Yesterday was Thanksgiving in the USA. Infowars have posted two articles on Thanksgiving: the first is by Steven Crowder; and the second by Judy Thommesen at The Mises Institute, which is an intellectual base of Libertarianism.
Thommesen writes:
The celebration of Thanksgiving is a celebration of plenty and appreciation of the abundance that has characterized the free enterprise, individualistic, capitalistic systems of the US. This why America grew into the most productive, highest standard of living area in the world.
...The Thanksgiving we celebrate is for the success of the Pilgrims after establishing property rights and free enterprise as that event laid the foundation for the growth of America.
[source : Thanksgiving Is a Celebration of Free Enterprise, Mises Institute, https://mises.org/library/thanksgiving-celebration-free-enterprise, 26th November 2015]
From the way Thommesen writes you would not know that what is now The United States of America currently inhabited by 'Americans' had been inhabited for thousands of years by the native Americans. Today you can drive down any street in Chicago, New York, Atlanta, Tucson, Denver, indeed along any street with houses, and the property that is owned on those streets was at some time in the past owned by the native Americans. This was recognised by the numerous treaties that the United States Government had with the many native American tribes.
But where are those native Americans now? They have been herded into reservations of ever decreasing size, having been tricked, harrassed or forced off their ancestral lands by the immigrants, most of whom were white Europeans, some of whom also brought or bought their own personal property in the form of slaves to work the plantations from dawn until dusk under threat of a good thrashing.
One such immigrant was President Andrew Jackson.
Crowder addresses four alleged myths about native Americans:
1. native Americans were peaceful with no concept of war;
2. native Americans were an advanced society;
3. settlers deliberately infected native Americans with smallpox;
4. settlers killed native Americans en masse for sport.
At least Crowder, unlike Thommesen, recognises the fact that the native Americans actually existed (and is it just a myth that they still do?).
But I don't say the native Americans were peaceful. They were fighting with each other. Much like we have done through all the many wars, including world wars.
Regarding advanced societies, the Cherokee were advanced and were adapting to the lifestyle of the immigrants. But guess what happened? The immigrants wanted the Cherokee off their ancestral lands, that had been recognised as Cherokee by the United States, so that the immigrants could dig for gold and build plantations for their slaves to work. And guess who helped the immigrants to do this? President Andrew Jackson. And this is where Crowder shoots himself in the foot, because he writes:
But Europeans were not hellbent on wiping out Native Americans, they were actually encouraged to bring the people into European culture and convert them to Christianity. Plus, inter-marrying was incredibly common. How else do you explain Johnny Depp, Angalina Jolie, Kid Cudi and even imaginary Elizabeth Warren claiming to be 1/16th Cherokee?
[source : A Politically Incorrect Guide to Thanksgiving, LouderWithCrowder, http://louderwithcrowder.com/?p=13532]
But that is what the Cherokee were doing!
But Jackson forced them off!
Read The Indian Removal Act 1830.
But the immigrant prospectors and planters wanted the rich land that the Cherokee had inhabited for thousands of years so they got Andrew Jackson to herd them off hundreds of miles to the west (actually Jackson started the legal process but his British handler Martin van Buren finished the job off through The Trail of Tears).
The story is usually the same: a native American tribe is recognised to have some property rights through treaties; but gradually the treaties are broken by the immigrants wanting more and more property for themselves, to either mine or plant or farm; and then native Americans are forced to live elsewhere, sometimes uninhabitable like what happened to the Utes.
So the question is: could the white European immigrants have handled their colonisation of The United States with a bit more decorum, respect for the native Americans?
I believe so, with much more respect.
It seems to me that it all boils down to how you see Andrew Jackson.
Jackson's life was saved by a Cherokee, and Jackson promised the Cherokee that the United States would always be friends with the Cherokee. But just a few years later Jackson, a plantation and slave owner himself, was working for the removal of the Cherokee and four other tribes off their ancestral lands, which was recognised as their property through treaties. And the sick joke in all this is that the land owned by the Cherokee formed several of the Confederate states who in 1861 seceded over their right to own slaves as property, which led to a war in which hundreds of thousands died.
Property rights?
The many treaties between the US Government and the native Americans gave them property rights. But who owns that property now? And how did that transfer of ownership occur?
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