"Native Americans" And Rand's Statements: What Do We Know About The Native Americans of North/Central/South America?

[Extropy]

If Europeans could legitimately take land occupied by Indians because the Indians didn't believe in property rights, it would logically follow that Europeans could enslave Africans because (some) Africans had enslaved other Africans.

It logically follows, to a point, but Ayn Rand celebrated the new freedoms of the Negroes (with their tap dancing!). It logically follows from the corpus of her work that she believed in Man's Freedom.

As I suggest, she might have taken a pragmatic stance on the treatment of the Indians, maybe realising not even the forces of history but of biology (although she never would have put it in those terms, she simply said they hadn't attained the level of civilization Europeans had)

[Wolf DeVoon]

Rand's point was not that Indian tribes had forfeited their rights by attacking European settlers; rather she argued that they had no rights (even before the arrival of white pioneers) because they had not conceived rights and were not using them.

[The Native Americans] didn't have any rights to the land and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights which they had not conceived and were not using.... What was it they were fighting for, if they opposed white men on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence, their "right" to keep part of the earth untouched, unused and not even as property, just keep everybody out so that you will live practically like an animal, or maybe a few caves above it. Any white person who brought the element of civilization had the right to take over this continent.

If Europeans could legitimately take land occupied by Indians because the Indians didn't believe in property rights, it would logically follow that Europeans could enslave Africans because (some) Africans had enslaved other Africans.

It is undeniably true that Ayn Rand made a profound contribution to ethics ("Evil requires the sanction of the victim"). Her interest in the philosophy of law however was almost nil, because she argued that politics was the handmaiden of ethics and therefore constitutional law was a slam dunk.

In the passage quoted above, Rand endorses conquest and unilateral disposition of American savages by right of "civilization." Francisco saw that the same theory of preemptive rights could be (and in fact historically was) used to justify the unilateral disposition of African slaves. It's not difficult to link colonization by European powers elsewhere around the world, notably India, Indochina, Australia, The Spanish Main, the entire continent of Africa and much of the Middle East. Russia probably viewed the conquest and subjugation of Central Asia as benevolently civilizing primitive tribes.

It's loathsome to me to mention religion, but English colonists in America believed themselves to be divinely empowered by God.

Divine missions were a steady theme throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, justifying unimaginable atrocities: "After calling briefly at Mozambique, the Portuguese expedition sailed to Kilwa, in what is now Tanzania. The ruler of Kilwa, the amir Ibrahim, had been unfriendly to Cabral; da Gama threatened to burn Kilwa if the Amir did not submit to the Portuguese and swear loyalty to King Manuel, which he then did. Coasting southern Arabia, da Gama then called at Goa before proceeding to Cannanore, a port in southwestern India to the north of Calicut, where he lay in wait for Arab shipping. After several days an Arab ship arrived with merchandise and between 200 and 400 passengers, including women and children. After seizing the cargo, da Gama shut up the passengers aboard the captured ship and set it afire, killing all on board." http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/imperialism/notes/gama.html

Behind the mystical revelations and rituals of Christian duty was raw plunder: "A river of silver from Potosí and Zacatecas flooded the world. The real de a ocho, the Spanish “piece of eight,” became an international currency that fueled the world economy for more than two centuries." http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200504/the.coming.of.the.portuguese.htm

With the Declaration of Independence in 1776 (which Miss Rand often quoted admiringly) and a clean slate to start afresh, our Founding Fathers were united and actuated by -- yep -- another divine mission: "The Founders’ use of Christian rhetoric and arguments becomes even more evident if one looks at other statements of colonial rights and concerns such as the Suffolk Resolves, the Declaration of Rights, and the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking up Arms, to say nothing of the dozen explicitly Christian calls for prayer, fasting, and thanksgiving issued by the Continental and Confederation Congresses... the Declaration’s references to “‘divine Providence’ and ‘the Supreme Judge of the World’ would have been quite acceptable to Reformed Americans in 1776, and conjured up images of the distinctly biblical God when they heard or read the Declaration.” http://www.heritage.org/research/lecture/2011/06/did-america-have-a-christian-founding

Now we come to the awkward bit about U.S. constitutional law and Rand's claim of preemptive right to dispose of the Indians.

