Is the US evil now , or was the US ever good?

[Nakosis]

Outside Iceland no nation / people isn't
residing on land taken by force from someone
else. Usually many times over.

Nothing new there. The native American fought plenty of wars among themselves to take control of land from each other. They were as brutal or perhaps even more brutal in their acquisition of land. They only had ownership of land if they could protect that ownership.

Same as it is today. The right to own land only extends as far as your ability to protect that ownership.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

The élites don't think of the common welfare.
They won't understand that a State needs their cooperation, because they drive the economy.
They don't care.

Commoners are the ones who fight for the common good.

That would seem to suggest that both elites and common folk act in the best interests of the groups to which they belong.

 

[Stevicus]

We vote for them. We put them in office.
Maybe masses of citizenry are too brainwashed by the media to make intelligent decisions. Maybe voting is too controlled by the two parties in power. Still we have the power to vote and if we are just sock puppets of the media, I still tend to blame us for our cattle mentality.

More like crabs in a bucket.

 

[Audie]

Nothing new there. The native American fought plenty of wars among themselves to take control of land from each other. They were as brutal or perhaps even more brutal in their acquisition of land. They only had ownership of land if they could protect that ownership.

Same as it is today. The right to own land only extends as far as your ability to protect that ownership.

Of course. So there was no call to fault the USA
for it.

Or for Americans to get pious re Tiber.

 

[Heyo]

The native American fought plenty of wars among themselves to take control of land from each other. They were as brutal or perhaps even more brutal in their acquisition of land. They only had ownership of land if they could protect that ownership.

About which tribes are you talking? At least some of them didn't have a concept of ownership of land.

 

[Stevicus]

About which tribes are you talking? At least some of them didn't have a concept of ownership of land.

Probably not formal ownership or national boundaries in the European sense. But that wouldn't stop anyone from fighting if they had a reason to fight. I can't say whether they were more brutal or less brutal than Europeans - although back in the early days, Europeans were pretty darn brutal. And greedy, too. I heard that Geronimo once asked "Why do you have to take all the land?"

 

[Nakosis]

About which tribes are you talking? At least some of them didn't have a concept of ownership of land.

Archaeological evidence confirms the prominent role of warfare in indigenous societies well before the arrival of permanent European settlers. As early as the year 1000, for example, Huron, Neutral, Petun and Iroquois villages were increasingly fortified by a timber palisade that could be nearly 10 metres in height, sometimes villages built a second or even third ring to protect them against attacks by enemy nations. Craig Keener has described how these structures became larger and more elaborate through to the 1500s, with logs as large as 24 inches in diameter being used to construct the multi-layered defences, an enormous investment in communal labour that the villagers would not have made had it not been deemed necessary. Sieges and assaults on such fortified villages therefore must have occurred before Europeans arrived, and were certainly evident in the 17th and 18th Centuries.
Warfare In Pre-Columbian North America - Canada.ca

For example, at the Crow Creek massacre site (in the territory of the Crow Creek Reservation in South Dakota), archaeologists found a mass grave containing the remains of more than 500 men, women, and children who had been slaughtered, scalped, and mutilated during an attack on their village a century and a half before Columbus's arrival (ca. 1325 AD). The Crow Creek massacre seems to have occurred just when the village's fortifications were being rebuilt. All the houses were burned, and most of the inhabitants were murdered. This death toll represented more than 60% of the village's population, estimated from the number of houses to have been about 800. The survivors appear to have been primarily young women, as their skeletons are underrepresented among the bones; if so, they were probably taken away as captives. Certainly, the site was deserted for some time after the attack because the bodies evidently remained exposed to scavenging animals for a few weeks before burial. In other words, this whole village was annihilated in a single attack and never reoccupied.
War Before Civilization - Wikipedia

 

[Heyo]

Archaeological evidence confirms the prominent role of warfare in indigenous societies well before the arrival of permanent European settlers. As early as the year 1000, for example, Huron, Neutral, Petun and Iroquois villages were increasingly fortified by a timber palisade that could be nearly 10 metres in height, sometimes villages built a second or even third ring to protect them against attacks by enemy nations. Craig Keener has described how these structures became larger and more elaborate through to the 1500s, with logs as large as 24 inches in diameter being used to construct the multi-layered defences, an enormous investment in communal labour that the villagers would not have made had it not been deemed necessary. Sieges and assaults on such fortified villages therefore must have occurred before Europeans arrived, and were certainly evident in the 17th and 18th Centuries.
Warfare In Pre-Columbian North America - Canada.ca

For example, at the Crow Creek massacre site (in the territory of the Crow Creek Reservation in South Dakota), archaeologists found a mass grave containing the remains of more than 500 men, women, and children who had been slaughtered, scalped, and mutilated during an attack on their village a century and a half before Columbus's arrival (ca. 1325 AD). The Crow Creek massacre seems to have occurred just when the village's fortifications were being rebuilt. All the houses were burned, and most of the inhabitants were murdered. This death toll represented more than 60% of the village's population, estimated from the number of houses to have been about 800. The survivors appear to have been primarily young women, as their skeletons are underrepresented among the bones; if so, they were probably taken away as captives. Certainly, the site was deserted for some time after the attack because the bodies evidently remained exposed to scavenging animals for a few weeks before burial. In other words, this whole village was annihilated in a single attack and never reoccupied.
War Before Civilization - Wikipedia

"War before civilization" - that seems to be the wrong title. War about land seems to be an effect of civilisation. Once you occupy land by building cities (a.k.a. civilisation), and having agriculture, you have a sense of ownership - and others who don't want you to own it.
Nomadic tribes wouldn't have such a sense of ownership. That is not to say that they wouldn't go to war, just not over land.

 

[Nakosis]

"War before civilization" - that seems to be the wrong title. War about land seems to be an effect of civilisation. Once you occupy land by building cities (a.k.a. civilisation), and having agriculture, you have a sense of ownership - and others who don't want you to own it.
Nomadic tribes wouldn't have such a sense of ownership. That is not to say that they wouldn't go to war, just not over land.

That was also Ann Rand's view of Native Americans. That since they had no concept of land ownership the European settlers didn't steal anything. Where in truth Native American had the idea of communal property were land was shared by many tribes but that doesn't mean there was no land ownership or that the land was free for the taking. Of course pre-Columbian Native American fought over terrtory i.e. land ownership.

On the Western Plains, pre‐Columbian warfare—before the introduction of horses and guns—pitted tribes against one another for control of territory and its resources, as well as for captives and honor. Indian forces marched on foot to attack rival tribes who sometimes resided in palisaded villages.
Native American Wars

In some cases a tribe would sell land to European settlers. Why would they sell what they didn't think they owned?