The American Spectator : Misremembering History

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Misremembering History

By Mark Tooley on 9.23.09 @ 6:07AM

America’s “sordid history,” as memorialized in Taos, New Mexico.

It’s an article of faith for the secular and Religious Left that Western civilization is a pox upon the planet. According to this not-so-new mythology, the earth and its indigenous peoples were essentially good. But European civilization, corrupted by Christian Constaninianism, injected corruption, conquest and genocide into largely pristine cultures.

In 1990, the National Council of Churches infamously denounced the impending quincentennial of Christopher Columbus’ “invasion” of America, which brought only “slavery, genocide, theft and exploitation.” In earlier years, the church council, whose chief denominations had helped found the United States, had celebrated American democracy. But the NCC’s ideologues, like most of the Religious Left, no longer heed Christianity’s traditional understanding of humanity as fallen. In the preferred mythology, people are good but corrupted by “systems” primarily associated with capitalism, patriarchy, and the Church.

This stance recently surfaced in an op-ed for Evangelical Left Jim Wallis’ Sojourners by Julie Clawson, author of Everyday Justice: The Global Impact of Our Daily Choices. Clawson had visited Taos, New Mexico, where she vividly examined America’s “sordid history,” which has amazingly not been “completely hushed up.” She darkly surmised: “In most of the country it is easy to forget who we stole the land from, who we enslaved to build initial infrastructure, and who we oppressed on our path to becoming a ‘great’ nation.” But apparently the truth broke through in New Mexico.

Or at least Clawson’s fragmentary understanding of truth. She recalled attending an “emergent” (liberal evangelical) church gathering at Glorieta, New Mexico, where in 1846 the Mexican army had “made its last stand against the invading U.S. army” during the Mexican-American War, only to be “massacred” by Americans. In fact, the U.S. Army’s conquest of New Mexico was peaceful because the Mexican Army near Glorieta dispersed, never to reassemble, and fueling rumors that the Mexican commander was bribed.

“It puts things in perspective to know the history of the place — knowing who died so we could use a spiffy [church] retreat center,” Clawson sarcastically observed, apparently unaware that no casualties occurred there until another conflict, nearly two decades later, between Confederates and Unionists. In her truncated version of the Mexican-American War, she remembers New Mexico as the “land we stole.”

More specifically, Clawson presented a very jaded history of the U.S. response to a New Mexican uprising in the ancient village of Taos in 1847. She recounted that “after the U.S. took New Mexico, local Indians and Hispanics were fearful that the U.S. wouldn’t honor their ownership of the land and so staged a rebellion against the U.S. governor in Taos.” In this process, the governor “ended up dead,” though Clawson declined to explain how. The U.S. Army “moved quickly to quash the revolt.” During the U.S. attack, she explained, many villagers, including women and children as well as “some of the insurgents,” sought refugee in the Catholic church. According to Clawson’s remembrance, the “U.S. army burned them alive inside the church.”

Such a horrible scene recalls the episode in Mel Gibson’s The Patriot, when a sinister British officer encircles a colonial church and incinerates its unarmed and worshipping congregants. That scene was a fiction, and Clawson’s history is mostly fiction as well. The New Mexico governor was in fact scalped alive and then shot dead in his house, after an extended appeal to the insurgents at his door. His wife and children, with help from an Indian servant, and accompanied by Mrs. Kit Carson, had just escaped by digging through the house floor. The governor’s scalp (one account says his whole head) was paraded through the streets by gleeful insurgents, who also murdered the local judge, the sheriff, circuit lawyer and other Americans.

Then U.S. Army Colonel Sterling Price is better now remembered as a Confederate general in the Civil War, and maybe better still as the namesake of the cat owned by John Wayne, as Rooster Cogburn, in his Academy Award winning True Grit. After the atrocities at Taos, Price marched his force there. He had learned of the rebels’ plans to “murder all the Americans in Taos, together with those Mexicans who had either accepted office under the American Government or were favorable to Americans.” When he arrived, the dead Americans were “lying about the streets, mutilated and disfigured in every possible way, and the hogs and dogs were making a repast upon the remains.”

Mexican and Indian insurgents gathered into the ancient Taos Pueblo, with many of them in its church. Across three days, Price’s forces pounded the thick pueblo walls and church with cannon and explosives, eventually blasting through the church. One hundred fifty out of possibly 700 defenders were killed. There were about 50 casualties among the U.S. force of about 500, which also included some French traders and allied Mexicans. The next day, according to one account, the women among the defenders emerged with white flags, and a surrender was negotiated.

Unlike what Clawson learned during her emerging church convo in Taos, seemingly no authoritative histories claim that the U.S. Army torched a church full of women and children. The church at Taos, at part of a fortification, was full of armed insurgents and was pierced by cannon shell and manually thrown explosives. Insurgents, and their accompanying civilians throughout the fortified pueblo, later surrendered. A handful of the insurgents were tried and hanged for murder or treason, while several evidently were acquitted. The rebellion in New Mexico was squashed, never to be repeated. After conquering Mexico City, the U.S. ultimately paid more than $30 million to Mexico for the territories that later became New Mexico, Arizona and California.

These territories, like virtually everyplace on earth, were not new to conquest or savagery. In the 1840s, the Mexicans were still at war with Apaches and other Plains Indians. The Spanish had conquered the territory centuries before, from tribesmen who themselves had waged wars of annihilation against each other. But Clawson remembers only the U.S. conquest, guiltily recalling that she is “enjoying the benefits of past oppression” originating in “great evil.” Even some Indians in New Mexico thought it rude to remember “how the U.S. army massacred their people,” she noticed. But Clawson had “no choice but to confront the sins of our collective past.” In fact, she is a “huge fan of going to places where that history is in your face,” even though it is not “fun to visit the site of a massacre, or of a firebombing, or the Holocaust Museum.”

Condemning ancestors for their supposed moral inferiority can provide smug pleasure, no doubt, especially while attending a church conference. But moral smugness is not an accurate guide for history, especially when assuming, as many on the left do, that human evil virtually originated with Western civilization and reached its zenith under the United States.

About the Author

Mark Tooley is president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C. and author of Methodism and Politics in the Twentieth Century. You can follow him on Twitter @markdtooley.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (146) | Leave a comment Leave a comment

Trip Kersh| 9.23.09 @ 6:53AM

Excellent article. The Toas pueblo led a revoltled against the Spanish in 1680 and drove them out of New Mexico. The spanish reconquest of New Mexico in 1692 under de Vargas was much more brutal than the 1847 episode.

One point Glorieta is outside of Santa Fe not Toas. I am sure this convo was held at the Glorieta Baptist Conference Center.

Kevin, Meath| 9.23.09 @ 7:38AM

I love reading History as do many but unfortunately many people just want it to reinforce their own bias. They want a good guy - bad guy version of events, the world is and always was far more complicated. The film mentioned in the article 'The Patriot' is a case good guy 'Americans' bad guy Brits, the truth great deal more complicated.
It is true that Columbas' arrival changed the Americas and the world it brought "slavery, genocide, theft and exploitation." thats true but that was already there to some degree or another.
I am Welsh and who are they? they live in the western edge of Britain at one time they settled all of the island along with Gaels (Irish/Scots) and Picts (Basques). The Romans conquered (not peacefully) then intergrated but at the fall of the Roman empire tribes from todays Germany, Holland and Denmark invaded and the ancient Britons held out only in parts of the west places like Wales (means non foriegner in old english) Cornwall, Cumbria and southern Scotland. What happened to those Britons who lived 'Angleland', debatable slavery , aparthaid, genocide are all suggested as is simple assimulation. Why did the English invade? because their lands were under pressure from tribes in Eastern Europe, who inturn were being invaded from Central Asia who in turn etc.
Invasion, migration etc is how we populated the world.

loulou| 9.23.09 @ 9:20AM

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Europeans never practiced human sacrifice.

tioedong | 9.23.09 @ 8:53PM

actually they did, (especially the celtic tribes) but not similar to the massive sacrifice of the Indians.
The Romans, on the other hand, just went in for massacres and enslaving the survivors...which at the time was considered much more humane.

John Edwards| 9.24.09 @ 8:13AM

Ok, I'll correct you, because you are wrong. Ancient Germanic tribes would slay children andl drip their blood on the roots of ancient oak trees which housed forest spirits. Celts practices the burning of wicker men, large human-shaped structures built of wood in which animals and humans were entrapped (e.g. see the movie "The Wicker Man".) Norse people would burn their dead kings along with their living queens. There is more, but that should be enough blood for now.

Jay Pitsby| 9.25.09 @ 12:19AM

loulou is no doubt talking about Christian Europe not pagan Europe. (Pagans!? Hmmmm!)

And don't you owe you wife a public apology for the affair with Rielle? You ought to be ashamed of yourself!

Happy Feder| 9.23.09 @ 10:26AM

The comments of Clawson remind me of a dinner party we shared with some liberal friends. One of them went off the deep end about how "we" stole this land from the Indians. She was very specific, too, referring to the tribe that once lived in the valley where she now owned a home. On and on about how terrible "we" were to the Indians, and still are. I suggested that if she was that concerned, the proper moral course would be to turn the title of her house and land over to the tribe and leave. Quit stealing from these Indians, I said. Do the right thing! This put a pall on the conversation. I was never invited back.

Lu| 9.23.09 @ 10:42AM

It always amazes me to see all that is wrong with the world is America's fault. Let's see, America has been in around for about 300 years, but everything that is wrong over centuriers is ALL our fault. If all these people that hate these country would just leave we would all be better off.

Pingback| 9.23.09 @ 10:44AM

The History Killers | Patriotic Dissent links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:

…Immigration Liberal Insanity Obama Obamacrats Obamaflation Obamanomics Obamunism Patriots Politics Puffed up Hubris Thugocracy Uncategorized The History Killers Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009 Misremembering History It’s an article of faith for the secular and Religious Left that Western civilization is a pox upon the planet. According to this not-so-new mythology, the earth and its indigenous peoples…

ejp| 9.23.09 @ 11:10AM

I have a standard answer for whenever a leftist rails on the evils of America stealing the "historic lands" of the Indians, and that's to ask them when in the interests of consistency are they going to with equal fervor demand the expulsion of Islam from the "historic lands" of Byzantine Christianity.

Victor| 9.23.09 @ 8:01PM

Don't hold your breath asking O-Bah-Ma why he is Hell-Bent on giving the so-called palestinians land they have no right to have in the first place.
Oh wait, that's why he is in favor of giving houses to those who have no right to own a house.

Peter McGrath| 9.23.09 @ 11:21AM

This strain of anti-western bias has its genesis in antipathy to Judeo-Christian principles.

Tim| 9.23.09 @ 12:08PM

years and years ago some guy who looks like you killed and robbed. Therefore you are responsible for paying another person who looks like one of that guy's vicitms.
Plus a small shipping and handling fee for the selfless radicals who cooked this grift up...

kingsmill| 9.23.09 @ 12:19PM

The self-hatred, at the root of this mentality, was brilliantly analyzed (and ridiculed) by two late, now nearly forgotten, philosophers of Western decline, Malcolm Muggeridge and James Burnham.

Bilwick| 9.23.09 @ 12:47PM

There's a bumper sticker, "If you want to disarm me, why would I trust you?" I find this a good thing to remember when trusting Leftist historiography. A political movement whose founders belived that there is no truth but "revolutionary truth" isn't one I'm going to expect accurate reportage from, either in newspapers or television, or in history books.

Gill O’Teen ✝✡| 9.23.09 @ 1:06PM

loulou, I cannot point to anything specific but I recall reading something years ago, before my stroke, that there is some archaeological evidence that some of the European lake-dweller cultures did practice human sacrifice. Such victims have, supposedly, been found in the peat bogs of those regions. Keep in mind that human sacrifice is an ancient solution to the ‘what to do with the POWs since we don’t need any more slaves especially since trained warriors are rather feisty and too ugly for bed-warmers’ problem.

Years ago, also before the stroke, I read an account of the ‘45, Bonnie Prince Charlie’s failed attempt to reclaim the British Crown forfeited by his grandfather. Supposedly, The Duke of Cumberland’s victorious soldiers in their fervor to stamp out all evidence of Highland culture, made a funeral pyre out of a local kirk containing some of the villagers. When I watched Gibson’s flick, I thought the writer of the screenplay might have borrowed that episode from over a century ago in order to tell a more gripping tale. I have heard of similar events being told about other tyrants and other wars.

We must remember that history is written by the winners, and right now that would be those who don’t think anything is a fact unless they say it is.

Open the pumps. NOW!

Gill O’Teen ✝✡
gill.Oteen07041776@gmail.com
Don’t Tread on Me!!

S.L. Toddard| 9.23.09 @ 1:16PM

"I cannot point to anything specific but I recall reading something years ago, before my stroke, that there is some archaeological evidence that some of the European lake-dweller cultures did practice human sacrifice. Such victims have, supposedly, been found in the peat bogs of those regions."

This is true. The Gauls were alleged to have practiced human sacrifice, and the bog bodies in Northern Europe show possible evidence of human sacrifice.

Al Adab| 9.23.09 @ 2:13PM

Gill:
Absolutely, open the pumps now. The Gov. of California should proceed with his national guard to reconstruct the sources and resupply the water. That event could be the catylist for a restoration of Tenth amendment rights and Liberty for us all. If not that action, some other, somewhere will surely come.

Kevin, Meath| 9.23.09 @ 2:46PM

The 'Celts' practiced human sacrifice and every so often a body (or part of) is uncovered preserved in a peat bog. The 'Celts' believed water features to be gateways to the gods. The unfortunate may have been a 'gift' to the gods or a messenger. They may well have believed they were going to paradise and been happy about their 'journey'. Whether they were POW's can not be known but by the physical condition they appeared to be high status. The Romans claimed the celtic priests ,Druids, sacrificed ,very nastily, Roman prisoners. This may be true but history is written by the winner and the Romans wished to show themselves as civilised and the Celts as 'savages. They stopped in the practice in mainland Britain and it may have carried for awhile in Ireland.
As for the burning of the villagers I read that if the incident happened at all, it was only of dead villagers not live ones you could wonder how they died, and was actually done by revolutionary troops and was in the origional script but was changed 'for the sake of clarity'.

S.L. Toddard| 9.23.09 @ 1:12PM

"It's an article of faith for the secular and Religious Left that Western civilization is a pox upon the planet. According to this not-so-new mythology, the earth and its indigenous peoples were essentially good. But European civilization, corrupted by Christian Constaninianism, injected corruption, conquest and genocide into largely pristine cultures."

