Vice President Joe Biden’s comment that Russia’s actions in Crimea are "nothing more than a land grab" reveals the depth of the hypocrisy of American foreign policy. What moral standing does the United States have to make such criticism when our own history includes a much larger land grab (and associated genocide) from the Native American people, as well as the outright theft of the kingdom of Hawaii from her citizens?
I left these comments:
"What moral standing does the United States have to" criticize Russia?
The answer: PLENTY!
The idea that America stole the Native Americans' land is utterly false and purely racist. It implies that the Indians owned the entire continent based on the color of their skin, and had a right to keep white European settlers out. And, since America was not formed until centuries after Europeans first arrived, the notion is also preposterous on its face.
The accusations of "genocide" is completely one-sided. While injustices that were perpetrated against American Indians by some Europeans or white Americans must never be excused, blaming current day America for hypocracy is again pure racism; in effect blaming living innocents for injustices committed centuries ago by people who happened to share a similar genetic lineage or skin color. Ehrenbeck's conspicuous onesidedness also fails to take into account the atrocities of American Indians against the Europeans and white Americans, including women and children, for merely settling on the North American continent.
The Founding of America swept aside primitive tribal societies that treated individual human beings as fodder for collectivist purposes, and replaced it with a nation based on individual rights and limited, rights protecting government; a government as servant, rather than ruler, of the people. This glorious achievement create a society in which all people of all genetic lineages, religions, and backgrounds—including Native Americans and Hawaiians—could live together and flourish independently in a culture of peaceful coexistence. While we must acknowledge that American ideals were not, regrettably, achieved overnight or practiced consistently [e.g., the horror of slavery], America's Founding ideals of individual equality under rights-protecting objective law made it achievable over time.
The only moral basis for a nation is a recognition of the right of the individual to his own life, liberty, property, and pursuit of happiness. Any system of political organization that subordinates the individual to the chief, the King, the state, or the collective is morally illegitimate, and can and should rightly be swept aside. European immigrants brought the knowledge, culture and ideas to North America that paved the way for material, spiritual, cultural, and political progress. How many of today's Native Americans do you think would trade the lives and opportunities they have now for the savagely primitive, stagnant tribal misery of 1491?
American history certainly has its blemishes. But so does the whole history of mankind, with its bloody progression of conquest, plunder, and enslavement. Not a single race, culture, nation, or region can claim innocence on this score. If an imperfect cultural history disqualifies contemporaries from speaking out against injustice, then no one has a right to speak out, and the future for man is indeed bleak.
The rise of Americanism pointed the world to a better future, and its ideals are mankind's only hope for a peaceful and free world. America's leaders most certainly do have the moral standing to protest Russia's annexation of Crimea, as well as any imperialist aggression anywhere. Shame on Ehrenbeck for denigrating the nation that, at its Founding, was the first moral nation that ever existed because it was the first nation Founded on the principle of individual sovereignty.
Related Reading:
The Declaration of Independence
The Achievement of Christopher Columbus
No comments:
Post a Comment