Where Have Good Manners Gone?

From right wing watch, comes this:

Bryan Fischer is back with another history lesson for us all - this one on how the Native Americans deserved to lose control of North America because “the superstition, savagery and sexual immorality” made them “morally disqualified from sovereign control of American soil.”

You see, there are three ways that control over land is established: settlement, purchase, and conquest. And in the case of Native Americans, it turns out that they were just like the Canaanites who were so immoral that God decided that “the slop bucket was full, and it was time to empty it out” and so he tasked Israel with being the “custodian to empty the bucket and start over.”

The following rant of mine is not really on subject, it's on how we choose to criticize other viewpoints. My inspiration came from this morning's debate on Huckleberries online, where most of the criticism was in the form of counter insults rather that an unfettered debate of the subject matter.

Deserve is not a word that I would use to describe the Indian nations. Europeans and their offspring, Americans, drove the Indians off of their traditional homes and hunting grounds because they could. Superior science and engineering skills created a power imbalance with some native people, not just American Indians. In past centuries, other races, such as Africans and yes, American Indians, were considered as less than human, which then gave the whites moral justification for their removal. Of course we now know better. We know that given the same educational advantages, both of these peoples can and do excel. Unfortunately, in some areas, radicalism in the quest for religious purity, has caused some to go off of the deep end with substantial gaps in their reasoning. To this date, though, one reality remains. That is, why do these civilizations not advance as others have. It would appear that some of these have not and apparently never will advance to the point of giving up tribal culture for a multicultural society.

In Africa, when the Europeans left, there was no intellectual bank of natives able or willing to rule, other than the traditional tribal links which still separate them and still subject their people to conquest and killing those of other tribes, religion and cultures. I have not seen any books on this subject of why some civilizations advance while others don’t. That would make for an interesting subject in and of itself.

OK, so this was a long winded opinion of mine without any misuse of negative nouns. It’s easy once you let go of your superior attitudes toward those you disagree with. Oh, and regarding the Canaanites, I suspect the Israelite s wanted their land, as others have before and after, used other excuses for conquest. I would recommend calling bullsh1t, except I think it is one of those outlawed terms.

The bottom line in my not so humble opinion, is learn to debate these issues without resorting to the very thing you are criticizing. Open debate on many subjects has in the past few years been severely curtailed by the politically correct smugness of the righteous left, as well as the right. Too many nouns. Not enough discussion of the topics themselves.