[PLUG-TALK] Re: [PLUG] Sounds good to me ;)

Jeme A Brelin jeme at brelin.net
Wed Jun 19 01:27:27 UTC 2002


On Tue, 18 Jun 2002, J Henshaw wrote:
> > It is true that they generally believed that no man can own land.
> 
> Land is for food which is for life;  take away the Natural right to survival
> and you have war

Um... right.  So the Europeans took away the natural right of the Natives
to survive by restricting the use of the land to particular
individuals.  Hence, there was war and it was caused by the greed and lack
of respect inherent in the European invasion and yielded the destruction
of many civilizations.

> History shows us that civilizations are more powerfult than tribes

Oh, please explain how "tribe" and "civilization" are mutually exclusive.

A tribe is a social order and a civilization is the product of a social
order.

> so we created one and would have let them join the party.

They had their own civilization and the Europeans suppressed it or ignored
it then destroyed it.

There was absolutely no reason for the natives to join the European
civilization.  Theirs was highly successful for thousands of years.

> We still left them some neutral land while we created a justice-based
> reality-based food distribution system called reap what you sow;  as
> opposed to hunter-gatherers or Marxists.

Which system created coercion and hunger as a way of life?  Which system
required servitude as a prerequisite for freedom?  Which system altered
the land and destroyed its original use for future generations and other
species?

> Now the muddle heads think hunting is "Wrong" too so they must cringe
> every time the dinner table is set.

I don't know anyone who both eats dead animals and thinks hunting is
wrong.  Do you?

> "Hey thats Our meat, and besides,  I am more hungry than you, and moreover,
> killing is wrong, even for food,  except for animals,  who have no morality,
> like the lion"
> Where does this insanity end?

I think that particular insanity is bounded completely by your skull.

> The fact that they were given enough land to be left alone and eat if
> they sow it, proves something.

Why did they have to be "given" land?  And to exactly which land are you
referring?  The land allotted to the Natives (which is a perverse notion
from the get-go) was impinged upon again and again until the Natives were
pushed back to the least useful land in every region.

> They never claimed this land you agreed, so how can we steal it? They
> did not claim a title to it.

They claimed that all are required to share it and use it minimally such
that others, both human and not, both alive and to be born, will also be
able to use that land.

This is the claim they made and the claim that was ignored by the
privateers and greedy, disrespectful Europeans.

>   This
> > belief stemmed from the essential doctrine
> 
> Every time I hear "essential doctrine"  I see a Marxist

You should get that checked.  I can only imagine what would happen if you
heard those words on the radio while pushing tons of steel at dozens of
miles per hour (in your belching Victorian monstrosity that affords you
your precious freedom of travel at the expense of all living things and
things yet to be born).  You might swerve into oncoming traffic.

> Yeah, selfish things like farming and eating the food produced while
> obeying the ten commandments?

Selfish things like creating scarcity in order to increase your personal
wealth.

> > So, you're right there.  Many held such a belief.
> 
> Did they form a govt?

In what sense?  There was not lawlessness.  Iriquouis law was perhaps the
most evolved and lucid set of regulations ever conceived on this planet.  
Jefferson was in awe of the Iriquois' deep respect for freedom,
individuals, and nature.

> What if they were cannibals?  Would there belief require me to become
> one?

No.  I don't know of a single Pre-Columbian Native Community that did not
allow free roaming of all people in or out of the civilization.

When the land is not the private property of some individual, no man can
keep another from travelling freely and leaving a community to seek
another that is more suitable to her temperment.

> Or to "approve" of it to make them feel "OK"?

If you don't like what you're neighbors do, move.  I think that's
essentially the sort of rule you'd see in that time and place.

> Or to give them special rights over and above non-cannibals?

I don't think anyone would stop you from favoring one person or another.  
But that's because there was so much freedom, you couldn't possibly amass
the power necessary to make that special treatment into a social force.

> What about the virgin in the volcanoe question I posed previously,
> that no muddle-head has answered yet?

I didn't see that question.  However, it is my understanding that tales of
human sacrifice in the "new world" were either exaggerated and
misunderstood observations of surgical procedures (cutting open a person
was considered only a form of punishment and brutality by the ignorant
Europeans) or total fabrications for the sake of a good tale to bring
home.

> > And I don't see why this belief is in any way invalid or harmful.
> irrelevant

It's NOT irrelevant.  They had a valid, harmless belief system and the
Europeans plowed it under in favor of their harmful system.

> > All I see is that the invading
> Invading ?  They did not claim title to any of it as per your stipulation

Which stipulation?  Did I say that one must claim private ownership in
order to be invaded?

They claimed that all had the right to land and the Europeans took that
right away by claiming private ownership of the land.  I'd call that
invasion.

> > Europeans failed to respect the local customs and traditions and
> > culture and imposed their invading culture upon the natives to the
> > point of cultural and near biological genocide.
> 
> Imposed?  No, propaganda.

No, IMPOSED.  It was not propaganda, it was coercion by force and threat
of violence.  The Natives were pushed back and back from the land they
knew and loved by fences and posses.

That was not propaganda, that was invasion.

> There was plenty of room for *IMMIGRATION* that you now promote, as
> long as it is non-white criminals with views like your own so that you
> will become a tyranny of the majority.

I promote the decriminiazation of immigration.  And I oppose all tyranny.

> And you know they can't run linux so you want a job as a govt food
> distributer IT type, keeping the biochips running.

That, however, makes no sense to me.

> > But what's the point?  So they practiced a different kind of religion than
> > the Europeans.  Does that mean they should not be treated with respect?
> 
> Of course not. Why would you ask such a stupid question?

Well, I'm just trying to figure out why you mentioned their potential
paganism in your justification for privatizing the land on which they
lived.

So, why did you mention it, again?

> > And fellow, I don't know what kind of history texts you've been reading,
> > but "love thy neighbor" was hardly the overriding policy in
> > European/Native American relations at any point in history.  Mostly, it
> > was a policy of slavery and slaughter.
> >
> > J.
> 
> Like scalp thy neighbor?  Eat his flesh?  Throw him down a volcanoe? I
> am sorry that you do not like the fact that nations rise and fall by
> the hand of God, but that is something you must deal with.

Scalping was a practice generally practiced by the white men to tally up
the number of Natives they'd slaughtered.  It was easy because so many
natives wore their hair in a braid.  You've seen too many 1950s cowboy
movies.

As for eating the flesh of a human, in my fairly extensive research into
cannibalism, I've found only one reference to a Pre-Columbian cannibal
tribe on the land that is now the United States of America.  There is a
reference in Payute literature to the Anastazi as cannibals.  But this
same tradition carries the statement that when an Anastazi was shot with
an arrow, he could leap into the air, catch the arrow, and return it at
the shooter with full force and pierce the shooter's heart before touching
the ground.  So I guess we can probably say that this testament contains
some exaggerations.

And throwing virgins in volcanoes is also something from those 1950s
matinees that really didn't happen... certainly not in North America.

J.
-- 
   -----------------
     Jeme A Brelin
    jeme at brelin.net
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