Is the United States government legitimate?
If another nation invited itself into a new land and did to its indigenous people what settlers and their descendants did to Native Americans, we'd bomb them into the Stone Age. America the current World's Policeman once was happy to do whatever it could get away with using the MIGHT MAKES RIGHT principle. Disgusted by this injustice, a U.S. General objected to it.

“It is often easier to fight for principles than to live up to them.”
Adlai Stevenson II, American politician and statesman

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
Mark Twain

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
Desmond Tutu

“It is doubtful if the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power — power to oppress others.”
Eric Hoffer

“A good writer of history is a guy who is suspicious.”
Jim Bishop
Comment: With good reason; most history is propaganda with an ulterior motive.

This article is part of the
$100,000 Challenge Series

People often think they are enlightened even when they believe things that should have been left in the Dark Ages.

In this series, I will challenge conventional wisdom and explore some odd and unjustifiable beliefs that persist, offering $100,000 to the first person who can solve each challenge, proving me wrong. My opinions are bound to ruffle some feathers and make you think.

I once thought it was preposterous to question the legitimacy of the United States. After all, what could be more legitimate than a bunch of people getting together and forming a government that excluded and denied voting rights to the longtime inhabitants of that land? Oh, cripe, perhaps it's not so preposterous to question the legitimacy of the United States, after all!

If you're strapped for time, here is the CliffsNotes answer: the USA is legitimate if might makes right. You think so? I don't. Might makes right is the common denominator of evil. Embrace it at your peril.

Burying the dead in a mass grave after the Wounded Knee Massacre

Burying the dead in a mass grave after the Wounded Knee Massacre. “More than 150, largely unarmed, Sioux men, women, and children were killed that day.” (link) “Some estimates placed the number of dead at 300.” Might makes right, right? Wrong. “The surviving Lakota fled, but U.S. cavalrymen pursued and killed many who were unarmed.” “Helpless children and women with babes in their arms had been chased as far as two miles from the original scene of encounter and cut down without mercy by the troopers.”

POP QUIZ: What do you call soldiers who kill unarmed children and women?
(a) war criminals
(b) terrorists
(c) barbarians
(d) guilty of crimes against humanity
(e) all of the above

What did the U.S. government do with those soldiers? Give them life sentences at hard labor? Hang 'em? Shoot 'em? No, it awarded them 20 Medals of Honor. “In contrast, only three Medals of Honor were awarded among the 64,000 South Dakotans who fought” during World War 2. “Some of the citations on the medals awarded to the troopers at Wounded Knee state that they went in pursuit of Lakota who were trying to escape or hide.” According to General Nelson Miles, “a large number of women and children who tried to escape by running and scattering over the prairie were hunted down and killed.

From a soldier who witnessed the massacre: “The pitiful wailing cries of babies and children mixed with the dull explosions of the old fashioned Hotchkiss machine guns rent the cold air. The sickening thuds as these big lead bullets smashed into the body of a baby or a child, arms and head all flying in different directions. The screams of mothers as machine gun bullets tore their bodies apart. The curses of the Indian warriors, fighting machine guns and cannons with old muskets, knives and tomahawks, being cut down in rows by demon-crazed white soldiers.”

From 300 reasons not to forget lessons of Wounded Knee: “One of the survivors, a Lakota woman, was treated by the Indian physician Dr. Charles Eastman at a makeshift hospital in a church in the village of Pine Ridge. Before she died of her wounds, she told about how she had concealed herself in a clump of bushes. As she hid there she saw two terrified little girls running past. She grabbed them and pulled them into the bushes. She put her hands over their mouths to keep them quiet, but a mounted soldier spotted them. He fired a bullet into the head of one girl, then calmly reloaded his rifle and fired into the head of the other girl. He then fired into the body of the Lakota woman. She feigned death and, although badly wounded, lived long enough to relate her terrible ordeal to Dr. Eastman. She said that as she lay there pretending to be dead, the soldier leaned down from his horse, used his rifle to lift up her dress in order to see her private parts, then snickered and rode off.”

