It's Prager time. Get 40% discount on nebula! go.nebula.tv/bigjoel/ Watch my sweet bonus video, nebula.tv/videos/bigjoel-men-... Support me on Patreon: / bigjoel Check out Little Joel: @littlestjoel Co-edited by myself and @mothcub
For more on the Civil War and reconstruction, I'd highly recommend this lecture series from a Yale Professor: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-QXXp1bHd6gI.html&ab_channel=YaleCourses My information about the Nazis and antiquity came from the book: Greeks, Romans, Germans: How the Nazis Usurped Europe's Classical Past
@@angygremlin4423 but you see it’s okay for powerful straight white men to commit violence for political power-no one else unless to help those white men
I don't understand how conservative channels like PragerU can simultaneously hold beliefs like "give me liberty or give me death" in the context of the American Revolution but "slavery, forced religious conversation, and torture aren't as bad as death lol" when it comes to the Taino/other native peoples.
I would bet money they say "give me liberty or give me death" when discussing a slave-owning founding father in another video, though I don't want to check.
And both were optional. You didn't have to enslave or kill people. PragerU wrote that line, they approved it and recorded it for children. Did they understand that at all, was that the best they could do?
A gladiator choked himself with a Jupiter-damn toilet sponge to get out of being a gladiator. If that doesn't say slavery can be worse than death I don't know what does
there's only good or bad, unless we tell you otherwise, in which case it's an entirely artificial grey area designed to obfuscate the fact that we liked it better with less human rights, but we can't say that, because bad cancel culture
Cannibalism and human sacrifice is especially bad when the people that were enslaved and murdered in this example never actually practiced either. Like the Taino, who were the first victims of Columbus and the later Spanish Viceroys.
"Being enslaved is better than being killed" Didnt slaves attempt to jump off of the ships they were being carried on, saying that death was better than torture.
PragerU’s advocacy of “Christian values” never seems very Christian. Feed the poor, heal the sick, welcome the stranger, turn the other cheek, don’t be judgmental… even pay your taxes are what Jesus advocated. Jesus, however, didn’t like the moneylenders. It’s almost as if Jesus was an anti-capitalist socialist?!
Oh yeah, in droves. Suicide was very high among slaves, as were revolts and other forms of resistance like slow working or sabotage. Whenever someone asks me “why didn’t slaves just revolt?” I answer “they did, a lot”
The argument "people didn't know slavery was bad back then" always falls apart when you, even for a second, consider that the slaves were people and PROBABLY knew slavery was bad!
That isn't a very good argument. Slavers wouldn't enjoy being enslaved either. Just because you don't like it when something bad is done to you doesn't mean you oppose that bad thing _on principle._ No, the real argument is that we have written accounts from throughout human history of people who understood that slavery is abhorrent on principle. There was never a time when people couldn't figure that out.
I do love the way PragerU argues you can't judge Columbus because you have to consider his culture, but then also judges all the cultures that he enslaves and discusses how they really benefited from having their culture entirely forcibly reoriented around a religion they didn't ask for.
Well you have to admit that these natives killed each other because of their misguided religions. Unlike Europeans who killed each other over the right religion.
It's also telling how even at the time the man was a fucking abhorrent monster. He stole and destroyed unimaginable hoards of wealth for his own interest, and for that the church excommunicated him, he was stripped of authority, and replaced with similarly avaricious, if not as wrathful, men.
@@Chillerll Oh of course - I mean you gotta kill people for Judeo-Christian values. Which if I recall correctly was properly practiced by blaming the Judeo- portion for killing Jesus and orienting Europe's political power around Rome, even though it was the Romans who actually did the deed and Jesus was part of that Judeo portion of the population. That's the right religion in action! Very important to share that around.
AND I guarantee there are videos on Prager U that complain about cultural relativism, how the libs tell them they can't judge child marriages or the way women are treated in Islam due to their culture (that is such a common strawman used by the right to argue that people on the left have no morals)
🤣 I know you meant that as a hypothetical metaphor, but it was literally the defense of John Jamelske, who kidnapped and kept a series of 5 women and girls for periods of months to years, chained by the ankle in his basement. Not only was it "ridiculous" to imprison him for punishment since he didn't kill them ... the prosecutors painted an "unfair" picture that made him "look like" a monster. Like how they said one of his victims was 13, but she was 14 when he released her! And they said the dungeon had only a bucket to use as a toilet, when really it was a CAMPER toilet bucket! I mean MY GOD, he even gave one of them A1 steak sauce! -I'm not joking; those were literally defenses he gave. The dude was nuts -he kept a calendar where he marked all the times he r___ d them but considered it "work" so he kept a tally of payments he owed them for it .... but he subtracted "room and board" amounts from that. So for instance $210 was the amount he calculated he owed one woman, after being his captive slave for over 2 years. He was a millionaire by the way. So when he was caught, the state split his wealth 5 ways, for the 5 victims.
@@audreymuzingo933 Lets be real here, the prosecutor just gave the fuck up. He didn’t even try because how can you defend that xD that story is so fucked up, thank you for sharing
@@rainingcomplete3018 There was no trial -he pleaded guilty to all counts because he didn't think they were a big deal. He thought he would just get community service, even though his lawyers tried to convince him otherwise.
