In the latest of our dispatches from tree-hugger land, we have this inspired piece of work from the Redmond Reporter, demonstrating further why the dead tree media is on the decline.
Be thankful, but true to our past
Nov 26 2008, 12:00 AM · NEW
On the fourth Thursday of every November, Americans pig out to the fullest extent while ignoring the sins of the past.
I guess I missed the part where I might somehow need to feel responsibility for things that occurred before I was born. I guess more time in the soon-to-be erected "re-education" camps will teach me where I went so tragically wrong.
Teachers have long since squashed the myth that Christopher Columbus sailed to America to prove the world was round, but some still perpetuate the myth that he was the peaceful discoverer of the American continent.
You found a school where Columbus was still part of the curriculum? That in itself is a miracle in these days of revisionist hate America first pap that you spoon feed to our children at every opportunity.
Columbus, in fact, was the precursor to a mass genocide.
gen-o-cide [jen-uh-sahyd]
–noun the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group.
Origin:
1940–45; < Gk géno(s) race + -cide
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc.
Considering that a 'precursor" is something that comes before, does that mean all of the revised histories will again have to be re-written? You know, the ones that call Columbus a murderer? Really, it is starting to get like we need a scorecard to keep track of these things any more. And Genocide? When was there ever a concerted effort on behalf of all Europeans here in the New World to systematically exterminate all living peoples? I'm fairly well versed in history, and I really don't remember coming across anything resembling a stated policy or governmental mandate to eradicate all indigenous peoples from North America. Can you say "flawed premise"? I knew you could.
More than 100 years later, the Pilgrims arrived peacefully to participate in the first Thanksgiving dinner. But, instead they opened the door to more death and destruction of the Native Americans.
Except that if it wasn't the Pilgrims, it would have been someone else. Mankind tends to stretch out in many different directions, but it really was a very skillful attempt to paint those evil Christofascist Pilgrims as murdering monsters, set on building their homes on the bones of unfortunate Indian children. Well, except for the part where I pointed out that the facts don't support the impression created. Sorry about that.
Eventually, they became the minority, captives in their own land. You can bet, they were never thankful for the famine, war, death, and plagues brought on by the Europeans.
Yeah, because they never had famine, war, death, or plagues before the Europeans came. Everybody knows that those were strictly inventions of the evil Europeans used to subjugate lands that they were not born to. All those tribes that warred with and killed each other, some times enslaving, but more frequently seeking extinction? How do you explain them? Famine? The phrase "hunger moon" did not arrive with the Europeans. Plagues? Disease does not exist in a vacuum. Simple reading in the field of epidemiology should be sufficient to convince you of this. And, since you are so blindingly ignorant of history, you might want to read up on the origins of swine flu...the native people's gift to Europeans, and the effects that it had.
Thanksgiving was a holiday created by President Abraham Lincoln to give Americans something to be thankful for during the Civil War. People can be thankful for a lot of things, but genocide should not be one of them.
Actually, the origins appear to reach back to St. Augustine in Florida, and then the Virgina and Massachusetts Colony. The Internet is a wonderful research tool. I suggest you use it to educate yourself on the true meaning of a holiday before you project your unreasonable self-loathing on the celebration of an entire nation. Yes, I know. You are not willing to let facts interfere with a serious bit of navel-gazing self-righteousness.
How can something so devastating as genocide become so overshadowed by a national holiday? Even if it happened centuries ago, a subject like genocide is something that should not be ignored no matter when it happened.
I'm not sure that such a thing can occur. I certainly have not witnessed where the Germans have a day where they load their tables with sausages and sauerkraut to celebrate the Holocaust. But then, that would be because the Holocaust was an actual, you know, genocide.
So this Thanksgiving you can be thankful for the money in your pocket or the freedom you have, but just remember the indigenous “Americans” who yearned for that freedom first.
Ok, now I'm confused. First you use the word "genocide" like a bludgeon, arguing passionately for the requirement that I feel guilt for a "genocide" that never happened, and I certainly had nothing to do with, and now you imply that our nation denied these people their 'freedoms'. They do not teach coherency in journalism course anymore, do they?
