Comment by f30e3dfed1c9

"cowardly to wait till he's dead when he isn't able to refute any of the points"

It's only here in the past few days that I have ever heard this particular view: that it's somehow "cowardly" or uncouth or otherwise inappropriate to speak critically of someone who has died because being dead, they are unable to respond.

I am genuinely curious where this idea came from. I've heard "don't speak ill of the dead" all my (by now, getting to be pretty long) life but I never heard this rationale for it except here in threads related to this guy.

I agree that it would be inappropriate to, say, attend someone's funeral and walk around saying you know, in a lot of ways, this guy was a real asshole.

But to claim it as some kind of general principle, with that rationale? That is... deeply weird, or at least it strikes me that way. How on earth could anyone ever discuss any historical figure while abiding by this rule?

Or on a much smaller scale, imagine a family with an abusive member who dies. Are the remaining members never to speak of the ways they were affected by that person? That's crazy.

People are who they are, live the lives they live, and do the things they do. Most people are better than the worst thing they ever did and worse than the best thing they ever did. There's nothing wrong with assessing that fully after they die.

But it's the "because they can't respond" rationale that surprises me. I had no idea that rationale even existed, let alone seems (at least here, with respect to this guy) to be somewhat widespread.