(no subject)

It should be quite clear that absence of hate does not equal "excuse". My own personal philosophy is that encouraging any kind of hate is a sin always worth avoiding. Certainly a worse sin than, say, peeing on a wall ;- ).

All morality is about causing people to act contrary to their natural inclinations. This is the problem with using surveys (such as the Kinsey Report) to determine the opinions we ought to have toward some behavior. "Okay, it's common. So what?" This goes for racism but it also goes for anything else you could mention. But equating the use of a word with 'racism' or anything other "ism" in absence of context is moronic. Still, Huckleberry Finn is not a book written for Elementary or Middle Schoolers, so I don't understand the need for a bowdlerized version. On the other hand, in WWII (the only war left to us for which it is politically correct to say was "just"), soldiers were encouraged to hate the Nazi society and the Imperial Japanese society and the armies that protected them. Many never got over it. My favorite uncle, who fought hand-to-hand on Iwo Jima wanted nothing to do with Japanese products until the day he died. Still, I don't know if one can argue this is 'sin' if he simultaneously argues that war can be a necessary evil. ᚹ