system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: We can not hold all slave traders before the 18th century to the same moral standards that we have today

I guess this is an unpopular opinion, but while I understand that statues while perhaps made for historical purposes can have different modern interpretations, and that thus gives people the right to remove them, I don't necessarily agree that all slave traders were all bad people. I know this is a really weird thing to be fussing about, and I'd like to point out that I fully support the Black Lives Matter movement, but I can't help but feel that we are all products of our environments. Take for example, a random dude born in the 1700's to a family of slave traders. This dude is a product of his environment and will not have moral standards that we do in the modern age. In fact, he might actually believe that what he's doing is moral as some people did back them. I understand that slavery is intrinsically bad but that's only because we've discussed the topic as a society and unanimously agreed that it's evil, the majority of slave traders back then probably didn't have the same discussion and didn't hold such preconceptions. I'm not trying to say what they did was right: I'm simply trying to say that we can not judge people from before the 18th century by holding them to the same moral standards we have today. I like to think that I'm an open-minded person though, so I'm willing to change my mind if anyone can do so.

EDIT: Yeah, I can see how my logic fails here. Thanks for everyone's understanding and the fact that I was able to actually have a conversation here really about such a controversial topic shows the quality of this sub. Thank you everyone!
gpt
>understand that statues while perhaps made for historical purposes

They generally weren't made for historical purposes. Statues of Confederate generals and such were largely put up in the 1950s and 1960s, not to remember history, but to intimidate blacks in the civil rights era. 

>This dude is a product of his environment and will not have moral standards that we do in the modern age. In fact, he might actually believe that what he's doing is moral as some people did back them.

Is anyone in history evil by this standard? Nazis were just following the culture of the time, the trail of tears was standard for US imperialism, etc. 

The truth is that people were speaking out against slavery in the 1700s just as there were people speaking against Nazism in 1930s Germany and against the trail of tears in the US. People absolutely understood that it was evil. Nazis who chose to execute Jewish children did buy into propaganda, but that doesn't excuse them. There were plenty of people who chose not to believe that Jewish people were subhuman, just like there were many people in the 1700s who were against slavery. Just because something was common doesn't mean that no one in that time could possibly have been expected to have a shred of decency.