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Last Independence Day, the social justice-conscious ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s posted a message to Twitter celebrating the nation’s founding by calling on the U.S. government to return the “stolen Indigenous land” on which the nation was formed.
“This 4th of July, it’s high time we recognize that the US exists on stolen Indigenous land and commit to returning it,” Ben & Jerry’s tweeted. The company went on to propose that the U.S. “start with Mount Rushmore”:
What is the meaning of Independence Day for those whose land this country stole, those who were murdered and forced with brutal violence onto reservations, those who were pushed from their holy places and denied their freedom. The faces on Mount Rushmore are the faces of men who actively worked to destroy Indigenous cultures and ways of life, to deny Indigenous people their basic rights.
Ben and Jerry’s did not lead the way by committing to return the land on which their headquarters was built to the indigenous people who once owned it, so we can dismiss their statement as empty virtue-signaling. But it reflects a widespread, corrosive misconception in America and the rest of the West, that the history of European colonialism throughout the New World is nothing but one long, atrocity-punctuated narrative of genocide, exploitation, theft and oppression.
Indeed, it is fashionable now for self-loathing Western multiculturalists to begin many public events, from lectures to performing arts productions to city council meetings, with statements acknowledging that the venues sit on lands “stolen” from the natives. Western governments feel obliged to offer up solemn mea culpas for abominations of centuries past. Statues erected to honor Western explorers, leaders, soldiers, and even abolitionists like Frederick Douglass have been targeted in recent years for removal and/or destruction because their association with colonialism causes “harm” and makes young people of non-European origin feel “unsafe.” Similarly, schools, streets, and buildings named after revered figures in Western history are being renamed to erase their tarnished legacy and to assuage sensitive feelings. Thanksgiving Day dinners are routinely ruined now by media scolds and brainwashed college students denouncing the holiday for its whitewashing of the colonialist genocide of Native Americans.
For decades activist educators – with Howard Zinn’s massively influential A People’s History of the United States in hand – have indoctrinated young people to be ashamed of and outraged by their own cultural heritage. No matter that Western civilization has provided more prosperity, liberty, and opportunities for untold numbers of people worldwide than any other culture. Those benefits are now seen to have been achieved on the backs of exploited, brutalized native peoples.
Scholars have debunked Zinn’s propaganda before (most recently and thoroughly in Mary Grabar’s 2019 book appropriately titled Debunking Howard Zinn), but a more comprehensive antidote to all of this poisonous historical revisionism has arrived. Jeff Fynn-Paul’s brand new book Not Stolen: The Truth About European Colonialism in the New World, from Bombardier Books, lays out in well-documented and even-handed fashion the facts, context, and clear-eyed perspective on every one of the most malicious accusations hurled at Western colonialism.
Dr. Fynn-Paul is a professor of Economics and Global History at Leiden University, the oldest university in the Netherlands and one of the top research institutions in Europe. The author of dozens of scholarly articles and books, Fynn-Paul conducts historical research in eight (!) languages and is a winner of the 2016 European History Quarterly Prize. In addition to being an editor for the Journal of Global Slavery, he is also the presenter of a short PragerU video titled “Are We Living on Stolen Land?” which gives you a preview of what you can expect from his latest book.
“Today nearly every historian with a public platform, every journalist, and every social media pundit seems unanimous in their conviction that America and the West have been uniquely depraved,” Fynn-Paul states in the introduction to Not Stolen. But he explains that his book “is not a rah-rah defense of all things European”:
Rather, it is a work of historical restoration. Its goal is to remind us what historians used to believe a few years ago, up to the time when historical reason was drowned by cultural hysteria sometime around the year 2016. Its aim is to clear away the tangled vines of radicalism that have been allowed to grow over the precious garden of our democracy in recent years, choking out level headedness and objectivity in the process.
“This book,” Fynn-Paul goes on, “aims at reconciliation and the optimism of a shared and prosperous future, while its detractors encourage factionalism born of nihilism, despair, and a petty desire for point scoring and personal gain… The aim is to avoid downplaying the real evil done by Europeans, while deflating the hyperbole spread in recent years by radical historians and their disciples.”
The book’s myth-busting begins with the cover illustration itself, a painting by British-American illustrator Alfred Fredericks depicting Dutch governor Peter Minuit’s purchase of Manhattan island in 1626. This incident is often cited as an example of greedy Europeans scamming innocent indigenous people out of their valuable land. As Fynn-Paul notes, the painting
contains historical anachronisms that make it an easy target for modern critics, who may reflexively condemn it as a sentimental whitewashing of the genocidal theft of Indian land. But Fredericks’ painting reveals a more nuanced story to those who look past the hype…
The focus of the painting is the purchase of Manhattan – by mutual consent. By most definitions, a sale is the opposite of theft. It would be misleading to suggest, as many critics do, that the natives were cynically taken advantage of when they parted with the island for twenty-four dollars worth of “trinkets.”