“Knowing what's right doesn't mean much unless you do what's right.”
Theodore Roosevelt

Tell that to the soldiers and their leaders who care more about power than doing the right thing.

Since I am part Native American, some readers may think my strident opinion stems from that. Not true. I didn't learn of my Native American ancestry until a year after I posted this essay early in 2010. Since then, I've also changed my opinion on Mexican “illegal” immigration. To understand why and how drastically my opinion shifted, read why I am selling my Sea-doo, Ski-doo, and shed to help a deported person reenter the U.S.

“Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes

“Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.”
Albert Einstein

“I don't consider Americans bullies, but I do consider the American government bullying.”
George Michael

“But, actually, it is only Americans who say that our freedoms and prosperity are the reason foreigners hate us. If you ask the foreigners, they make it clear that it's America's bullying foreign policy they detest.”
Harry Browne

“Force always attracts men of low morality.”
Albert Einstein

Keep this in mind as you read the following section:

If millions of Mexicans entered the United States and had enough firepower to take over our government and us by imposing their laws and way of life on us, most Americans would be enraged. We would feel eminently justified in fighting back any way we could, even if it took 200 or more years to expel the invaders and to erase every trace of the controls they placed on us, including laws, regulations, debt, taxes, and other manifestations of their government—a government that we would almost universally declare to be not legitimate. With this in mind, I have a question for you:

Is the United States of America government legitimate?

No government or nation is legitimate if coercion played a role in its formation. If you trace the roots of every government or nation back far enough, you will see that power comes largely from the barrel of a gun. Even the United States of America, which traditionally basks in self-righteousness so extreme that it precludes introspection, has roots that are no better than a muscle man raping a woman simply because he can get away with it. The American Indians were indisputably here first. It was their land, and they did not willingly deed it to people who invaded North America from Great Britain and Europe. “Here are the keys to our home. Now put us on reservations and tell us what to do.”

Yeah, right, it would never happen. No proud man or woman wants to be controlled, and the American Indians were no exception. Thus, they did not willingly deed their land to us; they capitulated after the colonists and their descendants killed enough Indians to make them submit—like what a woman might do when she is ordered to spread her legs by a thug holding a gun to her head.

American Indians benefited in many ways from modernization brought by the White Man. As one of those White Men who grew up reading books that presented an incredibly lopsided view of history, I used to think that Indians should be grateful for that modernization. While they probably do owe us their gratitude, they never owed us their land. If you believe that introducing someone to technology were sufficient justification for usurping their property, let me introduce you to some amazing gizmos I've made. As your jaw drops in amazement and you wonder if you've been teleported into the next century, I will take your property and, while I'm at it, tell you what to do, now and forever. I'll also tell your children and grandchildren what to do. Fair?

Obviously not. If you receive stolen goods, you are never the legitimate owner of them. They always properly belong to their original owner. Courts recognize that contracts signed under duress—such as when the threat of force induces someone to sign a contract—are not valid. Therefore, the surrender of American Indians, effected by Winchester, Remington, and Smith & Wesson, was clearly a coercion fueled by gunpowder and blood, not ethics or justifiable legal principles, so the United States government is not legitimate, period.

If you are familiar with the events surrounding the 1836 Treaty of New Echota, you know that it culminated in a forced relocation known as the Trail of Tears in which thousands of Cherokee Indians died and many more suffered in a viciously violent, unethical, and illegal action that is worse in some ways than the notoriously barbaric Bataan Death March during World War II. The US government was justified in doing what it did to the Cherokee (and other) Indians as much as a musclebound man is justified in raping a young girl because he is physically capable of making her submit to his evil desires.

