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Comment by ryanobjc | Hacker News Reader

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> I mean, small wonder. Look at what was being done in the conservative name recently: separated kids in cages. That’s a hard legacy to justify.

A result of the Flores Settlement[1] from 1997 which came about under Clinton and Reno in response to the practice of keeping children in general population detention. So not really a conservative legacy...

It's a double edged sword -- separating children from their families, but also from the creeps[2].

[1] https://youthlaw.org/case/flores-v-reno/ [2] https://www.vox.com/2018/6/20/17484546/executive-order-famil...

The current administration is responsible for its own actions; they are the ones elected and in power. If they don't want or aren't competent to handle their responsibilities, then they should step down. Blaming others and making excuses is absurd and irresponsible. You are the POTUS; figure it out.

Seperating kids in cages and wrapping them in foil was an Obama era photo that the NYT "mistook" for a current one.

You seem to be conflating an act and a photo. There are first-hand reports from members of Congress who have verified that what the poster above described is taking place.

Yes, it is happening now. The point is that it was also happening under Obama (I don’t know the scale of it though), so it is unfair to blame just the Donald for it, while Barry gets a free pass. At least Trump did reverse his stance on splitting families up, as a token, if nothing more.

I don't see how that's the point at all. There are many, many awful things that have happened in the past. It's still completely fair to blame people who are doing awful things now. I'm not trying to accuse you of bad faith, but in practice, bringing up past injustices by people who are no longer in power seems like little more than a distraction unless you're suggesting a way we can redress them now.

Oh no, I never said or meant that current bad practices are justified based on past precedents.

Just that blaming the incumbent while ignoring identical practices by the predecessor seems borderline biased reporting by the media. Not that the current situation shouldn’t be highlighted - it most certainly should be. But giving the impression that it is a new development (by ignoring the fact that it isn’t) seems politically motivated - just because of the extant political tensions and divisive climate.

I’m not sure past wrongs can indeed be redressed except notionally, by official apology, but at the very least future wrongs ought to be prevented.

It's a false equivalency. Scale matters, as does the intent/policy of the administration.

"Immigration experts we spoke to said Obama-era policies did lead to some family separations, but only relatively rarely, and nowhere near the rate of the Trump administration."

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2018/jun/19/...

I’m curious as to what’s next for conservatives who reject human cruelty and actually care about their fellow citizens, country, and human beings.

I'm curious what the next act for leftist ideology is, since various forms of it (mostly communism) were responsible for the most human misery in all of human history in just one century.

In America almost no leftists are communists. The moderate ones are some hybrid of capitalism and socialism and the radical ones are anarchists.

I hate participating in these discussions though, because everyone’s characterizations of their opponent are so absurd, it’s like—where do I even start with you people?

I’d tell you the same I’d tell crazy liberals... go talk to some actual people and find out what they really think rather than basing your opinion of half the population on some crazy person you saw on the internet once.

"In all of human history"? Are you sure? Ghenghis Khan and Alexander the Great likely killed more people than either Hitler or Stalin.

And then there's the institution of slavery, which wasn't political until abolition efforts were underway. (Semi-related: hard to label abolitionists conservatives or rightists.)

It also bears mentioning that Hitler was anti-immigrant and nativist, which are the forces that animate today's Western conservative backlashes (including Trumpism).

Have to remember the world population was much smaller. Maybe 150 million in Alexander's time and 400 million in Ghenghis Khan's. They'd have had to do a much more efficient butchery to reach the same raw numbers.

That said, a little googling seems to indicate that the Mongols do, in fact, win that competition. They were pretty big on genocide.

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