Hi hope you are well.

Forgive my delay in answering your comments as there were many and my time is limited.

Firstly the oppression of the Native Americans goes on to this day. The attempt to change tribal ownership to individual ownership is a major factor. The abuse of mining companies and oil companies taking resources from tribal lands without compensation is another. The interference of Native American life on their ‘rervations’. There is the Bureau of Indians Affairs,when it is not needed. Not honoring treaties, such as fishing rights and so forth. If you are interest there is a book called “The Spirit of Crazy Horse” which tells of why there was a shoot out at Wounded Knee and what caused it.

There is a myth that sorrounds every nation. In reading the works of Josephus the author contradicts what the Bible says to make Isreal sound better. Today I was reading the newspaper and the grand son of Joesph Stalin is suing a Russian newspaper for defamation as it portrayed the Russian leader in a bad light. I believe the myth of nations exist for every nation in existance and probably ever substantial organization. History is subject to prejudice. Even if one was one hundred percent objective there is only a limited amount one can write. In the scarce space available one must explain what has occurred. Judgements have to be made. For example in American history more time is spent on what George Washington did milatarily and as first president. This is without doubt of primary importance. But why do we spend time on the story of George “chopping down a cherry tree and not lying about it” rather than the fact that he was a slave owner and engaged in hostile wars with the Native Americans to take their land?

So, as in every country there is a myth. The myth is made of half truth, exclusions and lies. Again in America is was recently revealed that the attack of the ship in the Gulf of Tonkin that ingnited the Vietnam war never occurred. Why do we remember the Main and not the Liberty?

This myth is a dangerous thing where ever it exists as people base their actions on knowledge. If the knowledge is faulty then the conclusions will be as well. Look at Isreal and Palestine. Both people lay claim to the land based on contradicting histories.

I know of no perfect people other than Jesus. Likewise since United States is made of not perfect people the government, or any government cannot be perfect. But when you portray the United States in such a saintly description as it is, history is distorted. There is a direct correlation to what happened to the indiginous people in the United States to what our country is doing today.

Unlike others who have personal knowledge of me I grew up in high school with very conservative teachers. From youth I was taught the infallability of America as always being righteous and that is a lie. In fact the opposite is true.

A person argued that the United States is the greatest country as it is the wealthiest. Well the United States has more people in jail than any other country, including Mainland China which has over three times our population. So what standard do you use to judge greatness? It all tends to your point of view. Both facts are true but one’s conclusions would differ.

Finally to answer your question. Yes I believe we should give back the United States to the Native Americans.

Love,

John

Hi hope you are well.

Let me warn you of the dangers of hell fire and bid you a farewell. A farewell but not a goodbye. The struggle is not over and time will tell who is right.

It is my prayer that you will join us one day. We are a very open and forgiving group, accepting all.

But let me at least say I appreciate your honesty in your allegience to Darwinism. By your own theory you are simply no more than a very intelligent animal. But I know you are a human being created in the image of God. And by that alone you are worthy of Love and respect.

Love,

John

Of course, you do not really make that necessary with your attempted defense of slavery. Really, trying to justify slavery now? And on the basis of history? It is almost impossible to know where to start correcting your errors.
The economic conditions of the early colonies did not in fact require slavery, or indentured servitude, in order to survive, and indeed it was only when they abandoned collective living with forced labor that the first English colonies managed to survive at all.
It was not in fact a default cultural practice, or even particularly common in Europe at the time it was embraced on such a massive scale in the colonies when it became economically viable.
That also casually obscures the very real, very significant shift from the future states practicing nothing but indentured servitude, a reasonable economic practice to gain new colonists, to practicing racially based slavery.
That does not even address your blithe dismissal of the forcible enslavement of free men, their transport another continent, and their enslavement, solely to try and save others. Perhaps, and a very extreme perhaps, if the slaves were exclusively prisoners taken in war first hand that might have some historical validity. But in that form, and even by that time, it had none.
You claim that is not a defense, merely an attempt to put it in historical perspective, but your history is absurdly wrong. In the face of such obfuscation, it difficult to credit your claim to standing on the side of history.

As for the CDC, either you are a trained virologist and know more than they do or you are not, and you are simply refusing to surrender your ideology in the face of opposing facts.
Do you know how long the scabs, which can contain live infectious material, remain so when in bedding or not?
It is obvious the answer is no.
That means your claim that smallpox cannot be spread by blankets is wrong, meaning your claim that it was never so spread, or attempted to be spread by such means, questionable at best, spurious most likely, and very easily revisionist denial.
Terrible those facts getting in your way, “and yet it moves”.

As for the CDC, I repeat, nowhere in the cited article does it comment on the life cycle of the smallpox virus in an inhospitable environment. The reason viruses and bacteria find homes in our bodies is that our bodies are hospitable to them in the sense that they keep them toasty warm, moist, and comfy until such time as our immune systems can build a strong enough army of T-cells (I think?) to defeat the buggers. Viruses and bacteria outside the body are not hardy organisms and lose virulence quickly. I am suggesting that this loss of potency occurs in seconds or minutes depending on the virus or bacterium’s out of body experience. If you, Sam, have another more reliable answer, please, follow up with the facts, which the CDC did not provide. This is not to say that the CDC is incompetent. I only write that the CDC has not provided answers after stating that transmission was the result of prolonged face-to-face contact. This then raises the question of how the virus contaminating linen is supposed to transit from said linen into the uninfected person. Last I heard people don’t chow down on their bed linen, which doesn’t mean that transmission is impossible, but it certainly makes it unlikely or improbable as compared against the odds of infection by prolonged face-to-face exposure, which strongly suggest an oral nasal transmission vector.

