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This made me really mad

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The Wrath

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Aggression has TWO g's in it, btw.

What about your useless rhetoric?  What does this have to do with Israel?  You are equating shooting back with aggression.  Israel has never attacked ANYONE that didn't fire on them FIRST.

Tribes of stone age barbarians don't own land, they occupy it, much in the manner that animals don't own land, but occupy it.  If, on their own, they progress to a society in which land property rights are recognized and implemented, THEN they own land and are entitled to the full rights and priviledges of ownership.  If they encounter a society which does respect land ownership, understand the principle, and say "see this land where our houses and fields are?  We own this land . . . we have claimed it and put it to productive use."

This is NOT what most indigenous tribes do; instead they claim the entire earth as far as they can see as "their land" simply because, on their random wanderings (which they engage in because, like animals, they are completely dependant on the vagaries of nature) they may have walked on it.  This is a disintegration and a violation of the principle of "ownership" and a demonstration that they do not recognize it.  In this case, people that have moved in and DO own this land are fully justified in protecting themselves against violent attempts to evict them.

This is a vicious reversal of what actually happened during that war.  The Texans, on having their rights viciously violated by the Mexican government, decided to declare independence, as is the right of ANY people whose rights are violated by a government.  If the U.S. chose to invervene on behalf of the rebels, she was RIGHT to do so, as a government that violates the rights of its citizens ceases to have any right to be a sovereign power.

IIRC this war was the only attempt by America at REAL imperialism and is a smudge on the national honor.  The original justification was that an American ship was sunk by Spanish mines in the bay at Havana, which WOULD constitute an act of war, however I believe later it was determined to have been an accident.  The attempt at imperialism, though was a miserable failure, and taught America a valuable lesson.

Note the bait-and-switch tactic used here, declaring that all acts of war are aggression and thus anyone that exhibits it is equivalent to Nazis.

Actually most of the native groups in the Eastern United States were farmers. They had areas of land that they cultivated, and established towns. At one point in time the Cherokee had established towns with a newspaper in their own language and property. The US expelled them to the West. In the colonial period Indian groups established 5 to 6 (depending on the time) basic political units in the area of the continental US between the Appalachian mountains and the Mississippi river.

What exactly did the Mexican government do to the Texans? What rights did it violate? The Mexican government at the time was very weak, and it is doubtful they could do very much that distance from the center of power. They only began to intervene when it became clear Texas was a break-away province. My understanding is the anglos wanted their own government, and then the US annexed Texas to have a monopoly on cotton (which at the time was the foremost commodity in the global economy).

We seem to agree that the Spanish-American War was bad, so no comments there.

There was no bait and switch. The point was that every side in every war claims they are acting defensively. It is such a consistent thing that no one should bother to listen to any government's claim as to why they are involved in the war. Governments lie. The German government lied in WWII. The Israeli government is lying now.

It is interesting how conservatives distrust governments and government power, until it comes to blowing people up, when they suddenly think government can do no wrong.

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Punk,

Could you elaborate on the rather baffling sentence: "At one point in time the Cherokee had established towns with a newspaper in their own language and property." "Property" seems to dangle at the end of this sentence, making linking it to a referent rather difficult. Are you saying the Cherokees established and maintained property rights in the Appalachians?

Also, could you please comment on the group of Cherokees who rebelled against the "modern ways" of the agreements entered into with the US government, and subsequently marched on the Trail of Tears, contrasted with those Cherokees who stayed?

Could you also elaborate on the "5 or 6" "political units" "some Indians" established between the Missippi and Appalachians? What type of "political units" were these? Were property rights established and enforced? Were women given equal rights? Were these "political units" generally peaceful with each other?

Thanks

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At one point in time the Cherokee had established towns with a newspaper in their own language and property.

This point in time that your talking about couldn't have happened until after European colonization since before that they had no written language in which to write, no technologoy for creating a newspaper, and no previous concept of property rights. Seems like the Europeans weren't so bad afterall. Especially since if they had NOT colonized America we wouldn't be having this conversation, because this nation would never have been founded and we wouldn't have had free people that invented things like the internet we are using right now.