"Though the Indians are acknowledged to have an unquestionable and, heretofore, unquestioned right to the lands they occupy until that right shall be extinguished by a voluntary cession to our government, yet it may well be doubted whether those tribes which reside within the acknowledged boundaries of the United States can, with strict accuracy, be denominated foreign nations. They may more correctly, perhaps, be denominated domestic dependent nations. They occupy a territory to which we assert a title independent of their will, which must take effect in point of possession when their right of possession ceases. Meanwhile, they are in a state of pupilage. Their relation to the United States resembles that of a ward to his guardian." Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 30 U.S. 1 (1831)

One year later, in Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. 515 (1832), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Cherokee Nation was sovereign, thus making the Indian Removal Act invalid, illegal, unconstitutional, and against treaties previously made by the United States. President Andrew Jackson refused to uphold the ruling of this case, allowing the expulsion of the Cherokee nation. Their relocation and route is called the “The Trail of Tears.” Of the 15,000 who left, 4000 died on the journey to “Indian Territory” in the present-day state of Oklahoma. [Wikipedia]

In 1889 Congress authorized the opening land seized from the Indian Territory for homestead settlement, and a year later Congress passed an act that officially created the Oklahoma Territory. After years of trying to open Indian Territory, President Grover Cleveland signed the 1889 Act which officially opened the "Unassigned Lands" to white settlers under the Homestead Act. "Whatever may have been the desire or intention of the United States Government in 1866 to locate Indians and negroes upon these lands, it is certain that no such desire or intention exists in 1879." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unassigned_Lands#The_pro-settlement_campaign

So much for constitutional law, when it inconveniences plunder.

[Gary Fisher]

So much for constitutional law, when it inconveniences plunder.

Developing the land is now considered plunder?

[Francisco Ferrer]

So much for constitutional law, when it inconveniences plunder.

Developing the land is now considered plunder?

Obviously, you did not read all or understand any of what DeVoon wrote. Indians were expelled from their land without just cause and in violation of previous treaties and a U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

By 1800 the Cherokees were no longer nomadic hunter-gatherers or a violent threat to whites. At the time of the removal they had permanent homes, farms, villages, Christian churches, a newspaper, and a written constitution--little different from what white men were doing a few miles away.

Their removal was nothing more than ethnic cleansing.

[syrakusos]

It logically follows, to a point, but Ayn Rand celebrated the new freedoms of the Negroes (with their tap dancing!).

To be funny, you have to base it on actual knowledge. Tap dancing was invented at Five Points, a tough neighborhood, perhaps the toughest, in New York City. Al Capone was the last of big hoodlums to come from there. Before the Civil War, freed Blacks and new Irish lived on the same streets. Gang fights were common enough. However, life being as it is, they stopped fighting occasionally, and they merged the Irish hop with the African brush to create tap.

[BaalChatzaf]

Obviously, you did not read all or understand any of what DeVoon wrote. Indians were expelled from their land without just cause and in violation of previous treaties and a U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

By 1800 the Cherokees were no longer nomadic hunter-gatherers or a violent threat to whites. At the time of the removal they had permanent homes, farms, villages, Christian churches, a newspaper, and a written constitution--little different from what white men were doing a few miles away.

Their removal was nothing more than ethnic cleansing.

At that time, property owing Cherokee (some of them) even had Negro Slaves. That proves they were civilized.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Extropy]

I was not trying to be funny in my earlier post but to make a point I will now make more clear:

It was inevitable for Europeans to expand upon the sparsely inhabited, seldom settled, lands of the Americas. It was inevitable for the people of the east coast cities not to gradually move inland, and conflict with indian tribes was as inevitable as the conflicts those tribes had among themselves (always in bellic expansion or contraction).

It was not inevitable for Europeans to enslave Negroes and bring them to the Americas. That, unlike American westward expansion, was a moral choice. (ex.)

When I say Ayn Rand might have had a pragmatic view on the subject, I meant to say practical as in respect for reality. It is inevitable and morally imperative for the more civilized group to expand. I think it's the same point she made about the State of Israel.