As much as this sounds like a simplification, it's simply true. There's no question about it. And Anglo-derived culture is despised especially, even beyond the rest of the West.

What's worse - they've won. Their self-hatred combined with their fantasies of egalitarianism (if anything is inarguably true it is that people are wildly divergent in ability and character, and that the only equality that does, can, or should exist is equality before the law) have led to immigration policies that have guaranteed the extinction of the West. Europeans and their descendants once made up 33% of the world's population. They now make up something like 9%, I believe. Most Western countries will cease to be Western in population and culture some time this next century - and sooner for us here in America.

2Anglico| 9.23.09 @ 2:15PM

And one other time the evil Americans took the capital of Mexico (can you say "Halls of Montezuma"?), and then, like most conquerers in history, gave it back. Yeah, America sucks.

Charles Perry| 9.23.09 @ 9:16PM

Under what is laughingly called international law, after defeating Mexico we could have done anything we wanted with it: turn it into a colony, seize as much property as we wanted, impose reparations. Instead, we demanded that Mexico give up its claims to Texas (which had already won its independence and had a signed treaty to prove it) and sell us New Mexico, California and the adjoining territories. Tell me, what imperialist conqueror has ever said, "Bwah-hah-hah-hah! Now we have you! We demand that you take this money!"
I remember this whenever Aztlan activists insist that we "stole" California from Mexico.

ARealist| 9.23.09 @ 2:22PM

Here's an idea;

all those folks whose ancestors are from Europe and believe that Western Civilization is a pox upon the earth can lead by example and kill themselves, their parents and their children and other close evil relatives.
First, however, they must deed over all their assets and property to the "indigenous" folks who suffered injustices committed by their great-great grandparents.
In this manner we can rid the world of those evil beings of European ancestry.

Ray| 9.23.09 @ 2:28PM

Human atrocities predate Human history, let alone European history. There is archeological evidence that things like Human sacrifice dates back more than 10,000 years, long before "Anglo-derived culture," or any other culture for that matter, even existed. So to place blame on America for the atrocities that humanity has practiced for tens of thousands of year is absurd. ALL cultures have performed atrocities sometime in their past. There are NO exceptions as this is a Human trait, not a cultural trait..

It is also true that most "cultures" have "disappeared", have changed over time. Even some of the oldest "cultures", like China, has changed so much over the centuries that we hardly recognize them any more.

As any observer of history will understand, ALL cultures follow a repeatable, predictable path, one of assent and decline. Some cultures even experience a resurgence, yet fall into decline at a later date. To claim that one or more culture is "at fault" for the decline of another is to deny basic human traits themselves, like the human trait of social, cultural change occurring naturally over time.

Cultures adopt to the environment that sustains them, just like every thing else. When that environment changes, so does the culture it sustains.

No one culture can be blamed for the decline of another, for that decline is a NATURAL process, one which occurs to EVERY culture. Just ask the Hunter-Gatherer culture about that, if you can find any remnants left of that ancient culture.

Big Leo| 9.23.09 @ 2:53PM

The relationship between the European settlers, chiefly Anglo, in what is now the United States and the Indians is far more complicated than simplistic self-haters like SLT would admit. The first 'massacres' in the newly-settled Eastern states were by Indians on the settlers. The Pequot War in the 1670's and the Jamestown Revolt of the 1620's all began when the Indians fell on the civil population without warning and murdered up to a third of them in Jamestown and a large but undetermined number in New England. The biggest massacres since then were by Indians on whites, not the other way around.

An example is the history of Pennsylvania. I am of the original settlers. We had eighty years of peace because we bought the land at fair prices and protected the Indians. Our farm had an agricultural Indian village on one side of it. Then, Indians with no title who had never lived there were recruited first by French and later the British to drive out the settlers AND the native Indians. Over a thousand settlers, including some of my ancestors, were murdered. We responded by sending an army into Iroquois territory and burning their villages. The burning of the villages is remembered today-- the legion of peaceful settlers tortured and murdered by the Indians is not.

Big Leo| 9.23.09 @ 3:10PM

Another comment on Stoddard's self hatred- - the basic decency, freedom, and prosperity of a society is directly correlated to the degree that it has adopted Western humanistic and Christian values. The degree to which it has rejected them is the degree to which it is unfree, cruel, and poor. This applies from everything from the treatment of animals to freedom of expression.

S.L. Toddard| 9.23.09 @ 6:14PM

Uh... are you a crazy person? My entire post criticizes Liberal hatred of the West and Anglo cultures in particular, and ruefully notes ("what's worse") that their philosophy will end in the extinction of European peoples and culture.

Learn to read.

Alan Brooks| 9.23.09 @ 11:21PM

No, Todd, you are all over the road-- you are too ambitious.
To be conservative you have to cut it back. Nothing wrong w/ you, though.
WRONG BLOG

Alan Brooks| 9.23.09 @ 11:25PM

Conservatism is-- or was-- embodied in Coolidge, he wasn't all over the verbal map like Todd.

S.L. Toddard| 9.24.09 @ 7:52AM

If I have been inconsistent, please point out where and I will redress it.

Liberal Reader| 9.23.09 @ 4:08PM

Tooley --

Doubtless there are people on the left who make zany historical claims.

However, it is simply not true that a belief on the left prevails that western civilization is somehow the originator of evil on earth or that civilization is somehow inherently corrupt or evil.

You are making a mistake conservatives often make. You are mistaking CRITIQUE of a culture -- that is, an analytic study of its limits, blind spots, weaknesses and so on -- for a CONDEMNATION of western culture.

There's a big different. Liberal study demands that we rigorously examine the full historical context of something like western expansion -- why it was carried out, whom it affected, and so on -- without recourse to over-idealizing myths (Manifest Destiny) or knee-jerk condemnation. The idea is to UNDERSTAND history better. That process is often -- understandably, I guess -- mistaken for a kind of slanderous judgment or condemnation by conservatives.

Margie| 9.23.09 @ 6:33PM

LibRead~ "You are making a mistake conservatives often make. You are mistaking CRITIQUE of a culture -- that is, an analytic study of its limits, blind spots, weaknesses and so on -- for a CONDEMNATION of western culture."

Yeah right. You mean like Julie Clawson's analytic study? Nice try, but what you say is laughable.

Victor| 9.23.09 @ 8:33PM

Dear Simple Reader,
"Liberal study demands that we rigorously examine the full historical context of something like western expansion -- why it was carried out, whom it affected, and so on -- without recourse to over-idealizing myths (Manifest Destiny) or knee-jerk condemnation. The idea is to UNDERSTAND history better. "

There's nothing wrong with reading and understanding history as long as that's what it is.
It's when you decide to do something about it such as "rectifying" past wrongs and punishing those in the present for things done in the past.
Take slavery for instance. Slavery existed in the United States for only 76 years, but we are now being told by some that we need to pay for this with reparations.
Obama believes we should make "serious investments" to settle this issue.
There are people in this country whose ancestors were enslaved in other countries and they should pay for something that happened 100 to 200 years ago? Slavery is still going on in the Sudan and other parts of Africa. You should be getting upset over that and not something that went on 200 years or so ago, eh?
That is just one "remedy that you guys have come up with. What about giving the Southwest back to the Mexicans?

Belloc| 9.23.09 @ 4:54PM

Liberal study? Liberals don't study history they re-write and revise history.

Libs take their ideological bearings in the current moment and then read back into history. They choose the good and bad guys from their ideological pre-conceptions and construct their "historical" model.

It's called the Whig Interpretation of History. Herbert Butterfield wrote a classic little book on the subject, for those studiers out there.

Ken (Old Texican)| 9.23.09 @ 5:05PM

Liberal reader
Shut up and read!

You are so absolutely ignorant of real history, why not just shut up and learn something?

Manifest destiny led to you having a voice at all.
If it were not for the US of A, you would be just another peasant following a mule's butt plowing a corn field.
Hmmmmm. On the other hand, screw USA. We would not have you dissing the people that fed you.

Mike| 9.23.09 @ 5:42PM

So Liberal Reader

The idiotic antics such as refusing to celebrate Columbus day, or worse, teaching children that he was an evil wretched cuss is just a crtique of history in order to understand it better?

This is just an imediate example of the left's bastardization of history that sprung to mind. Given some time and research I am sure I could create a post full of examples that would rival the anti-semite's posts in length.

Mike Johnston
SFC USA(RET)

Liberal REader| 9.23.09 @ 6:29PM

Mike --

Your reply at least was sane, so I'll respond in kind.

While there are some groups who oppose Columbus day, and while some teachers perhaps go overboard in their condemnation of Columbus, I am not aware of children being taught that he was "an evil wretched cuss."

Columbus was also not blameless or morally pure. His treatment of natives at times was horrendously cruel -- just read his own journal entries about it -- as was, obviously, the treatment of natives by many European explorers and conquerors.

I do not believe that students should be taught to revile figures like Columbus; I also don't think that the people who suffered as a result of European colonization ought to be silenced either.

A sound education in history explores these issues in all their complexity. History is NOT ideological training; it is NOT an opportunity to indoctrinate students to believe in American "exceptionalism" or in any jaundiced theory of American culpability.

S.L. Toddard| 9.23.09 @ 6:51PM

LR, it's obviously an exaggeration to say that Liberals think evil did not exist before the rise of Europe. And even my statements above were unfair generalizations - I should have qualified them more. But there is and has been an obvious tendency amongst Liberals to denigrate Western culture while romanticizing non-Western cultures. The fight to discredit "Eurocentrism" and all its attendant sub-battles, the tendency to blame every contemporary societal ill of every non-Western people on Western colonialism, the long battle to discredit the study of "Dead White Males", the discrediting of the Founding Fathers as nothing more than slaveholders who didn't want to pay their taxes etc.

Now, it is too much of a generalization - an unfair one - to say that "Liberals believe" this and that. But there is an undeniable undercurrent to the general Liberal worldview that manifests itself in myriad ways - some of them mentioned by me above, some by others - that indicates this bias against Western culture. It is related in some way to the disease of "white guilt".

If you simply don't recognize what I'm talking about then you won't see it, no matter how much we go on.

S.L. Toddard| 9.23.09 @ 6:56PM

And that's to say nothing of the long fight, waged from the left, to replace Europeans and their descendants with non-Westerners in their own countries. Americans of traditional American culture will soon be a minority in their own country, replaced by third-worlders, largely Latinos. That this does not bother the left at all - that they fight to continue and accelerate this process - is truly inarguable proof of that tendency. Their own cultures will go extinct, and they fight to *hasten* the process, caring more about non-Westerners than the existence and sovereignty of their own people.

Margie| 9.23.09 @ 6:38PM

Hey LibRead, you say this:
"A sound education in history explores these issues in all their complexity. History is NOT ideological training; it is NOT an opportunity to indoctrinate students to believe in American "exceptionalism."

~ I have a question for you. Do YOU think America is exceptional? A simple yes or no answer, please.

S.L. Toddard| 9.23.09 @ 6:59PM

Every country is by definition "exceptional", since there is only one of them.

Margie| 9.23.09 @ 7:26PM

Ha! Nice way to weasel! My goodness what a product of the Lib school you are. OK~ let me try and put it another way. Do you think the U.S.A. is the best country on the face of the earth?

Margie| 9.23.09 @ 7:44PM

LibReader=Toddard.

S.L. Toddard| 9.24.09 @ 7:30AM

The best at what?

Victor| 9.23.09 @ 8:43PM

Dear Slo Todd,
We are not talking about any other country, but this one, and you, like that Man in the White House, cannot or will not say that the United States is Exceptional. The Founders created this nation to be just so, the Beacon of Freedom and the Light to the World.
Too bad you don't think so. And neither does he.
I've never heard him say how glad he is to be an American or that he cannot imagine being anywhere else. That's why everyone is coming to America, to escape their own hell-hole.
Too bad some want to turn it into the same thing they left behind.
Here's a typical speech by the One:
''crap crap sorry sorry america suck crap''
And now he gave this speech to the I.T.T.U:
the International Thugs and Tyrants Union.

S.L. Toddard| 9.24.09 @ 7:32AM

"you, like that Man in the White House, cannot or will not say that the United States is Exceptional."

What are you talking about? I noted above that every country is exceptional - that includes the US. So, yes, the US is exceptional. Just like Libya and Lichtenstein.

Margie| 9.24.09 @ 12:15PM

Toddard answers:
"What are you talking about? I noted above that every country is exceptional - that includes the US. So, yes, the US is exceptional. Just like Libya and Lichtenstein."

-Spoken like a true Leftist. Hey, and "everything's relative", too, right Toddard?

S.L. Toddard| 9.24.09 @ 12:31PM

I'm sorry, but you simply cannot argue with my statement. Every nation is by definition "exceptional" - that is categorically true.

Margie| 9.24.09 @ 3:35PM

Right, oh slithering one, and by your definition of moron we'd all have to be one because you are, I suppose.
Do you actually get paid for this blather by the Leftist website you come from called The American Conservative? Or do you get paid by Obama?

Liberal Reader and Toddard are one in the same, heads up all.

A.J. Nock| 9.23.09 @ 7:17PM

The goal of education theory is not to arrive at "truth". Truth is the product of rejected metaphyics.

Modern education is a process of adjusting the child to the social construct.

The left's social construct is materialist and egalatarian. Therefore, history must be arranged and filtered to fit into the desired leftist social vision.

It is pure ideology and the student is the play dough.

Margie| 9.23.09 @ 7:52PM

" The goal of education theory is not to arrive at "truth". Truth is the product of rejected metaphyics."

~My goodness, if education isn't about teaching the truth to your students, then it is useless. Truth is Truth. Everyone knows what it is. At least God made man with the ability to begin with, but they like to play games. But~ " Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions. Ecc. 7:9

Mike| 9.23.09 @ 7:30PM

Liberal Reader

Your comment about history not being a place to indoctrinate about American Exceptionalism is exactly my point. It is not taught at all and it is a fact that our history is full of examples of that exceptionalism.

When I was in school I was taught about American exceptionlism. I was taught about the marvelous accomplishments of Columbus. I was also taught things such as the massacre at Wounded Knee and some of the problems with Columbus (BTW don't judge him by our current world view 500 years refined).

My son was taught the latter but not the former in school and thus history misremembered. There is no doubt in my mind that the liberal establishment hates Western Civilization and would love to see it's downfall and are actively attempting to bring that about.