@@rainingcomplete3018 I agree. He was up for parole just last year. - DENIED, ha. Crazy thing is, he already looked ancient when he was arrested in 2003, so it's hard to believe he's even still alive! You should look up that story sometime, and see the dungeon, it's effing horrifying what kind of "living" those poor people had to do.
'Morality is objective; good is always good, evil is always evil!' 'Slavery is evil' 'Hang on a minute, you've got to look at it in context. It's bad now, but it was ok back then. It all comes down to the subjectivity of society at any given time in history. Hope that clears things up'
I’m just so struck by the one-two combo of: “We stopped these people from committing cannibalism because it’s bad!! BUT YOU CAN’T JUDGE ME FOR ENSLAVING PEOPLE BECAUSE OUR MORALS ARE DIFFERENT.” Like the hypocrisy isn’t even hidden.
I always find it kind of extra nonsensical when Catholics (i.e. Christopher Columbus was Catholic) use cannibalism as an excuse for genocide and/or slavery considering the doctrine of transubstantiation ("bread becomes flesh, wine becomes blood of Jesus"), but besides that, you never see people only enslaving whom they find guilty of cannibalism; like if some priests in a society do some cannibalism in some religious ritual or whatever, why does the whole society's population become enslaved/killed besides the just priests? It is revealing.
The Right must be really dependent on fundamentalist homeschooling to keep producing people that are ignorant enough to swallow this bilge without asking questions.
But ofc, as Joel alludes to, Columbus would never have said anything of the sort. He would have said "I'm sad to see that the morality of the future has become so degenerate." Obviously, he thought he was morally justified, and would be as baffled as a pillow salesman by the idea that our morals are "different".
Furthermore, we have plenty of documents from the time: there were a lot of people in Europe calling out what Columbus & co. were doing in the Americas as “immoral”, including in the catholic church…
He wasn't even that tbh. At the time, he would probably identify as Genoan, as Italian identity came to life around the time Napoleon had conqueredb the peninsula.
the idea that no one had a problem with slavery is hilarious cuz who ended slavery then? they all thought it was really cool but decided it was cringe one day for no reason I guess
The whole "moral standard" argument with Columbus is irrelevant when the King and Queen of Spain explicitly told him not to treat the natives horribly and to leave them relatively alone, and they were horrified when they found out. They even punished him and stripped him of his titles because of his mistreatment, and in his life he never believed he found America and insisted he had reached Asia.
It's no different than police chiefs scapegoating their officers today, they sent him to do their dirty work and then threw him under the bus after to save face
How can they dare compare owning, overworking, sexually and financially abusing, and educationally neglecting a race of people to cheating in a chess game?
Since you "cheat to win", it actually sounds like the problem here isn't even that slavery is bad, but that it's economically unfair that some people "get to own slaves" while others don't.
It's called an analogy. The point is that cheaters did a bad thing, and slave owners did a bad thing. The question PU is asking is: how should we reconcile with people who do bad things? Analogies are never ever perfectly 1:1 comparisons. The point is to take the important mechanics underlying a topic, and find another topic which shares those underlying mechanics. Normally, this is done to bypass any emotional charge or other intellectual barriers surrounding a topic. The point here is to simplify the issue by relating it to something a kid can understand. A kid doesn't know what it's like to be the President of the United States, but a kid does know what it's like to have friends who cheat at games. This is an incredibly mundane communication technique. PU is a dogshit organization, but criticizing them for drawing an analogy is utterly worthless. What would you have them do? Compare slavery to the Holocaust? In what way would that make the subject easier for kids to digest?
He was arrested and deported because he did slave trade Spanish ships and spanish crew when the spanish crown declared they abolished slave trade. Not because he was too cruel. If he had permission from italy instead he would be fine.
@SomeCoolToad if you wanna get technical then yes, but he had no love for the Spanish, he cut a woman's tongue out, crucified a little boy, sold little girls casually, ordered a dozen starving men to be bound and whipped for buying food, etc. That's not to mention the horrible atrocities towards the indigenous, doing slave trade was about the least bad thing he did.
@@riotbreaker3506 Also, if we go technical, it was Castilla at the time (Spain as a legal entity didn't exist until 1714), and the Castillian Queen at the time (Isabella I) had signed an act called the Laws of Indies for which the natives were legally considered as Castillian citizens, so legally speaking, he was in for a world of troubles anyways (and in fact the natives he traded were later set free and given compensation).
besides the fact that "slavery is better than death" is a ridiculous justification, it is also completely non applicable because the Taino people DID die (at extremely high rates) as a result of Columbus and Spanish colonization.
I don't think you can blame the conquistadors for most of the deaths, since those were caused by disease. They're to blame for any deaths caused by abuse or exploitation. Columbus' sponsor, queen Isabella declared that the Indians were not to be enslaved.
An ironic quote from Patrick Henry, a Virginian slave owner. Out of all of the United States' founders, only a few never owned slaves: John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Roger Sherman, and Thomas Paine.
@@debeb5148 Heres thought... they lost a war so slavery is okay.. because in losing a war the other option is death. if not slavery or servitutde/ submission to the attacking nation.