[BaalChatzaf]

I was not trying to be funny in my earlier post but to make a point I will now make more clear:

It was inevitable for Europeans to expand upon the sparsely inhabited, seldom settled, lands of the Americas. It was inevitable for the people of the east coast cities not to gradually move inland, and conflict with indian tribes was as inevitable as the conflicts those tribes had among themselves (always in bellic expansion or contraction).

It was not inevitable for Europeans to enslave Negroes and bring them to the Americas. That, unlike American westward expansion, was a moral choice. (ex.)

When I say Ayn Rand might have had a pragmatic view on the subject, I meant to say practical as in respect for reality. It is inevitable and morally imperative for the more civilized group to expand. I think it's the same point she made about the State of Israel.

Are you saying that the U.S. army killing women and children at Wounded Kneed was not a moral choice?

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Wolf DeVoon]

Your comparison of Westward expansion and Israel is apt.

[Extropy]

I'm saying one way or another the expansion was inevitable. Some Catholic orders engaged in intermarrying and conversion to christianity rather than massacres. A bit of fraud was involved there I suppose.

Many ways were practiced.

Of course that specific instance and all specific instances were moral choices. Do you fail to understand the point of inevitability I'm trying to make?

[Extropy]

Your comparison of Westward expansion and Israel is apt.

It's really not. I'm only saying that Ayn Rand might have used the same arguments of civilization vs barbary (or lower degrees of civ).

In the case of the people of a big landmass settling upon a smaller isolated landmass, or westward expansion, there really was not a choice (unless you suggest the Iberians and the Vatican had decided AND had the power to "quarantine" the New World perpetually).

In the case of the State of Israel it was not inevitable. Zionism was only one of four popular ways for Jews to contemplate survival among Marxism, Orthodoxy, and Liberalism.

[Wolf DeVoon]

Do you fail to understand the point of inevitability I'm trying to make?

Inevitable hegemony of China in Asia? Russia in Eastern and Central Europe? Ascent of Christianity, Communism, Islam?

civilization vs barbary = might makes right?

[Extropy]

Maybe the ascent of Islam is an acceptable comparison, with their forced connection of the east west and south of the pangea, but technically no.

We have one big landmass where most likely man comes from and where, most likely, most civilizations arose, and with many domestic animals.

We have a second, smaller landmass, quiet isolated from the other landmass, where man arrived through a bottleneck and forgot about it, and where no more than three proper civilizations arose, and with few domestic animals.

At several points in history they meet, until one day the people from the bigger landmass declare the "discovery" official and make it public.

What could have happened so differently than what happened?

[Wolf DeVoon]

My daughter has the right take on world history: "War, war, war. It's all so stupid."

[Extropy]

From a biological point of view she's not so wrong. But that's just you evading the question of what other possible course of action could have been taken.

[Wolf DeVoon]

From a biological point of view she's not so wrong. But that's just you evading the question of what other possible course of action could have been taken.

I've lost the thread of discourse. Do you mean Westward expansion in 19th century America, or Israel, or Imperial Japan?

Japanese conquest of the Pacific was inevitable in the sense that they had no oil. They still don't have any, except imports from Arabia guaranteed by U.S. Navy Sixth and Seventh Fleets. Was that inevitable, too, U.S. becoming world cop?

[Extropy]

What other course of action could have been taken by people from the Old World (Europeans, Asians, Africans) once a discovery of a huge continent and the possibility to know the world they inhabit, had been made public?

Very funny about Japan, and informative as I'm not familiar with the numbers of America's fleets, while I do know they keep the world not just Japan, going around.

[Selene]

In the case of the State of Israel it was not inevitable. Zionism was only one of four popular ways for Jews to contemplate survival among Marxism, Orthodoxy, and Liberalism.

There were several Kibbutzes, post 1948 and through to the 1960's, that were either pure communist, or, pure Marxist. One of which was Stalinist.

A...

[Wolf DeVoon]

What other course of action could have been taken by people from the Old World (Europeans, Asians, Africans) once a discovery of a huge continent and the possibility to know the world they inhabit, had been made public?

