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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (774275)	3/11/2014 4:54:15 PM
From: one_less	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1574059

>>>I'm very familiar with the concept of "manifest destiny." Me too. Any believer should have no problem accepting the term. However, it is just a term or doctrine, words on a page that can mean one thing to a decent person and something entirely different to some screwball, and such things can and have been used as excuses to commit abhorrent and evil acts by people claiming to be doing things in the name of God. >>>What I don't agree with is the notion that America established a systematic policy of Indian removal. America's number one priority was expansion, not genocide. They went hand in hand down the path of "how the west was won." One does not discount the other. Theodore Roosevelt... This Indian fighter firmly grasped the notion of Manifest Destiny saying that America's extermination of the Indians and thefts of their lands "was ultimately beneficial as it was inevitable". Roosevelt once said, "I don't go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn't like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth". (Stannard, Op.Cit.) >>>I'll grant you that in many cases, the forcible relocation (and slaughter) of Natives just to satisfy the goals of expansion could count as genocidal. But there were also many cases where the white man and Natives coexisted peacefully, just like many of the Founding Fathers intended in the early 1800's. And there were many Natives who chose (i.e. not forced) to assimilate into American society. There were definitely those periods, but when describing the circumstances from the 1830s to 1880 they were not the status quo, such things had to be very rare if they existed at all. In modern times, we've moved passed it, at least in the mainstream culture. I see peaceful coexistence and assimilation as a choice, although leaving the Res is going against the odds for some. >>Overall, the picture is rather complicated, and I think it's overly simplistic to just come out and say America is guilty of genocide. We disagree, I think it is clear cut when the universal intent, practice, and end is extermination of groups (it really wasn't one group even though we define it that way) of people. That doesn't make the Indians as a whole, innocent even from the beginning of the colonies. Both things can be true. Some of them behaved badly and we went about exterminating all of them we could as a general matter of fact, with malice and forethought. I watched the movie "How the West Was One." I thought it slightly cornball but really liked it anyway. I have a copy of Ron Howard's "Far and Away" and find it a very inspiring movie ... I just have to suspend reality of what I know about plains Indians and specifically Oklahoma Indians of the period, while watching it. I read the book, "Dancing with Wolves" and liked it, but I thought the Movie was left wing trash.