I’m Steve Serialkiller and I can confirm. My family has held the patent on serial killing since we invented it twenty years ago (once it stopped being “the past” and so bad things could start to exist)
that's a cute strawman. the argument would be more like, ''when serial killing was normal, my client engaged in it and therefore doesn't deserve to be singled out. some of my clients were early adopters of 'anti' serial killing and successfully enacted reforms before most others. therefore, condemning my clientele as especially villainous would be unjust.'' - I'm not saying that is an amazing argument, just that if you want to engage with peoples arguments, then engage with their arguments - not mischaracterizations that are easy to dunk on.
The thing I love is that Columbus WAS a controversial figure of the time. He was even arrested for his actions. But people constantly go to bat for him like he was even the first European to discover America. He didn’t even land in the America that PragerU likes!
Right. The natives were the discoverers of the Americas, and that famous band of Vikings arrived at North America around 500 years before Columbus did.
@@micahcook2408 Since I just heared about this recently - Like the rich people of Europe BUYING corpses/mummies in Eqypt and eating them (or more like a powder they made out of them)
Funnily enough, even in Columbus' day people back in Spain were shocked and horrified by the sheer brutality with which he treated the indigenous people. So the entire argument of "Oh it was just normal back then so don't look at it with our modern lense" is nonsense in this context
The thing that gets me with the Columbus one is that the man WAS criticized for his time. Like, he WAS judged based on his own culture's principles. Like...c'mon.
Conservatives do this about everything they try to whitewash, and what you're saying is almost always true. There's some idea that the concept of justice was invented recently, but people who were historically pieces of shit, were known at the time to be pieces of shit, and there have always been people at any time in history that knew that shit like slavery was wrong, the same way that today we know that a lot of shit that people in power do frequently is wrong.
@@GiordanDiodato don't understand why people like Prager go to bat for a guy that not only was seen as worse than the og torturers but that has almost nothing to do with US history.
Conservatives: we are morally upright people that believe in freedom. Also conservatives: colonialism and imperialism were actually really good for the people that got colonized. Just look at all the civic improvements that Leopold II made in the Congo region.
My reaction was more “what people are you saying columbus helped and civilized?He killed such an obscene number of people that if anything the civilization was irrevocably destroyed, considering so much of the society was killed off”
As someone who is passionate about animation, it bothers me to no end that the mouth they use for "neutral face talking" is an upside down smile as opposed to literally anything else.
That's not what pisses me off the most. The 'floatiness' of the animation make it seem like they're not people, that they're just puppets. I know they're puppet rigs but most puppet rigs at least seem like they're people.
Floridian here, our schools are basically being destroyed by “deathsantis” (sorry i heard that name once and like using that lmfaooo) and ive been getting most education from things outside of school. Luckily i am outside of the main age range prageru kids to be shown in my schools -somewhat safe from desantis in pinellas
The funny thing about this episode and the poor kids in Florida that will have to see it is that many people in Florida are latinos, and Colombus and other colonizers fucked Latinoamerica and our culture to the point where in this modern times, we need to leave our countries becuase the government and economy are broken. And this cunts go and say we should thank him for democracy and religion, as if we didn't had it.
This doesn't apply to all gay people but I've seen videos of people taking their children to pride parades which from what I've seen are pretty sexual in nature and not child appropriate or people in drag teaching kids to twerk or people being upset that there's a bill that prohibits teachers from talking to kids under a certain grade level about sex I absolutely believe SOME people in the Lgbt community are trying to indoctrinate children. I'm not defending PragerU either I just beleive that there are bad apples on both sides of the political spectrum and that neither side is perfect.
Seriously though! It happens on both sides, but conservatives massively take the lions share of the cake when it comes to railing against others for behaviors of which they are masters of. They're like dogs barking at themselves in a mirror. Behavioral studies have showed time and again how the average conservative has a much more difficult with empathy. They think it has to do with deficits of imagination, and the ability to imagine themselves in the shoes of others. They tend to possess an avoidance to novel exsperiance, which ties directly into the unwillingness or inability to consider the exsperiance of others. You see this all the time. Its why highly and dogmatic religious people tend to be highly conservative, they refuse to or are literally unable to consider the fact that billions of other people believe in their other religions or world views just as profoundly and with just as much certainty as they do in their own god. How often they think they are one of the "chosen" people. That they've felt it to be right, so subsequently "know its right". They have a very difficult time with nuance and tend to see the world in white and black, strictly right and wrong. Its much harder to be a nostic, an absolutist, or a conservative when you can't help but consider things (honestly) from other persons points of view.
Columbus: Native Americans practiced human sacrifice, so destroying their cultures was justified. Columbus, not 60 seconds later: Slavery and murder were just part of my culture, don't judge me for it.
Don't forget Columbus was condemned by the church because his actions were considered to be vile even by their standards. Even during his time he was seen a shitty person.