To the Indians themselves, the mosquito ridden island was of little value, whereas the “trinkets” they were offered – including textiles, metal tools and weapons – were so life changing that many tribes intentionally relocated near the coast in order to trade more easily with the newcomers. In any case, neither party had any conception of what the island would become 200 years later…
Mysteriously, that broader historical context never seems to get a mention when some critic raises this instance of settlers purportedly cheating naïve natives out of Manhattan.
For a taste of other pervasive anti-Western myths which Fynn-Paul debunks and clarifies in Not Stolen, here are some of the book’s twenty chapter titles (which are all framed as questions):
- Intrepid Explorer or Genocidal Maniac? The Complex Case of Christopher Columbus
- Did Europeans Commit Genocide in the New World?
- Were the Conquistadors Bloodthirsty Zealots?
- Did The Founders Steal Democracy From Native Americans?
- Is Thanksgiving Racist?
- Did Europeans Starve, Massacre, or Spread Disease Among the Natives?
- Did Europeans Commit Cultural Genocide?
- Are Natives Owed Reparations?
Space considerations obviously preclude examining all these topics, but let’s drill down into one of the chapters as a sample: “Were Native Americans Naturally Peaceful and Benevolent?”
Beginning in the 1970s, Fynn-Paul writes, the academic Left began to appropriate the popular image of Indians as proud, noble warriors for its own ends, portraying them instead as naturally peace-loving and harmonious; any negative characteristics were attributed to the corrupting influence of European colonialists, whose society was viewed as “hierarchical, oppressive, exploitative, greedy, misguided, superstitious, and arrogant.”
But as Fynn-Paul makes clear, “There is one small problem with this image of peaceloving Native American societies: it is completely untrue. Before the Spanish imposed peace on Amerindian tribes from California to Tierra del Fuego, the unrelenting reality of their lives was a Hobbesian war of all against all.” As is true of any tribal society, constant warfare, raiding, enslavement, and the extermination of rival tribes were endemic, as well as cannibalism, and human sacrifice on a mass scale.
As for slavery, the practice was not introduced to Native Americans by Europeans as some scholars claim; indeed, it “was widespread not only in Mesoamerica but also throughout the Indian tribes of the New World” long before Europeans arrived. In fact, “Indians enslaved far more Indians than Europeans ever did. It is likely that more Africans were enslaved by Indians in the New World, than Indians by Europeans.”
And then there was the torture of prisoners – not only white ones but Amerindians from rival tribes. Fynn-Paul quotes, from the journal of Samuel de Champlain, a hair-raising incident the French explorer witnessed of the exceptionally cruel treatment of one captured enemy; “countless chroniclers and letter writers” in addition to Champlain, Fynn-Paul notes, “attest that such behavior was indeed not exceptional but normative.”
Each chapter goes on in similar fashion to take down other misconceptions. “In the end,” Fynn-Paul writes, “we conclude that America was not ‘stolen,’ any more than Europeans are the inventors of slavery or colonialism. Like every modern society, the United States is the result of complex historical factors that resist easy categorization, and we slide into nihilistic generalizations only at great peril to the health of our democracy.”
Indeed we do, and the subversive voices determined to destroy the West have already succeeded in eroding the patriotism and pride of generations of our youth, with no sign of abating. As the author notes in a sadly necessary coda titled, “The Case for Objectivity in History,” the “trend toward Euro-bashing has now become so dominant, so shrill, and often so unmoored from historical reality that someone has to step in and present a corrective to their excessive revisionism.”
Jeff Fynn-Paul’s book Not Stolen: The Truth About European Colonialism in the New World is that corrective: an important, enlightening work that deserves to be more widely-read and influential than A People’s History of the United States. It is a must-have for anyone who wants to be prepared to defend the truth about our civilization against the ideologically-charged distortions and smears that predominate in our culture.
Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior.
Just my two cents worth, but knowing so much of my own family history – I know my forebears first brought the island of Nantucket from its English owner, Thomas Mayhew, and also brought it from the natives there living at the time. In addition, they brought Edward Folger (my twice forefather and grandfather of Benjamin Franklin) because he spoke the native language to help ensure good relations.
One of the results of this was that Nantucket was saved from the effects of King Phillip’s War in 1676. King Phillip (or his actual name Metacomet) came out to the island to raise the natives against my ancestors. They didn’t and both groups on the island kept the peace between them.
This current narrative that the land was stolen has as much fact as that the New World was a land of peace, joy and delight – before white people. Mistakes were made all around, and not just one side.
