Let us judge all men relative to their time, region, and culture, for otherwise we live in a world of absolutes, and in a world of absolutes there is no room for error.
This discussion reminds me: as utterly loathsome and horrifyingly racist Woodrow Wilson's views on black people and many immigrant groups obviously were, was he really
that out of the ordinary for a well-educated white Southerner who came of age through the Civil War and Reconstruction and who, being an elite American/Western academic/intellectual of his time, subscribed to the same kinds of elitist, elaborately constructed (intellectually speaking) racist and classist ideologies that were so fashionable in elite circles during the late 19th and early 20th centuries (with such unforgettable contributions from this period including eugenics)?
I guess what I'm saying here is that Wilson was very much a man of his time - specifically, a man of his regional, cultural, generational, and social class background. None of this excuses Wilson, of course; rather, it damns the many more of that era who were like Wilson, to one extent or another, in addition to Wilson himself.