No, it assumes one possess both a sense of morality, and the will to employ it.
You express the standard of moral relativism, where nothing can be judged because of differences in culture, with morality irrelevant, and the only standard being success, along with an arrogance that dismisses all sins as those of someone else while claiming a moral purity.
Simply, nonsense.
Simply, as I said, that is the the Turks, trying to blame the Ottomans for the Armenian Genocide while declaring offense at anyone who even mentions it.
At that rate you not merely can, but are dismissing any possibility of judgement of any act, leaving everything immune to condemnation. With such a standard, how then can any moral evolution occur? If anything is excusable, and no one is ever to be held accountable by history, what means cannot be justified by some theoretical ends?
In fact, when people learn they have made a mistake, whether it be of simple mechanics, advanced science, or complex morality, most are willing to accept that they did, in fact, make a mistake, accept correction, and move forward having learned from the lesson.
Without some form of judgement, however far removed, we can learn no lessons from the past. That is a poor basis for a social order, particularly by the standards we have today.

“Note that there is no attempt to define the length of time over which bed linen and clothing is contagious, but if you read quite precisely the definition of the term over which the person is contagious. Bed linen can only be contaminated because it is infected with a living smallpox virus. So the next question is: Over what period of time is that living smallpox virus actually alive and virulent?”

Are you an expert on the topic or not?
That is the entry from the CDC. Obviously they find the virus lives long enough in bedding and such to be contagious.
Why should anyone take your agenda drive layman’s musings over their description?

Hi hope you are well.

Your response is portrays what you are.

Love,

John

“The native Americans were superior in culture.”

By whose gauge? Yours? Even by today’s United Nations standards I don’t think your assertion holds a drop of water. What history literature to you read? Classic Comics?

The fate of the indigenous people of the Americas is in many ways a sad tragedy. But don’t hang that rap on me.

The Indians who greeted the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock got the help of the Pilgrims against other Indian tribes.

“Surely it was not American bravery or superior tactics that one [sic] the conflict but more numerous numbers of soldiers and superior weapons. Throw in of course multiple lies and and [sic] broken promises, promises that were never meant to be kept by the invaders.”

Initially the native North Americans far outnumbered the settlers to this continent, so in the early years of settlement the numbers favoured the indigenous population. What then proved the difference was technology (guns) and military tactics, which can be described both as a cultural and a technological aspect of a civilization. A culture, such as the European culture, had over centuries gained an appreciation of not only war but, more precisely, siege war. Hence when Europeans built settlements they incorporated defensive preparedness into those settlements. This is both a cultural (hope for the best expect the worst) aspect of European civilization and a technological (clear sight lines out, obstructed sight lines in) aspect. As for bravery, Europeans have nothing to prove on this score for crossing the unforgiving North Atlantic in ships that today would not run the length and beam of a good yacht is proof enough of bravery. As for broken promises, let us stick to the issue at hand, you know, those raised by me in the original blog.

“ “And then the article concludes, “But, then competition is a dirty word to socialists, isn’t it?”

“And here is where the anger is raised. Comeptition? The genocide of nations of people dismissed as winning a contest. Like it was some grand football game or something?”

You are at best being subjective and at worst disingenuous above. The reality is that any who do not see the life and death war that was fought on this continent as a competition between two cultures do not have a proper appreciation of either war or culture. What happened in North America was no game, and to call it a competition doesn’t in any way make it one, the word only serves to focus the reader’s attention on the factions competing. What happened here was a brutal Darwinian competition for survival, and this is a fact, I think, beyond question.

“They made concession after concession.”

Your romanticism, evidenced above, is clouding your historic vision. Especially in light of your comment that, “The majority of the people say there were misdeeds on both sides.” Yet, I suspect that your use of the word majority is aimed at communicating that you aim to fix yourself firmly within the minority that does not allocate equal blame. Both sides were either equally to blame or they were not. As for you, John, either nail your flag to a position without equivocation or stop trying to convince us that you are fairly looking at both sides of this argument for your choice of words indicate anything but fair-mindedness. If anything your words are those of an equivocator, and they do you and your position no credit.

“Yet what is the outcome today. Whole tribes destroyed, their memory only in names of places. Still the oppression continues as the United States perpetuates evil on the natives. Trying to destroy their tribal unity, trying to make them into the pale man.”

What tribes were destroyed, and under what circumstances? Were their battles fought? What were the battles fought over? Who attacked whom? Who initiated what? As for the oppression that continues, what oppression and who presides over that oppression? Today’s American natives enjoy the good grace to live in the world’s wealthiest country. Ask yourself, John, how many of them would go back to being hunter-gatherers if they had the option. I suspect that very few would, as they would have to give up their pickup trucks and indoor bathrooms. Do you not see that the people who invented the tomahawk did so because the likely had a use for the invention? Do you not see that inter-tribal warfare was likely a daily occurrence among tribal cultures looking to steal everything from food and hides to wives and children? This is what tribal cultures do, if for no other reason than to mix blood lines.

“When man is degraded into a statistic. Or when a tragedy of enormous proportions is dismissed as competition that is far across the line. It dehumanizes humanity. Just as Hitler reduced the Eastern Europeans to less than human or the United States in Vietnam tried to portray the ‘commies’ as less than human it is wrong.”

The above is simply silly, and I will not dignify it with an answer except to say that you have proven to all reading this blog that you are a superior human being, and we, Neanderthals all, look to you with love radiating from our black hearts. John, comeback again when you have something more than moral preening to offer.