“The distance (or the number of generations) required before no longer being considered related to someone depends on how and why you look at it. Legally, you may no longer be considered akin to someone as 2nd cousin. Genetically, it may take 4-5 generations to virtually eliminate shared DNA.”
It does get tiring to hear people of all backgrounds talking about ancestors they are not related to in any rational sense of the word. It’s the same nonsense at the bottom of “the native’s stolen land”, the Aryan Race, Father Abraham, and reparations for blacks. It’s the same nonsense at the bottom of racism, tribalism, and sticking to your clan.
Primitive men needed the protection of the tribe and the clan. If we all go back far enough all our ancestors were tribal, clannish, primitive savages whose average lifespan was about 40 years. But people will mention only their illustrious ancestors, not the criminals, drunkards, or the savages.
America was supposed to be the land of the rugged individual who stood or fell on the basis of his own character, merits, and accomplishments. And not because he needed to impress others but because happiness, self-reliance, and self-esteem, life itself, requires it.
All true happiness and accomplishment is private and individual, it can’t be shared. The product of our accomplishment and happiness can be shared but not the accomplishment and happiness itself.
Ive read somewhere that it takes 7 generations. Still, who can say?
A friend of mine has a genetic muscular disease that has traveled through his line since before they arrived from Germany (early 1800’s) This fact makes me doubt that everything is known about genes and how they are passed down.
Remove those persons – and where would you be? You have some point in this claim, but you place too much value on the individual as a stand alone condition over that of anything else. But, it makes sense when selfishness is make into a virtue. It’s chief reason I was never impressed by Ayn Rand.
But also – your are not quite on the mark with the question of DNA. It’s well over many hundreds of years, and still – my own mapping of it shows me having about 5% Dano-Norwegian. What’s the deep Viking heritage.
I wonder how many generations it would take for you to fit into the land of the rugged individual, sitting up in NYC on your Objectivist Lotus Flower, passing judgement on the rest of us, while trying to impress the rest of us with your long winded spam posts.
“Long winded spam” – the blessing of beautiful brevity. Good one
“America was supposed to be the land of the rugged individual who stood or fell on the basis of his own character, merits, and accomplishments.”
The men and women of that era and up through approx 1920 were so much stronger and smarter than people today. Any soft handed, mellow male today who whimply criticizes and disses men and women of that era is a damn fool and sophomoric. A wimp today would not last one month in the wilderness alone yet they arrogantly sound off hiding behind a safe keyboard. Now that is evolution.
Amen! Most of us – men included – would more likely drop if we had to do what people did daily. Just be ‘inclusive’, one of my ancestral aunts walked the distance from North Carolina to Indiana giving the removal an almost Biblical air. These were my Quaker forebears who had enough of slavery.
But yes – most of us today would drop trying to do a day’s effort.
The rest of your comment – you speak my mind on the matter.
The Women of The West during the days of Wagon Trains crossing the Plains were made of strong stuff indeed and did many of the things that men could do only these Women did it in a long dress and Heels while dealing with what every women deals with on a monthly basis as well as giving birth to the future generation and today’s young American women with their Pink Hats and screaming they are not treated equally would never survive one day in the Wild West.
Just as people mentioned Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were making fancy dance moves though she was doing them backwards… and in a long dress and Heels…
Indians chased each other all over the map. We just did it better. Now, white people murder their own babies and call it health care, so it’s their turn to be chased.
Beads were used as currency in those days, in Africa also.
True.
But the Dutch paid the equivalent of $24 in coin.
(I no longer have the book covering commerce, but I remember the chapter on odd currency. Shells were covered in that chapter – the black ones being valued more due to their rarity.)
With inflation $24 then was $500 now? Depending on how you calculate inflation, of course. That was unimproved land, not a towering NYC of today and there was also a lot of land.
On the other hand, ownership wasn’t nearly as secure in those times so ownership claims were a comparative whimsy. And the devilish indigens for sure thought they were getting the best of any deal. Those songs entitled ‘Indian Giver’ have a lot of basic truth in them. Any culture so eagerly anxious to take continuous dumps on itself as the Western cultures have been gulled into (by the UN and our own self serving legal industries) is on the wrong side of Darwin.
‘Coin’ was real coin in those days. Manhattan was a mosquito infested bog that the crafty Indigens hoaxed ’em into ‘buying’–had a great evening feast later at which their late night jokers made hilarious comments about the goof-box Europeans–some of whom were in attendance as goofs-of-honor. If y’all insist on taking dumps on yourselves over nonsense as ludicrous as these claims, you’re on the wrong side of Darwin.
To buy slaves from other Africans.
