[Peace-discuss] Slavery and oil…

[ouroboros rex]

Morton K. Brussel wrote:

> Reply to Dave,  and Bob:
>
> I'm afraid the logic here is (also) faulty: "No Hitler, no Holocaust"  
> simply means that Hitler was a necessary actor in the event,
> although he may not have been a sufficient actor/cause. Similarly,  
> one can say that the issue of slavery was indeed a necessary aspect/ 
> cause for the Civil War. The "issue of slavery" involved diverse  
> factors, economic, racial, perhaps others, but without that  
> institution one may well surmise that the Civil War would not have  
> occurred.
>
> "No oil, no war" is in the same category, I believe, as many others  
> have pointed out.
>
> And although I admire Bertrand Russel, the peremptory quote below is  
> not one of his most cogent. Propositions may involve various clauses  
> and factors, some of which may be true and the others false, so…
>
> --mkb
>
>
>
> On Mar 15, 2007, at 2:55 PM, David Green wrote:
> That reminds me of another bit of historical nonsense that has pretty  
> much become conventional wisdom: "No Hitler, no Holocaust." If one  
> buys into the faulty logic that Hitler therefore caused the  
> Holocaust, then you don't have to deal with all the other factors.
>
> DG
>
> Bob Illyes <illyes at uiuc.edu> wrote:
> Chuck and Ron have done a good job of covering the complexities
> of the motivations that led to the Civil War. One of the first
> things you (usually) learn when you take history in college is
> that the notion that the Civil War was principally about slavery
> is a myth. Zinn puts it well in Chuck's quote.
>
> Much of America's commonly accepted history is actually a myth, and
> one that Zinn has done much to debunk (if you haven't read his
> People's History, I highly recommend it). Although I respect America
> greatly, we are not anywhere nearly as noble as most Americans
> believe.
>
> One of my favorite Bertrand Russell quotes is "any given proposition
> is either true, false, or nonsense." It is the nonsense we need to
> beware of, because it is the most dangerous. For example, the
> proposition that if a particular factor that led to a war were absent,
> and the war were then prevented, then that factor is the cause of the
> war. This is rather like saying that if you remove someone's liver
> and they cease living, then the liver is the cause of life.
> Nonsense, of course. 


  Or, to put it another way, correlation does not imply causation.  A 
hard habit to break, because it often gores sacred cows.