The ability to live as one sees fit, free from unjust coercion from any party who seeks to inflict it; an abstract concept that Western nations have fought and died for over centuries. Who deserves liberty? Put simply, I think only those who are willing and able to fight for it, win it, and preserve it. Take, for example, the founders of America. Those who founded this country came from Western nations who already valued individual liberty relatively more so than other nations on the planet. They self-selected themselves out of the population to travel across an ocean to an undeveloped continent to carve civilization out of the wilderness. Basically, you had a brave, individualistic, entrepreneurial group of men and women voluntarily submitting themselves to a Darwinian social experiment in which only the strongest would survive. Of course these people weren’t going to submit to the rule of a monarch on another continent. They had the desire for liberty, the ability to take it, and that’s what they did. Of course, America came to include many different types of people. A later wave of immigrants than the people who founded this country weren’t all quite the frontiersmen as the founders. But most of them valued liberty and wanted to work hard and make a life for themselves in a free society. Good people from many different nations that would work to make this country great. Today, there are many people in America who value liberty, and many who don’t. If someone we elect as president wants to take our property and redistribute it, or confiscate our weapons, and we aren’t willing or able to resist it, then I say we don’t deserve that kind of liberty anymore.
You are discounting the influence of Native Americans on the colonists view of personal liberty. A lot of Europeans had a big problem with the egalitarian views of many of the northeastern tribes, and lamented that the Indians didn't know to heed to their betters. Franklin and other contemporaries wrote of the shocking levels of personal autonomy and anti-authoritarian natures of the natives. Would youthink that this did not affect the class structured colonists?
The sad part of this story is that Americans, and indeed much of the free world, has had it so good for so long that they have forgotten what a precious commodity Liberty truly is. Hence you have groups that want to restrict the right to bear arms, abortion choices, Confederate flags, etc., etc. Liberty is declining because of alot of stupid people who are clueless about what liberty and tolerance really mean.
This here... Nice sentiment, but for the most part, bullshit. If those colonists had been able to enforce their views and religions on their fellow Europeans, they never would have left. The colonists learned about freedom and autonomy from the Natives, not the other way around.
I'd argue that the Colonists learned more about freedom from the likes of John Locke and Adam Smith than from Chief Cornstalk. The writings of the Founding Fathers credit enlightenment philosophers far more than the damned dirty savage Indians. And to be perfectly fair, the upper crust of Colonial society also bitched about the lower classes not knowing their places.
yet oddly, when it came time for their rule, they had no problem restricting the freedom of others and enslaving those they considered inferior. and then THOSE people had to work for THEIR freedom. History repeats itself. All this happened before and will happen again. But will we be the tyrants or will we be the freedom fighters?
Mann's a revisionist, pure and simple. He actually argues that Indian technology was superior to the colonists as well, using examples such as the Indian short bow was a better weapon than a flintlock. Needless to say, this is complete bunk, because firearms didn't require the extensive training that bows did and therefore you could arm militia with them easily and have an expectation of success against Indian war parties. The Boston Tea party participants didn't dress up as Mohawks because they represented freedom for them. They did it to conceal their identities. I'm sure there's some sense of freedom for the colonist and appeal to the native way of life, but population pressures made them antagonistic from almost the beginning. For every Plymouth colony experience, there was a Jamestown. Certainly one of the major reasons there's so few remaining indigenous people in North America today is their lack of social organization which made greater degrees of complexity a reality. The 'noble savage' is largely a myth. They were people, just like any other. Just not particularly advanced, and they suffered terribly when they ran into those that were.
No, that would be disease. Most of the Americas were decimated by disease and famine long before most of the Europeans came ashore. As for North American indians lack of complexity, that is a testament to how free they were. Are you speaking of the sort of complexity that labors to build large temples and civic structures like their kin down south? "Complex societies" like the Aztec and Inca were largely totalitarian states, ruled with an iron fist, and oppressive to their neighbors. Free people for the most part don't bother with such things. Oh and nowhere did I say the savage was noble? I merely said he was unconstrained by the caste system that Europeans had known for so long. If you want to erect a "noble strawsavage" that's fine by me.
Sam Bradford, American Indian QB, helped liberate Texas Tech from the pressure of the national championship race last night.
Depends on who you believe. Diamond argued that in Guns, Germs and Steel, but I've seen scholarly works that the population estimates of anywhere from a fraction of the population of Europe to several times that. Certainly disease had a profound effect on the Aztecs and was one of the largest contributions to the fall of Tenochtitlan. Yes. It's Hobbes Leviathan writ large - governments take away freedoms to provide security. The problem is always the same - if you don't organize to protect yourself, someone else comes along and conquers you. Perhaps we've escaped that equation with the nuclear age, but I concur, the freedom of the native americans in North America prevented them from protecting themselves. I'd argue that you have to find a middle ground. Too repressive and you destroy the ability to create and defeat the political good which leads to the destruction of the government. Too permissive historically has meant the inability to organize and often technological stagnation. It's also really only been available to areas with low population. And these are the areas that are easily swallowed up by more organized, technological advanced societies. The real hope is a kind of social singularity, like Rodenberry and Banks project, were technological sophistication has absolved government of the need for strong structure to ensure the success of the populace. It's certainly a common theme in Mann's treatises, who you quoted as support for your arguments.
So the American colonists were all collectivists with no sense of individuality until the Indians taught them about individual liberty. Guess you learn something new every day.
No, they were caste bound puritan elitists who saw real liberty and freedom all around them, and it influenced their thinking, and European thinking, and eventually helped spur the American mindset. Unless you have some proof that the Northeastern tribes were totalitarian savages. If so, please share.
I think it was probably a combination of a number of things. In England, as early as the 1600s concessions were made (can't remember off the top of my head) to 'commoners' and how much control the aristocracy had over them.
Why would you advocate shooting someone for who they are - or might be? Mewakun, you have a lot to learn.
As I recall our forebears also looked to the Spartans of ancient Greece for ideas about democracy and liberty. But sadly we never adopted such things as an overnight trial of infant survival in the wilderness, although the colonist's equivelent of the helots were probably bummed that an underclass was kept (mainly blacks and chicks, I guess). I've read just a handful of books on subjects related to this (like Diamond's book mentioned by Demi), and I'm still on the fence whether the modern historical spin on amerindians is a more insightful and honest take on the subject or simply another case of revisionism borne of guilt. But it's a good thread. God, we may need them, but I can't stand the fuckin' wackaloo liberals.
If you're speaking of Mann, I hardly classify his argument as one of typical liberalism. His stance is that the inadvertent genocide due to the transfer of ordinary smallpoxes was unavoidable, as the natives had no immunity to them, and the Europeans had no idea they would be as deadly as they were. Plus the environmentalists dislike him for making the case that Native Americans were hardly innocent hippies living in concert with the land, the ecosystems were highly manipulated and managed, on a massive scale. The eden like Americas found by Europeans were largely due to the relative absence of natives and the subsequent over growth and over population of herds and flocks that had been highly sculpted by human hand. Hardly your standard environmentalist clap trap.
