The Glade 4.0

The various attitudes regarding Palestine, for example.

Either the conquerors win, or they don't. There cannot be mealy-mouthing on that particular issue without blatant hypocrisy.

_________________
“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Again, avoiding hypocrisy is not the primary goal of national policy. In any case, the problem of Palestine is unique in that Israel didn't intend to conquer the West Bank or Gaza in any long-term sense; it wanted to trade them back for a peace agreement. That wasn't forthcoming. Israel was mistaken in conducting its cost-benefit analysis and hasn't always handled the issue well since, but the fact of the matter is that if Egypt hadn't been planning an attack in 1967, Israel wouldn't have attacked it first and ended up with these territories.

_________________
"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Indeed, but you can't begin to say that public perception and image both domestically and internationally doesn't play a role in diplomacy and politicking. Hence at both the organizational and the individual politician-trying-to-get-re-elected levels, it is important.

Primary? No.

_________________
“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

In the short-term, domestic respect that's true. However, "national hypocrisy" is pretty broad and vague, and often runs into the problem that the "hypocrisy" is a matter of 2 different people who are not only not necessarily in government but may not even be alive at the same time doing 2 different things in response to 2 different situations which may or may not be more than superficially similar.

While perception is certainly part of international image and politics as well, avoiding it is really more a matter of it being convenient or inconvenient for other nations to make an issue of it. Every nation is hypocritical in the respect I just mentioned. It's pretty easy to pick out some aspect of a nation's overall policy and hammer it on the international scene to make it seem like the bad guy. In some cases its a very tangible problem with that nation; in many other cases its simply the leaders of the (politically) attacking nation siezing on public perceptions and selectively making an issue of something.

This issue is a perfect example. Ok, the U.S. overran and took over some indigenous tribal nations in North America and the Pacific. This was in an era where a lot of other countries in Europe were doing the same thing; the major difference is that the U.S. did a much better job of hanging onto its posessions. Of course, that isn't to say "Europe did it too!" but look at the condition of a lot of Ex-European posessions. How does Viet Nam or the Sudan have it compared to American Indian tribes?

A lot of the time the accusation of hypocrisy is really just cricticizing the victor for having the bad taste to win, especially if they do a good job of it.

_________________
"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

It never ceases to amaze me how quick some conservatives are to accept the doctrine of might makes right.

_________________


It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Because it does? I'm not conservative but you'd have to be utterly retarded not to see it. We might decry "might makes right" here in the borders of the US because there are laws that protect the "weak" from the "strong," but on an international level the people with the bigger guns decide what is right and wrong.

It doesn't make right. It makes what is. There is a huge difference.

_________________
"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

I can easily make myself right (at least about moral issues, I can't make myself right about things like physical laws) by killing everyone who says I am wrong and pretending they never existed. One generation later, no one will even know of the concept of declaring me wrong.

The reason you have this illusion that it doesn't is simply because we have a very powerful might prepared to enforce our non-"might-makes-right" ideals.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

It never ceases to amaze me how many liberals will embrace a philosophy of might makes wrong.

_________________
"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Far better. Orders of magnitude better, in fact. There is more than 10% of their population left alive, for example.

_________________
“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

I don't see how the size of the population is a measure of how well that population is doing. I'd also like to know how, since there are a great many people that have various percentages of Native American ancestry in them, how this 10% is arrived at.

Finally the assertion that the quality of life is orders of magnitude better in either the Sudan or Viet Nam than for any population within the U.S. is pretty absurd. The thread really pertains towards the situation of native populations now, not the history of various things that have happened to them over the years.

_________________
"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Yes, and as it pertains to now, there are 90% less Native Americans than there should be, if not more. All their land has been stolen.

The Vietnamese and Sudanese both: 1) Have their land, and 2) aren't missing as much of their population.

They win.

_________________
“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Link?

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Abstract of book indicates from 75 million to "a few". That indicates no more than probably 10% remained.

http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/cu ... o=EJ407452


Another source, indicating anywhere at most a ~21% survival rate:
http://countmazz.wordpress.com/2009/01/ ... -genocide/


More, geography specific:
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/d ... tions.html


Wiki's opinion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocides_in_history




Now, to be fair, lots of those deaths, clearly were caused by disease. Of course, giving smallpox blankets to natives as gifts sort of clouds the issue.

_________________
“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

A classic example of a gift that keeps on giving.

_________________
The Dude abides.

Okay, alol.


This post is proof that unPC comments can be hilarious.

_________________
“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

That gets back to my original point. They signed a treaty. Legally, it's not that simple.

Dey Terk eer Jerbs!

_________________

Holy shitsnacks!

None of which indicates any quantifiable statistics relative to "today," which was your assertion, DFK!. How many Native Americans "should" there be today (accounting for intermingling bloodlines taking a lot of families out of the running, etc.) vs. how many there are?

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

How many Jews "should" there be today?


The ancestral base having been decimated directly correlates to current populations.

_________________
“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Not necessarily. Would the Native American population, had European colonists not come over and stolen lands, still have significant nomadic lifestyles? The population density for North America pre-European arrival is *much* lower; probably orders of magnitude lower; than that of European areas, and the European influenced colonies that came after.

Thus, without proof (or supported assertions) that Native American Tribes would have abandoned their culture without intervention, you can't determine whether the population that would have resulted from no interference is greater than the mingled and Europeanized (cities, towns, raping the landscape to make way for human population increases) descendent population that has resulted from the intervention and stealing the land.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Disease killed most of the natives.

_________________
"The map is not the territory."

I'm not arguing "no intervention." I'm arguing "no genocide."

_________________
“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Okay, no genocide. However, we still haven't stolen lands and imposed a change in the tribal culture and lifestyle. So, presumably you have evidence that, for example, the Great Plains tribes would not have continued to chase buffalo, and would instead have settled down into cities?

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades