This Land Was Stolen from Native Americans

I'm not going to accept the premise. True, the European colonials plundered, but to assume that the loss of material resources left other corners of the globe as permanent victims is ignorant of history. Rule of law, property rights, individual liberty, these are what enables a society to grow and prosper. There were two paths to take after shedding the shackles of colonial "oppression", one was to wallow in victimhood, the other was to embrace the better aspects of European society.

Material wealth does not guarantee prosperity. Russia is blessed with a bread basket that rivals anything in North America, yet their history is one plagued by tyranny and starvation. England is a rock in the North Atlantic, yet their influence will cast shadows over world history as much as the Roman Empire.

A belief that only material wealth can make a people great disregards the product of men's minds, it assumes that man is nothing more than an animal merely grazing upon a bountiful plain. Ironic for a self described non materialist such as Packard, don't you think?

No one could have summed it up better, 'flo.

On the contrary. WE didn't steal anything, Europeans did first, then the government did.

By contrast to that, the property rights that are foundational are PRIVATE property rights, not public property rights.

It cannot rationally be considered to reassign all property right to the original holder of those rights who first lost his property via violence.since the identity of said person, nor his actual descendents, can be identified.

Thus, the Native American, for instance, who pleads that his land was forciebly taken from him cannot demonstrate anything approching legal title (under the same reasoning as he makes his claim) in order to have standing.

Therefore, the situation is moot. All that can be ask of a government is to act in a manner consistant with it's existing laws and constitution (again, predicated on private property rights among other things).

I, for one, am open to the idea that the government, in the ninteenth century, failed to meet certain obligations which it agreed to in various treaties with native americans....and in those cases when it can be proven that the U.S. government was first in breech of said agreement, I would favor a just reconciliation of that matter, though in a manner which did not impact negatively on the rights of others.

But I think the twisting is yours when you imply that I or any of my ancestors "stole" the Chickisaw land on which I now live. The negotiated for it, settled the ownership of it in a treaty which resolved the disputes between the chicksaw nation and the government of the United States.

that is not theft. Even if the USG materially breached the terms of the treaty, it would not be theft as you use the term.

In point of fact, only that land which was seized by force, without legal agreement, from a landholder who was not in violent conflict with the subsequent landholder can be said to have been "stolen" outright.

And, when you narrow that to what was stolen directly by the U.S. government (i.e. if Alaska was stolen from the natives, it was stolen by Russia, not the U.S.) that's a pretty small segment of the territory now occupied by America.

That is equivilant to saying that since many many men were once slaves, no one is now entitled to freedom.

The fact that previous generations acted, even aquired wealth, in an immoral or unethical fashion in no way defines what is moral or ethical for you or I to do.

So? All government, or even lack of government, flows from "human convention". The manner in which Indian tribes were governed was "human convention".

some of these conventions CLAIM a "universal/divine constant" behind them. As "inalienable rights" as it were. But even inalienable rights become human convention when some group of humans RECOGNIZE their existance.

Just, again, as humans eventually recognized that slavery was "wrong".

If, in point of fact, slavery is wrong - it was wrong all along, even before we recognized it.
(If, otoh, it is a human convention, then if we decide to enslave all the illegals we would not be doing wrong, just changing our convention, no?)

Likewise, IF in point of fact, personal property rights ARE a universal constant, it is NOT necessary for human beings to have always RECOGNIZED that constant for it to have, nevertheless, existed.

The essential ellement of all human government is force. It might be latent or active, but force or the implication of potential force if it is needed is always there.

Thus, it's hardly a chink in the armor of libertarianism.

Yes. Now when a group says "Property rights are great, but they don't apply to Indians because of their culture.", then that group does not claim any kind of universal, divine or other constant behind such a right. Which in reverse means that if they want to introduce or defend such a right by human convention, they'll need a better reason than "it's just right!"

Agreed?

The hypothetical is that of Chaos Descending, and probably yours since you're defending it.

You have quoted right-makes-right several times in this very thread; and again, the hypothetical grandfather is Chaos', not mine.

And you still haven't answered your own question, although you've been loudly announcing there's an obvious answer for two pages now.

Famous last words.

I'm not sure I follow the question, so i will default to my previous example:

it is possible for a universal constant to exist and not be recognized by any or all human cultures, i.e. that slavery is wrong.

the lack of recognition of said truth does not render it less true, just less recognized.

Thus, the fact that many did not recognize in 1750 that slavery was wrong did not, in point of fact, make slavery a non-wrong.

Likewise, the fact that the Indians or any other culture did not recognize propert rights as a constant did not and does not render it otherwise.

It may, in theory, be true that private proerty rights isn't a constaant, but the fact that a given human culture at a given point in time did not recognize it as such is not in any way evidence for that point.

True and agreed.

Now please consider:

Position 1: Private property rights are not a constant, no universal moral imperative nor a divinely granted part of being human. They only exist by artificial consensus.

Position 2: Private property rights are a universal constant. Notwithstanding, some societies in history have failed to recognize them.

My point is that if you take Position 2, you can't deny Indians their rights just because they did not recognize their own rights. If you believe all humans have always had those rights, then you have to believe that they did, too.

Vice versa, that means that if you deny their rights on the basis that they did not recognize them, you're arguing for Position 1.

In your own parallel example of slavery, we wouldn't be justified to enslave a people just because they might have grown up in slavery and are unaware that they have the right to be free.

No doubt.

Now, consider this: The clear implication of this thesis is that it is unworkable to apply rights retroactively to the point in time or space where they were not recognized, to wit, it is impossible to justly reimburse the descendents of slaves for the wages due their ancestors and the wealth that might have subsequently accrued. It is an impossible calculation. the most you could do is a "feel good" band aid.

But yu can recognize that, on the whole, those who held slaves acted in accordance with the laws of the time and very often within the currently understood ethos on the matte.

So, to apply the same logic to the matter of private preprty rights and the Indians, one must recognize that, in regards to the U.S. Government...

and actions which pre-date the U.S. Government do not speak to the question of whether U.S. proerty was aquired inconsitantly with the U.S. private property ethos

...and her citizens, they acted within the laws as they existed (with a few excetions) and the prevailing ethos at the time. We must further recognize that, just as with slavery, the fact that our ethos on the subject has been more clearly refined and defined in such a ay as to call into question some applications of the previous understanding does not mean that it is wise, practical, or even possible to retroactively rectify the previous error in a just manner.


In short, the citizens and representatives of the U.S. government acted (in the great majority of cases) within the law and consistantly with the Consitutional doctrine of private prperty rights in their aquisition of native lands. Thus, as they understood the terms, it was not robbery.

(It is quite true that they materially breeched many of the treaties which acquired those lands at a later point (as did the Indians in many cases) but that is a seperate ethical question from whether or not the original agreement reflected the Constitution doctrine we are discussing. I conceed that these breechs may be used semanticly to infer the U.S. "stole" the land if you make the presumption that they never inteded to honor the terms of the treaty but knowingly defrauded the Natives.)

As if all that were not enough, someone nees to note that it is only VERY recently that anyone would have even entertained the notion that Constitutional Rights applied to non-citizens.

Thus, in a strictly constitutional view, whatever the Constitution said about the private property rights of american citizens, that would not apply at all to Indians, or to Mexicans for that matter. Not in the 18th and 19th or even most of the 20th centuries.

True, but nor can you abolish property rights until equilibrium has been reestablished. So as long as Europe continues to hold possessions that were taken from elsewhere...

In essence, property is here to stay. And anything should be fair game to be property, save for fellow human beings.

This is quite a good description of the rationalization behind the premise that "we stole it fair and square," but note that the argument goes both ways. If understandings can change with the passage of time, then there is nothing to prevent the continued evolution of such understandings to act so as to deprive property rights of their current meaning. Further, there is nothing to make current understandings any more legitimate than future ones with which they may be fundamentally incompatible. This is precisely why I say that the arguments of the nativists are no better than the arguments of progressives who desire to accommodate the actual needs of migrants as they correlate with the corresponding needs and ideals of this country.