That would be 16th and 17th century rape of the Aztecs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_conquest_of_the_Aztec_Empire

conquest of Balkans, North Africa and Arabia by Ottoman Empire http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Empire

or maybe French colonization of the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes... prelude to conquest of Africa

"Higher races have a right over the lower races, they have a duty to civilize the inferior races." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_colonial_empires

[anthony]

Expansion (aka, colonialism, imperialism) was inevitable. Whether they were bringing something (missionaries) - taking something away (minerals etc.) - escaping something (repression of Christians and Jews in Europe) - or adventure and exploration to advance knowledge.

Inevitable, but it didn't *have to be that way* (at any time, or by anybody, particularly).

[Gary Fisher]

Obviously, you did not read all or understand any of what DeVoon wrote. Indians were expelled from their land without just cause and in violation of previous treaties and a U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

By 1800 the Cherokees were no longer nomadic hunter-gatherers or a violent threat to whites. At the time of the removal they had permanent homes, farms, villages, Christian churches, a newspaper, and a written constitution--little different from what white men were doing a few miles away.

Their removal was nothing more than ethnic cleansing.

Lol! It's not ethnic cleansing it's self-defense. What were we supposed to do, let a foreign power emerge right under our nose? It would have been ten times better for all parties concerned if the Indians had voluntarily ceded their territory to the US government like it was offered. Instead, they chose violent resistance over peace and prosperity.

[Wolf DeVoon]

Let's take the modern world as it is, and forget about the past. We still have great powers (U.S., China, Russia, Britain, France, Germany, Japan) and hundreds of lesser, ambitious, aggressive states and ethnic enclaves. All of the people of these nations have long memories of real and perceived "honor" and spiteful grievances against their neighbors.

Dutch businessman on a trip to former DDR, to an elderly East German guard: "I want my bicycle back."

Nuclear weapons in India, Pakistan, North Korea -- particularly Israel and Iran -- are more worrisome than tribal wars in Syria or Iraq or Nigeria. I don't think it's a very controversial proposition that religion is the enduring animus that threatens peaceful trade, economic development, and resolution of ancient resentments. It ought to be a scientific taxonomy: human religious-resentment-beings.

There are two ways for the United States of America to address it. We can continue to police the world and wring our hands with worry about the fate of every man, woman, child and plankton on earth -- or for fuck's sake, drop it. The same choice confronts us domestically. Either we continue to pour sand in the engine of progress, clinging to the notion that nothing good can happen without central banking, favored oligarchs, and increasingly militarized Federal, state and local police power (like Putin's Russia) -- or for fuck's sake, drop it.

The world sees the U.S. as a crucible of innovation. How bright is it to let others drag us back to the past and re-fight old wars?

We did wrong to Native Americans? -- too bad. We did wrong to African slaves? -- forget it. FDR, LBJ, Clinton, and Obama made idiotic promises that can't be kept? -- cancel them, kill the entitlement and regulatory payola. Roll the rock of liberty forward, not backward.

It's silly to expect a majority of U.S. voters to agree. We need a second American Revolution.

Merrill looked at Galt's Gulch and trembled, didn't want to go there. Fine. If people don't want to grow up, that's their choice. But wishing for a happy ending and peaceful coexistence with Alan Greenspan is more dangerous than burning your bridges to socialism, as you know goddamn well from reading Atlas Shrugged. Stop supporting your destroyers. Quit paying tax and get out. Withdraw the sanction of the victim and join us. https://web.archive.org/web/20020601104523/http://www.zolatimes.com/V4.20/niceguy.html

Ayn Rand was right. It is imperative to strip from tyranny every scientific, technical, and entrepreneurial genius on earth — a strike of the men of the mind — some of whom should be deployed to nudge along the economic collapse of New Rome on the Potomac. Aggressive, heroic action, personal and collective, is the key to victory... Moral necessity requires that you get environmentally unfriendly, sir. https://web.archive.org/web/20020601122215/http://www.zolatimes.com/V4.42/endof_fukuyama.html

If it is certain that a mob of gangsters or democrats pose a clear and present danger to the innocent, then war is inevitable. https://web.archive.org/web/20020610150319/http://www.zolatimes.com/V3.45/scoundrels.html

[Francisco Ferrer]

Obviously, you did not read all or understand any of what DeVoon wrote. Indians were expelled from their land without just cause and in violation of previous treaties and a U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

By 1800 the Cherokees were no longer nomadic hunter-gatherers or a violent threat to whites. At the time of the removal they had permanent homes, farms, villages, Christian churches, a newspaper, and a written constitution--little different from what white men were doing a few miles away.

