"You live on stolen land"

[RINO Tom]

It's cliched, but I think a lot of it is due to people's lack of understanding and appreciation for history; people view history as "the past," failing to really think about the fact that every single person throughout history lived in "their equivalent of 2020" ... in other words, no "ancient" people ever thought of themselves as anything other than the most advanced, tolerant and *post-historical* people yet to walk the Earth.  Our basic evolutionary instincts led rise to things like tribes and even nation states in an effort to provide at least those "closest to us" with a better life, often with the absolute necessity that someone loses out.  I think there is a balance that can be struck where we might acknowledge that we shouldn't "steal land just because we can" anymore, but once you start putting pressure on entire countries or ethnic groups to apologize for a past they had no part of, it's a really dumb and quite slippery slope.  The US could conquer Central America tomorrow, but we don't; and we shouldn't.  However, just because our varied European ancestors took land from technologically inferior previous inhabitants doesn't mean we have to go back to the drawing board taking pride in literally anything about our current country.  Do we live on "stolen land"?  Of course ... honestly, the most that should be done about that is maybe some government-sponsored programs to try to better the lives of Native Americans in our country ... everything else is just a big fat "eye roll."

[RINO Tom]

This is a complex issue because resitution does need to be made for historic wrongs, but "Turtle Island is stolen indigenous land and Whites should go back to Europe" is LARPy Tankie Bullsh[inks].

I agree it should be a goal, but only if the government (say, the United States) simply wants to try to do some good to help groups it has hurt in the past (say, Native Americans) ... there shouldn't be a "hard and fast rule."  Does anyone really think that modern-day Italians owe anything to Germans because of Rome enslaving barbarians from Germania?  Surely nobody thinks Swedes and Danes should feel guilt for the actions of the Vikings.  I suppose you could maintain that as long as there was one, continuous government, the situation is different ... but how long do we "make up for the wrongs," and by what metric do we measure our success?  Should Native American communities be helped out until the median income is equal to that of Whites?  Or Asians?  It just gets messy.

Again, I do agree that some type of action should be taken, but it should honestly be viewed as a goodwill gesture, not something that is clearly owed...

[RINO Tom]

You are missing my point. I am not trying to downplay what happened to the Natives; I'm just pointing out that America is hardly unique in the quality of being "built on stolen land." The experiences you just described can be applied to half a hundred ethnic groups around the world just in the last fifty years. So if you're going to argue that the US is built on stolen land but the rest of the world isn't, you need a better case for it than that.

This is true, but I don't think they would disagree with you here

I know this post is pretty old but it gets at something important.

I'm not going to speculate on Dule's specific motives here but a lot of the pushback you see against the "stolen land" claims and several others argues against them as if they were relative statements about world history. I don't think this is what is meant - more often they're meant to be viewed as absolute statements. It is true that US history is riddled with abusive and coercive treaties (often ignored) and land acquisition fueled through conquest and other types of brutality, often with incredibly nefarious and racist motivations.

The fact that it has happened throughout world history doesn't really change the fact it happened in the US. If anything, the comparison being made when the "stolen land" argument is invoked isn't the rest of the world, it's to the idea of American exceptionalism itself. American history like the history of most nations (especially but not limited to most large European powers) is full of conquest, perfidy, unimaginable brutality, and subjugation. The difference is that Americans teach themselves as an article of faith that their history is uniquely rid of these problems. This is why the "stolen land" arguments have gained traction in the last several decades. It's a form of self-accountability.

That's a fair enough argument.  This "motto" of the US is also how you end up with Europeans unironically calling Americans "racist" for having attitudes toward immigration that are fundamentally more liberal than most Europeans'.