Also the people that Columbus (and later Spanish authorities) brutalized and enslaved the most, the Taino, never practiced human sacrifice. In fact it was their aversion to conflict and willingness to compromise that made the Spanish think they would be ideal slaves. Now the other big culture in the region, the Caribs, were alleged to have been cannibals, though it is to this day disputed if and to what degree this was true. It is suspicious that neither the English nor French accused the Caribs of widespread cannibalism during their later wars with them, only the Spanish did so. As far back as the 18th century scientist Alexander von Humboldt accused earlier Spanish reports of being total fabrication. But it is considered to be plausible that there was some ritualized cannibalism of captives, something also practiced by Europeans, just in another form. Look up what happened to the bodies of people who were executed in Europe during the Early Modern Period, it's...not pretty. Medical cannibalism is a thing. It's pretty disturbing how much people used to be into comsuming pieces of other people. In fact, if we spread it to the later US, cannibalism or human sacrifice were almost unheard of among the indigenous North American cultures. Meanwhile the Spanish and the early English colonists publicly killed people for the explicit reason of appeasing God and in the case of the Salem hysteria, to improve their fortunes after devastating war and famine. Is this not a practice of human sacrifice? You could even argue that Lynching is a form of human sacrifice, I certainly am. Some random minority is grabbed off the street, sans legal conviction of a crime. Then the entire community comes together with their families to gleefully watch as the victim is brutally murdered, all while the audience is cheering, eating, singing and praising God. Afterwards the body of the victim is mutilated, with trophies being taken home by the attendants. As far as I'm concerned such a crime is absolutely ritual human sacrifice and would be called such if the culprits weren't WASPs. If we accept this, then the barbaric American Southerner practiced human sacrifices until at least the 1950s (that we know of). But you would rightfully be called crazy if you said that "they commit human sacrifice" about every person of European descent living in North America at that time. Now, does this particular savage tribe known as "The South" deserve to be enslaved, colonized or forcefully converted away from their violent culture and beastly cult that includes human sacrifice? I mean that last part objectively yes, but the people funding Prager would have you disappeared if you were a public figure expressing that.
@@sherlocksmuuug6692 I'll go one further and postulate that capital punishment is a form of human sacrifice to appease the "god" of retribution for the public. Whatever reasons or rituals are used to justify murder within a society, the end result is the same. At the end of the day, the Spanish tried to justify considerably more murder of natives than the natives ever did.
@@sherlocksmuuug6692 Very few Native Americans (and Aztecs/Mayans) performed human sacrifice, it was an ancient tradition that was rapidly dying out. Many tribes never did it.
He was literally told not to enslave ppl by Queen Isabella bc they should have the same rights as Spaniards, so this excuse doesn’t even work Even the country that backed him (or at least parts of it… idk I’m rusty on my history) didn’t agree with the practices he put into place And Columbus was a dumbass anyways, not that I’d expect all the much intelligence from someone who fucked a llama and gave humanity syphilis. Idk why America ever decided he was some national hero
saying Columbus "sold natives into slavery" and justifying by it saying he "did not invent slavery" is like a student justifying plagiarism by saying "I wasn't the only one doing it." It's a really dumb way of looking at things tbh.
“don’t judge us from the past because slavery wasn’t a big deal back then” this is implying that absolutely NO ONE was against slavery hundreds of years ago (which isn’t true) and that the victims of slavery (the slaves) were pretty chill about the whole situation when being kidnapped from their home and families, tortured, abused, and r*ped for the rest of their lives.
Uh yeah I was pretty confused on that part too like, yo it’s not like the attempts at colonization were met with a population of people who were chill and down with being colonized
Literally. Like a more recent example of someone thinking it's a big deal is John Brown, the guy who would shoot slave owners and helped slaves escape by letting them hide in his house or giving them resources. so like clearly it wasn't always seen as chill. even before John Brown people knew it was wrong. there were people who'd help slaves escape, or people who would buy slaves to free them. (though that one isn't as confirmed. however people alive during slavery had said it happened.) also like, people even during the American revolution thought it was weird. John Lawrence tried to free slaves. And Alexander Hamilton's son had once written that his dad bought a group of slaves and freed them. Which, even if that's a lie done to repair his image, that says that at least his son knew that slavery was wrong and that freeing them was a good thing.
I think we can say rather safely that from the day the first human being was enslaved, the first slaver was born, and so to the first abolitionist. To suggest that, at minimum, the enslaved were incapable of petitioning for their own freedom, and had to wait until western philosophy would put a name to a cause is an insane veil adopted by fascist demons.
Gotta love how the show says "Think about what their culture was back then". Wasn't he like disowned by royalty and had his title revoked for the stuff he did?
"Slavery is as old as time" IT IS NOT, ITS NOT EVEN AS OLD AS HUMANS, WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT UNLESS YOU WANTED PEOPLE TO BELIEVE SLAVERY IS NATURAL Edit: should also be noted slavery wasn't even a racially motivated thing until a few hundred years ago, so even though it may be true that slavery is a very old institution in terms of our recorded history, it's an extreme and racist equivocation to suggest that the kind of slavery being done by Chris Columbus was functionally the same as how slavery had historically worked
What would conservatives do if he was alive though? If he had decades more to educate Americans to his actual beliefs. They couldn't just go "content of character lalalalalalalalalalalalalalala". Had to go.
@@taranullius9221 If they failed to kill him this particular time, they'd just go back and do it again. It wasn't the first time the US government attempted to assassinate King, and the only reason it was the last is because it was successful. Not a conspiracy theory, btw - the US government was found guilty in court of conspiring to murder King in 1999. The fact that this isn't mentioned every single time MLK is brought up astounds me.
"We may have different views, but we all read the same Bible and worship the same god." Holy shit, that took me by surprise. Should someone tell them we have a separation of church and state? I feel like someone should tell them.