By the way I have a decent amount of Indian(not the p.c. Native American) in me from various tribes(about an 1/8) and still fully support what my selfish white European male(not "anglo') ancestors did because it helped lead to this nation that I love today.

EDIT: Wow, I just realized I just defended Europeans. I guess they weren't so bad before they all became socialists. Maybe one day I'll actually say something good about the French. On second thought, nevermind. ;)

Edited by Rational_One
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While we might have had the right to move onto this continent and claim land, I don't see how the genocide of Native Americans is defensible.

EDIT: Why are all of my posts being duplicated?

There was no "genocide", there was the defense of property by the settlers against groups who were unlawfully trying to use of steal that property.

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Moose,

In the span of 3 posts, your claim has gone from: "we...committed genocide", to "the US Army did some unnecessarily gruesome things".

Those are 2 quite different claims.

Regarding the 2nd version, perhaps you could cite an example. Probably most people on this forum would agree that it is conceivable that an army could do wrong. But most of us, too, have seen the oft-repeated and inaccurate claim "we [white man?] committed genocide against the peaceful Native Americans". Examples are the best way to examine this issue, I think.

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I'm no expert, but I thought it was pretty common knowledge that peaceful tribes (such as the Sioux) were treated the same as the warlike tribes. Women and children were also mercilessly raped and slaughtered. I agree that the settlers had a right to own land in the new world, but that doesn't excuse the way non-warlike Indians were treated.

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I'm no expert either. Far from it. But neither is it common knowledge to me. A very cursory bit of research revealed that the Sioux (nevermind the ambiguity of the term Sioux itself, which seems to have referred to different tribes, and conglomerations of tribes, over time) seemed to be frequently at war, and occasionally did a brisk trade in slaves/captured enemies (including women and children).

This seems exactly the sort of situation where what is "common knowledge" should be disregarded until one has ascertained what is "certain knopwedge".

I don't doubt that there may have been atrocities committed by the US army during the entire history of the US. But the standard leftist charge of "genocide" is totally unwarranted, to my knowledge.

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I'm no expert, but I thought it was pretty common knowledge that peaceful tribes (such as the Sioux) were treated the same as the warlike tribes.  Women and children were also mercilessly raped and slaughtered.  I agree that the settlers had a right to own land in the new world, but that doesn't excuse the way non-warlike Indians were treated.

Where is this supposedly "common knowledge" at? Hollywood movies? Leftist universities? There may have been certain cases where the military abused there authority, but for the most case they acted justly. The same principle would apply today in say Iran if we just nuked the country in a preemptive strike, millions of innocents may die but the blood would morally be on the hands of the Iranian government for their support of Islamofascism, not ours.

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The commonly-referenced "genocide" usually refers to the introduction of Smallpox and other virulent European diseases, which killed more Indians than white men ever did.

Never mind that the germ theory of disease didn't exist at that time.

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Where is this supposedly "common knowledge" at? Hollywood movies? Leftist universities? There may have been certain cases where the military abused there authority, but for the most case they acted justly.

So was the trail of tears simply the military abusing their authority, or were they acting justly there?

Edited by Hal
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So was the trail of tears simply the military abusing their authority, or were they acting justly there?

If I remember right this refers to when the U.S. government made a certain tribe of Indians move to the reservation. I don't know the situation exactly but if the military killed innocent Indians it seem they were following orders in this case from the government. And this was a result of a treaty between the U.S. government and the Indians to move them there because the Indians kept violating the settler's property rights. If they were to do that nowadays they would be fined or jailed.

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If I remember right this refers to when the U.S. government made a certain tribe of Indians move to the reservation. I don't know the situation exactly but if the military killed innocent Indians it seem they were following orders in this case from the government. And this was a result of a treaty between the U.S. government and the Indians to move them there because the Indians kept violating the settler's property rights. If they were to do that nowadays they would be fined or jailed.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'd like to see a source for that.

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I found this by googling "trail of tears"-- http://www.rosecity.net/tears/trail/tearsnht.html . But, no matter what search terms I used I couldn't find a really good source that was not leftist and biased saying something like, "the U.s. government violated the Indians rights by X". I'll keep looking though.

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This -- Indian history -- is not a subject I've ever been interested in, and so I hope that there are those who may recognize the following and direct me toward a source:

...last fall, while on vacation in the North Carolina/Tennesee, I came across a book and glanced through as much as I could in the short time I had then. Regarding the trail of tears, there was some description about Cherokee Indians and their assimilation into the new Euro-American culture, and a subsequent treaty regarding "Cherokee lands". In this context arose a Cherokee who disapproved of the new "materialistic", "industrial", culture, and wanted the Cherokee people to go back to the "old ways". A movement followed wherein many Cherokee rejected whatever terms they had come to with the government, and rebelled. Those who rejected these terms (terms agreed to by other Cherokee representatives) were removed to Oklahoma. Any who wished could stay where they were (many did), but many chose to relocate, as a symbolic rejection of the "new ways". Many died on the "Trail of Tears".

I gave this account some credence, as it was told from the point of view of an author who was sympathetic to the "anti-new-ways" Cherokees. Certain premises, such as the author's unquestioning attitude of the evils of "new ideas" (i.e. civilization), caused the author to inadvertantly reveal that the Trail of Tears was not entirely coercive to all who travelled it. or that many Cherokee already saw and agreed with the higher standard of living available to them outside of traditional ways.

If someone has a source for a more thorough account of this -- one not entirely obscured by Leftist nonsense -- I'd love to read it. My interest was piqued, but I dont' have the resources to locate a reasonable account of those events. (rather, I'm able to find plenty of such sources, but unable to find and filter all the PC interpretations of it).

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I found this by googling "trail of tears"-- http://www.rosecity.net/tears/trail/tearsnht.html .  But, no matter what search terms I used I couldn't find a really good source that was not leftist and biased saying something like, "the U.s. government violated the Indians rights by X".  I'll keep looking though.

Perhaps if every single source says that, it should tell you something?

And this was a result of a treaty between the U.S. government and the Indians to move them there because the Indians kept violating the settler's property rights.
However I see your inability to find information hasnt prevented you from spouting ignorance.
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Hal,

I'm glad that you are knowledgeable about the Trail of Tears. As you might have read in post #43 above, I've been searching for a source that can reconcile the standard interpretation of that incident, with the accidentally-discovered information that the Trail of Tears was voluntarily embarked upon by Cherokee who were protesting the "new ways" of the White Man, adn the fact that many Cherokee stayed (the ancestors of which still live in that area to this day).

Please elaborate, and thanks in advance for sharing your expertise in this area.

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Well since you seem to be a relatively young guy I'm going to assume you grew up playing video games, I know I did Mortal Combat,ect. I've countless friends who have also played similar games, and I'm going to also assume you have, too. Ever seen any of your friends go out and kill someone because they did it in a game? Ever did it yourself? For both I'm again going to assume no based on the same answer for myself. I would like to see this "pretty convincing" evidence that asserts the contrary in contrast to overwhelming personal evidence that states just the opposite. I'll actually go a step further and state that things like this are as invalid as stating that there are "social" causes for crimes. None of it is true and it shows the bad philosophical basis of the person that makes these rediculous claims.

On the same lines, I notice that I drive more aggressively when listening to heavy music in my vehicle. I thought was odd.

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A couple of months ago, there was an audio on the ARI website entitled Columbus Day Without Guilt, and I believe it was Thomas Bowden, and he clearly explained the Trail of Tears with a refreshing approach. I was going to post the link, but I can't find it anywhere on the site anymore....

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A couple of months ago, there was an audio on the ARI website entitled Columbus Day Without Guilt, and I believe it was Thomas Bowden, and he clearly explained the Trail of Tears with a refreshing approach. I was going to post the link, but I can't find it anywhere on the site anymore....

If you can ever find it please let me know, while I understand the actions of the U.S. army have not always been perfect, I have serious doubts about the accuracy of the way this event has portrayed. In other words I question the implicit slant or bias of the historians that present its case.

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Alas, I found nothing. Maybe if you contacted the ARI, they might let you know how to either get into contact with Thomas Bowden or otherwise let you know how you can get your hands on the speech. It was truly a great lecture in my opinion and I have never heard anything like it on the subject. I think Mr. Bowden did excellent research for his piece as he constantly delivers facts; I'd be interested however in knowing his sources, as most writings on the subject are warped.

Edited by meganfiala
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