Mike Johnston
SFC USA (RET)

Liberal Reader| 9.23.09 @ 9:02PM

Mike -

If America truly is "exceptional," then that exceptional quality need not be advertised in history class.

America is indeed a magnificent country; our history is fascinating, complex, and rich.

To see American history as one long chain of unmitigated goodness is very very un-American: that's how Russians used to be taught to view the Soviet Union.

In America, you will have recognized, we don't go in for that sort of thing. You all can propagandize yourselves in a big circle jerk listening to right wing radio, but in school we talk about REALITY, and in history class we talk about what HAPPENED, what men and women actually did -- NOT what we wish they did.

S.L. Toddard| 9.24.09 @ 7:59AM

That's not entirely true and you know it. For a long time Columbus was taught to be a Hero, now he is taught to be a genocidal maniac. Which is the truth? What HAPPENED?

Mike| 9.24.09 @ 9:43AM

Liberal Reader you wrote:

To see American history as one long chain of unmitigated goodness is very very un-American: that's how Russians used to be taught to view the Soviet Union.

It should be clear from my post that I agree with you on this point. I was taught both good and bad. The massacre at Wounded Knee is an indictment on all that was wrong with American Indian policy in the 19th Century.

However to paraphrase your comment: to see American as one long chain of unmitigated wrongness is un-American: that's how Russians used to be taught to view the Soviet Union.

The only difference being in the USSR the establishment was teaching propaganda about how good the Soviets were and here the liberal establishment is pushing propaganda on how bad Western Civ (read America) is. They are both doing it for their own purposes of controlling the masses.

You also wrote: but in school we talk about REALITY, and in history class we talk about what HAPPENED, what men and women actually did -- NOT what we wish they did.

This I also agree with and wish it was true. If we honestly teach what happened we will teach American Exceptionalism. I do not just wish that America is an exceptional nation it is a fact. If I take your comment at face value you do not believe that America is an exceptional nation. You believe that seeing America that way is just wishful thinking.

I don't believe we should teach that all was good and bright and shiny in the past for that would be a lie. Pick up a text book on American History or Western Civ and you can read page after page of what you know is simply not true.

Mike Johnston
SFC USA (RET)

philfl63| 9.23.09 @ 8:05PM

As Dan Ackroyd would have said, "Julie, you ignorant slut!"

Big Leo| 9.23.09 @ 9:48PM

Of course I believe in American exceptionalism. If America wasn't a marvelous land of promise, we'd have been pretty stupid to risk our lives coming here, wouldn't it?

We've contributed more to the freedom and prosperity of the world in the years since our founding than any other nation. Pretty exceptional, wouldn't you say?

Liberal Death Wisher| 9.23.09 @ 11:05PM

"America must be exceptional only in recognition of her guilt. We cannot be a guidepost to the world.We must be scorned and suffer for our sins. This guilt must overwhelm us so America can not act. Our country must become like a gigantic faculty lounge of a massive, state university, where our citizens gaze at their navels in abject despondency for their past crimes. Only then will the rest of the world accept us." The BHO Doctrine

Alan Brooks| 9.23.09 @ 11:45PM

you got it.

we must make everyone feel special in class.

(except whites)

Robert Rosencrans| 9.24.09 @ 5:56AM

Julie Clemson sounds like she could find a home in Obama's cabinet. The official title would be Bitch Slap America in the Face Czar.

Pingback| 9.24.09 @ 6:45AM

The American Spectator : Misremembering History links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:

…has amazingly not been “completely hushed up.” She darkly surmised: “In most of the country it is easy to forget who we stole the land … Read the rest here: The American Spectator : Misremembering History Related posts: The American Spectator : AmSpecBlog : Rewriting History: The … …123 Show more Authors associated with spectator.org the_spectator The_Spectator philipaklein... The…

John Edwards| 9.24.09 @ 8:33AM

It is morally vapid for anyone to enjoy the benefits of a conquered land, all the while smuggly chastising the morality of the past that brought them the land on which they squat their fat asses!

LogicalUS| 9.24.09 @ 10:08AM

Most of the haters are as ignorant of history as they are of human nature.

The two questions which I always have asked which shuts them up or sends them into a rage of insults for exposing their idiocy is:

1) Who gave this land to a particular tribe?

and

2) If the Native Americans were living such a utopia world of eco-bearhugging and love could YOU please explain why their societies were set up on warrior caste basis in which the men were prized for bravery in battle and boys were not considered men until they proved this bravery?

The truth is that these people were a backwards society which lived in submission to their surroundings. And the many small groups were fighting constantly amongst themselves plue they remained small due to the harshness of their lives and the inadequacies of their society for providing a healthy lifestyle for its members.

The hippies in the 60's who started the communes learned that despite the romanticism a nomadic life is brutally hard. Food is not always plentiful and often subject to the whim of nature.

Complete fantasy created by morons.

kingsmill| 9.24.09 @ 11:56AM

Absolutely correct.

This romanticizing of primitive peoples began in earnest with Rousseau. The unsatisfied, yearning western aristocrats and artists projected an innocent utopia onto the native tribes.

However, for most of these tribes life was "nasty, brutish and short". They lacked any notion of property rights and could not organize their societies to prevail against the Europeans.

The crime was not endemic to European civilization. The crimes against native peoples were individual and particular atrocities.

The native peoples would have dominated the Europeans, if they had developed the cultural and material resources. And without the cultural experience of Christianity, their atrocities would have been much greater.

Liberal Reader| 9.24.09 @ 12:12PM

kingsmill --

You are right to point to Rousseau as an important figure in this discussion. (Rousseau, it turns out, is an important figure in almost any discussion.)

However, he was not the first to do this; Thomas More engaged in a similar "yearning" at the dawn of the English Renaissance, for example. Hobbes, whom you cite, was NOT referring to tribal life when he made his famous quote; he was positing life in a "state of nature" without strictures of government or custom.

Generalizing about life among "tribes" is not very useful; however, life expectancy in the Americas before the arrival of Europeans was almost certainly higher than it was in European cities.

Violence is endemic to human life, of course, but there is no evidence to suggest that tribal life is MORE violent than "civilization."

Remember too that much of the suspicion to the values of western civilization has arisen in an intellectual context conditioned by two world wars and the Holocaust, events that could not have been carried out by Amazon tribes (even though fascist "tribalism" played an enormous role in them).

kingsmill| 9.24.09 @ 12:46PM

L.R.

Incorrect. More's exercise in the "Utopia" was in line with classical political philosophy, like Plato's "Republic". It was a "city in speech".

Rousseau's project was much different. It was a complete break from classical political philosophy-an attempt to create an actual city by means of "feeling", by means of a transformation in the psyche of Western consciousness. Utterly different.

Your ability to project life expectancy of native Americans as opposed to European city dwellers is unverifiable, and has not been attempted by modern demographic research.

European cities survived and flourished into the 21st century. Tribal life is a novelty and curiosity that is restricted to a minute portion of the globe.

There is no way to account for the slaughter engaged in tribe on tribe in the long history proceeding the arrival of Europeans to America. The violence of Europeans has been historically documented and can be subjected to moral reasoning.

The experience of the two world wars and their progeny, Fascism and Communism, were breaks from the Christian inheritance of Western Civilization. Hitlerism was marked by a radical hatred of Christianity. Communism was an ideological deformation that wiped away Christian transcendence and attempted to impose the eschaton on earth. These two ideological deformations, Fascism and Communism, cannot be projected back onto 16th, 17th and 18th century Europeans.

Liberal Reader| 9.24.09 @ 1:24PM

kingsmill --

I'm attempting to establish radio contact to the Land of Oversimplification, a primitive region of the jungle where you are being held captive by pagan head hunters.

It is true Rousseau's philosophy was incredibly original; you don't need to lecture me on Rousseau. But More's project DID find an innocence and child-like wisdom in non-European people. It's true that More was looking back to Plato, but he, like Bacon, and many other writers of utopian visions, was also entertaining a common fantasy that the Golden Age was available outside the confines of civilization, law, courts, and so on.

To say that "Fascism and Communism...were breaks from Christian inheritance" is not entirely acceptable. To manage that claim you have to simplify and reduce all these terms so much that it's virtually pointless to use them anymore.

Fascism's immediate historical, sociological context is Christian, western Europe; the anti-Semitism that fueled Nazism was endemic to Christianity for millenia, although it's transformation in Germany into a national death cult was extremely radical.

Marxism, when viewed structurally, is nothing but a recapitulation of Christian eschatology: to say it is simply a break from Christianity is ludicrous. The ideals and concerns of Marx and his followers were deeply imbrued by Christian values and experience.

Your view of what is "Christian" is amazingly impoverished if you think it is only represented by -- say -- Thomas Jefferson (who was NOT a Christian) and the cast of the 700 Club.

kingsmill| 9.24.09 @ 1:47PM

Your reversion to polemical name calling is a mark of the ideological non-thinker. But in the interests of enlightening the non ideologue, who may happen on this post...

More was reasoning in line with classical political philosophy. Rousseau was a break from that tradition. He moved from reasoning in speech to praxis. He was a founder of modern natural right. Your survey course references to More and Plato are shallow.

You have a few slogans, but you can not plume any depth. Orwell's definition of the ideologue : "thinks in slogans, talks in bullets", comes to mind.

If you could break from your closed, ideological bubble, you might have recourse to the seminal works of Voegelin, Brinton, von Balthasar and de Lubac among others, on the radical break represented by Fascism and Communism from Christianity. You might augment your "liberal study of history" with something of a bit more philosophical heft along these lines.

Your reference to to the 700 club is idiotic and is meaningless to a pre-Reformation Christinan, like myself.

Liberal Reader| 9.24.09 @ 2:36PM

kingsmill --

Who's name-calling?

My references to More and Plato are "shallow"?

Well, kingsmill, this isn't a philosophy seminar, and I'm not being paid to deliver lectures.

My point was constrained and narrow: Rousseau was NOT the first person to "romanticize" tribal life. It is simply a fact.

Fascism is not MERELY a rejection of Christianity; nor is communism. To contend that it is so is reductivism, and I won't have it. You can list all the book authors you want; it is still intolerably simplistic to make such a claim.

kingsmill| 9.24.09 @ 3:15PM

1." Land of Oversimplification, a primitive region of the jungle where you are being held captive by pagan head hunters". Not name calling, must be deep thought?

2. Rousseau is the philosophical father of modern revolution. More was a thinker in line with classical political philosophy and Christian reflection. The fact that he recognizes the existence of "innocence" is meaningless, and has nothing to do with my original point. The ideology of historicism, is at issue, and Rousseau is relevant, not More.

3. Seminar? Lectures? Hardly, there is no there, there. The line for refunds would bankrupt the online university.

4. Again, Rousseau was the influence behind the fascination with primitive existence and the larger point about historicism. Your point was "Contrained and narrow"....more importantly, it is meaningless.

5. Non-responsive. Didn't say it was "merely rejection of Christianity". They are ideological deformations, important word that, means they grew up organically within Christian cultures, in opposition to Christian root teachings. Have you lectured, badly, on Nietzsche yet?

6. The scientism of Hitlerism and Communism could due with more fleshing out in your next course. The scientistic racism of Hitler and the fatuous scientism of Communist ideology have roots in modern science, not the caricature of Christianity you label as 700 club.

The derailment of true scientific reflection is central in these ideologies, and that root festers in modern thought. Cut the polemics for a nanosecond and think about it.

Margie| 9.24.09 @ 3:41PM

"Fascism is not MERELY a rejection of Christianity; nor is communism. To contend that it is so is reductivism, and I won't have it. You can list all the book authors you want; it is still intolerably simplistic to make such a claim."

Lol!!! YOU won't have it?!! That is hilarious, LibRead/SLToddard. By the way-- what DO you get paid for doing here, hmm? And by whom you little anti-Christ. Communism IS Satanism. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. And God won't have His Truth any other way!

Petro| 9.24.09 @ 2:37PM

Kingsmill, absolutely true.

Liberal non-Reader is the Boy in an Ideological Bubble.

He can't think his way out of a paper bag. All his posts start off with a few references culled from popular websites, blogging for dummies type stuff.

When he is refuted, and the debate is engaged, he goes back to the name calling and table banging.

A moron troll.

S.L. Toddard| 9.24.09 @ 2:50PM

Notice the difference between Kingsmill's arguments and Petro's ad hominem. Would that there were more Kingsmills (and Liberal Readers) here than name-callers. Whether you agree or not with Kingsmill and LR, they use reason and logic as the basis for their opinions.

theoph| 9.24.09 @ 10:35AM

Since most liberal reject the Judeo-Christian worldview they simple fail to realize that mankind basic problem is not social justice but the need for redemption from the inside out.

Liberal Reader| 9.24.09 @ 12:16PM

theoph --

Pointless and absurd generalizations, vapid cliches, unexamined assumptions, bigotry, and moronic suspicions characterize many posts on this website, so you need not fear you are alone.

To say that "liberals reject the Judeo-Christian worldview" is to misunderstand a) liberals; and b) the Judeo-Christian worldview. I'm not certain how you could be more inaccurate, but I'm not going to underestimate you. How being interested in "social justice" is at odds with "the Judeo-Christian worldview" is something you're going to need to explain to me, too.

S.L. Toddard| 9.24.09 @ 12:27PM

LR, I often agree with you here on this site, since we both generally oppose Imperialism, depredations of the financial-political elite, and the hypocrisy of constitution-trampling, government-expanding Republicans who profess to revere the Constitution and embrace small gov't principles. But I disagree here with you - not on technicalities, but in a general way. What we're speaking of are obvious, longstanding trends that have manifested themselves in myriad ways (some of which I enumerated above), but there is no smoking gun one can point to, i.e. a Liberal Manifesto signed by FDR, LBJ, and Ted Kennedy that states "We abhor Western culture".

Although the 1965 Immigration Act comes close.

Liberal Reader| 9.24.09 @ 1:30PM

There are always barbarians at the gate.

IN the 60s and 70s, a radical and noisy fringe of the "left" perpetrated an intellectual attack on "western values" that was often silly but sometimes interesting.

Now, the barbarians are coming from the right. The "conservative" movement is -- no longer conservative, if by conservative you mean a high value is placed on cultural institutions, traditions, mores, etc.

The white nationalist, populist uprising that is fueled Limbaugh and Beck is anti-establishment: they despise education, journalism, science, reasoned discourse, politics -- really all of those institutions that maintain democratic society.

They claim to be inspired by a love for the Constitution, but this kind of revanchism can barely conceal their resentment for and fear of any kind of tradition or authority.