I actually felt physically revolted when they made Colombus say "how can you judge me by your standards" Truly an evil and repulsive piece of propaganda
@@eelvis1674 I am interested in how you consider those things this evil. Yes, I agree with Joel that Prager is deeply wrong on this one, but ehy are you that much disgusted by this?
@@igorlorenc1445 I don't know. It just hit me hard for some reason. Might be the message conveyed through such a childish cartoon and voice acting. But I in general don't buy the arguement of not judging people by "today's standard". It's just an excuse that today's equivalent of slave owners and colonists use to feel less bad about being shit heads lol.
@@eelvis1674 mostly because they do not consider themselves bad for doing those things. Morality is a bit of a tricky issue. For the most part people cant agree on what is good and badbin this world in principle, so utilitarianism and liberalism are actually pretty usefull in this regard. Religion kinda falls flat on this issue.
What the hell does 'western civilization' even mean? Like, do these people know anything about European history? Most European countries HATED each other.
Or maybe they can afford to be soft on crime BECAUSE they don't have much of it? They can have an open air prison on an island because you'd freeze to death swimming to the next island.
what's insane is that this just got approved as learning material for the state of florida... holy fuck is our educational system rapidly getting worse
Imagine those kids walking below decks to see starving people chained together rowing the boat right after Columbus gleefully tells them it's better than death.
@@locsoluv94 the sick ones were often thrown overboard, too, as dead slaves were quite often insured for more than they could sell a sick, alive slave for.
Prager U’s ideology funnel is as terrifying as it is utterly fascinating….😵💫 As a career marketer, it’s like watching someone use the dark arts. The whole Prager playbook, all of their tactics, CHILLINGLY familiar. Honestly, they’d be a textbook in great marketing if it weren’t bastardized to convert and radicalize children and freethinkers. Anyway, I stopped by to say this the most thought provoking and well articulated piece I’ve seen on RU-vid in ages!! Great work
I like how Columbus justified it with “it’s better to be alive and a slave than dead.” Im sure a huge chunk of people would rather be dead than live in misery their whole life and finally die when their usefulness runs out.
@@snausages43 I audibly gasped when they said that. Can’t believe it’s real like it literally sounds like satire. And the fact that those videos are for CHILDREN!? so absurd
@Kataifi We don't even have to guess at that. Plenty of enslaved people ended their own lives or the lives of their children instead of living in slavery. There were definitely those that believed death was better.
I think the worst part about prageru kids might be that youtube ACTUALLY recognizes it as a kids channel. This means that it appears more readily when children are using the "kids" option on youtube, and the kids' categorization disables comments, which means there is no way to fact check or dispute these videos where the video is shown....
Yeah PragerU is actually extremely dangerous. According to one of their polls, half their audience is under 25. They could be fabricating the stats, but if that’s true, they’re making a deliberate effort to conservative Gen Z
To piggyback off this point, it shouldn’t be legal for this ghoulish propaganda organization to masquerade as an educational institution with the Prager”U”
The MLK video has him spout the line that only "peaceful" social protest is an acceptable form of confronting social ills. That's deeply conservative politics. Conservatives love arguing "King's protests were peaceful so modern leftists are not legitimate cause of their non-peaceful protest". It's constantly deployed to against leftist protest that is factually peaceful but still socially disruptive, as a way to delegitimize that protest and simultaneously weaken and distort King's teachings. King used non-violent protest strategically cause he knew the white southerners would respond with such overwhelming violence that the country writ large would be shocked into political action by the contrasting images of peaceful blacks and brutal whites. King didn't believe that non-violence was the only legitimate form of protest, just the most strategically effect one in that place and time and social circumstance. To have him say that the kids should only protest injustice and inequality "peacefully" is to essentialize the only part of King's methods that conservatives today think was okay. Hell, during the civil rights actions King lead, southern conservatives were calling him a rabble rouser and social disrupter; they thought he was making trouble. Conservatives love crying violence when leftist people defend themselves against violence from the state and powerful social actors. BLM isn't legit cause they don't just quietly ask for black justice, they're loud and noisy and aggressive. Tribes and water protectors are violent when they chain themselves to pipeline building machinery to physically halt work. Modern conservatives do not want people considering that resistance and protest can be anything other than quiet, obedient, and non-disruptive. It's disarming and weakening protest by the left so it can be ignored. Conservatives also have a running project of intense apologia for right wing protest that are disruptive or violent (think Bundys seizing the wildlife refuge, Jan 6 insurrection, heavily armed anti-maskers rallying outside government buildings). These protests aim for ends the conservatives desire, so they must be legitimized as okay despite the violence.
To be fair neither the Jan 6 or BLM riots really achieved anything in the end anyways nor had a leader to rally behind that wasn’t an obvious grifter, so they kind of didn’t really do much in terms of what they wanted
@@guyferrari8124George Floyd’s murderer was found guilty after the protests, so we at least got that. Also what grifter are you implying was leading BLM?
@@guyferrari8124 It absolutely achieved something, even if it was nowhere near enough imo Also, this myth that BLM has a leader or group of leaders behind it needs to die. There is a distinct difference between the movement and the specific group that started it or lead it.
I was in disbelief about what Michael said about Columbus. Saying "Columbus sold people into slavery but he didn't invent slavery" is like saying "Ted bundy murdered people but he didn't invent murder". God that was terrible.