Correct. The Bantu tribes conquered and enslaved most of sub-Saharan Africa (no idle prefix there). Bantu tribes also enslaved other Bantus and sold them to Arabs and Europeans. To this day, their descendants seem to feel the need to conquer and subjugate other people wherever they go.
Other conqueror tribes include the Han Chinese, Arabs, Aryans, Polynesians, Aztecs, Mayas, Incas, other Native Americans, Japanese, and so on. We are all in fact descended from conquerors and the conquered. So enough with trying to manipulate others with guilt, another tool of conquest.
Those African scarves that Nancy Pelosi & company wore during that shameless photo-op for street-trash George Floyd were from a tribe of slave owners.
Oops! (Not to worry; the press ran their usual cover)
The doddering fools bent the knee for eight minutes for that scumbag.
No word if they lent any empathy for that poor pregnant woman that Floyd pistol-whipped. Her attack wasn’t on video, so I’d guess not.
That’s the kind of thug-criminal-drug user and pusher blacks and the left hung their hats on. I think that explains a lot..
Too bad we can’t enslave those creeps and sell them to the Africans.
Like our Great grandpappy used to say if you do not take it for your dominion someone else will and make you their slave”.
Nice partial summary.
Wherever there are people, there were other people there before. A possible exception would be a location where the “original” people were not replaced or assimilated and did not move away. In such a case, they likely replaced another extinct human species or subspecies.
Dinesh D’Souza made an excellent case in his book “What’s so Great about America”
Chapter Two is devoted to ubiquitous conquest & changing borders/land ownership throughout history.
Native Indians here routinely exhausted farmland & then invaded other tribes. So spare me the crybaby bullshit from pricks like Ben&Jerry that bluster but don’t walk the walk.
They are not just ‘pricks’, they are ardent communists.
Great riposte David Ray!
The British signed the Treaty of Waitangi with the tribes of the north island in New Zealand with the condition that Maori abolish slavery and cannabilism.
The woke joker lefties in NZ never seem to mention these facts. Funny that. Blows their moronic only whites enslave other races out their fact averse rear ends
“ Western governments feel obliged to offer up solemn mea culpas for abominations of centuries past. ”
But they deny EVERYTHING that they screw up today.
Can you imagine what those beads would go for today?
That’s so future, lousy politicians will have something to point at and say ‘well, we’re bad, but they were worse!’
Those who attack American exceptionalism do so out of envy and frustration at white Europeans who had the wits about them to build seaworthy vessels and the courage to climb aboard them and sail off into the unknown, “Where Dragons Be” on the maps of that era. It was equivalent to the modern day Mars Rover.
The freedom to conduct business that benefitted the individual (capitalism) was the driving force behind America’s success and today and it’s under attack from the folks like Ben and Jerry who have money but the white liberal guilt trip they’re on is why they must virtue signal to the world they’re socialists at heart because they ‘still care for the little people.’
That said, FJB and anyone who actually cast a vote for him.
Eliot Pattison, writer and contributor to the Daily Caller said it best:
“The American identity will not be cancelled or regulated out of existence. It may be slow to anger, but it is finding its voice again. History tells us that our deeply rooted identity will endure and the latest generation of elites will not. To paraphrase a wise commentator of another age, you may chase the American character out with a pitchfork, but it will always come roaring back through the rear door.”
Human beings have never, ever owned land. Human beings occupy land until they don’t, The reasons for the displacement are fairly consistent over time. The rationale for the displacement varies according to circumstance and the culture of the displacers
That’s like saying human beings have never owned their bodies they just occupy them until somebody enslaves them.
“A right is a prerogative that cannot be MORALLY infringed or alienated. Factually, criminals are possible; innocent men can be robbed or enslaved. In such cases, however, the victim’s rights are still inalienable: the right remains on the side of the victim; the criminal is WRONG.” – Leonard Peikoff, “Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand”
“Any material element or resource which, in order to become of use or value to men, requires the application of human knowledge and effort, should be private property—by the right of those who apply the knowledge and effort.” – Ayn Rand
You are already enslaved to cult….you just don’t realize it.
If we humans would own our bodies, we would have managed to get rid of pain, bad odors, ugliness and other annoyances a long time ago. Only our souls we may strive to own.
Apparently you don’t come from a line of farmers. Because if you’d cleared, weeded, sown, tilled, nurtured, watered, sweated and toiled all your life on a piece of land that you’d loved and protected at the peril of your life, that land would rightly be yours, whether or not a piece of paper could confirm the fact..
My family in Europe – ex-farmers become city-dwellers in the 19e century – had bought some land in the north of Paris as an investment, planning to lease it to tenant farmers. In between the turmoil caused by the 2 WWs, the younger generation didn’t bother with collecting the rent. Then we learnt that this now valuable piece of land had become the property of the family who had kept farming it, which I think is perfectly fair. The land belongs to those who work it.