They are more indebted to Abbe Hoffman than Thomas Jefferson, only UNLIKE the great 60s leftist radical, they are boring and merely obnoxious.

S.L. Toddard| 9.24.09 @ 1:42PM

Look - I agree that most of the appeals to the Constitution coming from the Fox News Right are entirely disingenuous and opportunistic. There is certainly some ugliness to the protests, though my view is not as bleak as yours - I hold out hope that what Beck is tapping into is, at least in part, a growing acceptance of Ron Paul-style traditional conservatism (thought I do not believe that is the bulk of what's going on).

I would not characterize the Fox News Right as "anti-establishment" at all: they are anti-Democrat establishment. When the Right is in power they fetishize authority, and smear anyone who does not bow the knee as a traitor.

I'm sorry, but if you want to denigrate the Fox News Right you're not going to get a fight out of me. I'm with you.

What is being debated here is the Liberal bias against traditional Western culture and people. I summarized my position earlier when I said:

If you simply don't recognize what I'm talking about then you won't see it, no matter how much

********

and:

Liberal Reader| 9.24.09 @ 1:50PM

Toddard --

I see no evidence that liberals are fighting "to replace Europeans..with non-Westerners in their own countries."

You are conflating and confusing many different issues, and I see no reason to disentangle them for you.

Liberals -- broadly speaking -- have advocated that intellectuals take more stock of the effects of western expansionism on non-western peoples, and it has insisted we take full stock of the role of slavery and genocide in the Americas in our history. I see no problem with that, and I think there only people that do have a problem with that have a trouble propensity for proto-fascist anti-intellectualism and nationalist triumphalism.

I am completely unimpressed by the bathos of patriotic self-congratulation: it is intellectually dull, politically dangerous, and COMPLETELY un-American.

S.L. Toddard| 9.24.09 @ 2:04PM

"I see no evidence that liberals are fighting "to replace Europeans..with non-Westerners in their own countries."

The immigration policies Liberals by-and-large support are having that effect, including their policies on illegal immigration. They refuse to take any measures to halt or reverse the process, such as a border-fence with Mexico or drastically reducing legal immigration from non-Western countries. If you do not see that, it is because you are making a positive effort not to.

"Liberals -- broadly speaking -- have advocated that intellectuals take more stock of the effects of western expansionism on non-western peoples, and it has insisted we take full stock of the role of slavery and genocide in the Americas in our history. I see no problem with that, and I think there only people that do have a problem with that have a trouble propensity for proto-fascist anti-intellectualism and nationalist triumphalism. "

Ah - I'm very, very familiar with this tactic from debating the other posters here. It's the "my side is right, and the opposition are all profoundly evil caricatures, so there's no reason to even have the debate with these villains."

You're adopting the methodology of the Fox News Right even while you rail against them. It's the professional wrestling-style Good v Evil narrative: there is "my" argument, and also an argument made only by depraved, mentally ill sociopaths. Oof.

"I am completely unimpressed by the bathos of patriotic self-congratulation: it is intellectually dull, politically dangerous, and COMPLETELY un-American."

So am I. I spend a good deal of time here arguing against the ridiculous idea of "American Exceptionalism", which amounts to nothing more than "We're the Best!!" The pathetic need for people to have to be constantly told this is evidence of a deep insecurity about their own country - it is a weak patriotism that needs to be constantly propped up by bragging and grandstanding.

Anyway, as I said before if it's not something you see already then you won't see it now.

Liberal Reader| 9.24.09 @ 2:32PM

I'm not in profound disagreement with you.

I do NOT think current "immigration" policy is a major source of motivation on the left. Liberals ARE concerned that people who are lured by promises of prosperity be treated fairly and humanely.

But remember: immigration, and especially illegal immigration, is driven ENTIRELY by a single desire: the desire for cheap labor. This is not exactly something that inspires the hearts of liberals.

Conservatives talk a good game on immigration, and their base certainly has anti-immigrant xenophobia, but it's not as though they have somoe promising set of policy proposals to offer.

S.L. Toddard| 9.24.09 @ 2:46PM

"I do NOT think current "immigration" policy is a major source of motivation on the left."

True, but that is because current immigration policy is in zero danger of being reformed. Whenever it is - whenever a border fence is proposed, or someone dares to suggest an immigration policy that reinforces our Western identity instead of submerging it, then the demonizations and slurs come flying from the left.

None of this, by the way, is a comment on you in particular.

"But remember: immigration, and especially illegal immigration, is driven ENTIRELY by a single desire: the desire for cheap labor. This is not exactly something that inspires the hearts of liberals."

Again, I agree wholeheartedly. Pro-immigration Liberals have no idea whatsoever that they are dupes for the corporations that exploit cheap illegal labor, and the Democrat and Republican politicans that they own.

"Conservatives talk a good game on immigration, and their base certainly has anti-immigrant xenophobia, but it's not as though they have somoe promising set of policy proposals to offer."

Conservatives most certainly do have policy proposals to offer. It's just that no Conservatives hold office in the Republican Party. That dubious honor goes to corporatist Big Government neoconservatives and the principle-free officials who serve their ends. They talk up immigration reform to rile up the base, then get into office and do the bidding of their corporate masters and hold the gates wide open.

There are any number of proposals that could help address the problem, the first and most important of which is sealing the border with Mexico. I recommend drastically reducing immigration quotas from third-world countries, and opening up more to Anglosphere nations.

Either way, what is most important is stemming the tide from Mexico. Even if favoring the Anglosphere nations is not politically possible, it is imperative that we spread immigration out evenly to stop the flood of immigrants coming primarily from South America. It is much harder to assimilate one giant block, all coming from one place. Even if immigration were spread out amongst non-Latino 3rd world countries it would help immensely vis a vis assimilation.

Liberal Reader| 9.24.09 @ 3:37PM

Again, Toddard, I know of NO concerted effort on the part of liberals to increase immigration. Bigots on the reactionary right constantly make this accusation, but it's just not true.

Liberals ARE concerned with how people are treated once they are here, and in general we are not in love with mass deportation programs. (Our European heritage -- in part -- makes us very uneasy about the sound of governments moving large groups of civilians for any reason.)

I'd be all for policies that were intended to slow immigration into this country -- for cultural and purely economic reasons.

Liberal Reader| 9.24.09 @ 3:40PM

Here's a policy proposal to curb illegal immigration:

If you are a CEO of a corporation found guilty of hiring illegal aliens, you will serve 10 years in prison.

Let's see Republicans vote for a law like that.

And they will too: when the world is ended.

S.L. Toddard| 9.24.09 @ 3:48PM

Sure. Sounds good to me. How about the border wall? Sound good?

Liberal Reader| 9.24.09 @ 5:28PM

Well -- Honestly, I'm not as interested in punitive measures against people mired in poverty. I guess a fence sounds O.K., but how about this:

If a company is caught hiring illegal immigrants, the companies ASSETS shall be seized, sold, and used to support those immigrants it tried to hire in Mexico. The money could be used for micro- small business loans; it could also be used to support legal funds to combat political corruption in Mexico; and as grants for agricultural and manufacturing businesses in Mexico.

Again -- I wouldn't hold my breath.

Conservatives seem to WANT illegal immigrants to be their convenient scapegoats and second class citizens. It's great to be able to bash the Mexicans while eating the dirt cheap food their labor affords us.

Victor| 9.24.09 @ 8:37PM

Scuse, me Lib/Todd, but they need to be kept from coming here in the first place and then they need to be deported as they are breaking the law!
Liberals need them for their inflated voter registration drives and keep them on the welfare rolls.
Plus you gays want to count them in th enext phony census and reapportion the states.

S.L. Toddard| 9.25.09 @ 7:24AM

Come on. A border fence is not a "punitive measure" by any stretch. That is liberal bunkum - it is no more a "punitive measure" to seal the border than it is to lock a safe, or a front door. You need to retract that.

Our border is a joke, and a million people (is that right?) stream across it a year, I believe. That, incidentally, belies the Neocon claim to have done everything in the name of nat'l security - they launched two wars on the other side of the world and yet did nothing to seal the largest and most-used access point for illegals who want to cross the border right here at home. It's like locking all the windows in a house in a bad neighborhood and leaving your front door wide open and unguarded.

That being said, yes, I agree that we should hammer companies that employ illegal aliens, though obviously none of that money should go to Mexico. We cannot solve Mexico's problems for them.

The issue needs to be addressed with a multi-pronged approach: border fence, punitive measures against companies that hire illegals, and deportation of any illegals who find their way into criminal courts. We probably *should* make an effort to deport most of the rest as well, but I do not feel comfortable advocating it either. Although that's probably a sentimental weakness that I should work to correct. It's not logical.

Victor | 9.24.09 @ 8:24PM

Yes, absolutely!
Fine and imprisonment for those who encourage ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION! and for those who PROFIT from it.
And then deport every last blody one of them back to wherever they bloody well came from, eh?
How about you libs voting for Citizen Verification for Voting and Driver's Licenses?
How about anyone caught with a fraudulent Birth Certificate, Voter Registration Card and Drivers License gets 5 years in the hoosegow and then deported if applicable, eh?
Who's with me.

Margie| 9.24.09 @ 4:01PM

You are exactly right, theoph. You speak the truth. That's why the resident trolls hate you. God's truth is too simple for them. Thus: "Jesus said to them, "If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded and came forth from God; I came not of My own accord, but He sent Me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear My word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But, because I tell the truth, you do not believe Me. Which of you convicts Me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe Me? He who is of God hears the words of God; the reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God." Jn. 8:42-47

Liberal Reader| 9.24.09 @ 4:21PM

Margie --

A bigot with a Bible is still a bigot.

Menken said that when fascism comes to America, it will be waving a flag and carrying a Bible. Menken was a wise man.

Margie| 9.24.09 @ 6:24PM

Fascists don't believe in God, LibRead/Toddard. I do believe you are referring to your own ilk when you speak.
Bye now.

Victor| 9.24.09 @ 7:38PM

It's a pity that you cannot even read the Hater's Handbook clearly as MENCKEN never even said anything close. This was something that Sinclair Lewis might have said, but it was really from Huey Long.
PS can you move over as Toddard cannot read from behind your skirts.
When fascism came to Germany, it wasn't carrying the Bible. Hitler said, "Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure."
That's true because Jesus came to save sinners and not the righteous.
By the way do you also mangle Franklin's quote about security as other liberals do?
Christianity has always stood up to abusive governments. When fascism carries a Bible, it will be as Clinton did as he rejected the contents.

Alex B.| 9.24.09 @ 8:34PM

As we all know, history is written by the victors. Tooley's response to Ms. Clawson is clearly relying on the "official" American version of that history, i.e. that of the victors. However, if one actually goes to Taos Pueblo (as Ms. Clawson clearly did) they will find that the Indians remember a very different version of what happened back then. I guess the question is whether you are more inclined to trust those whose lands were taken and homes were destroyed, or those who did the taking and destroying?

I also notice that Tooley's account is actually not that different from Clawson's. For instance, both agree that US forces destroyed the church while native inhabitants were inside. The real difference is simply that Tooley spins it in such a way as to seemingly justify the American's actions (especially by his use of the politically charged label "insurgents" to describe the Indian inhabitants).

Of course this simply begs the question of whether the Americans had any right to be there in the first place. Tooley seems to assume "yes", but by what kind of ethical reasoning? Because they won a war of conquest? (So now might makes right?) Because they "paid" for it? (Question: how many of you would be okay with the federal government selling off your state to some foreign power as long as you knew they got a good deal for it?) How you answer these questions will affect whether you see the Mexicans involved in this uprising (according to the Indians, they had nothing to do with the uprising and were simply framed by the Mexicans) as "rebels" and "insurgents" or as "patriots" and "freedom fighters".

Victor| 9.24.09 @ 8:45PM

Napoleon needed the money and that's how we got the Louisiana Purchase. Russia needed the money and that's how we got Alaska. Mexico needed the money and that's how we got the Gadsden Purchase.
They sold it, we bought it and you cannot go back.
Tough noogies, deal with it.

Alex B.| 9.24.09 @ 9:09PM

Oh, and again, I really do wonder, if the Federal Government sold off your home state to say, Canada, would your response simply be "Tough noogies, deal with it"?

Victor| 9.24.09 @ 9:16PM

First of all, dear boy, nobody lived in those wildernesses at the time.
Typical libber, comparing apples with cumquats.
Then again, maybe your boy barry would do that rather than cut spending, eh?

Alex B.| 9.25.09 @ 12:17AM

"First of all, dear boy, nobody lived in those wildernesses at the time."

Really? Then who were the Americans fighting with? Who was it that killed the governor? Who did they happen to kill at the Pueblo?

Have you ever even been to New Mexico? It has some of the oldest continuously inhabited Indian communities in the country (the Taos Pueblo in particular is over a 1000 years old), and Santa Fe is one of the oldest colonial capitals on the whole continent.

"Typical libber, comparing apples with cumquats."

I see you're quick to label, but the truth is you don't know me from Adam, so how do you presume know anything at all about my political opinions? (Or is anyone who expresses a differing opinion from you automatically a "libber"?) At any rate, you'd do well not to speak out of your ignorance.

As it happens, I am an academic historian, and my interest in this conversation is primarily historical and ethical, not political. I couldn't care less about all the ridiculous "right vs. left" snark you all seem to enjoy wasting your time with here.

"Then again, maybe your boy barry would do that rather than cut spending, eh? "

Who? No clue what you're on about. But again, since you don't know anything about me, you'd probably do well not to assume to know what side I'm on or who my "boys" are.

victor| 9.25.09 @ 8:22PM

"First of all, dear boy, nobody lived in those wildernesses at the time."

""Really? Then who were the Americans fighting with?""

The Americans weren't fighting with anyone in Alaska or Louisiana, but they still bought it.

"" Who was it that killed the governor?""
The blood-thirsty Indians and Hispanics that lived in Taos.
""Who did they happen to kill at the Pueblo? ""

The Americans came in and exacted penalties for the massacre.

"Typical libber, comparing apples with cumquats."

"""I see you're quick to label, but the truth is you don't know me from Adam, so how do you presume know anything at all about my political opinions? (Or is anyone who expresses a differing opinion from you automatically a "libber"?) At any rate, you'd do well not to speak out of your ignorance. """

Based on your answers that the Feds have powers they don't have would make you a liberal.
Based on your seeming justification
that the residents had the right to kill the Governor and his family without suffering the consequences because the American Gov't should not have taken control of a territory they had no right to might make you a libertarian.