I don’t get why people thinking that what Columbus did was good. This shouldn’t be glorified, we should always know him as a awful person because he own slaves.
@@aliciad270 he had a big part in founding the institution of _racialised, chattel_ slavery, _as it was carried out in the Americas._ But that's not the entirety of slavery! Remember that the old testament/torah talks approvingly about slavery and gives rules for who you may and may not enslave and how to treat them. Many of the ancient greek city states were slave states with incredibly high rates of slavery; I think I've read figures up to a quarter of people in Athens being slaves? Just off the top of my head. And mine slaves in ancient Rome were as cruelly treated as slaves at any point in history. But yes, Columbus basically founded the triangle trade and deserves every ounce of criticism he gets for that. Man was a motherfucking monster, frankly.
Reminder that Christopher Columbus was deemed too cruel by people in his own time, similarly to how H.P. Lovecraft was too racist for most people in his own time
That "slavery > death" argument seems to assume that slaves lived a long time. Slavery was just a more drawn-out death sentence in many cases. Especially when they could be killed or mutilated for the most arbitrary reasons.
Why do modern conservatives even choose this battle? Why do they care to defend some horrible people from hundreds of years ago? I know they're all stupid tools of rich people, but damn, it's a really sad use of of their lives and the gifts our brains are on something so unnecessary and immoral
As a Dominican the Christopher Colombus video is so... sad. The tainos were completely wiped out, and the descendants were prohibited from practicing their language and culture. We know so little of our mother culture and it's an issue that resonates a lot with us, but sure Colombus wasn't so bad he just made a little mistake. Ugh. Like I said, it's not even maddening to me it's just so incredibly sad. Even centuries later the tainos are still treated like less.
My sympathies. Reading Columbus' own writing gives some mortifying insight into the thought-process of the Spanish colonists. The Tainos approached him in good faith hoping for cooperation and he immediately saw this peaceful approach as a weakness to be exploited. Not that later governors were any better.
Oh, didn't you hear? Racism is over! America had a black president so we have the all go to white wash history of all atrocity. If you're still experiencing hardship or poverty it must be because you're lazy... nothing to do with 500 years of repression! 🎉
Dead languages and cultures always make me feel so depressed. The richness of a language, the intricacies of every word, the complexity and beauty of it all completely lost to time. It really hurts.
That's history, baby. We can talk about history and how it may have caused the present, but in reality, that was the way of the world. Nobody had any ill intent against specific peoples in most cases, everyone who wasn't the wealthy invasive countries got the short end of the stick. Do we cry about the Mongols and the terrors they caused on the world? 'Course not, because they weren't white dudes so nobody gives a fuck. It wasn't because they were racists, or they hated your people, it's because they were there when someone else wanted their stuff. Sucks, but we let billionaires and corporations do it all the time nowadays, so why don't we decry Nestle taking water from Flint, Michigan for decades? Why don't we decry the companies in Amerikkka using child labour? No, it's much easier to cry about history and things that we can't change, because it actually takes effort to change things in reality.
@@10thletter40 not to these people. they argue for no abortion ever, because judeochristian values. which the jews then argue against because of religious freedom because abortion if it's unsafe for the mother is mandated in their holy book.
But of course none of you here are going to hear this or listen. Stubborn as a mule huh. I think you guys _want_ to hate people. You want the other side to be irredeemable so you can despise them in peace
Also included in the Columbus episode is a blatant contradiction of a point made earlier in the video. Columbus talks about the horrors of human sacrifice, and how he made it so much better, then says that you shouldn’t judge something if it was part of a culture. This show is beyond help.
I think what’s especially funny about Columbus’ portrayal in this show is how they aren’t even consistent with his stance on slavery. When he hears slavery is no longer acceptable in current times, he’s relieved at how far we’ve come to abolish it and recognizes it as the horrible act that it is. But then he’s also simultaneously upset with Leo and Layla judging him on being a slaver since ‘you’re from 500 years in the future, this was okay in my time’. So he somehow is compassionate and smart enough to know slavery is wrong but also too naive from the time he’s from to be judged for partaking in it. It honestly just makes him look like a total hypocrite.
the same logic by which dead authors were "only a product of their time" and simutaneously would "roll in their grave if you changed anything about their texts" whenever anyone discusses porblematic/bigoted ideas in their writing
Yes, this I found particularly uncanny I imagine the real Columbus wouldn't so much flinch, and instead respond say "well, what's wrong with it?", maybe explain what it's done for him.
@@elanorniennandilme3292 it is not the same logic. Of course they would roll in their graves if you change anything about their writings if they're products of their time. If they're products of their time; all they know is well, their present. If you tried to not only overindulge on what another persons work be, but say their rhetoric is completely wrong; they'll just scoff at you.
Columbus: "Behold, I am a good Liberal embracing situational ethics and diversity of thought, therefore any Liberal who doesn't like me or Prager is actually a Fascist." King Ferdinand: "Wanna bet, PragerUwU?"
Why does PragerU for kids have both characters with pink and blue hairs? I thought that was "woke" for their characters to have strange colors on them? But what do I know.