If American Indians asserted they had the right to govern the contiguous 48 states (native people in Alaska and Hawaii could assert the same right to govern their land), who would referee such a dispute? A United States court? The Congress of the United States? The United States government, with its characteristic arrogance, would almost certainly aver that it had the right to decide whether their usurpation of the land we now call the United States was legal, or whether it was confiscated by the use of force and the threat of more of it. You don't need a crystal ball to predict the outcome of such a dispute: an arrogant United States court or United States Congress would certainly declare that the US government was legitimate, no matter how many brains they had to bash in to take over a land that certainly was never theirs to take. Expecting a United States court or the United States Congress to be fair to the American Indians in such a dispute would be like expecting a Mafia consigliere to advise the Mafia don that his criminal enterprise was illegal and thus should be disbanded: it would never happen.

This is what gives rise to war. The original impetus for litigating disputes in court arose from a desire to give people a way to equitably settle disagreements without resorting to violence. Research has shown that even some animals possess an inborn sense of fair play, and react negatively when they are treated unfairly—that is, when they are subjected to some injustice. With a sufficient provocation, the desire for revenge kicks in. Seeking revenge is yet another innate human response that courts can mitigate by equitably settling disputes, or exacerbate by not fairly settling them.

Given the overwhelming gap between the power of the United States government and the power of the American Indians, is all of this a moot point? Is their lack of firepower so insufficient that the US government could brush away their valid legal claims to this land without any worry that the Indians could use force to retake what is rightfully theirs? Yes, for now. But what if one or more Indians invented some of the weapon-methods* I thought of (and decided not to use)? They could use such methods to force the US government to vacate their offices.

*UPDATE: After 9/11, I thought of ways we could combat terrorism without bankrupting the United States and depriving its citizens of their liberties. Collectively, I refer to things as weapon-methods because they are so far outside the box they aren't weapons in a traditional sense, but they can be just as lethal. While they are incredibly useful against terrorists and other miscreants (e.g., rapists), I decided not to let the cat out of the bag because any unprincipled person in possession of that technology could rule the world with an iron fist. Do the math: think of the prevalence of sociopaths (learn how to spot a sociopath), and consider how long it might take for one to put 2 and 2 together. Five minutes, perhaps?

I mentioned weapon-methods in this essay only to give people something to think about: What if a Native American independently conceived of them? What if he had no more qualms about might makes right than the men who established and maintained the power of the United States as it trampled the rights of Native Americans?

You might object to their use of force to retake what is rightfully theirs, but our forefathers used violence to force them. We can use force, but they cannot? That is a double standard, and an indefensible one. Violence and the use of force (or the threat of it) is never desirable, but it is ethically warranted when there is no other means to restore property to its rightful owner. When a deputy sheriff evicts people from their homes, he shows up with a gun because the US government knows that violent force, or the threat of it, is the way to make people do things they don't want to do, such as paying exorbitant taxes so that politicians can use your money to screw you in myriad ways. If the US government were as legitimate and noble as it claims to be, it would not need to use so much force at home and abroad to control resistance to it.

You might contend that you had no part in the violence used by the US government to take control of a land that was occupied by American Indians and their forefathers for 15,000 years before White Men arrived and said, “This sure looks like home. Our home.” True, so perhaps the American Indians could not fairly assert ownership of your land—or perhaps they could (and should), because if you purchase a stolen piece of property or inherit it, it is never rightfully yours.

While reasonable minds might disagree on how to best settle that dispute, no ethical person could possibly contend that control of the land that is now the United States should not be returned to the American Indians. The swath of North America that we call the United States is controlled by the US government not because God gave us title to this land, or because the Indians begged us to impose our controls on them after we invited ourselves to the land they inhabited, but because we were more successful in killing them than they were in killing us. It's that simple: Might makes right. Do whatever you can get away with. The Indians were here first? It was their land? Screw 'em, said the US government, we appointed ourselves rulers of this land.

What's that, the Indians didn't bow down and kiss our feet? No problem. Let's turn to page 1 of the Might Makes Right Manual. There it is, plain as day. Friggin' savages* won't lay down and let us walk all over them. Might Makes Right Solution? Start killing them, and continue killing them until they beg for mercy. They will agree, after enough of them are turned into hamburger.

* It will be utterly obvious to everyone with a brain that “Friggin' savages” is how Indians were viewed by the U.S. government in their Might Makes Right Manual; this is obviously not how I view them.

The US government conveniently made it a heinous crime for anyone to even attempt to overthrow them. Had they shown the same level of respect for the Indians as the US government now demands OR ELSE, when White Men invited themselves into North America, they would have assimilated into the Indian culture instead of bossing them around on their land. But might makes right, correct? Want others to follow your orders? Just load your gun.

Dissolving the US government would obviously be good for the American Indians (and the right thing to do), but it would also be potentially good for other US citizens since it would instantly erase the massive US debt and teach the many creditors of that debt a valuable lesson in how it is inadvisable to do business with an illegal enterprise.

Rebooting our government would benefit us in many ways, similar to the improvements a computer user would obtain by installing a new and better operating system (OS) on his computer. The OS of the federal government is horrendously bloated, disgustingly corrupt, amazingly inefficient, and sustained by roots stained in Indian blood, not justifiable principles of ethics.

The US government is hardly the only one founded on the “might makes right” principle. I think that ethical people should rethink their participation in continuing to acquiesce to governments or nations that arose via coercion. Perpetuating an injustice does not erase it. If it could, a rapist could expunge his guilt merely by the passage of time. His first stroke was a felony, and his thousandth stroke is fine, right?

Obviously not.

Hey kids, gather round! Good ol' Uncle Sam has a lesson for you:

Does your neighbor have a nicer home than you? More land, too? If he won't give it to you, just pick up your trusty Winchester and pay him a visit. Tell him this is now your home, and he will abide by your rules—or else, as in or else you will start shooting until he gives in and stops complaining about being put in the closet.

Uncle Sam wants you to know that might makes right—unless, of course, might is used against the US government. Anyone doing that is a very bad person—a terrorist, in fact. Public Enemy #1. Only the US government can invite itself into someone's home, kill the occupants, and still be as pure as the wind-driven snow.

The US government should be thankful that I was not alive in 1881 – 1885, when one of my relatives, Chester A. Arthur, was President of the United States. Had I been alive then, I would have invited myself into the White House to see if the fairness genes I possess came from President Arthur or from someone else.* If Arthur were fair, he would understand that the good intentions of our forefathers were ironically, and tragically, based on the arrogant assumption that we had a right to create a government that spread its control over every square inch of this land because, in their minds, the Indians were subhuman. They were here first? Screw 'em, we have more Winchesters!

*UPDATE: I learned more about Arthur after writing this essay. Possibly more than any other President, he was committed to doing the right thing for the nation, not playing politics, and not using his position to enrich his supporters, as I discussed in the article explaining why I am selling my Sea-doo, Ski-doo, and shed to help a deported person reenter the U.S.

Like most of their contemporaries around the world, the Founding Fathers of the United States possessed a rather one-sided conception of fairness. When they wrote that “all men are created equal” and that “they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” they meant that all white men are created equal. It was perfectly acceptable to put a chain around the ankle of a black man and whip him if he didn't work fast enough, and it was A-OK to tell Indians that the land they had called home for thousands of years was suddenly going to be controlled by White Men. Indians at that time might well have asked, “Who died and put you in charge?

What response could the White Men possibly muster? Would they sheepishly admit, “Uh, we did”? Or, suffused with the notion that God gave men with white skin the right to rule others, would they boldly proclaim that they were justified in doing what they did?

If a group of immigrants were to move to a new land in 2010 and take it over as the White Men did in North America, the self-appointed Policeman of the World, the current United States government, would use its military might to bomb the hell out of those immigrants. Our President would give a self-righteous speech in which he would tacitly suggest that we were eminently justified in doing that because it is a violation of human rights for those immigrants to invite themselves into the home of someone else and then assert the right to control that home.