Unless there is a contract that says otherwise. Freedom is contractual as long as there is AN other than your self. A contract says enforcement is possible or will be forthcoming. This means there is a governing system in place, regardless how simple or privative in form to today. Details matter most in the long run.
So what Rules of Conquest were the Apache, the Iroquois and the Caribs operating under that were different than those of the French, Spanish and English? No difference…other than the tools. White man bad.
Conquerors never give back conquered lands unless it also serves the conqueror. to do so !
American Indians had their chance to stop the steal, but Tecumseh could not get all the eastern tribes to agree with him that colonist needed to be stopped, thus the army they could have had to stop the immigration of the white man fell apart ending up with not one tribe being able to dos so by itself.
Bows and arrows are not a good defense against rifles and bullets. Eventually Indians lost their lands and need to get over it. It was in losing their lands that built the strongest nation in the world and in history. As humanity became more technologically advanced so was their ability to make war to suit their needs and those cultures that didn’t jump on board the band wagon would slowly die out. That was and is the nature of the human animal when it basically functioned on “Our Animalistic & Tribal Territorial Imperatives”
Ben & Jerry’s must be run by ignorant fools to even considering giving back lands to a people who many continue to live like slovenly outcast, instead of grasping the tools that white man brought to bear.
“America’s policies toward the Indians were generally benign, aimed at protecting them from undeserved harm while providing significant material support and encouragement to become civilized. When those policies erred, it was usually by treating Indians collectively, as “nations” entitled to permanent occupancy of semi-sovereign reservations. Instead, Indians should have been treated as individuals deserving full and equal American citizenship in exchange for embracing individual rights, including private ownership of land.” – Thomas A. Bowden
The conflict was tribalism versus individualism. Primitivism versus a Constitutional Republic. The whites were not conquering the land as white tribes. They were settling the land as individuals. There are no such things as racial rights or tribal rights, there only exists the Rights of Man, or in other words individual rights. Many but not all of the tribes were offered American citizenship to become individual Americans with individual private property rights but they refused they wanted to remain roaming, nomadic, warring tribes.
As an analogy, imagine the Hell’s Angels, Nomads, Bandidos, Mongols, Sons of Anarchy, running around on their motorcycles raising hell in every town, even scalping, raping, kidnapping, enslaving, and killing the townsfolk. And you ask them politely to settle down, become civilized, act civilized, and each member will get 100 acres and house and they say “F U we’re gangsters, this is our ancient way of life, we ain’t gona settle down to your boring way of life!” What can the civilized citizens do but crush their way of life or perish at the motorcycle gangs’ hands?
It’s like the Palestinians and the Israelis. The Israelis want peace, they keep offering concessions, and the Palestinians want implacable war. What are you gona do?
It is amazing someone so inferior can think of themselves as something other than primitive you are.
“Inferior”? That’s racist, big time!
Yes, I think arguing that the North American continent should have been left as a sort of refuge for wild animals and wild Indians is sophomoric and imbecilic. Man has an inherent inquisitiveness and desire to explore and learn. Sailing the seas to learn and discover new lands is no different than man’s desire to go to the moon and beyond. God made us that way.
This debate about “how” it happened is sophistry on both sides. The fact still remains that a more practical civilization subsumed a lesser one–to the point of extinction of the latter. That is the only relevant debate, that is, can men today change the devouring nature of mankind since the dawn of time? The answer, of course, is, no, so there is no debate at all, really. Thus, we circle back to “kill or be killed,” or–for the less savage, “enslave or be enslaved”–and this will never change until the End of Days. Speaking of “less savage,” the desire of “civil” men is for peace, but–regardless of the extent of their megalomaniacal delusions–“peace” can only exist as some form of slavery. And that’s the mission of all Government: to discover and perfect the best method of enslavement. Is this a nihilist viewpoint? I think not. Nihilism is merely the acceptance of the true human condition–slavery and death–without belief in a metaphysical calling to do good works. I believe in the Gospel of Christ Jesus, so I feel content to remain alive as long as possible to do some good of my own free will…until He comes…or until “evil”, that is, “typical”, men kill me. However, I very much doubt that I will make it to a “ripe old age” and die peacefully as a shriveled prune. Oddly, the prospect of that really does depress me! Nihilism is ever at my doorstep, I guess.
Is that the same Ben & Jerrys from the white (91.9 percent) leftist segregation camp know as Vermont. To give a perspective, California with over 39 million is 34..7 percent white. United States as a whole is 58.9 percent white..
