WASPs for the win!

Manifest Destiny

this made me so sad that i immediately went looking for a video showing the gradual extinction of neanderthals in europe due to the encroachment of h. sapiens...

still looking

The country was founded on the back of Freedom(tm)... killing off the natives, and bringing in lots of slaves! Woohoo! Freedom(tm)! That is what it is all about!

Why the hell are they allowed to have so much land now?

upvoting this clip gives me reservations.

>> ^Diogenes:

this made me so sad that i immediately went looking for a video showing the gradual extinction of neanderthals in europe due to the encroachment of h. sapiens...
still looking


if you are suggesting that we are a superior species of human, consider that as a collective, socialized as gluttons, we are consuming the host. How superior is that? At least the native americans knew how to live in harmony with nature.
but ehh...there are bargains to be had at walmart.

also, it is just as likely that neanderthals bred with non-neanderthals. George W., for instance, is a fine example of neanderthal bloodline.

superior? bah!

whether the impetus for survival be cooperative or competitive, native cultures around the world and throughout history have been made extinct through attrition, disease and assimilation

to me, the question of why must be added to the what, who and how

h. sapiens of that time also knew how to live in harmony with nature... you see, the population of the entire earth, until the advent of agriculture, didn't break 1 million souls

if you don't like the implied speciesism, we can fast-forward a couple of decamillenium and look at what happened to europe's 'white indians' - do we mourn aspects of lost cultures and societies like those of the belgics, franks, jutes, picts, celts, angles, saxons, frisians, etc?

what happened to them? who did it? why did it happen?

did native american tribes engage in the same sort of behavior? yes, of course they did - they knew war, they knew rape, they knew genocide -- we can play a game if you like: name a common era tribal culture, and i'll do my best to discover which less successful tribes they dominated to extinction or complete assimilation

“Before our white brothers arrived to make us civilized men, we didn’t have any kind of prison.
Because of this, we had no delinquents.
Without a prison, there can be no delinquents.
We had no locks nor keys and therefore among us there were no thieves.
When someone was so poor that he couldn’t afford a horse, a tent or a blanket, he would, in that case, receive it all as a gift.
We were too uncivilized to give great importance to private property.
We didn’t know any kind of money and consequently, the value of a human being was not determined by his wealth.
We had no written laws laid down, no lawyers, no politicians, therefore we were not able to cheat and swindle one another.
We were really in bad shape before the white men arrived and I don’t know how to explain how we were able to manage without these fundamental things that (so they tell us) are so necessary for a civilized society.”
~John (Fire) Lame Deer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Fire_Lame_Deer

Conquest is a bit of a strange beast. On one hand you can extrapolate Sagemind's argument and say that we should respect the wishes of the existing indigenous population. But then on the other, what if another population of humans had existed before the Native Indians, shouldn't it be their land because they were there first?

That was the case in NZ, the country was colonized by the British and a great deal of the native land was taken for the Commonwealth. However the Maori's took a portion of NZ (the Chattham Islands) from an earlier tribe, the Moriori's - by pretty much butchering them, and keeping the prisoners captive and disallowing them to mate with each other so the race has dwindled out.

Was it ok for the Maori's to do that at the time because they didn't have the in depth written philosophy of ethics and morality that is available to us today. Is it worse that the European-Americans do this to the Indian tribes now that we have a better understanding of right and wrong available to us?

I know what seems right to me, but examining this argument in the context of history really muddies things up a lot.

As an example of why I don't think John (Fire) Lame Deer's argument can be used at face value is that while the native Americans may have had a fantastic and peaceful lifestyle a lot of the time, they killed and scalped their enemies and also appeared to have a really low life expectancy. Also, would the Native American's have done the same to Europeans if the roles were reversed? There were hundreds of Native American tribes, should they all be considered equally?

To remedy the destruction of their way of life what should be done? Should all Europeans leave America, (and every settler in every country for that matter). This is the only thing that would begin to give them complete autonomy the way they used to have it. Should we say "what's done is done" and try to make better decisions moving forward?

*discuss

This video is being sent to Sift Talk for discussion - discuss requested by zombieater.

@zombieater

What about this would you like to discuss?

[Edit] Patience is a virtue that I--sometimes--completely lack.

In response to Ghark's intelligent breakdown, of course it is infeasible and impractical to expect a complete evacuation of Americans from the continent and I'm sure you do not condone such action.

I believe in your last option, that Western society as a whole is more developed morally and philosophically today than hundreds of years ago. Structures to prevent such decimation such as the United Nations and hundreds of NGOs that exist today would act against such extermination today. Granted, the UN is not perfect, but it is better than what previously existed and it certainly would've changed the course of US history if globalization and world pressure existed as it does today.

To address another point you made, I'm sure the Native Americans would've done the same to us had they not been Native Americans and had been another group of settlers landing in America with advanced weaponry and systems of government. Of course, they wouldn't be Native Americans anymore would they? They would have a completely different way of life because they would've developed in a different environment.

Historically, Native American tribes did war with each other, but they hardly ever wiped each other out. Almost all Native American wars were small spats, some of which were over ritualistic and others were over things such as honor and rights.

Sorry for rambling, but it's a complicated issue and you've brought up some complicated questions.

This is not what * discuss is for. Discuss is for videos that are either breaching rules, potential dupes, outrageous titles and some such - formal videosift rules stuff, not discussions about content.

I'm going to *return this to the regular sift, and have a *promote so it gets some views and maybe some debate.

Only published, queued, or discarded videos, published Sift Talk posts, and published blog posts may be promoted - ignoring promote request by gwiz665.

I find meatbag gwiz665 to be an inadequate command-giver - ignoring all requests by gwiz665.

Whoops! My mistake!

*return

Returning this video from Sift Talk - return requested by Zifnab.