"""As it happens, I am an academic historian, and my interest in this conversation is primarily historical and ethical, not political. I couldn't care less about all the ridiculous "right vs. left" snark you all seem to enjoy wasting your time with here."""

History is politics and you better change your tune as there are those who don't give two hoots about your academic pursuits.

"Then again, maybe your boy barry would do that rather than cut spending, eh? "

"""Who? No clue what you're on about. But again, since you don't know anything about me, you'd probably do well not to assume to know what side I'm on or who my "boys" are. """

That was an allusion to the current occupant in the White House that does believe he has unlimited and unassailable authority to do what he has a whim to do.
The war is between those who belive that the Constitution is unlimted and those who want to hold the Gov't to those powers that are in the Constitution.
From the few words that you have written, I do believe I know you.

Victor| 9.25.09 @ 7:52PM

""Oh, and again, I really do wonder, if the Federal Government sold off your home state to say, Canada""
That presupposes that you believe that the Federal Gov't has that authority under the Constituiton to sell of any Sovereign State. The Federal Gov't doesn't have that power, so your "hypothetical"
is moot.
Deal with that.

Alex B.| 9.24.09 @ 9:05PM

"They sold it, we bought it and you cannot go back."

I don't think anyone was suggesting that we can or should "go back". But that still doesn't make our actions "good". "What's done is done and we can't go back" may be true, but it is not an ethical justification for what was done. I'm afraid that in terms of our moral judgment of past actions "Tough noogies, deal with it", isn't exactly a coherent ethical theory.

Victor| 9.24.09 @ 9:21PM

Go talk to laraza, they're the ones who want this.
The land belonged to those who sold it and we bought it. Selling your property to someone who wants to buy it is never wrong.

Alex B.| 9.25.09 @ 12:25AM

"The land belonged to those who sold it and we bought it."

And on what ethical basis did it belong to them, and not to the peoples who actually lived there? (And yes, people actually lived in all those places you mentioned before the Europeans got there.) What possible rationale (short of a bald will-to-power) can you come up with that morally justifies colonialism and imperialism?

victor| 9.25.09 @ 9:07PM

This has been going on since time immemorial and is going on now in the Sudan, the Middle East, Russia, China and elsewhere.
You may have grounds on ethics and morals, but you seem to be castigating US, the US, and noone else. If you're going to criticize us why not everyone else who is guilty of the same?

Alex B.| 9.26.09 @ 10:48AM

I very frequently do. But the context of this particular discussion was American history. Is it necessary to give a complete rundown of all the sins of humanity throughout the whole of history before one can comment on the actions of one particular people?

At any rate, "everyone else does it too" is not a valid ethical justification either. Didn't we all learn in kindergarten that two wrongs don't make a right?

Until humanity is willing to admit the mistakes we have made in the past, we can't help but repeat them in the future. That's the importance of viewing history through an ethical lens, no matter which culture or whose country we are critiquing - especially our own!

Paul Crowley| 9.25.09 @ 2:25AM

“apparently unaware that . . . another conflict, nearly two decades later, between Confederates and Unionists.” [Mark Tooley]

No. They would not be unaware. It’s impossible to miss these days.

Since the mid 1980s, the confederate flag has been raised over Santa Fe and the battlefield made into a State Park, complete with re-enactment’s of the Battle of Apache Canyon (now renamed the Battle of Glorieta Pass).

New Mexico has been a favorite recipient for historical monuments erected to aid the formation of new, reformed American culture, all post-1969. Like elsewhere, there was a burst of them in the decade of the 1980s.

The foundations of the themes were developed, circa 1969-79:

Beginning with the political movements of 1969 (Black Power, La Raza, AIM’s weak attempts in New Mexico, Women’s Liberation, and Hollywood).

They coincided with the social studies movements in the colleges, and high schools: Black History, Chicano History, American Indian History (now “Native American), and Women’s Studies. . .

A peak was achieved with Jimmy Carter's Presidential Pardon of Robert E. Lee and groundwork for the Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday.

The Foundations were laid, publicly, 1967-80.

Paul Crowley| 9.25.09 @ 2:36AM

The Confederate Flag over New Mexico.

The Confederate flag was raised for the first time over Santa Fe, sometime in the decade of the 1980s (I don't recall the first year), about 120 years after the end of the American Civil War.

It's something completely unhistorical.

New Mexico Territory (present-day New Mexico and Arizona at the time) was never governed by the Confederacy.

Baylor declared it to be the Confederate Territory of Arizona, after occupying Fort Fillmore (present-day Las Cruces) in September 1861.

Sibley tried to seize the territory, and Colorado Territory, militarily, about February-March 1862.

It was a critical campaign.

By 1862, it was clear that the Confederate government lacked financing, and badly needed the specie it hoped to obtain it by.

The Gold Rush in southern Colorado had begun in 1858.

Further the seizure of New Mexico and Colorado territories would have broken the main Line of Communications with California.

California gold shipments would have had to be diverted to maritime shipment around Cape Horn, or via Nicaragua, which would make them targets of confederate cruisers (supplied by Britian).

Colonel Canby defended the territory brilliantly.

Canby employed standard American defensive tactics: Slowly giving up ground, fighting an intelligent delaying action, relocating the Territorial government, slowing and weakening the advancing enemy (Sibley's Texans), being led to his defeat at Canby’s place of choosing (originally chosen as Fort Union).

In the end, the invading Texans were spanked and sent home.

Grandiose Declarations mean nothing if one is not able to back them up

The Rebels were not able to do so.

The Confederate Territory of Arizona never existed, except in the minds of the Confederate Congress in Richmond, and its Federal government.

The raising of the Confederate rag over Santa Fe, dishonors the Americans who served.

That it was not done until over 120 years after the end of the War of the Rebellion, reeks of political machinations.

That it was done in the decade of the 1980s, only half a dozen or so years after Jimmy Carter's Presidential Pardon of Robert E. Lee, reeks of social engineering.

Paul Crowley| 9.25.09 @ 2:57AM

Just some points, for one's bearing.

From 1846-48, New Mexico was under military occupation, and America was still at war with Mexico.

The uprising in 1847 was against the occupation government.

New Mexico was seized in 1846 by General Kearny, who then marched his Army of the West, west from Mesilla (present-day Las Cruces metro), to Alta California.

He was reinforced in present-day Arizona by Mormons who had pre-positioned themselves in settlements througout the region (present-day NM, CO, UT, AZ, NV, CA, ID).

Present-day New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, California, and portions of Idaho were not purchased by America until 1848.The Gadsen purchase completing the territory of New Mexico was not made until some years later.

New Mexico was formally made a territory in 1850, when California entered the union (both were part of the Slavery Compromise of 1850).

Arizona was made a territory in 1863.

New Mexico and Arizona territories entered the union as states in 1912.

Paul Crowley| 9.25.09 @ 3:06AM

“More specifically, Clawson presented a very jaded history of the U.S. response to a New Mexican uprising in the ancient village of Taos in 1847. She recounted that ‘after the U.S. took New Mexico, local Indians and Hispanics were fearful that the U.S. wouldn't honor their ownership of the land and so staged a rebellion against the U.S. governor in Taos.’ " [Mark Tooley, quoting Julie Clawson]

Synthesis, not jaded, is the term.

Clawson's remarks obviously develop (“evolve”) a synthesis between the events of the American occupation of New Mexico (1846-48), the New Mexican uprising against the provisional government (1847), and La Raza (circa about 1969-72).

She ascribes the La Raza movement Land Grants effort as reason held by New Mexicans (what she dubs the "local Hispanics") and even the Indians (!) for the uprising.

Again, synthesis, not jaded, is the term for this.

Paul Crowley| 9.25.09 @ 3:40AM

Decade of the 1980s:

Santa Fe got the rebel battle flag.

Columbus got Pancho Villa.

Radium Springs got Fort Sheldon.

The whole state got Cinco De Mayo sometime between about 1987-92.

New Mexico Circa, 1965-72.

Hollywood gave us the movie "Lonely Are The Brave," based on Edward Abbey’s novel, filmed in Albuquerque, starring Kirk Douglas, Carrol O’Connor, and Walter Matheau.
[Hollywood's movie based on Abbey's novel, "Fire On The Mountain," I believe was the title, directed by Opie (A.K.A. R. Howard), came a couple decades later].

Hollywood gave us the movie Flap, starring Anthony Quinn.

Fort Sheldon, which I remember when it was just piles of melting adobe, surrounded by weeds, is the most normal of all of these, and has been made into a very nice memorial. It is interesting, only in light of these others examples of post-1989 homage to New Mexico history, due to its exhibit on the 9th & 10 Cavalry, which had been garrisoned there, as they were throughough the forts in New Mexico Territory, as those regiements were quite active in campaigning against the Apaches.

Of course all of this is completely new and novel to the Californians who have been herded to, and now occupy, Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Las Cruces, and the government and military employees at Roswell, and Silver City. I don't know if New York cops are still retiring in Deming these days or not. . .

Paul Crowley| 9.25.09 @ 3:48AM

Columbus, New Mexico: “Pancho Villa State Park.”

Columbus was the town that was attacked by Mexicans in 1916, with, if I remember correctly, 17 American citizens killed, as a result.

Villa was blamed for the Mexican military raid on Columbus at the time.

This led to General Pershings expedition into northern Mexico.

In like manner to Sitting Bull and the Sioux & Cheyenne, being given pride of place in Montana over the American Army, and Silbey's defeated invading Texans, in rebellion against the American government, in Santa Fe, Villa got the star billing in Columbus.

Don’t worry, I doubt that there weill be an Osama Bin Laden State Park on Manhattan Island in 65-75 years, just as there’s no Admiral Yamamoto State Park in Honolulu, Admiral Togo state Park in Alaska, or Prince George Park on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C.

It would be exactly the same if there were, but Osama Bin Laden, like Admiral Yamamoto will probably continue to have other uses.

Prince George Park may happen yet. It's irrelevant that most people (probably especially Britons) don’t even know that George IV existed, never mind that he was regent when the White House was burned by the British.

Paul Crowley| 9.25.09 @ 4:25AM

“Silbey's defeated invading Texans, in rebellion against the American government, in Santa Fe,”

The equivalent to Sibley, his invading Texans of the failed Confederate Offensive in New Mexico, circa February-March 1862, and the raising of the Confederate battle flag over Santa Fe, in the 1980s, would be a Timothy McVeigh memorial plaque in Oklahoma City, sometime in the future.

This is something that I don’t rule out at all, if it should prove useful for some reason in the future.

There are numerous precedents around the country erected in the post-Cold War era, and common to American history text books (post-1989) and penny press (i.e. Barnes & Noble et al. The Penny Press of the late 19th century and early 20th, is now the Thirty Dollar Press).

Paul Crowley| 9.25.09 @ 5:13AM

The Rebel battle flag, Poncho Villa and Cinco de Mayo!

Can anyone blame a lot of us native New Mexicans for being confused by strange new events under the guise of "history," about 1987-92?

The Cinco De Mayo celebrations began sometime about 1987-92.

These were just confusing, to us Americans AND to average Mexicans (since Cinco De Mayo was not a holiday celebrated in Mexico), as Letter To The Editor of New Mexico newspapers at the time, will attest.

The Battle of Puebla was fought in the same year as the defeat of the three major Confederate Offensives into New Mexico Territory, Kentucky and Maryland), that led to President Lincoln’s ability to issue the Emancipation Proclamation (Primary credit tends to go to General Thomas, but Colonel Canby and McClellan deserve credit also).

Kentucky and Maryland were both southern states. Kentucky, along with Missouri, is another claim made by the Confederate Congress (why there are 13, rather than 11 stars in the confederate battle flag), that couldn’t be backed up.

Kentucky never joined the Rebellion.

Maryland was the one southern state never claimed by the confederate government. And it never joined the rebellion.

Missouri was secured due to the Lyons Campaign of 1862.

All three Confederate military invasions (New Mexico, Kentucky, and Maryland) in 1862 failed, and the invading confederate armies were made to withdraw.

In the same Year (1862):

The Republic of Mexico was resisting the French entry into Mexico (1862-67).

The Juarez administration, was aligned with, and supported by the American government.

(The Mexican Republic was ultimately restored fully by the American Army, under General Sheridan, after the defeat of the of the southern rebellion, allowed mobilization on the Rio Grande River, in newly reseized Texas, in 1865).

The French Empire of Mexico was supported by the Confederate government in Richmond.

France never recognized the self-declared C.S.A. (as no government in the world ever did), but the French in Mexico colluded with the rebels, in shipping cotton out of Texas, into Mexico, and then out of the Mexican port of Bagdad, at the mouth of the Rio Grande River. French Foriegn Legionaires were employed against the Mexian troops of the Juarez administration, to facilitate the export. Free Trade? Kinda, I suppose (but not without the French Foreign Legion).

So, clearly, at the very least, the new holiday of Cinco De Mayo, is diametrically opposed to the neo-confederate craze, kicked off circa 1959-65, and then revived, 1977-99, beginning with Jimmy Carter's presidential pardons of dead confederate generals, and the surge in books, movies, ad nauseum, on the civil war that followed immediately thereafter.

Paul Crowley| 9.25.09 @ 6:26AM

Post-Cold War Neo-Confederates and Reformed American Indians Unite???

The last round of Indian revisions, began with the American Indian Movement (AIM) of about 1969-77.

AIM was the Red Power counterpart to the Black Power Movement of the time, and initially made up of almost all urbanized American Indians.

Like the rest, the new social studies Indian Studies came right along with it.

Like the revisions before it (circa 1910 and 1933), the new version of Indians makes of the Indians of the past something that the Indians never were.

Additionally, this one can facilitate the disinheriting of native Americans, and citizens of other republics in this hemisphere, of their birthright, by the newly formed Native American Race (i.e. the ammlgomation of all Indians of the Western Hemisphere into one giant quasi-tribe: A new Race).

Indians in New Mexico didn’t take to the AIM agenda at the time (With the exception of some of the younger urbanized ones in the B.I.A. and at the universities: Effectively a Red Man’s version of the proverbial “College Socialists/Parlor Pinks.”

The events in the Anthony Quinn movie, Flap, were never played out in New Mexico, except in the movie itself, where it was filmed.

However, some very like them were played out by some urbanized Indians of AIM, and a few Indians native to the reservation, on the Pine Ridge Reservation, in South Dakota a few years later.

The most radical act in New Mexico was a guy in Santa Fe, wearing a city workers uniform, chiseling out the word “savage” from a monument on the plaza. The monument is to the American Army troops who served in the Indian wars in New Mewxico Territory (1850-86).