Such a sanctimonious speech would illustrate that the US government was founded on a hypocritically indefensible assumption: that is was fine for us to use force to take control of the land we now call the United States, but no one else enjoys that privilege, even if they only want to control a few square miles, ten acres, or just the four square feet of space they occupy.

Native Americans did not gain the right to vote until the 20th century, thus giving the United States government plenty of time to become entrenched, using progressively more power to threaten anyone who objected to its illegitimate foundation.

No judge could rightfully deny that Native Americans controlled this land thousands of years before White Men even knew it existed.

No judge could rightfully claim that we had the right to invite ourselves into their home and establish a government that made us superior to them.

No judge could rightfully claim that we had the right to exclude Native Americans from voting until long after we wrested control of this land from them, to us.

No judge could rightfully claim that the only elections that matter are ones that tacitly assume that the only legitimate controllers of the land now occupied by the United States are United States politicians who are eager to perpetuate the injustice upon which the United States was founded: the usurpation of the control of this land.

Nevertheless, virtually all judges are brainwashed into thinking that US governments, including federal and all 50 states, are legitimate despite overwhelming evidence that White Men seized control of this land by using hot lead as a means of persuasion. Consequently, if I or someone else were to deny that the US government was legitimate, virtually all judges would not be sufficiently intelligent to refute my logic, which is based on common-sense principles of ethics. All men are created equal and they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights—except, of course, if some arrogant White Men presume they have the power to revoke rights endowed by their Creator, a.k.a., God.

Placing themselves above God placed our Founding Fathers in a very untenable position. Though it reeked of indefensible inconsistencies and contradictions, virtually all judges would use every bit of twisted logic they could muster to counter my arguments. Once they failed to change my mind with their best attempts at logic, they would resort to the same tried-and-true method of persuasion that the US government is so fond of: Winchester, Remington, Smith & Wesson, or anything else that can sling hot lead fast enough to obliterate the brains of people who know that perpetuating an injustice does not legitimize it. White Men took control of this land by killing the people who had long occupied it. That makes those White Men criminals and terrorists, and anyone who perpetuates the usurpation of this land is party to a crime.

President Washington, President Obama, and even my relative, President Arthur, were all convinced that they and the United States were perfectly legitimate. Yes, and Saddam Hussein was convinced that he was the legitimate ruler of Iraq. The current Royal Family of Saudi Arabia is convinced that it is legitimate, too, but what gave them the right to rule was not a right given by God but a willingness to use lethal force to make other men and women get on their knees—or else.

UPDATE: I later wrote an article on the bloody roots of royal power.

Remember the quote at the beginning of this section? “Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.”

Until recently, I was very proud of my country and never questioned its legitimacy. However, if you read enough, sooner or later you are bound to encounter facts that don't mesh with your view of the world. Most people rigidly cling to their preconceived notions and are threatened by conflicting ideas, but I am willing to consider the possibility that I may be wrong. When I looked at the facts, only one conclusion resulted: The United States of America established its rule over this land by killing people who had lived here for centuries. Sure, we didn't kill all of the Native Americans—just enough so the remaining ones could read the writing on the wall: Do what the US government wants, or you, too, will be slaughtered. In short, we used violent force to take this land from the people who lived here for thousands of years. So is the United States legitimate? Obviously not, unless you think that killing people is a legitimate technique of persuasion.

Unless you want to bury your head in the sand, ignore the evidence, and make self-delusion more of a priority than doing what is right, you will agree with me. Do you? Contact me and let me know what you think. I will publish the best responses and comment on them.

The $100,000 challenge: Persuade me that the subjugation of Native Americans was ethically and legally permissible. No one has yet attempted to justify it. That isn't surprising, because as Einstein said, “Force always attracts men of low morality.” Justifying force also attracts people of low morality.