I am not an American. I am a Ghanaian. I started watching conservative commentators on RU-vid because, honestly, some of their 'values' align with what I have grown up with, but gradually, I began realising some hypocrisy and started unsubscribing from their channels. One of them rationalised slavery. That was the last straw. They are 'know-it-alls' who complain about petty things yet forget the things they are always angry about are what is giving them a living because else, what would be there to talk about?
Isn’t that also the case with big Joel though? If it wheren’t for the fact that he makes bank off of these videos he would be doing something else. All RU-vidrs are grifters no matter the lean
As a Nigerian, finally an African in an comment section. What types of guys did you see that made conservatism so bad for you? As someone who aligns more with conservatism I’d like to know.
I would like to believe that most conservatives believe in empathy. I think a lot of the time, people just don’t like the beating over the head of slavery being bad. Dont get me wrong, it definitely is, but a lot of people take it as a personal attack, being of european descent themselves.
@@walter7787 I'm taking world civilization this semester, and learning about the slave trade in Africa. I'm a black American. African descent, if you will. Somehow, I decided not to feel personally attacked.
@@walter7787 Thinking that attacking slavery is an attack on people for having european descent is genuinely racist towards europeans. That's the sort of thinking you would hear from a black supremacist who thinks all white people have demon blood or something.
@@walter7787 I think one factor could be the uncertainty of whether or not their own family had any slavers in it. And I'm not just talking about slave owners, but also the working-class people involved in the slave trade as well. Not everyone knows their full family tree. It's certainly something I have wondered about at times.
I'm not even Christian but I'm pretty sure Jesus would not support their version of Christian beliefs. And they are historically infamous for denying science, such as man made climate change.
@@jr2904 I agree. We shouldn't even be taking sides when it comes to history or how it's interpreted. There shouldn't be a "liberal reading" or "conservative reading" - it should just be a reading. People are going to be mad when you say liberals twist history, though. The truth is anyone with political motives will shift history however they want. That said, when it comes to slavery, leftists are overwhelming in agreement that it was bad, while conservatives tend to ignore or downplay it. So, at least on the topic of slavery, it's safe to point the finger at PU and conservatives. What they're doing is trying to downplay slavery.
About time someone spoke up for those poor slave owners! I can think of nothing worse than being held accountable for your horrific mistreatment of other human beings :(
What's really scary is that "patriotic," conservative (although many of them would deny they were conservative, and insist they were "progressive," because that word meant "civilized" back then, and wasn't a derogatory word yet) propagandists of the 1960s and earlier did not, by and large, try to equivocate about slavery or similar atrocities. They knew they could never defend slavery, so they simply avoided mentioning the issue. So, in a way, they lied, but at least they didn't obfuscate morality.
The fact that the MLK one ended with the girl doing a fundraiser to make her school wheelchair accessible really says a lot. Like, clearly, if you're not a monster, you'd think that something like that should be handled by lawmakers and tax payers. But, no, the children having to fundraise for the kid in a wheelchair is a happy ending to them. Fuck me.
I mean it’s like real life, too. Like the school where the kids did a fundraiser to pay off another students lunch debt. And a lot of media outlets were like “awww this such a heartwarming story :)” instead of asking why a literal child had a debt.
It *is* a happy ending to them. Why? Because the wheelchair kid had to *earn* a fundraiser. They had to have friends who cared enough to fundraise for them. Disabled people have to earn their place; they have to show that they're *worthy* of help. Someone had to judge whether that individual *deserved* to have accommodations. And that's the point. That's what the right is all about: judgment. Charity that happens without judging whether the individual on the receiving end is worthy of that charity is just wrong to them. Does this poor person *deserve* heating during the winter? Well, maybe if they have some friends or something, or if they have a sufficiently tragic backstory that sparks my desire to help them. But they'd rather there be no charity at all than to have their charity money going to those they do not *personally and individually* deem worthy.
@@GeneralBolasI feel like you gave words to something I already felt but didn't know how to articulate very well, thanks. As an engineer, I was quite confused about where the extra space to widen a hallway is coming from, plus there must have been some plumbing or structural walls SOMEWHERE along the route, & I gotta figure even if it's not that long distance, we're talking $10k minimum real quick, if it's even possible. Like, you can't just casually decide to shrink a classroom & move the wall in 3' without consequence. As an adult-diagnosed neurodivergant who was bullied a lot in school, I can tell for certain that teenage bullies don't just stop bullying & start fundraising like that. They might sometimes fake compliance while adults are watching, but they'll find a time where they can't see; then all the bullying comes back with interest.
Okay but what do you want to happen, that to magically be possible? If we had taxpayers pay for every single renovation and law for everything taxes would be insane
As someone coming in blind, I see how gendered with color they made the kids and also, I notice the girl is older than her brother. I suspect this sets the show/channel up to have her “taking care” of her younger brother in a more maternalistic sense but I’ll see
To this day I still can't get over the fact that Frederick Douglass gave a whole speech on his trauma growing up as a slave and fighting for freedom and Leo was like "wow that reminds me of when I struggle with math homework".