The monument was still there the last I looked in 1994. I've never bothered to look during return trips since. The monument is stone, so, if its still there, then one should still be able to see where the word was chiseled out.

Paul Crowley| 9.25.09 @ 6:59AM

Reformed Indians and Neo-Confederates.

Is this the Correct synthesis of the libertarian wing of the new reformed "Conservative Movement?"

I don’t know. But with the new reformed versions of American Indians, it is clearly a potential, and seems to be forming this way among the reformed conservative and libertarian propagandists.

The bizarre libertarian whine about roads and opposition to drivers licenses, progagated about 1985 onward, and bought into by the more impressionable rubes, may also finally make sense.

In reality

The Navajo War of 1863 and the Indian War of 1864, were American Civil War campaigns that contributed to suppressing the Confederate Rebellion against the American government.

The Confederacy had a highly centralized federal government and was able to implement mandatory conscription earlier and more effectively than the American government was able to do. The Lincoln administration had heartache from the governors of the states, and greater resistance to conscription, throughout the war, than anything Jefferson Davis had to deal with.

The Homestead Act of 1862, The Trans-Pacific Railroad (1862-69), the Navajo War of 1863, the incarceration of the Navajos in N.M. Territory (1863-68), the Indian War of 1864, the garrisoning of the western roads, and the U.S. Volunteers (Confederate Prisoners of War, dubbed “galvanized Yankees,” who agreed to serve in American cavalry companies in the Indian War of 1864), all helped to weaken confederate
manpower at a critical time (late 1863-65).

None of the many, and steadily increasing, deserters from the confederate armies, or southerner fleeing that mess, were returned to the south by the American government.

But Neo-Confederate fantasies don’t tend to include much about the grim reality of Confederate conscription.

The campaigns to open the western roads began with the First New Mexico, under Colonel Kit Carson, subduing the Navajos in 1863. That and the simultaneous campaign against Indians in Utah Territtory, cleared the roads west to Salt Lake City.

The First New Mexico also made a successful campaign against the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho, in the panhandle region of Texas during the Indian War of 1864, when they left Indian Territory and entered Texas.

The Texans were busy rebelling against the American government and following Hood to the impending annihilation of his army by General Thomas.

The agents of the Confederate Bureau of Indian Affairs were actively attempting to enlist the aid of the Cheyenne and Arapaho, and other tribes, in the rebellion.

The First Colorado campaigned against the southern Cheyenne and Arapaho in the Platte river regions of Colorado Territory and western Kansas.

The Sioux tribes and the northern Plains tribes were kept quiet by negotiation by the American Army.

The erection and garrisoning of forts to secure the western roads was done by state and territorial volunteers and then joined by U.S. Volunteers.

The first forts on the Bozeman Trail (A.K.A., The Montana Road), in then Idaho Territory, were constructed and garrisoned by U.S. Volunteer Cavalry (the “Galvanized Yankees”).

The subsequent American-Indians wars, 1866-68, Homestead Act of 1862, the Trans-Pacific Railroad (1862-69), and garrisoning of the western roads, contributed to the occupation of the 11 southern states whose governments had taken part in the failed
rebellion, and also to reconstruction. Tough luck to the Sioux, the northern Cheyenne, and the Kiowa.

So, one clear potential synthesis is an alliance between the radicalized rubes of the new reformed Indians (transformed into "Native Americans") with the neo-confederate element of the new White Race, who have been cultivated and formed, especially in the past 30 years.

No wonder my neighbor was taught a saccharine and romantic version of American Indians at nearby Lamar university, but, it's not just here in Texas. This rubbish is ubiquitous in education throughout the hemisphere and around the world these days.

Both Indians and the Confederate Rebellion of 148-144 years ago have been made into something that neither ever really were.

Paul Crowley| 9.25.09 @ 11:04AM

"Misremembering History" [Mark Tooley]

This is an idiotic sounding title.

It is synthesizing history, via rationalization of various elements, espcecially previously unrelated ones, not "misremembering" it.

It is historical synthesis employed as "Vitriol and Instruction."

It facilitates the formation of the new races, which include in this hemisphere, the new White Race (with numerous sub-races being formed within it, including the new Scots-Irish sub-race) (there is no such thing as a European race, and there hasn't been since at least 1648, but closer to since 1579), the new Hispanic Race (with White and Non-White subgroups), the new African-American Race (a renaming of the term Negro), the new Arab Race, the new Asian Race, the new Native American Race, and so on. . .

The old races, based upon language, or national origin, are clearly being erased. New ones, such as the many Indian "Nations," including the partition of the Eskimo, are being formed. Sub-races within the greater Native American Race.

Ultimately the real partition of the American population is by class, not the new races. The new races and sub-races only aid in the "process."

Pingback| 9.25.09 @ 12:39PM

Bookworm Room » The Aztecs might have been noble, but they were also savages *UPDATED links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:

…As I’ve said a couple of times in the comments, this post wasn’t meant to put a heroic gloss on the Spanish, for whom I hold no brief. Instead, I wanted to use it as a counterpoint to this type of Leftist idiocy, which still prevails in our American schools, and which dehumanizes the complex Native American cultures by casting them as plaster saints, brutally smashed by irredeemably evil Western…

Pingback| 9.25.09 @ 4:45PM

The American Spectator : Misremembering History « New links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:

…which has amazingly not been “completely hushed up.” She darkly surmised: “In most of the country it is easy to forget who we stole the land … Original post: The American Spectator : Misremembering History Tags: amazingly-not, america-, completely-hushed, darkly-surmised, History, joining-the, land, lesson, New, not-very This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009 at 10:07 am…

Ray Torres| 9.26.09 @ 4:22AM

This is New Ager claptrap re-packaged for the extreme left. New Agers are always co-opting Native American struggles to further their own ends and re-writing history for the same purpose. Imperialism was alive and well in this hemisphere long before the Europeans arrived. The Aztec empire being one of the prime examples. Their treatment of conquered peoples goes way beyond anything the Euros ever did. The Plains Indians protected their territories with a ferocity greatly underestimated by the U.S., at first. People forget there aren't any other peoples on the planet that the United States ceded any of it's territory to as part of a peace agreement other than the Native American tribes.

benning | 9.26.09 @ 9:25AM

Good commentary!

We've become inundated by faux history that demonizes White Europeans, and elevates the Noble Red Natives to Sainthood. One of the more popular has always been the silliness of the Sacred Black Hills of the Dakota Territory. These were supposedly sacred to the Lakota/Dakota/Sioux indians, which we wicked White Europeans stole. But in the period of Colonial America those same Sacred Hills were not Sioux terrotiry, but were taken by them from the previous 'owners'. I cannot recall which tribe, exactly, but I seem to remember, from my reading, that it was the Arapaho.

And who did the Arapaho take the territory from? And so on. This is merely how all living creatures work. When they need space, they move in and take it. If they aren't strong enough they are pushed out, perhaps destroyed. If they are strong enough to hold the new area, the losers are pushed out, perhaps destroyed.

Nothing new here. Only the bizarre interpretations of the dim-witted Leftists are new. And those interpretations are based, not on facts or reality, but on political ideology and ignorance.

Alex B.| 9.26.09 @ 10:43AM

It is not necessary to idealize the Native Americans in order to realize that it was still wrong to take their land.

"And who did the Arapaho take the territory from? And so on. This is merely how all living creatures work. When they need space, they move in and take it. If they aren't strong enough they are pushed out, perhaps destroyed. If they are strong enough to hold the new area, the losers are pushed out, perhaps destroyed. "

Wow! I didn't realize folks here were such Nietzscheans. Might makes right? "We need Lebensraum" and all that?

I'm curious. Would most of you all here agree with this kind of ethical theory?

Paul Crowley| 9.26.09 @ 5:36PM

“It is not necessary to idealize the Native Americans in order to realize that it was still wrong to take their land.
. . .
Wow! I didn't realize folks here were such Nietzscheans. Might makes right? ‘We need Lebensraum’ and all that? I'm curious. Would most of you all here agree with this kind of ethical theory?” [Alex B.].

No. Ethically, this is purely amoral, and leads to immoral acts.

I say this on the basis of pre-reformed American ethics (i.e. pre-1969 at the very least, more realistically, about pre-1998, for an inflection point).

This was not the ethics of the majority of Americans, prior to 1998. It most certainly was not in the 19th century.

A great deal of what’s been done to the Indians, and a great many incidents are absolutely indefensible, then and now.

FIRST, however.

There a gross contradiction in your question.

It is a logical contradiction, historicaly speaking (since history is the theme here).

It's a contradiction that has historical precedent, interestingly one associated with the American Civil War (e.g. the post-war treaties with the tribes in then Indian Territory). I'll ignore this for the moment.

Your question, and the title that you give to the Indians (“Native Americans”) both serve to IDEALIZE the Indians, and make them into something that they never were, and really, still are not.

In the time in question, then the Indians were not even Americans.

Indians did not have American citizenship.

Most of all, and the only valuable point of the simplistic phrasing about Indian inter-tribal warfare made in the comments you addressed, is that the Indian tribes were in no way unified.

These observations do make an important point, but are only made in the context of a variation of historical determinism, with the implication that this was American ethics at the time, which they were not.

Prior to the latest version of American Indians introduced publicly about 1969 onward), then one could not have spoken of the Indians, using the romantic and novel title, of Native Americans. This has changed, but is still somewhat confusing since their status today is one of dual citizenship.

Hence why, since about the late 1970s and early 1980s, some Indians traveling outside the country, choose to use Tribal passports, rather than American passports, to avoid being identified as American citizens in the event of becoming involved in a terrorist act of some kind (such as plane hijackings). Those “Native Americans” would rather be identified by the name of a tribe, few in this country would probably recognize, and no one outside of it would, rather than as Americans.

Prior to 1969, American was universally recognized as a term applying to someone who was a citizen of the United States of America (U.S.A.). It was not until after about 1969 that the notion began to be propagated and popularized that “American” applies to all people’s of the Western Hemisphere. This began most earnestly with the British in British dominions, especially Canada. This didn't begin to be more widely propagated here until about the last 18-20 years.

Until about the second (post-1890), romanticized version of the Indians, the public propagation of which coincided with the reforms enacted during the Roosevelt administration, no Indians would have thought of themselves as a unified whole across the country, never mind across the entire Western Hemisphere. In the west, there were still tribes engaging in small raids against each other, the Navajo and Hopi come to mind. This as late as the 1920s, I believe.

From 1890 onward, the army’s job was no longer to campaign against Indians leaving the reservations on raids against Americans, but more commonly it was used to subdue the raids of one tribe against another.
The American Indian Day, introduced in the first post-1890 romanticized version of the Indians, did not serve to bring about that sense of identity.

It looks like the Pow Wows of the 1930s-60s, arranged by the new tribal governments, established by the reforms enacted during the Roosevelt administation, were successful in leading to this.

The Pow Wows are now known, in our third romanticized version of the Indians, as The Gathering of the Nations.

As to your "Might Makes Right" question, and the majority of American, then I do not believe that a majority will be found who would support this if phrawsed this way. However, I will say that most Americans, pre and post reformed, would accept a variation of this, or your oversimplification of the issue. Probably in the form of a vague historical determinism ("inevitability").

Paul Crowley| 9.26.09 @ 6:33PM

There’s some truth in this, but it is a great over simplification. The universality of “all living creatures” is false (a variation of Natural Selection Evolution: "Survival of the Fittest").

The “space” argument is irrelevant and false in the case of the Indians.

Inter-tribal wars and conquests were rarely to never due to the need for something like “living space.”

Interestingly, this Natural-Selection Evolution argument is one that is made in the manner more like what many Indians argued.

In the only accounts available of the three American-Sioux conventions (negotiations) of 1864 in Kansas (with chiefs of at least four major tribes of the different Sioux tribes, and multiple chiefs of minor bands), one of the points made by General Mitchell, was done via the posing of a rhetorical question.

The negotiations were not over ownership, but over passage through the trails (roads) leading west.

The southern Cheyenne and Arapaho were going to war against Americans at the time.

The Pawnee Indians, were allied with the Americans.

The Sioux tribes and the Pawnee were bitter enemies.

General Mitchell noted that the Sioux boasted of ownership of the lands (very vague and not demarcated, obviously: effectively a majority of the plains region, in sub regions roamed by the various Sioux tribes) that the Americans wished to pass through as being theirs due to the Sioux having taken it away from the Pawnee. He then asked, if the Sioux can acquire all of what they claim as their land by conquering the Pawnee, then why shouldn’t American’s simply conquer the Sioux and take ALL of the lands away from them, as they boast of having done to the Pawnee?

Apparently a sullen silence, on the part of the chiefs, followed the General's question (which is not hard to imagine).

General Mitchell then argued that there was land enough for everyone, the Americans, the Sioux and all of the tribes.

No treaties resulted from the American-Sioux conventions of 1864. However, the Sioux tribes did not take part in the Indian War of 1864.

Paul Crowley| 9.26.09 @ 7:27PM

The Conquest of The Nations (or Anglicized Sioux Indians of 1864 and “Survival of the Fittest”).

Where the Indian Tribes of the Great Plains are concerned, then most of the conquests by one tribe over another were due more to war over trade (i.e. they were more economic in nature).

Central to the issue in the 19th century were the vast buffalo hunts conducted by the Plains tribes. Contrary to the romantic and false image of the American Indian as hunting buffalo so as to only acquire their immediate needs, the Indians engaged in massive hunts for the purpose of trade.

Hence the late 19th century charge that the Indians were resonsible for decimating the Buffalo herds (which is obviously at sharp odds with the Romantic version introduced in the 1930s, or taught today).

Foremost in the formation of this aspect of the culture of the plains tribes was probably the British Northwest Company and Hudson’s Bay Company, and then the trade companies that developed in American territories.

Buffalo herds, and the regions the herds migrated through, was a primary basis of the territorial claims made by Indian tribes, and cause of much of the initial inter-tribal warfare on the plains.

One cannot ignore the organizational aspects of Indian culture: Specifically, the cultural manipulation.

The martial organization, and ethics, of the plains tribes that emerged in the 19th century, obviously did not develop naturally (i.e. “evolve” in the manner of a natural process).

The Sioux tribes of 1864 are for the most part unrecognizable from the Sioux tribes of 1788.

In this SOME Europeans come into play, most especially the British where 19th century plains Indian tribes are concerned.

