Debates like this always leave me in knots. When I read about the Enlightenment, I feel inspired. I want, very much, to admire the men and women who contributed to that era. Not just the writers like Voltaire, but also the men of action who tried to put the new hunger for freedom into a working real-world form. Then people bring up the sins these men commited in their lives. And then I don't know what to think. There is an old British saying that no man is a hero to his valet. We all have small flaws. Is there no one in history to be admired?
(Sometimes the radicals feed on the radicals - I was at a party a few years ago and the house had several posters of Che Guevare up. An arugement broke out. Most of the crowd didn't know much about Che, but they worshipped him anyway. Two guys, however, both Hispanic, said they'd studied Che, and that Che had done many bad things, and that we shouldn't admire him. There reasons were all about Che's wrong interpretation of Marx. There is sometimes a negativity on the Left that gets so extreme it just depresses me.)