Their removal was nothing more than ethnic cleansing.

Lol! It's not ethnic cleansing it's self-defense. What were we supposed to do, let a foreign power emerge right under our nose? It would have been ten times better for all parties concerned if the Indians had voluntarily ceded their territory to the US government like it was offered. Instead, they chose violent resistance over peace and prosperity.

The definition of self-defense is using force against someone who has threatened or begun the use of force. There was no aggression or likelihood of aggression by the Cherokees in the 1830's. And there was relatively little resistance once the immoral, unconstitutional removal began

Using your theory, I have the right to drive my neighbors off their land and seize it for my own use on the grounds that at some future point in my lifetime my neighbor might poison my well or sell the land to a man who might turn into a mass murderer.

[Selene]

Obviously, you did not read all or understand any of what DeVoon wrote. Indians were expelled from their land without just cause and in violation of previous treaties and a U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

By 1800 the Cherokees were no longer nomadic hunter-gatherers or a violent threat to whites. At the time of the removal they had permanent homes, farms, villages, Christian churches, a newspaper, and a written constitution--little different from what white men were doing a few miles away.

Their removal was nothing more than ethnic cleansing.

Lol! It's not ethnic cleansing it's self-defense. What were we supposed to do, let a foreign power emerge right under our nose? It would have been ten times better for all parties concerned if the Indians had voluntarily ceded their territory to the US government like it was offered. Instead, they chose violent resistance over peace and prosperity.

The definition of self-defense is using force against someone who has threatened or begun the use of force. There was no aggression or likelihood of aggression by the Cherokees in the 1830's. And there was relatively little resistance once the immoral, unconstitutional removal began

Using your theory, I have the right to drive my neighbors off their land and seize it for my own use on the grounds that at some future point in my lifetime my neighbor might poison my well or sell the land to a man who might turn into a mass murderer.

Francisco:

Thanks for saving me the time to refute Gary.

It astounds me what comes in his posts.

A..

[Gary Fisher]

The definition of self-defense is using force against someone who has threatened or begun the use of force. There was no aggression or likelihood of aggression by the Cherokees in the 1830's. And there was relatively little resistance once the immoral, unconstitutional removal began

Using your theory, I have the right to drive my neighbors off their land and seize it for my own use on the grounds that at some future point in my lifetime my neighbor might poison my well or sell the land to a man who might turn into a mass murderer.

That's ridiculous. Self-defense is defense, not using force. When you use force, it's called "war". Defense is when you take the necessary steps and precautions to prevent or repel an attack. The seizure of Indian lands was necessary for the defense of the nation. The Indian's refusal to comply with the demands of the US government and their subsequent interference in the attempts of the US to defend itself is necessarily a form of aggression.

There was no aggression or likelihood of aggression by the Cherokees in the 1830's.

Using your theory, I have the right to drive my neighbors off their land and seize it for my own use on the grounds that at some future point in my lifetime my neighbor might poison my well or sell the land to a man who might turn into a mass murderer.

So there won't ever be any threat? I don't think you understand how itnernational relations work. Just because a country is not at war with you now, doesn't mean they won't ever be. I'm sure you would agree that the costs of any war are extremely high. It follows then that even a relatively small probability of war would be intolerable. It's always better to nip a major future threat in the bud now then it is to have to fight it at its full-strength later.

Your analogy is in-apt. In a state of anarchy, like one we have in an international system, you most definitely would have the right to drive your neighbors off their land because there's a chance they might poison your well. The only reason you don't is because you don't have to, since the government will be able to punish your neighbors for poisoning your well at relatively no cost to you.