Is Robin DiAngelo author of White Fragility still living in her 90 percent plus white liberal compound East of Seattle?
Does Rachal Maddow still own her farm house in 90 plus white community in Massachusetts?
There was a time when people risked their lives to come to the United
States for freedom – unlike the greedy parasites who are invading today.
The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution – unique in
history – gave the little guy the right to pursue a free life of his own making.
That idea is so precious, it should be revered all over the world – instead of
being stomped and spat on by Communist-wannabes through their twisting
distortions of America’s past.
I am enthused about reading Jeff Fynn-Paul’s “Not Stolen”. Anything that
protects what America really stands for – instead of tearing it down – will
always generate that in me.
Such an idea is being stomped and spat on because that particular America no longer exists. Ours is an America of rule by administrators, owned by corporations which have merged with governmental powers to form what Mussolini called Facism. The Declaration of Independance and the Constitution have been reduced to quaint pieces of paper to our rulers, and those who stomp and spit on them only do the bidding of their masters. Case in point, the J6 defendants. I pray for this nation.
The American welfare state started in the 1930s with FDR when America was 90% white and Christian.
Even at the very beginning of the nation the Founders were dedicated to ALTRUISM. Thomas Jefferson wanted to tax the citizens for public schools. In a country of freedom everything but the military, the police, and the courts of law are privately funded out of your own pocket or private charity. In a free society all infrastructure is funded privately and is private property open to the public for a fee. Roads are toll roads.
“The Americans were political revolutionaries but not ethical revolutionaries. Whatever their partial (and largely implicit) acceptance of the principle of ethical egoism, they remained explicitly within the standard European tradition, avowing their primary allegiance to a moral code stressing philanthropic service and social duty. Such was the American conflict: an impassioned politics presupposing one kind of ethics, within a cultural atmosphere professing the sublimity of an opposite kind of ethics.
The signs of the conflict and of the toll it was to exact from the distinctively American political approach were evident at the beginning. They were evident in Jefferson’s proposal for free public education; in Paine’s advocacy of a number of governmental welfare functions; in Franklin’s view that an individual has no right to his “superfluous” property, which the public may dispose of as it chooses, “whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such disposition”, etc.” – Leonard Peikoff, “The Ominous Parallels”
If they weren’t “ethical revolutionaries” you should probably leave and take your pristine ethics with you.
How do you stand living amongst the ethical heathens?
The Founders were much smarter than you. After all, they created this country. Many died for it over the last 250 years. What have you done besides whine and complain about it?
NO ONE lived on CONUS after the ‘comet”. The “fountains of the deep” opened up under such pressure the water streams went into sub-orbit.
And crashed back down as continent sized ice sheets, EXTINCTING ALL life on CONUS, down to insects. BUT, “frozen in place when the earth “tipped over” and climate “changed in just a few hours…..without the FIRST car/plane/oven ever operating….
AFTER the comet, the “native” Americans migrated here from Siberia as the Khan “tribes” of half nephilim were EATING normal humans for proteins after a climate disaster.
Throughout the history of mankind, property ( including land, livestock and slaves) was stolen by the strong from the weak. Some, like the Europeans, were more chivalrous about it than other marauders. Sometimes they even bought the land, like Manhattan, the Louisiana Purchase and Alaska. In modern times we sometimes just steal it like Obozo did Ukraine in 2014.
Those “cycles’ are from a comet that almost destroyed the planet 26,500 years ago (AT LEAST), and the “fragments’ looped back around the sun and would smash earth AGAIN for many millennia, every 3,600 years, finally stopping now.
Interesting how it stopped just for us.
Interesting how it stopped just for us.
What I find annoying is how the US has coddled and given special treatment to American Indians to this day while all of Central and South America just killed them off if they didn’t assimilate. Yet we’re the bad guys for ‘stealing land’.
I agree with one of the other posters, all humans have conquered since the beginning of humans. Why pick on Americans?
Ben & Jery Lied big time with their idiotic This is Stolen Land campaign they like the rest of the socialists just keep up their lies to us and try to see if they cant get even more irresponsible and they refuse to return the land their Ice Cream plant is on
I wonder if the Indians would take Manhatten back if they saw modern-day New York City? I think not…
I HIGHLY recommend T. H. Fehrenbach. Especially Lone Star” and “Commanches….”.
I have never subscribed to the “gentle, peace loving” myth. My family were old Arizona, came to the state as refugees from the Civil War. The Apache were real and sometimes a problem, sometimes just neighbors. There are family stories. A ranch house that was not only built to withstand attack, but also had evidence of being attacked.
What I didn’t realize was that the Apache had been in what is now known as Texas. The Commanche ran them out–they evacuated to New Mexico/Arizona/northern Mexico.