This Thanksgiving, we should be careful of what we’re grateful for.
Why this Thanksgiving? Why not last Thanksgiving? Why not next Thanksgiving? I refuse to let the triumph of form over substance that occurred in our recent Presidential election make me ashamed of being an American, or of the history of our nation, and being dictated to by sanctimonious dimwits such as yourself tends to reinforce the feeling. Somewhere, Zig Zigler is laughing hysterically at your flawed sales technique.
America, taken brutally from the natives already happily settled, built on the backs of slaves, and made powerful through numerous wars, has a bloody history.
Taken brutally from natives happily settled? You need to brush up on your native american histories. Tribes wiping entire tribes out. Enslaving others? Brutally attacking settlers who's only crime was moving into land that did not appear to be occupied. And bloody? Read some of the accounts of the French and Indian War. The tomahawk is not known for making a 'clean' wound. Built on the backs of slaves? If there was even a scintilla of truth to this assertion, then how is it that the north, with its noted absence of slaves, managed to win the Civil War? Anybody? Anybody? Bueller? Compare the numbers of Americans killed in the Civil War compared to any other conflict our nation has been in, and then try to make your case for bloody.
Nearly everything Americans have to be thankful for has hurt someone else along the way.
You're right. We hurt the Axis Powers...the ones who declared war on us, when we defeated them in WWII. We hurt the North Korean communists when they attempted to brutally repress their countrymen in South Korea. Ditto for the North Vietnamese. We hurt the man in the moon with the moon landings. We hurt the eastern bloc countries when we won the Cold War and they won their freedom. We hurt Sadam Hussein when we pushed him out of Kuwait and back into his own country. We hurt him again when we removed him from power so he could no longer arbitrarily and capriciously kill Iraquis who displeased him. We hurt the whole world with velcro, microwave ovens, incandescent light, the automobile, the zipper, refrigeration, the airplane, manned spaceflight, steel, and the various advances to existing technologies and processes that the Americans are responsible for bringing to the world. We hurt other people when we put our unique take on liberty and freedom and put it into writing. We hurt other people when we breathed life into those words with the sacrifices of our brave citizens as they fell time and again on foreign shores bringing those freedoms to lands that had previously only know tyranny.
The thought behind Thanksgiving is a pure and good one – set a day apart when we gather with family and friends and remember all the many things we have to be thankful for.
And to remember other times...some good, some bad, but always to be thankful for the providence that God has blessed this nation with, and the family and friends that we are fortunate enough to spend time with, regardless of all other circumstances, past, present, and future.
And we Americans have a lot to be thankful for.
Amen. Something we can both agree on. How did that happen?
The problem isn’t what we remember; rather, the problem is what we forget.
No, the problem is that you assume that because I don't engage in a lot of silly handwringing about things that I had nothing to do with, I need the benefit of your preachy admonition.
Americans simply don’t think about the people they have to step on to get where they are. This Thanksgiving, don’t make that mistake.
Insulting and stupid. If we are indelibly stained by any misdeeds that may have been committed by our fathers and grandfathers, then I submit to you that the rest of the world has as much or more to answer for than this great nation, yet I don't see you on your soapbox wagging your finger at any other country. Why is that?
Freedom is wonderful. By all means, be grateful for it. Enjoy that turkey dinner and be thankful for our freedom, friends and family.
Thank you. I intend to.
Just don’t forget about all the people who don’t get to be grateful for American freedom.
I'm confused. Did we change the subject of your outrage screed again? Because if they live here, they get the same freedoms you and I do. If they don't, then maybe they can aspire to it where they are, and that would be a good thing.
I'm thankful that your wretched 'opinion piece' was mercifully short. I would have been more thankful if you could have checked your "Hate America First" attitude before writing it and instead penned a thoughtful, factually based piece that would have treated thanks and pride as the centerpiece, rather than a half-hearted afterthought, tossed out to deflect any deserved criticism of your page of bile.
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