Seeing a clunkly animated Colombus being so offended at being judged for his part in the brutal colonization of the Americas is both incredibly funny and a source of unending rage that will never leave me.
the idea of a real life person's first reaction to ¨we don't do ... that anymore¨ being ¨HOW CAN YOU JUSDGRE MEIIUEA¨ is actually so ridiculous on the face of it. imagine someone coming from 500 years in the future to you and being like ¨oh, you eat meat / are a participant in capitalism? we don't do that anymore¨ and your first response is ¨congratulations bitch but how can you judge meeeeee¨ bla bla. how would that be your FIRST RESPONSE and not ¨wow! how!¨ or ¨wait, that was bad?¨ or whatever. AND WHY WOULD U BOTH HAVE HIM SAY ¨GREAT U GUYS DON'T DO THAT ANYMORE¨ AND ¨BUT I HAVE TO, IT'S THE OLDEN TIMES¨ LMAO. THAT'S THE WORST OF BOTH WORLDS also, there are people currently growing up in environments where murdering or torturing people etc under certain conditions is semi-socially acceptable. usually under extremely conservative traditions. or doing things that really are fine but they'd probably consider immoral and degenerate. is dennis prager gonna apply the same logic to them? ¨no one ever taught them better¨? or is he gonna say there's some magical quality about time that absolves everything?
@@theveganduolingobird7349 1) sure, man, i'm pretty clearly not saying ¨this video would be fine and dandy if only laila had a better character arc¨ or whatever. so yeah. bigjoel said some stuff. i don't have much to add. i'm saying a little thing. why am i on trial. why are u holding me at gun point rn. why is ur pfp the egg from shrek. why is the egg from shrek holding me hostage rn 2) i literally did criticize the nature of the propaganda itself... in the second paragraph? so? 3) the writing is bad in a way that is directly relevant to the propaganda. they're saying ¨how can u not see he was a product of his time¨ and then they write him as if he is a 2022 colonbus apologist and not 1500s actual colonbus. so that's uhhhh dumb and stupid and undermines their own point 4( this is an extension of the original comment why am i being ummmmmmmm bashed in the headd w a hammer rn
I don't think biblical figures had a big goofy mic and held on to it so determinedly. Biblical figures probably did less drugs too. Although you could be talking about a different kind of biblical figure from the ones I'm envisioning.
@@teutonicterror0365 You're right. It was more me snarking at the mic. I think it's kind of ridiculous looking. And the whole unkempt look. The over 30 person in me is saying take a shower, you don't have to look quite so wild-eyed in every video. I know, not kind.
right - but pragerU isn't hiding the ball. they own up to the fact that they're engaged in indoctrination. that is fine. the problem is people pretending to be engaged in neutral education (or journalism) whilst engaging in indoctrination, and then arguing that their efforts deserve support from nonpartisan and nonideological institutions. i'll be worried about prager too- if they try that.
@@andrewraby8008 what do you mean ''for example?'' i said indoctrination isn't inherently bad, compulsory indoctrination or government power/resources being used to indoctrinate are bad. are you conceding the point in principle but suggesting that in practice it never occurs?
Prageru: Morality is objective, written on our hearts by the lord God almighty Prageru: How can we judge the moral standards of people 500 years ago by our newer modern standards?
PragerU is the only company who would claim to be an institution for higher level learning despite being backwards and spreading misinformation about topics like climate change.
@@yareyaredaze3798 And if the person carrying that fetus should wish to terminate it before birth, then they should be allowed to without percussion in the eyes of the law or the community.
The whole "so-and-so didn't invent slavery" argument is quite hypocritical. These people position themselves as individualists, yet they refuse to hold individuals accountable for the actions they voluntarily engaged in.
It's also completely irrelevant. Imagine applying this excuse to any other harmful act. "But you see, i did not invent murdering someone and taking their stuff, therefore my doing so isn't so bad" I know this is an attempt at making the moral relativist argument by right wing ghouls, but in this particular formulation it's just pure nonsense.
My jaw went to the fucking floor as soon as they had Christopher say "Yea but slavery is better than being killed so i did them a favor" and meant that fully with their chest Then i started loosing it harder when they also said "Well it was a different time so why are you judging me?" how is this show allowed to exist
"It's ok to enslaved people because at least you didn't kill them." This is being said by people who think a 2nd American Civil War is necessary because a beer company released a pro-LGBT can design.
And even at it’s core, the “it was okay for the time” defense is not true, columbus was judged at the time, known as a complete monster who was literally arrested for his treatment of native Americans and general cruelty. Even back then Columbus was seen as crazy, especially since his cruelty extended to Spanish people also, with him cutting the tongue of a woman off or literally crucifying a boy.
@@tahamohammad8842 some of his literal slaving compatriots even stepped back and went "ok fuck we're the baddies, holy shit we're monsters" and then spent the rest of their lives trying to atone it was not impossible to think "hey slavery is like really wrong"
It just occurred to me that Prageru says that we cannot judge people for following things that were morally accepted in their time, and yet with abortion, gay marriage, etc, they say they shouldn't be accepted just because most people agree with them.
Right? Not only is it comlpletely ahistorical, but it goes against the argument they JUST made. Why would he be happy about slavery ending unless he knows it's bad? And if he knows it's bad then the logic of judging him based on "the culture of his time" or whatever goes out the window.
Dude... idk if you'll ever see this comment but this video? It is fucking incredible. I don't know why you insist on touching a Van der Graaf static electricity generator before recording BUT I DON'T CARE. It's incredible script writing. You've done and made a great thing here. I hope more people see it. Bless you, fellow human. Subscribed and looking forward to other videos 💜❤️💜
