I thought the recent release of True Grit was a good movie but the thing I notice about it is its interesting way of avoiding the politically correct mandate that we often see in movies during this time period. There was a scene where a black man was 'dismissed' by the main character. Of course, he wasn't a slave but an employee but it showed accurately the relationship between whites and blacks in those days and didn't try to artificially create some B.S. or having a feel-good 'blacks are good as whites' type of scene.
It is true that a lot of people in this country in the 1800s were a little racist in their attitudes but nothing has really changed since then. I say this because people are still a little racist to some degree and the fact that laws of today and back then were usually geared around this. This is why they made the equal protection clause in the 14th amendment. It was designed to ensure that whatever protections one person got then every other person had to receive the same protections. This shows that while people had racism they believed in a sense of fairness under the law and that people had to be treated equally by the law in order to ensure a just application of it.
This is all we can and should hope for because human nature remains constant. It just regurgitates the same feelings over and over again. Societies of any age don't improve but reconstitute themselves from the same human material so societies don't change over time. Its like the law of energy in that the same amount of good and evil in human beings remains the same in the universe.
The same amount of good is what we should focus on. Human nature doesn't change but that doesn't mean that human nature is necessarily evil. It just means that the amount of good and evil that exist in humanity doesn't alter itself so that means that their is as much good in humanity a hundred years ago as there is now and hundred years from now. It doesn't change and never will.
The one thing in the movie I noticed that was different from all other societies is freedom. The freedom for society to be itself whether that course be good or evil. Evil was not a concern of the law back then because that was between a person and there own conscience. The law was there to mediate the free-space by enforcing the social compact. It was society in a free state where each person was a free-radical that functioned as its own body and unconcerned with the greater whole.
It is true that a lot of people in this country in the 1800s were a little racist in their attitudes but nothing has really changed since then. I say this because people are still a little racist to some degree and the fact that laws of today and back then were usually geared around this. This is why they made the equal protection clause in the 14th amendment. It was designed to ensure that whatever protections one person got then every other person had to receive the same protections. This shows that while people had racism they believed in a sense of fairness under the law and that people had to be treated equally by the law in order to ensure a just application of it.
This is all we can and should hope for because human nature remains constant. It just regurgitates the same feelings over and over again. Societies of any age don't improve but reconstitute themselves from the same human material so societies don't change over time. Its like the law of energy in that the same amount of good and evil in human beings remains the same in the universe.
The same amount of good is what we should focus on. Human nature doesn't change but that doesn't mean that human nature is necessarily evil. It just means that the amount of good and evil that exist in humanity doesn't alter itself so that means that their is as much good in humanity a hundred years ago as there is now and hundred years from now. It doesn't change and never will.
The one thing in the movie I noticed that was different from all other societies is freedom. The freedom for society to be itself whether that course be good or evil. Evil was not a concern of the law back then because that was between a person and there own conscience. The law was there to mediate the free-space by enforcing the social compact. It was society in a free state where each person was a free-radical that functioned as its own body and unconcerned with the greater whole.
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