Judging Our Fathers

Most of us today do not consciously go through life doing evil. Every day, we try to do the best we can according to what we know. There is no logical reason to believe our ancestors were any different. However, some are quick to point blame, based upon comparing what "was" with what is today and what "should be".

Does anyone really believe that if we had been born a male in 1906 -- knowing only what it was possible for males to know back then -- we would have behaved any differently than they? We all know that answer since it is the only logical answer possible. We would have been just like them. We may or may not have agreed with women getting the vote -- some did, some didn't, and their opinions were not just based upon how much they wanted to oppress women. In fact, all women (especially at first) were not for women getting the vote.

We can say with authority that it was unhygienic for people to defecate in a pot and then dump it in the street a few hundred years ago. But it would be wrong thinking to believe they knew the dangers and did it anyway just because they were "nasty" people. This type of thinking is what is sometimes applied to "oppressive males" of the early twentieth century and before.

So, who made the rules back then? It wasn't a who, or a group of whos. It was the times. We cannot blame the times on males just because they had the vote. You might as well blame them for the San Francisco earthquake.

When technological advances resulted in better economic conditions, both women and men found more opportunities to go to college, study, get better jobs and become self sufficient. As men became better educated, they understood that women had every right to vote as men -- so eventually education won out over ignorance and men voted to give women the vote.

It is impossible for us to put our 21st century brain into people a hundred years ago. That makes it impossible for us to condemn them because they did not do what we would do today.

Women should have equal rights. Women were "second-class" citizens a hundred years ago compared to women's status today. Some would want us to agree with them that the typical early 20th century male oppressed females while knowing better, which would make him -- not ignorant -- but evil. Sorry, that just wasn't the case.

We should truly respect other people -- and that goes for the dead as well as the living. Virtually everyone deserves respect to some extent, and I am certainly not the one to lay down the ruler. But, for the sake of men living and men dead, I feel I should be frank for a moment.

I have a problem with anyone who thinks he or she is qualified to judge anyone else in space or time. Christ said he had a problem with that too, so I don't think it's just me. We can judge deeds, but we cannot judge the people who do them -- because we were not born and raised in their shoes.

I also have a problem with condemning a person who does wrong out of ignorance, whether it is an ignorant child or an ignorant man who lived in the early 1900's. That, to me, is mean -- and dishonors our fathers and grandfathers.