plane, the way you phrased it was: "You are telling me they were right."
They were not right. I never told you they were right. Increasing public safety at an unacceptable cost in injustice and sacrificed freedoms cannot be right.
I think maybe you were confused between two separate issues: (a) whether repression does or does not increase public safety and (b) whether it's right to increase public safety by unjust oppression of minorities and sacrifice of basic freedoms. You took my affirmative on issue (a) as an affirmative on (b) as well.
Opression both works and doesn't I guess.
Does this depend on the timescale?
Thomas Jefferson discussed the situation he was facing as he gained power in a society that was struggleing for survival.
He opined that te removal of Indian from proximity of White settlement was necessacery , not that it was just, but that it increased safety.
He compared the situation of Negro slavery to holding a wolf by the ears , you don't like doing it but you can't stop without being bit.
He actually argued that the situaion was so unjust that the offended people couldn't forgive and couldn't make peace , the system was too unjust to end.
Thomas was one of the best of us that there has ever been , an American of such insight that he formed the mold of our ideals , but this stuff had him stuck in dissonance , equivocateing to himself even as he knew he was.
Was he right really? Did these injustaces need to continue untill five more generations had grown out of the situation?