Michael Knowles Slams Professor Claiming Columbus "Stole Land"

[Dill]

(04-24-2019, 09:41 PM)BFritz21 Wrote: I had never thought about it this way and kind of always thought that it was kind of unfair for Columbus and the European settlers to take the land from the Native Americans.  I always just kind of justified it by saying that it was just the expansion of the world and that it was inevitable.

However, listen . . . to this point made by Michael Knowles when he slams Columbus for stealing the Native Americans' land and points out that the Native Americans were battling each other and stealing land from one-another, so how is that different than what Columbus did?  Just because he had more advanced weapons and technology, that somehow makes it worse than what the Native Americans were doing to each other?  

Am I the only one that's just now thinking of that?

Is it wrong to think that way?  

If so, why is it wrong?

Whether it is wrong or not depends on what values or standards you are employing to judge Columbus' actions.

If you think that people have universal rights to equality, liberty, property, security and dignity (per the UN), and that taking these by force is wrong, then you have to condemn Columbus' actions.  His actions are not made retroactively ok because some Indians in Mexico were also taking land from some other Indians in Mexico in 1492, any more than it is ok that I steal your car because people are stealing cars in California and Florida too.

On the other hand, if you start from the conviction that rights are tied to and prioritized by ethnic/racial status, then your judgement of Columbus could be very different.  E.g., rights of whites/Europeans cancel the rights of Native Americans whenever the group conflict over liberty/property issues. That was also likely the view of those Indians taking land from other Indians.

One of the questions which should be added to any discussion like this is, what are the values or standards that we ourselves want to stand for, or that we want the U.S. to stand for.  Do we really ever want to be arguing that our side of a fight is no worse than anyone else just because it has better killing technlogy, if our side is also taking away people's liberty and property by force?