The French, Dutch and English had their roles in the 17th & 18th centuries.
The Spanish had no part in forming the fundamental attributes of the cultures of the Plains tribes of the mid 19th century.

After the Arrival of the French, Dutch and English, then it becomes virtually impossible to speak of anything one can call traditional Indian culture, east and west (not just the plains, which are a couple centuries in the future at this point).

The Sioux and northern Plains tribes of 1864 were by then veritable Anglo-French creations, just as the Zulu Chief being crowned King of the Zulus, about the same time (crowned with a tin crown with some gold foil and fake jewels). The new, short-lived, “Kingdom of Zululand” was conquered and partitioned in 1879. The new “King” was a chief of a tribe whose martial culture only began to come into existence following the British entry into southern Africa, with the occupation and annexation of Cape Colony (The first piece of the British Union of South Africa), following the Napoleonic Wars (1815).

It was the British who conquered primitive peoples by giving tribes the status of being a “nation” (“kingdom,” “empire”. . . ), and then defining the new “nation” as being suzerain to the Kingdom of Britain, via treaty.

This was especially common here in the Western hemisphere.

All of the conquests of the suzerain “nation” (i.e. the Indian tribe) were then claimed by Britain.

Legal-wise, the conquered territories were British, by right of law (assuming, as the British took as merely self evident, that the tribes really understood the contents of the treaties that the chiefs were taught to put their mark on).

This tactic wasn't applied in present-day Australia, since the British engaged in no warfare with the Dutch or French there.

Americans never recognized the British claims, based on Indian conquests, after driving the miserable kingdom out, so British Indian policy modified in what is now present-day Canada, after 1783.

Elsewhere, when many of the “nations” were no longer necessary, especially 1867 onward, then in came the British punitive expeditions.

The same was done to the tribes used by the British in island conquests in the south Pacific (Tongans, Hawaiins, Samoans, . . . ). These were British creations, initially used to conquer the whole of the island groups. The South Pacific tribes became exceptions to later conquest by punitive expedition, but not to social turmoil and bloodshed. Their subsequent conquest was by Rule by Law, treaty and protectorate. . .

I don't want to give more credit to the English than they deserve. The English don't seem to have invented it, but primarily copied and perfected the tactics.

The Dutch and the French had their own variations on the theme, and uses of primitive tribes in warfare.

The Dutch did much to establish and initiate the tactic, all the way back to the early 17th century.

The English do deserve credit for the trick of designating the tribes nations ("kingdoms," "empires").

The British also became expert at manipulation of religions, even though they didn't invent this either.

So, what exactly is “Indian Culture?” What exactly is traditional Indian culture?

These are virtually impossible questions to answer at this point in time (which is true of most peoples, whatever the color of their skin, white, brown, red, yellow, whatever. . . ).

It’s more accurate to ask what was the Indian culture at a specific point in time. such as a
given year.

Paul Crowley| 9.26.09 @ 9:40PM

The Confederacy and the Indian War of 1864

“the episode in Mel Gibson's The Patriot, when a sinister British officer encircles a colonial church and incinerates its unarmed and worshipping congregants. That scene was a fiction.” [Mark Tooley]

Gibson’s movie was overall lousy.
As most historical fiction is.

Lest We Forget.

While some of the many charges of Confederate involvement in Indian uprisings at the time (Such as the Sioux Uprising in Minnesota in 1863) were overblown, or not true, there’s no question that Indian Agents of the Confederate federal government were involved in the uprisings in Indian Territory and the southern Cheyenne and Arapaho uprisings in 1864.
The memory of the savagery of Indians in warfare was already dim for most Southerners at the time of the American Civil War.

The majority of American southerners had only entered the country since about 1850, and the Indians of the then southern states were driven out, into the new Indian Territory of 1834-90 (present-day Oklahoma) (the “Trail of Tears” propagated in American grade and junior high schools, about 1975-87).

Additionally, the Confederate government, being in rebellion against the American government, was courting the British and French governments, seeking the recognition, that both did much to imply to the rebels was impending, but that neither gave, and so had no reason to bring up past events in American history, or current events in American-Anglo diplomatic relations, that didn’t apply to the southern region.

For Americans in the states that remained loyal, and resisted the rebellion, then it was still all too vivid, and still current and ongoing.

Some of the Conferate officers who served in the American army on the frontiers prior to the war would. over 90 percent of American enlisted stayed in the army, so not many Rebel non-coms would.

At Antietam, near Sharpsburg, Maryland, later in the same year that the Confederate invasion of New Mexico Territory was defeated, and as General Thomas was fighting the Confederate invasion into Kentucky, the American troops manning the sunken road smeared gunpowder on their faces, simulating war paint, and responded to the Rebel Yell with Indian War Crys. Men with experience of such things that the majority of most southerners in the eastern states lacked. The sunken lane was held.

Oregonians were experiencing Indian raids by marauding Indians attacking into Oregon from their refuge in British Columbia (across the Anglo-American border, “the Medicine Line” to the raiding Indians), including on the islands in Puget Sound waterway then being contested by America and Britain.

Indian uprisings in the northern California, the southwest territories and western states (present-day upper Midwest) were still a norm.

Americans in the states and territories that remained loyal to the American government remembered all too clearly the British use of Indians against Americans in both the first and second Anglo-American wars: The Revolutionary War and the War of 1812.

The British use of their Indian “auxiliaries” is in no small way probably one of the primary reasons that the United States of America continued its existence It’s an interesting question that if Burgoyne had not used Indians, then the British Campaign of 1777 may very well have succeed in defeating the Americans in detail (upstate New York and then New Jersey), allowed dissolution of the U.S.A., and return of America to colonial status.

When Burgoyne entered New York, popular sentiment was still strongly divided in most of New York state. The majority of people were unsure or loyalist in sentiment. It the British use of Indians that served to unify Americans in New York state, and place them firmly in the pro-American cause, from that time onward.

Indians at that time could be useful in warfare, as shock troops to overwhelm an enemy by sheer numbers and intensity of fighting on a battlefield.

They were moderately organized and taught some rudimentary tactics. However, they were extremely undisciplined, and had no concept of strategy whatsoever. They were also fierce and were commonly blood-thirstily savage in their fighting.

At the very least, Burgoyne couldn’t keep them in line. His Indian auxiliaries engaged in depredations, killing people, including British loyalists, and including women (which unlike today, bothered civilized people).

Upstate New Yorkers rallied for their own defense. The presence of the American army there, initially badly outnumbered, that otherwise probably would have been surrounded and annihilated, with professional officers and non-commissioned officers, was capable of organize the New Yorkers. Burgoyne was taken under siege and his army made to surrender in a decisive victory for the American army.

Saratoga!

That’s the battle that brought France and Spain into the war openly (1778 & 1779) and ensured the survival of the American Republic.

It ensured that Americans would no longer live under the tyranny of Parliament, in the name of its puppet Monarch.

One can debate whether Burgoyne intended the savagery of the Indians used by the British in 1777.
There’s no debate regarding British intentions in the incidents of the War of 1812.

Indians were purposely unleashed on the city of Buffalo by the British.

They were also purposely unleashed on American prisoners of war and wounded on the Northwest Frontier.

In Canadian historical displays that I saw in Toronto and Montreal (about 1983), a great deal was there that depicted the American sack of York (present-day Toronto) in 1813.

One, in Montreal, even had a model of the American White House. Neither, at that time made any mention whatsoever of the battle that served as the battle cry of Americans on the northwest and Niagara Frontiers (“Remember the Raisen!”)

After the Battle of the Raisen River (present-day Michigan), the British turned the American wounded prisoners of war over to their Indian auxiliaries, who promptly slit the throats of the American militiamen or hatcheted them to death (bullets were not wasted).

When Americans burned the public buildings and records, and blew up the magazine and destroyed the cantonment, at York, it wasn’t merely because the boys got a little out of hand, and they certainly were not proto-anarchists. Americans sent a very clear message of what they thought of Britain: A very strong Get The Hell Out.

None of these incidents were the interest of the Confedrate government to remember, never mind emphasize to the populations of the 11 states in rebellion against the government, 1861-65. The actions of Confederate agents in Indian Territory, are not the reason for the defeat of the confederacy. But the outrage of Americans at the actions of the rebels at the time, were not merely due to ‘hysteria’ or American misinformation.

This doesn’t define Indians, but I do say that the American Indian, like the neo-conderate's confederacy (all variations, 20th century and today), and like so much else, have been, and are being, made into things that they never were.

[I may be misspelling the name of the Raisen river. If so, I apologize. It’s not included in my dictionary and I don’t have an atlas handy].

Paul Crowley| 9.26.09 @ 10:02PM

"The Plains Indians protected their territories with a ferocity greatly underestimated by the U.S."[Ray Torres]

Not Really.

This fantasy was begun with the first romanticized revision of the Indians, at the turn of the century, just prior to World War I.

The two biggest victories against Americans that can be claimed by the Plains Indians in the Indian Wars, 1863-90, are the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876 and the Fetterman Ambush & Massacre in December 1866.

Credit where credit is due, the Sioux and northern Cheyenne won both. The Fetterman ambush was well done (the hot-headed Fetterman contributed).

An entire company annihilated, 80 some odd Officers and men killed in the Fetterman ambush.

Defeat of one cavalry regiment on a reconaisance in force at Little Bighorn:
Five half-strength companies annihilated, 253 Officers and men killed, I believe, who were with custer, an additional Five half-strength companies besieged for a day or so with heavy casualties.

The besieging Indians scattered just before the main column arrived. Sitting Bull took his tribe to British Canada, where the British punitive expedtion of 1870 into the new Manitoba, which went through Sioux territories (but was not against the Sioux) was example enough for him to suck the butts of the three mounties (just recently formed) who arrived in his camp shortly after his arrival.

"The Medicine Line" again.

Those are the largest victories by any Indian tribe in the 27 years of the last Indian wars, from the period during which American policy shifted to reservations.

Both were purely tactical victories, and strategically accomplished nothing.

Little Bighorn was a strategic defeat for the northern plains tribes.

The army campaigns during this period, subdued the Indians, all of but 1 year of which, was during peacetime, and with peace time military funding.

That's an extremely poor record.

Paul Crowley| 9.26.09 @ 10:33PM

"The Plains Indians protected their territories with a ferocity greatly underestimated by the U.S."[Ray Torres]

I’ll also add that is the Hollywood version.

As I said above: Gibson’s movie [The Patriot] was overall lousy. As most historical fiction is.

The Indians, of all tribes, were more ferocious and won more battles in Hollywood movies, than they ever did in real life.

If this seems to you like an attack against the Indians, then I don’t make it as such, at all.

Where the Sioux and other Upper Plains tribes are concerned, then, in truth, I’m more impressed how long-suffering the Sioux and Upper Plains tribes truly were, and how much they attempted to avoid war.

In this they were better people than any of the post-1890 fantasy versions make them out to be.

As I noted above, the Sioux tribes did not take part in the Indian War of 1864. The Sioux tribes moved out of the region of the fighting by the southern Cheyenne and Arapaho.

Some of their young men, as hot-blooded, and mostly stupid, youth can be wont, did engage in raids and murders. Their actions can’t be blamed on the Sioux Chiefs or the tribes, in general.

Red Cloud’s uprising after the Civil War is perfectly understandable given the shabby events due to the American government, on the Bozeman Trail.

The Sioux & Cheyenne War of 1875-76, was purely due to American violation of the Sioux Treaty of 1868, antagonism against the Sioux, and a good bit of intrigue. The Sioux and northern Cheyenne Indians were gravely wronged, and cheated.

One can push a people only so far, before they get angry and lash back. That was part of the intrigue practiced against the Sioux, circa 1874-76.

Paul Crowley| 9.27.09 @ 2:58PM

First.
My skin is white.
I’m a native American.
I’m not a European.

Second.
The Black Hills were stolen from the Sioux Indians.

Third "Faux History" means nothing.
More accurate is the observation that the English-speaking world has been dominated by
British historiography since 1960 onward.

The Noble Savage itself was mostly was a British creation, especially propagated about the tribes in the Fijian islands (the upper caste tribes of the highly caste-based society: The Nobles of the Savages), but not restricted to them.

The glamorization and false accounts also contributed to some of the early Anglo-French communist movements, about 1825-47.

With that said. . . You’re right.The romantic “Sacred Black Hills” business can indeed be fairly called silly.

This is part of the post-1969 version, especially propagated over the past 18-20 years.

It’s effectively a post-1969 equivalent to the pathetic Ghost Dance religion of the 1890s, the Mahdist sect in The Sudan (1879-98), British Evangelicals of about 1840-1914, and most of what’s found in present-day post-1965 reformed religions, among a good many other examples, especially in the 17th-20th centuries, and that abound, world-wide today, including our new post-1969 "Scots-Irish."

In this instance, it is clearly social engineering (i.e. a manipulation of people, employing religion and culture, through historical commentary.

It’s true that the New Age Movement has contributed.
I could give a list of others equivalent to the Black Hills, from New Mexico and Arizona, and some other places, as well.

What is interesting about the Sacred Black Hills version is that it coincides with the almost-psychotic focus upon Custer, the man, and the Battle of Little Bighorn, at least the reformed Custer, in this new post-1969 version of the Indians (which is obviously still a work in progress, and moving toward a new revision), and giving Sitting Bull pride of place at the battlefield in Montana in the 1980s.

There are logical contradictions, historically speaking, between the individual events of this synthesis (which obviously is no problem where historical syntheses are concerned, due to the state of the majority the present-day populations, which is why manipulation of history and religion is so useful, as the English learned, well before they became British).

If the Sioux Indians of 1868-76 had viewed the Black Hills as sacred, then one should be forgiven for asking why did the clash between the Sioux and northern Cheyenne of 1876 take place in present-day Montana, rather than in the Black Hills region itself, where all of the Sioux tribes were sent by the American-Sioux Treaty of 1868, which established The Great Sioux Reservation?

What made the Black Hills "sacred” at the time, was the gold deposits that were found in them and the Gold Standard of the time.

It was not the Sioux Indians for whom they were sacred.

The wealth of the Sioux Indians of the time was counted in livestock and trade via buffalo hunting.

Hence the Buffalo Dance religion toward the end of the century.

Part of the American-Sioux Treaty of 1868 was the closing of the Bozeman Trail (A.K.A.the Montana Road).

The status of the region (present-day Montana) was left vague. It was not formally ceded to the Indians, but the American army did withdraw its garrisons from the forts and cantonments, which the Indians misinterpreted as a victory on their part.