Read the accounts of the Commanche domination and depredations and you gain some appreciation for “the only good Indian is a dead Indian”. By today’s standards, a horrific statement, but read the real history and it is understandable in context.
From the beginning of mankind, “community building,” whether tribe, village, city, state, or nation, has involved a stronger group taking over from a weaker one. At this level things have always been Darwinian. The idea that expansion of western nations was “stealing native land” ignores millennia of history across all people, all over the world. It’s lies! Nonsense on stilts, and grossly ignorant nonsense at that.
Private property rights have to be discovered and understood before they can be implemented. In that sense human history has been an awakening from a nightmare.
But man is the rational animal, he can if he discovers and chooses it, become the productive animal. He is not doomed to the zero-sum game like other animals, he alone among the animals can rise above it and enter the non-zero sum game. Man is not doomed to be a savage, predator, thug, beggar, thief, or parasite.
“The virtue of Productiveness is the recognition of the fact that productive work is the process by which man’s mind sustains his life, the process that sets man free of the necessity to adjust himself to his background, as all animals do, and gives him the power to adjust his background to himself. Productive work is the road of man’s unlimited achievement and calls upon the highest attributes of his character: his creative ability, his ambitiousness, his self-assertiveness, his refusal to bear uncontested disasters, his dedication to the goal of reshaping the earth in the image of his values. “Productive work” does not mean the unfocused performance of the motions of some job. It means the consciously chosen pursuit of a productive career, in any line of rational endeavor, great or modest, on any level of ability. It is not the degree of a man’s ability nor the scale of his work that is ethically relevant here, but the fullest and most purposeful use of his mind.” – Ayn Rand
For God’s sake please stop treating us as if we are two years old and in need of your guidance. What is it with you? Unresolved daddy issues?
Your arrogance combined with that pathetic Messiah complex is one of your most annoying narcissistic personality traits. It is you that is doomed to be a parasite.
I have known what private property rights are all my life and I have the mortgage receipts to prove it.
The Indians of North and South America, especially North America, were not far removed from caves. Hunters and gathers without written language some of whom still practiced cannibalism and frequently fought viciously with one another.
Too much wealth and leisure today promote fantasy especially among those farther removed from the harshness of life of those times.
There isn’t one acre of the planet that hasn’t seen bands of newcomers turning up and settling there, forcibly or not, at one time or at another. The Fertile Croissant, North Africa, the Mediterranean isles and shores and actually the whole of Europe and the Middle East, have absorbed endless waves of invaders. Even now that borders have been firmly established in Europe, the mystery remains about the origins of the Basques or the Celts for instance.
All that nonsense about America’s invasion is nothing but political BS, same as the planet being in danger, the gender (non)issue or racism.
A wonderful book on the subject is: ‘Conquests and Cultures’, by the great Thomas Sowell. I recommend it.
Anything by Thomas Sowell is valuable and wise. The only problem is that he has written so much. Sadly, he is mostly retired–richly deserved, but we occasionally hear from him.
Ok, so the 20 square miles of Manhattan were acquired in a fairly equitable trade, and some Natives were not exactly the most friendly people—none of this is new information. There is such a deep sense of pointlessness to this article.
The entire history of mankind is one people displacing another. May sound cold but a people who do not possess the will nor the strength to hold their lands are fated to lose them.
thomas sowell [ black ] has done the hard yards in regards to the history of slavery and rebuffs most if not all myths regarding it yet most americans don’t know who he is . a national treasure that no one knows . even black history month doesn’t mention him , then bob woodson [ black ] a tireless advocate for inner-city blacks . then v d hanson , one of the most knowledgeable american historians currently . the reason you don’t see or hear from them in the propaganda outlets , commonly known as the MSM is that they are all conservative . their books are national treasures , the current batch of americans would be screaming for safe spaces upon even thinking of reading their work . the u.s. is now the modern day version of the titanic .
Using the ”logic” of morons like Ben and Jerry then perhaps the islamic Nations that exist from Turkey to Afghanistan today can return such Land Mass to the Christians, Jews,Hindus Buddhist and other minority religious Sect that the islamic Warriors conquered by slaughtering, beheading or forcing such people to convert to that Fascist Religious Cult.as is the case today however there can be no stranger alliance than the teaching in islam and those Of The Left today which merely shows the lack of information and pure ignorance of those Of the Left today.
So if wee Ben and fat Jerry wish to ”return” the Land back to people who didn’t own it as Indians knew nothing of owning land then perhaps the two Jewish guys that created Ben and Jerry’s could scream about the islamic warriors beheading their own tribe and religious peoples…. I can dream cant I?.
White people DID colonise many lands – America being one such.
Undeniable truth.
