The Volokh Conspiracy » Judging People by their Unpopular Views: "There is a lot of truth to Bryan’s argument. For example, modern Americans deserve little credit for being opposed to slavery, because almost everyone holds that view today. By contrast, William Lloyd Garrison deserves great credit for being an antislavery activist back when it was extremely unpopular in the 1830s. I would, however, extend Bryan’s argument to separate out moral and epistemic virtue."
'via Blog this'
This reminds me of a thought I had while watching "42," the movie about Jackie Robinson. I generally liked the movie. Obviously it's a great story about overcoming the race barrier, something everyone today supports. I, however, thought there was something a little unseemly in the way the movie encouraged the audience to morally condemn the racists who supported segregation in sports. While the movie condemned the people of the era for their knee-jerk racist objection to a black man playing baseball with whites, it seemed to me to ironically encourage the sort of knee-jerk judgment of the practitioners of racism by caricaturing them as sinister bigots, even though they represented a large portion of the population at that time.
I expect that in 50 years we will be watching movies that portray people who oppose same sex marriage as cloddish bigots who spent their days sneering at gays.
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