The Great Sioux Reservation, in present-day Dakotas was ceded to the Sioux Indians.

The geologists of the Custer expedition of 1874 found gold deposits in the Black Hills, on what the Sioux understood as being part of the The Great Sioux Reservation.

The Gold Rush that ensued, onto The Great Sioux Reservation, angered the Sioux Indians, unsurprisingly, and quite justly.

The territory was clearly enough promised as theirs by the American-Sioux Treaty of 1868 (in answer to the question of who said it was theirs?). Although, no doubt the phrasing, and lack of formal demarcation, left it vague and ambiguous enough to be argued that there was no quid pro quo in particular portions of it, should it be necessary.

Many of the Sioux began migrating off of The Great Sioux Reservation back into present-day Montana (the region whose status was left vague).

In December 1875, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (part of the Department of the Interior since 1850) issued an ultimatum to the Indians giving them one month to return to The Great Sioux Reservation (e.g. to move from present-day Montana to present-day South Dakota in the middle of December!).

Unsurprisingly, the Indians, in winter quarters at the time they received the ultimatum, did not obey the order.

The Secretary of the Interior formally requested the Secretary of War to have the army enforce the order.

The army columns that advanced into the region used the half-strenth (peacetime manning) 7th Cavalry regiment to make a reconnaissance, ahead of the advancing columns.

This is what led to the Battle of Little Bighorn in June 1876.

After the Custer Massacre shocked the country, the army poured troops into the Great Plains and the Mountain northwest.

It’s why I said that the Sioux & Cheyenne War of 1875-76, was due to American violation of the Sioux Treaty of 1868, antagonism against the Sioux, and a good bit of intrigue.

The Sioux and northern Cheyenne Indians were gravely wronged, and cheated.

The same thing happened to the Warm Springs Apaches (in the moutains near present-day Truth or Consequences) in New Mexico Territory later. In their case, buffalo were not part of the issue. Neither was gold.

There it was the new Silver Standard and the discovery of Silver in the region that led to that campaign.

I won’t blindly defend every action of the American government toward the Indians, then or now, including this latest version of the Indians, that is being used.

Sitting Bull being give pride of place at the battlefield in Montana is exactly the same as the Brits now dubbing Riel "the Father of Manitoba" in Canada. The British punitive expedition (now being redubbed a Peace-keeping Mission in Candian historiography) really was a land grab and theft, just like the Black Hills were.

The reform of Riel from Desparado to Hero, upset a number in the older generation of Canadians, circa 1969-89, as the historic themes taught to the children were shifted. Goodby ridiculously-over glamorized Mary Secord, hello reformed Lous Riel.

Americans are getting the same thing.

Paul Crowley| 9.27.09 @ 4:40PM

To bring it back on topic, or, rather, back to the historical synthesis of interest, raised by Tooley’s political essay.

Again, synthesis, not jaded, is the term.

Clawson's remarks:

American occupation of New Mexico (1846-48).

The New Mexican uprising against the provisional government (1847).

American-Mexican War of 1846-48.

Republic of Mexico, beginning about 1823 (1824 if one prefers).

Followed the Empire of Mexico, 1821-23.

Mexican independence (1821; not 1810, as Mexican Republican, all of them, political historiography like to play with).

Mexican "Secularization" of the California Missions, c. 1834-1830s).

Viceroyalty of New Spain (1524-1821).

La Raza (c. 1967-74).

. . .

The California missions has been “secularized” by the Mexican government, in Baja and Alta California, the 1830s: i.e. seized and sold under the redefining of the ecclesiastical term “secular” by the Mexican government (what is today dubbed “Classical Liberalism” at work). The road linking Alta California and New Mexico was well established by then.

Indians in Mexican New Mexico had reason to be nervous about what the future held for them.

La Raza (circa about 1969-72).
La Raza’s political synthesis was based on claims to Spanish Land Grants, so that takes us to late 16th century & 17th century New Mexico when it was under the Kings of Spain, governed by the Viceroyalty of Spain (1524-1821), which Mexico (c. 1516) was part of, and Mexico City was the capital of.

In New Mexico, the Onate expedition used to be commemorated in Santa Fe, by New Mexicans, every year, pre-1969: The Reconquest.

Onate was shown the door in the 1970s (a done deal by about the time that Jimmy Carter was issuing the presidential pardon of Robert E. Lee).

By then we had the Tri-Culure Theme (White, Hispanic and Indian) (black New Mexicans were shown to the cultural back-of-the-bus).

Pepe, the Indian pueblo medicine man who is credited with leading the Pueblo uprising that compelled the Spaniards to abandon New Mexico for about 14 years, was enshrined by the Congressional delegation of N.M. (a mix of Republican and democrat) in the American capitol building in Washington, D.C., in the mid 1980s.

This was about the time that the rebel flag was being raised over Santa Fe, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday was being made a national holiday, Poncho Villa was being given pride of place in Columbus, N.M. the Buffalo Soldier exhibit was going up at the restored Fort Sheldon, Cinco de Mayo was popping up, Sitting Bull was being given pride of place in Montana, and the Russian American Fur Company 1794-1867) was being given a 5,000 acre state park in California(!), “The Round House,” our new Indian Kiva-style state legislature building that replaced the old capital building not long before, seemed to any New Mexican, 20 years old and younger, to have always been there, and the hippies who took over Madrid New Mexico, abandoned by the mining company whose company town it was in the late 1950s, were transforming themselves into artist-entrepreneurs. . .

1990-94, the reformed Archdiocese was going through the priest predophile crisis and the Archbishops affairs with the Maloof girls crisis (New Mexico leads the nation? Not quite, Lafayette, Louisiana was first in 1987), Our Lady of the Conquest, La Conquistadora, was shown the door, and reformed into “Our Lady of Conquering Love.” shortly after this the puppet-King of Spain (restored in 1975) began arriving on P.R. visits, and the Sister's of Loredo chapel in Santa Fe, was turned into a tourist trap, complete with irregular marriage ceremonies. . .

The Shrine of La Conquistadora in St. Francis Cathedral, was not destroyed (“renovated”) until after 2001.

Just after the statue of St. Katherine, the First Native American Saint (from the upper Midwest), was erected in front of the Cathedral of St. France (the statue of St. Francis had long since been moved from inside the church, to the porch outside of the cathedral), and Bishop, later Archbishop, Lamy, first Bishop of New Mexico, was described as having imposed a “Euro-Centric” Catholicism on New Mexico (Lamy was a Frenchman, so the Irish couldn’t be blamed in this instance).

“Misremembering?????” These are only some of the items that have to go into the synthesis!

Only some, albeit some of the more important, that go into the Mess.

And let's not forget the Jamestown site in Virginia (when I was there in 1984, it wasn't much more than a clearing with some architectural digs. What is it today?).

My commentary above, is not detached either, not even that on the Sioux and upper Plains tribes.

American Indians of the 19th century and Americans of the first decade of the 21st Century?

After 40 years of cultural slaughter, giving them enough rope to hang themselves, and the death of the World War II population, there's no difference whatsoever. Americans 70 years old and younger, including the urbanized Indian-Americans styled "Native Americans," are mostly just more polished primitives, that's it.

Paul Crowley| 9.27.09 @ 4:51PM

The London Tea Party Movement of April 2009 falls into the same category.

The USE of historical events.

The Boston Tea Party was a favorite British theme in its colonies in the 19th century when the British government introduced the shams of Representative government, and later, Responsible Government.

The American Congress, real self-government, the mutiny of American militias, and Saratoga were not.

The Tea Party shams were only rabble rousing that aided selling the sham of quasi-self government to the colonies later confederated into the dominions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Afriaca.

Newfoundland and the Irish Free state, were intermittant necessities. . .

Paul Crowley| 9.27.09 @ 6:43PM

Correction.

Pope, not Pepe, I believe, is the name given to the Pueblo Indian medicine man, popularized in the Chicano and Indian studies, 1969 onward, and enshrined in the Capitol building by the New Mexico Congressional delegation in the mid 1980s.

A Californian-New Mexican would probably have spotted this immediately. I'm sure they Know All About New Mexico History now.

At any rate, it shows what happens to human memory.

All of the La Raza synthesis is well outside of living memory, except for the events driven by it since about 1969.

It’s Hobbes, not Roussea, who is of interest romanticism, especially primitive peoples, actually all peoples, is concerned.

Hobbes recognized that the printing press was not the mile-stone accomplishment in Mankind’s History that Protestants of the time were making of it.

Rather, as he rightly saw, it is writing that was the true mile-stone accomplishment in Mankind’s History, and that made civilization possible.

His observation is sound. Writing was far more critical to mankind than the printing press.

If one relies on histories via oral traditions, then history is lost.

Human memory, at best spans a mere four generations, and those incomplete: For an individual, then it spans from some knowledge of his grandparent’s and his parents’, to himself, to his children's lifetimes. That’s personal memory. Other elements can be carried from a bit later, to a bit further.

It’s the invention of writing that allows what can be termed Mankind’s collective memory.

Without it, History itself would be impossible. There would be no science or engineering, to be sure.

Hobbes, observant as he was, also recognized that Human beings can be taught to do things which are actually harmful to them.

Hobbes really didn’t recognize much that was new with this last, but he did phrase it differently than it had been until that time.

Interestingly his observation on this were recorded by comparison and contrast of human beings with lower animals. Hobbes become one of the earliest to clearly engage in anthropomorphism, that attribute, that as recently as 70 years ago was pre-eminently English, but has now spread world-wide.

Take these two combined, give it to an amoral man by pre-reformed standards), such as most Americans today are, and the kind of tactic that can be made of it is all too painfully clear.

This is one reason that there has been no such thing as a European or European culture.

Such a thing did exist once, but it has not since at least about 1579, and definitely not since 1648. It still doesn’t exist, but is being formed. There has never been anything that could be dubbed Asian or African culture.

The printing press, the Lady's Typewriter, and the personal computer, are technologies that have had a tremondous impact, and continue to. They provide the writing for the post-Napoleonic Wars urbanized peasantry (i.e. The Comman Man).

Americans today are at about the point that the Victorian British were by about 1895, right down to the militarization and neo-paganization. The militarization of the Victorians at that point in time was a gutless and easy militarization and patriotism.

The English were never a martial Race (now they're no longer a Race at all) and the English government that owned the kingdom, conquerqued primarily by getting other peoples to do the bulk of its fighting.

Even though mercenaries were no longer needed to be hired for use as regular troops, as in the first Anglo-American war, the American Revolutionary war, or slaves purchased to be trained and used as regular soldiers, as in the French Revolutionary wars, Kipling got the term wrong.

In 1895, the common British soldier of the Royal Army should have been dubbed the Paddies, Donnies and Johns, not Tommies.

Paddy, Donnie and John made up less than one half of the British grunts of the time, the other more-than-a-half common soldiers were in the the Royal Indian Army. Ireland and India were two large British garrisons in 1895.

The Tommys didn't arrive in large numbers, for the first time, until about 1899-1902, and then really large numbers 1914-18 and 1940-45.

That took the starch out of them. The unprecedented love of guns and bugles, that the common now-urbanized Englishman Had Been Taught to romanticize, about 1870-97.

It also showed that the "Muscular Christianity," of the newly reformed British Evangelicals, was, in reality, tremendously flabby. An entirely material-reliant religion.

The American population is now at about the same point as 1895 Victorian Britain.

As to the emergence of the British "Tommy." They weren't the only Human Resources used.

Ireland still sent more than 600,000 men to fight in in World War I, and that just from the 2/3 of the south, and doesn't count the Ulster Division sent to France.

About 200,000 serving in France, and the rest in the colonial grabs against the Ottomans (at a standstill, and stopped by Ottoman armies, until Italy, and then America entered the war).

The Irish took the worst of it on the southern beaches at Gallipoli (no wonder Gallipoli, Another Magnificent Retreat, was romanticized in British historical commentary in Britain until about 1960, when it was turned over to the colonials, Australia and New Zealand, for romanticization.

Another change in historical commentary. Until after World War II common Aussies didn't romantize Gallipoli, but saw it as an example not to blindly turn their men over to British leadership.

The Aussie troops themselves were heavily Irish, since the Irish were used to populate the new colonies that became Australia (1901), from 1847-50 onward.

Most of them were the lower-class Presbyterian-Protestant Irish, no longer being needed by Britian, in Ireland, from 1846 onward.

These are now re-dubbed "Scots-Irish."

James Webb isn't the only one coming up with an absurd re-culturization of Protestant Irish-Americans.

Contrary to Webb's fantasy version, these people didn't become tired of being used, they became redundant.

The Yeoman militia was replaced by the Royal Irish Constabulatory and the Royal Army, during the years of the Great Famine, when both were used to enforce exports, via the new Free Trade policy, after Britain did away with the last of its old mercantile laws, The Corn Act (1846) and the Navigation Act (1849).

It's not only Marxist governements that enforce, and make possible Famine, such as The Ukraine in the early 1930s.

The lower-class Protestant Irish were an the excess population, that was used to help populate British in present-day Australia, Canada, and the U.S.A. The ancestors of most Irish-Americans of this sub-group, who are now being taught that they are "Scots-Irish," didn't begin arriving in this country until after 1847-50.

But the rubes are being taught that they're much more ancient that the majority of them truly are.

Most arrived after the American Civil War.

How many Neo-Confederates today Have Been Taught to romantacize a thing that not only never existed, but whose ancesters arrived in steerage, anywhere from 5-60 years after the end of the Civil War??!

It's not only American Indians that are being used.

Or the new Hispanic Race, Native American Race, African-American Race (a renaming of Negro), or Asian-American Race that is being formed. The new White Race is being formed as anything but a uniform whole itself.

The thoroughly anglicized Mic, Tooley, who wrote this political essay, demonstrates the potential Hobbes recognized: What the great-grandchildren can be formed into.

Paul Crowley| 9.27.09 @ 7:28PM

“Survival of Fittest” = Conquest by the Clever weaklings.

To paraphrase President Andrew Jackson (1829-37) on the British government: The most perfidious in the history of mankind.

The reformed U.S.A. has taken its place.

Although in central Asia, Americans are mostly used as peons: grunts, operators, clerks, and some lower-end managers of the departments of defense and state. The high-end work, engineering and infrastructure construction, is being done by Indians, Pakistanis and Chinese.

Watch out Americans, reformed-India’s star is rising at the beginning of this century as America’s was at the beginning of the last.

Indians? They shouldn't get too cocky. Without staying with the British, in the Commonwealth, they would never have received the financing.

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