subjective morality matches to mine. That makes some sense if I believe there is a hard objective measure of morality (dogmatic theism perhaps). But given I don't...meh...

 

[ImmortalFlame]

I think I speak for all Europeans when I say...

Yes, Americans are morally superior. I mean, have you seen their pancakes??

 

[Viker]

No.

 

[Augustus]

If one scrolls down to read what he has to say about the Native-American genocide the author works to deny blame and deflect for settlers that weaponized disease:

It is broadly true though, but also true that not all disease outbreaks are equal.

Bundling loosely related stuff together to make a nice narrative coherence where they can be considered single “events” for the purpose of making nice lists is arbitrary. We never include the 100 million Spanish Flu deaths in WW1 stats and there is no real logic to this compared to other events where we do add in the disease deaths that occurred roughly concurrently.

The idea of lumping together a 400 years process with multiple actors acting in diverse and often competing ways, along with many wars, atrocities, and conflicts and also epidemics of multiple diseases that were primarily just normal epidemics and considering it a single “event” is not really meaningful imo.

Someone dying of disease on a forced march across country is very different from someone dying during a natural smallpox or cholera outbreak.

We could put the formation of modern Europe into a period from the 30 Years War through the Wars of Spanish and Austrian Succession and the Napoleonic Wars and into the 2 World Wars and call it the European Wars. Add in some plagues, famines and natural disasters and decide it is the worst atrocity in history with 200-300 million deaths.

But we don’t, because we don’t see this as a single “event” even though it makes about as much sense as treating “The conquest of the Americas” as a single event. As a result we can treat it with nuance rather than trying to force it into a single, named atrocity.

.

 

[libre]

The idea of lumping together a 400 years process with multiple actors acting in diverse and often competing ways, along with many wars, atrocities, and conflicts and also epidemics of multiple diseases that were primarily just normal epidemics and considering it a single “event” is not really meaningful imo.

I do think that lumping together large historical processes can be super reductive.

I do however think that the author to argue that the same outcomes would've occurred even if the Europeans had been perfect guests presents the native genocide as if it were an inevitability is leaning towards apologia. The comparison to Natives introducing tobbaco to the world as being a comparable is very silly, as I'm not aware of a single instance of the Natives weaponizing tabbaco against others.

My main criticism of the cite is the omission of the Holocaust from the list, as categorizing it's victims as just WW2 deaths is very distorted.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Are Americans morally superior to those of other nations?

No.

 

[ChristineM]

I think I speak for all Europeans when I say...

Yes, Americans are morally superior. I mean, have you seen their pancakes??

I prefer crepes... Does that make France morality superior than America?

 

[ImmortalFlame]

I prefer crepes... Does that make France morality superior than America?

Nah, it just makes you morally inferior to people who prefer American pancakes.

That being said, you ever seen Japanese pancakes? They are the MOST morally superior.

 

[Unfettered]

Are Americans morally superior to those of other nations?

This is a true dead-end question.

 

[Mock Turtle]

Are Americans morally superior to those of other nations?

No, and much as I suspect no other nation would claim such either. Most nations have so much in their past and present so as never to claim this.

 

[Revoltingest]

I prefer crepes... Does that make France morality superior than America?

Crepes are just flimsy pancakes.
But I'm not a fan of either.
This makes Ameristan only a teensy tiny
bit morally superior to Froggistan.
(It's a low bar. And we barely cleared it.)

 

[ChristineM]

Crepes are just flimsy pancakes.
But I'm not a fan of either.
This makes Ameristan only a teensy tiny
bit morally superior to Froggistan.
(It's a low bar. And we barely cleared it.)

Delicate, not flimsy

I wouldn't say Ameristan only a teensy tiny bit morally superior to Froggistan. You have Trump and his gang.

 

[Kathryn]

Are Americans morally superior to those of other nations?

No.

 

[Revoltingest]

Delicate, not flimsy

I wouldn't say Ameristan only a teensy tiny bit morally superior to Froggistan. You have Trump and his gang.

You have had that Jerard Depardoo guy.

 

[Shaul]

Americans as individual people are not morally superior since all people are innately equivalent morally. However, as American exceptionalism notes, the foundational ethos and principles upon which the American ideals were founded are arguably superior to the norm.

 

[ChristineM]

You have had that Jerard Depardoo guy.

Damn fine actor despite his faults, can you say the same?

 

[Revoltingest]

Damn fine actor despite his faults, can you say the same?

Yes.
I could say that I'm a damn fine actor despite my faults.
(I'm lying about the acting, but not about the faults.)

 

[ChristineM]

Yes.
I could say that I'm a damn fine actor despite my faults.
(I'm lying about the acting, but not about the faults.)

At least he's not bare faces enough to try and take over the country