The age of apologies

[Hazir]

There's a difference between 'we weren't that nice to them' and 'mass depopulation, land theft and ethnic cleansing'.

And that's without even getting into the whole attitude to slavery over there.



I'm really going to enjoy seeing you try and justify this one.



I think the decision to issue/withhold repatriations or even just formal apologies will always be a political one. Even if there were a legal framework under which we could actually establish guilt liability it would be completely unenforcible against almost any state which were even slightly inclined to dispute or ignore the findings of this hypothetical court.

Did you ever hear about the Armenian Genocide? You could fill books about whether or not the genocide part in that is justifiable or a dangerous anachronism. The Turkish government takes the nomenclatura so serious because they fear very real legal repercussions from the acceptance of the term Genocide. If the Armenian Genocide would take on a meaning similar to that of the Holocaust it is very possible that Turkish interests would be attacked (with possible) success in court all over the world. Formal apologies are just as explosive, and for the same reason hardly anybody goes futher than expressing regrets about excesses in the past.

[Veldan Rath]

Native Americans are mostly screwed Lewk. For the most part the reservations are traps. They don't privately own the land, thus they can rarely develop it for individual uses. Casinos notwithstanding, I'm talking about private small enterprise. There are no jobs as they are mostly in remote locations and a lack of transportation to get anywhere.

They do not have it better aside from spotty access to modern medicine.

[GGT]

Do you have any evidence that they were on the verge of discovering technology and playing catch up with Europe? A simple truth is that the more technically advanced a society is the better the people are off. Would you rather have AC/Heat or not? Would you rather not have high rates of infant mortality? All of these point to the fact that their decedents are better off now due to intervention. Again - for the people living at the time that died due to disease, were driven from their homeland etc reparations, apologies and restitution would be appropriate. But they're all dead. If we look to their decedents their better off due to what happened so it makes little sense to provide them more than what we've already done.

Hell there are people in Poland who probably were alive in the 40s - they would probably be in line for shit from Germany and Russia far sooner than crap that happened 1904.

That's a fucked up interpretation of history AND technical advancements, with bad grammar/spelling. Where did you go to school?

[Lewkowski]

Native Americans are mostly screwed Lewk. For the most part the reservations are traps. They don't privately own the land, thus they can rarely develop it for individual uses. Casinos notwithstanding, I'm talking about private small enterprise. There are no jobs as they are mostly in remote locations and a lack of transportation to get anywhere.

They do not have it better aside from spotty access to modern medicine.

Nothing stops them from living elsewhere. Culturally the reservations ARE traps but its one that is easy to get out of.

[GGT]

Nothing stops them from living elsewhere. Culturally the reservations ARE traps but its one that is easy to get out of.

That's the kind of rhetoric that says if you don't like it here, go somewhere else. What a bunch of bull.

[Flixy]

That's quite an assumption; that the native Americans would have made no progress in the centuries that passed since they were driven from their homelands. Aside from the question of they should get something in return for the suffering of their ancestors, I think that saying that 'they are better off this way' is something in the same category as saying that Hitler was a great guy because he built the Autobahn and ended unemployment.

And completely skipping the fact that they'd probably be better off if they got the same progress through trade and cooperation rather than colonization. And Hitler could have built autobahns and ended unemploymemt without genocide.

[Veldan Rath]

Nothing stops them from living elsewhere. Culturally the reservations ARE traps but its one that is easy to get out of.

Did you manage the internet equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears?

NO MONEY, NO JOB, NO WAY TO GET TO A JOB, NO PROPERTY TO TAKE OUT LOAN ON.

I figured this would be easy for you to get as this is a direct failure of big government getting in the way of these people succeeding...to protect them from themselves.

[LittleFuzzy]

Did you manage the internet equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears?

NO MONEY, NO JOB, NO WAY TO GET TO A JOB, NO PROPERTY TO TAKE OUT LOAN ON.

I figured this would be easy for you to get as this is a direct failure of big government getting in the way of these people succeeding...to protect them from themselves.

Don't forget the frequent lack of so much as a high school diploma or GED.

[Veldan Rath]

Don't forget the frequent lack of so much as a high school diploma or GED.

I was getting bored with typing, then realizing I was dealing with Lewk...need to take my own advice it seems.

[Lewkowski]

Don't forget the frequent lack of so much as a high school diploma or GED.

Rather self inflicted by all accounts.

[LittleFuzzy]

Rather self inflicted by all accounts.

No, it's inflicted by the aforementioned crushing poverty, lack of transportation, etc. For instance, by treaty the federal government is supposed to pay for education on reservations. But they actually pay ~40% less per student than they do off the reservation.