Slavery and Invasion

Is the white race, as Susan Sontag wrote, “the cancer of human history”?

NO.

Buchanan’s post has me baffled. Is this the same Buchanan that advocates the wall at the US Southern border?

Now no one denies that great sins and crimes were committed in that conquest. But are not the Mexican people, 130 million of them, far better off because the Spanish came and overthrew the Aztec Empire?

Maybe, maybe not. We will not know. A lot that would be different could have happened in 500 years.

Did not 300 years of Spanish rule and replacement of Mexico’s pagan cults with the Catholic faith lead to enormous advances for its civilization and human rights?

Probably, after the killing stopped. But we claim to be doing the same in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. How is that working for you, Pat? I am thinking you would admit – Not well.

Did the Aztecs have a right to be left alone by the European world?

If so, whence came that right?

The right to be left alone belonged to the Aztecs just as it belongs to every individual on today’s planet. Mr. B you are suppressing your inner Libertarian.

Behind this demand for an apology from Spain and the Church is a view of history familiar to Americans, and rooted in clashing concepts about who we are, and were.

Query: Can peoples who are ashamed of their nation’s past do great things in its future? Or is a deep-seated national guilt, such as that which afflicts many Germans today, a permanent incapacitating feature of a nation’s existence?

There is no reason for anyone to be ashamed of what ancestors from hundreds of years ago did. People have been doing bad stuff to other people ever since there have been people. No one’s ancestry is pristine. Not even the Jesus’.

The thing to do is help prevent it from happening again. If you are Libertarian think NAP, Non Agression Principle.

Apologies and reparations: Take slavery in the US.

The make up of the US is so different from 1840 it would take 10,000 pages of regulations to figure who had to apologize and, of course, pay whom. Native Americans, the Irish immigrants escaping the potato famine, Western and European immigrants of 1880 on, Koreans, various Asians. Do they pay for something that happened 200 years ago?

The democratic party is all about “fairness”, right? Unfortunately, Nancy, Bernie and Occasional-Cortex could have 10,000 pages knocked out in no time.

I think what underlies this to a great extent is the thought of receiving ‘free government money’ and, of course, votes in return.

The 900 pound invisible gorilla.

I am more concerned about what is happening today. Particularly the rampant child sex slavery in the Middle East.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/03/patrick-j-buchanan/must-the-west-beg-the-world-for-forgiveness/

By Patrick J. Buchanan

…

Have the Western peoples who conquered and changed much of the world been, on balance, a blessing to mankind or a curse? Is the history of the West, though replete with the failings of all civilizations, not unique in the greatness of what it produced?

Or are the West’s crimes of imperialism, colonialism, genocide, racism, slavery and maltreatment of minorities of color so sweeping, hateful and shameful they cancel out the good done?…

Be seeing you