Who's reprimanding who? I've just been expressing opinions.
Read your post #23 in this thread. It is filled with your moral judgements about others beliefs and actions.
I'm a leave me and other people the hell alone-ist
In my view rights are inherent, not government given.
What makes it ours? That were here? Well so are they. 12 million of them.
What makes me better than them? What makes me entitled to live here in this land of milk and honey and not them? Who am I to exclude them?
These are moral claims that other people should adhere to your standard of human rights and fair play. Even the idea of human rights is an explicitly moral concept that you expect me to follow. You should further consider that all law is based on moral beliefs, and as you are not an anarchist, you do believe in imposing your morality on others. So do I.
It seems that now the lines have been drawn I'm being treated like a mental defective for disagreeing.
Well, you'll have that in most discussion forums, but I hope you'll tell me if I've done that. I gave up long ago thinking that people were stupid, just because they disagreed with me.
Apologize? Show me where I've injured you and I will make amends.
I'm okay, but admitting your mistakes demonstrates intellectual honesty.
Would you leave the country and denounce the USA if we found out that yes, it was true, the Colonialists did in fact break laws to emigrate?
What would that solve? I think your question is based on a poor understanding of the situation (even poorer than mine!) but let me save that for later. As far as I can tell, we most certainly pushed out American Indians and took their lands. Often, we dealt with them in a most treacherous manner. However, this cannot be undone and in fact undoing it would destroy the nation that is the best earthly hope for justice and freedom. And who would the land rightfully belong to? Pre-Columbian history is filled with warfare and migrations of peoples, much like that of the rest of the world. In fact, we have as good a claim to it as those our ancestors took it from, and they are long dead. I do not say that the end justifies the means. Rather, the means cannot be taken back or changed, and we are left with the ends, which we would not wish to change.
However the Indians who occupied U.S. territory in the times of white expansion did not have modern nation-states. It is unwise to generalize overmuch about so many different groups, but as I understand it, they were as close to mercedesrules' anarchist vision as any group I can think of. Tribes or "nations" lived together and governed themselves loosely. A chief could command the alliegance of no one, but individuals often chose to follow his leadership. Any treaty made with another nation was binding on those present to make the treaty, so any in the group who didn't agree to the treaty could ignore it. Land boundaries were decided by treaties and warfare, and there were no standard procedures for those crossing over.
When the colonists came, some Indians chose to kill settlers, some made treaties, hoping the men with boomsticks could be powerful allies in their own wars and internecine rivalries, and some wanted to trade. Some protested, I am sure, but to compare this to our own laws and their enforcement is tricky, at best. One lesson to learn is this: let us not be over-run as we over-ran the American Indian. They failed to organize themselves to protect their land. They had no unified policy to regulate who should be allowed in or how. They fought among themselves.
I'm sure I could make my point far more cogently, were I not so sleepy.