Further, it is by no means an unalloyed truth that the idea of property was understood much differently in the past than it is now and it was, to the contrary, controversial among the contemporaries of those who took land from Native Americans to effectuate policies that had the effect of doing so.

Still further, and consistent with the above, there were many who opposed the government's policy of forced removal of the Cherokees even though conducted under the fig leaf of treaty.

(Excerpt)

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears

Certainly if we are craven enough to allow ourselves to become less free that is possible - it has certainly happened in human history before.

And if so, we will deserve our chains.

To those, such as so-called "illegal" immigrants, who would be able to benefit from a different conception of property or related rights and who are legally barred from doing so now, "liberty" would be greater for its evolution.

Shadow, I agree with all of what you've said except for this bit:

That's historically completely incorrect. In the original human rights discourse of ancient Athens, as well as in the modern French and Scottish (and somewhat Swiss) discourse that makes the background of American independence, and in the very texts both of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the US, individual rights are always defined as general HUMAN rights. In some cases, arts of humanity were not recognized as human or fully human, such as women in all those examples and Persians in most of the Attic writings, and many other examples; but the distinction of citizens vs. non-citizens was not usually used in this way. What you're describing is an extremely recent point of view -- not to be found in any mainstream outside of fascist propaganda earlier than 10 years ago, I would guess.

As applied in theactual appplication of United States law, there is a CLEAR distinction between citizens and non-citizens. For an example where such thinking produced a bad result, one need look no further than Dred Scott.

The rational that a non-citizen did not have legal standing to sue for Constitutional rights was not unique to that case.

Further, even in the case of citizens sometimes rights were suspended in times of crisis - i.e. the inernment camps during WW2.

It is true that the language employed speaks in ways which imply human rights. but the argument that the Constitution and Decleration actually MEAN "human rights" as a Universal (as opposed to that which the U.S. government seeks to recoognize and protect) is easily countered by the observation that the man who wrote (and those who signed their agreement to) "all men are created equal" did not, in fact, view the genders as equal, nor the various "races".

So you argue that in order to increase the material standing of others, we should volentarily make ourselves less free?

IF said people are in fact danaged by a poor interpretation of private property rights, they are so damanged by the decisions, actions, and philosophy of government which prevails in the land of their birth.

I therefore counsel these individuals to rise up, throw off the shackles which have held them so long in poverty in the land of their birth and establish a new dawn of personal liberty in that sunny land. In so doing, they will find that the same rights that they would have mitigated in our country are the very ones they dare not attempt to achive freedom without recognizing in their own.

OMG, are you all still talking about this?!? I always knew we should have just killed them all.

Exactly. The document's vocabulary makes that difference. But it does not apply that difference to the basic human rights it discusses. So, it deliberately does not apply that distinction to the issue of basic human rights.

...limits the obligation of American institutions to actively right any wrongs outside of the US' own citizenship, but does not limit acceptance that it must not violate such rights in dealings with others, or recognize violations of such rights.

In the next two paragraphs, you make two points about rights not being granted to citizens. I don't deny this; your second example is one I mentioned in my previous post. But I'm not sure why you're quoting examples where citizens did not enjoy individual rights to show that citizens do enjoy such rights while non-citizens do not.

^^
It illustrates that one cannot argue that the implication of the existance of "human rights" in the founding documents was understood by the founders as a recognition of an equality of rights between citizens and non-citizens.

Why on Earth would it illustrate that?

All men are equal; no mention of a distinction between citizens and non-citizens.

Women aren't equal; no mention of a distinction between citizens and non-citizens.

How does the second sentence imply that the text distinguishes rights for citizens from those for non-citizens?

Or are you saying that women aren't equal because they're somehow not considered citizens?

The fact is, however, that the Dred Scott decision was met with substantial outrage at the time.