Let me be blunt: The people who came here and used force to get their way did that because they craved freedom—obviously for themselves, not Native Americans. As fond as they were of using force, they could have stayed in Europe and elsewhere and fought for freedom, but as ethically valid as that may have been (see my article on the bloody roots of royal power), they found it easier to pick on Native Americans. That is pathetic, not honorable.

Securing freedom by taking it from others, and obtaining land by taking it from others, is nothing to celebrate; it is criminal behavior that reveals a remarkably self-centered arrogance and a glaring lack of conscience on the part of people who think, “I matter; you don't.” Later in this article, I offer evidence that this stemmed from a racist devaluation of Native Americans that was tantamount to a beauty contest.


Someecards.com has a card that reads, “Let's celebrate Columbus Day by walking into someone's house and telling them that we live there now.

A clever cartoon depicts Pilgrims being met on the Atlantic shore by Native Americans who said, “No Green Cards? No Visas?? I'm sorry, but we need to see some identification.”

spot a typo?
If so, please tell me about it.

UPDATE: I published this essay early in 2010, months before Media Matters destroyed their credibility by claiming I thought Native Americans “should have been grateful for their subjugation by whites.” Clearly, that is the antithesis (exact opposite) of what I believe. Even before I knew I was part Native American, my aversion to might makes right compelled me to discuss this historical injustice rather than sweeping it under the rug or perfunctorily acknowledging it without passion as some professors do in a way that fails to convey the heart of the iniquity.

“A just society must strive with all its might to right wrongs even if righting wrongs is a highly perilous undertaking.”
Eric Hoffer in First Things, Last Things

Unfortunately, none of my teachers or professors even hinted that the subjugation of Native Americans was wrong; in fact, the message was that Manifest Destiny and all that was something to extol. My professors similarly failed to mention the horrors of colonialism. When I first heard President Obama mention that, I vaguely knew what he was talking about but I was mystified by why he was clearly so troubled by it. Now I know, after filling in that educational gap left by teachers and professors with a zero-for-everything record on evincing the injustice of might makes right.

Educators shouldn't leave it to parents to teach such lessons. My Dad was long gone and my Mom was so busy working multiple jobs to support our family (women in the 1960s faced terrible wage discrimination) that she was often absent, giving me freedom to do things such as get on my bike, training wheels and all, and pedal through various cities to visit a distant relative—at age 5. She wasn't there, so I pedaled home and arrived safely even though my 20/200 vision (legally blind) made everything a blur.

Another day, I cashed in my coin collection to eat lunch in a restaurant. I've never seen any other pre-kindergarten child eat by himself in a restaurant. In retrospect, it is amazing that I was served without being questioned where my parents were. In any case, I grew up in a vacuum of supervision.

My educators were similarly mum about the myriad wrongs committed by the British Empire. Oh sure, it was wrong of them to make us fight for freedom from their control, but the immorality of what they did to others was never mentioned. Not one peep. Their incursions were robotically mentioned in a way that tacitly suggested they were permissible, but only a barbarian would think that. If the British were still doing what they once did, we would bomb the hell out of them. The wrongs committed by current and recent targets of U.S. military force are just a drop in the bucket compared with what the British once did. I presented the tip of their evil iceberg in another article.

English author George Orwell referred to the British Indian Empire as “a despotism with theft as its final object.

Lord Salisbury said, “If our ancestors had cared for the rights of other people, the British empire would not have been made.”

By trying to understand (not just memorize) history, I wondered what might explain that evil. Perhaps it ultimately stemmed from the bloody roots of royal power. British people are not inherently evil, but many of their leaders were. Leaders have ways of making people do things they ordinarily wouldn't do—sometimes good, often bad. What British leaders did was commit so many crimes against humanity that we would tirelessly hunt them down, if they were still alive, and execute them, à la Saddam Hussein.