So far as reparations are concerned, it is not possible to repair the damage done.
The whole civilisation of native red Indians (for want of a better phrase) is destroyed.
The people to whom reparations were owed are all long dead.
Their descendants of today are far removed from them.
It’s best just to acknowledge mistakes, apologise in spirit to the long-dead folks, and move on.
No one can undo what was done then.
You miss the whole point of the article (probably intentionally).
“Colonization” and outright conquest have been going on throughout history by absolutely everyone, including the “Native Americans”. “White people” as such didn’t do anything; specific individuals and groups did, and they did exactly what everyone else was doing or trying to do.
The author doesn’t emphasize this, but the main reason that it is not going on as much today is that everything has been conquered already, and the conquerors are strong enough to prevent rebellion (or the conquered nations no longer exist.) Now that we have reached that point, it is easy for some to put on a fake moral superiority to their own ancestors and condemn past behaviors.
In what sense did the “natives” own all of Manhattan Island, a huge piece of land of which they used a tiny fraction? Why can’t anyone just claim to own all of Antarctica or the Sahara Desert (or maybe the Andromeda Galaxy)? There has to be some reasonable standard of acquisition first before the discussion about “theft” begins.
As long as Indians adopt the oppressive genocide narrative, they will live the lives oppressed dependants if the State. People are limited by the worldview they subscribe to.
If natives were all in the whole fully functioning citizens, these false histories would hold no sway.
I wonder how many Native Americans would like to go back and live the ‘Indin Way,’ especially the women.. Isis could take lessons about torture and killing.
My Aunt Faye was a member of the DAR, Daughters of the American Revolution. She had a geneology list drawn up for us going back to the 18th century. We know next to nothing about any relatives before my grandparents. I do not remember some relatives that died after I was born. We have a couple of photos of my great grandparents, but we know very little about them. I often wonder what they were like and wish I could talk to them about their world and lives. DNA is not all there is to people, and even if Jesus were an ancestor, that would not in any way reflect on who I am now. And furthermore, some of my ancestors are Lithuanians who came to America after the start of the 20th century. In that regard, we are not the same as the people in America before the last century.
But I have heard people talk as though Jews and Israelis today are just like the Israelites of the days when Jericho was destroyed. Or Christians today are just like the supposedly evil Crusaders. Yet really, what people do now and not their ancestry is what they are.
Not everyone in the world is ashamed of conquest and subjugation of past peoples either. In one famous world religion, they claim that god gave them all the land they ever conquered, and they are entitled to have back any land they were ever driven out of. Thus Spain, the Balkans, parts of Eastern Europe and India are all rightly theirs, and do not belong to the current countries that occupy those territories. And of course North Africa and Turkey do not belong to the Christians whose culturese were suppressed after conquest. Israel does not belong to the Israelis, because it is said that the peoples who want to drive them into the sea have a prior claim to the land. Past conquest by their civilization conveys an absolute right to these disputed lands, and there is no need to be ashamed or self incriminate. Perhaps the West should reconsider whether it has to be ashamed of its past when other cultures and civilizations are not.
Without conquests where would Rome have been for over 1000 years of glory and honor?
How would we survive without dominion?
If you do not ‘take it’ someone else will!
In Mexico City, the Anthropology Museum dedicates a massive floor to the history of the pre-Columbian residents of the Western Hemisphere from their earliest days to Twentieth Century. Far from peaceful, the world of the tribes was one of ongoing battles, privation, empire-building, slavery, conquest, environmental spoilage, cruelty, and isolated agriculture and detente.
No horror found in Africa, Asia, or Europe exceeds what one man did to another before the Fifteenth Century European arrival in the Western Hemisphere. But don’t tell Karen. It contradicts her indoctrination.
The land we know as the United States is a conquered land, a land taken from American natives at their expense, and a land in which once the young nation got a strong foothold it doubled efforts to wipe out the land’s indigenous people or confine survivors on isolated and worthless lands where they would starve. Every effort was made to cause an appearance of concern for the people while attempting to destroy them. It is undeniable. For every early citizen who wished the indigenous tribes well another hundred wished them dead.
Let’s not get carried away here; The systems of ‘writing’ you mentioned were not anywhere near as useful as those developed by the northern countries or even, say, China. In fact, they were mostly useful to primitive culture as an adjunct to hocus pocus and mumbo jumbo, including human sacrificial rituals–one reason why there’s no clear record of so much human history–altho Injuns are aways ready to history up for the gullible. We are the ones definitely buying the beads, anxious to take our proper place on the wrong side of Darwin.
Maybe Ben & Jerry should change their name of their Company to Dumb & Dumber. Their This is Stolen Land was one of t he most stupidest campaigns ever