“To most of us nothing is so invisible as an unpleasant truth.”
Eric Hoffer in The Passionate State of Mind

When people see others getting away with might makes right, whether currently or historically, it teaches them how to use force to deprive people of their freedom, property, or lives. The usual fight against evil is analogous to swatting flies but not going after the manure pile. We've spent trillions of dollars fighting crime and wars—that's swatting flies. I think a better way is to address the manure pile that generates the evil.

There will always will be enough sociopaths to fill governments with evil people eager to do evil things, yet I firmly believe that snuffing out the manifestation of evil is possible. To protect a population from an epidemic of disease, it isn't necessary to immunize everyone. Similarly, we could effectively immunize the world from evil by doing a much better job of inculcating the evil of might makes right. My teachers and professors had enough time to occasionally reveal tidbits of their personal lives, such as home renovations, yet they had no time to discuss might makes right?

Children and even adults need more than a dry recounting of history to maximally benefit from it; they also need a rendition: an explanation of something that is not immediately obvious. Yes, slavery is obviously wrong, but illustrating why it was wrong is key to making its evil glaringly obvious, reprehensible, and intolerable. Thus, in writing about slavery, I illustrated why it was wrong by asking readers to figuratively put themselves in the shoes of families who were ripped apart.

With a bit of encouragement, most people can put themselves in the shoes of others, which helps immunize them from exhortations by leaders to do evil things. Seeking to combat the roots of evil, I write to evince it and catalyze a disgust for it that makes people less susceptible to it.

To the best of my knowledge, Hitler, Stalin, and Emperor Hirohito—whose body count left both of them in the dust—never killed a single person. Instead, they got others to do the dirty work for them. The overwhelming majority of those who did that dirty work were not evil. Had they been effectively immunized against it, instead of doing what they did, they would have responded by saying something such as, “You want me to do WHAT? You're out of your frigging mind!”

What could Hitler, Stalin, and Hirohito do in response? Stomp their feet? Throw a temper tantrum? Pout? Complain to Mommy that they weren't getting their way?

“Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.”
Primo Levi

“No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.”
Voltaire

One thing is sure: if a critical mass of those populations were immunized against evil, the lives they shattered could have been enjoyed instead of, for example, having them prematurely ended such as when Japanese soldiers raped Chinese children and then speared their vaginas or sliced open their bodies in other abhorrently repulsive ways.

You didn't know about that? Neither did I, until I educated myself to fill in the many gaps left by teachers and professors who had no time to mention that, but enough time to talk about their homes, spouses, vacations, and personal interests.

Had Japanese soldiers similarly butchered American children, you'd never hear the end of it, and Hirohito would have swung from a rope instead of being invited to the White House.

Some of my Asian friends think (and I agree) that what Hirohito's men did to people in China and other Asian nations warrants outrage commensurate with that evoked by the Holocaust, but what do we get instead? An American President (Ford) so ignorant of history that he warmly welcomed Hirohito during a visit to The White House for a state dinner on October 2nd 1975.

Emperor Hirohito was the Casey Anthony of his day who got away with murder. Hirohito's armed forces did things that made Germans seem downright civilized, as I documented in two articles on Japanese war crimes and Hirohito: the war criminal who got off scot-free. Those articles attracted the attention of Dr. Michael Brett-Crowther, the Editor of International Journal of Environmental Studies, who asked me to write a paper on the psychological or cultural environment that permits such awful atrocities.

One of my life goals is to address the manure pile that serves as the wellspring for evil. By using shirtsleeve English to illustrate why that injustice was evil (as I did in this article), people can be immunized against it.

I work hard to make this world a better place, socially and technologically. I've endeavored to correct the gaps in my education that once left me clueless about historical wrongs. The ignorance filling those gaps allowed me to make politically incorrect blunders that can be remedied by an online tool I developed but haven't yet released. I've gone beyond that and addressed the roots of evil—again, well before Media Matters and their gullible troll followers sunk their rabid teeth into me. I endeavor to treat others as I wish to be treated, which compels me to give free medical care, meals, firewood, and to sell my Sea-doo, Ski-doo, and shed to help a deported person reenter the United States. I strive to always do the right thing, sometimes falling short, but a light-year ahead of others with a selfish “me, myself, and I” fixation.

Media Matters frequently expresses outrage at what they say is conservative misinformation and lies. They scream bloody murder when Fox News isn't fair, yet they don't hold themselves to that same standard of fairness, as they did in lying through their teeth about me. They can't have it both ways; liars have no right to demand the truth for others but give a pass to themselves.

For Media Matters to allege that I thought Native Americans “should have been grateful for their subjugation by whites” is as loony as saying Colonel Sanders didn't think people should eat chicken. If Media Matters and their too-lazy-to-do-their-own-research fans truly cared about fairness, they would crave fairness for all, as I do, not just people who march in lockstep with all of their political ideology. By manifesting intolerance for those with different viewpoints, even partially, Media Matters and their supporters manifest their bigotry.

bigot (noun): (1) a person who is utterly intolerant of any differing opinion, belief, or creed; (2) a person who is obstinately intolerant of any ideas other than his or her own, especially on politics or religion, and has animosity toward those of differing beliefs.

While I agree with conservatives and liberals on various issues, I don't side with either one because I think they are both off base. Too many folks think that attacking their opponents is the way to get ahead. I think there is a better way. By routinely putting myself in the shoes of others, I have a heartfelt desire to want to help everyone: conservatives, liberals, and everyone in between.

Can't do it? It's impossible? One cannot win without someone else losing? Wrong. I revealed how to create a win-win-win situation in regard to welfare that should thrill Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, conservatives, liberals, the Tea Party folks, and everyone with a brain. It's a win-win-win situation because:

  • It's better for welfare recipients because they get more money—potentially much more.
  • It's better for the government since there is less welfare burden to meet.
  • It's better for taxpayers, who get to keep more of their money.

My plan would have many secondary benefits, such as helping reduce crime, improve education, and trigger the joy of helping others along with other priceless psychological benefits. It would make our society a better one, help people become better people, and warm hearts from sea to shining sea.

My principle could be applied to Social Security and various other government entitlement programs. Together, they are bankrupting our nation. We cannot solve our financial crisis simply by eliminating fraud and pork barrel spending such as funding research to see what college co-eds do in the dark after drinking beer—as if we didn't already know! We need to address entitlement spending, but politicians can only suggest reducing payments or restricting eligibility. That would help, but not enough unless the cutbacks were draconian. That way would generate much pain; my way is painless.

Thus, that one idea could help save the nation and determine if your children live in a nice home or hut, but people in power fear change, so they have their smear merchants attack, lie, distort, and twist words. They want to help themselves and their bosses keep the world the screwed-up place it is beset with myriad problems, and I want to help everyone solve our current problems and implement a more adaptive way of addressing problems in the future and, better yet, prevent them. It's all very doable, but the folks who oppose change would rather drag the world down and you with it.

Smear merchants lie through their teeth about people like me who want to help others so their bosses can stay in power to help themselves. Would those smear merchants cut firewood to heat the homes of strangers? Would they sell a snowmobile, Sea-doo, shed, or anything comparable to help a deported person reenter the U.S.? I doubt it.

Do those smear merchants have any good ideas for helping everyone instead of robbing Peter to pay Paul? I doubt it. Their mental capacity is exhausted searching for isolated examples of imperfection they can magnify with the distorted lenses of their microscopes.

Media Matters was so desperate to smear me that they had to lie through their teeth, saying things I never said or did. In another article, I explained how they butchered the truth—and proved beyond a reasonable doubt they think lying is fair for them but not Fox News—by suggesting that I lure people “to a page where he tries to sell you his anti-spam software.”

I don't sell anti-spam software; I never did, and I never will. Several years ago, I developed a FREE site (MySpamSponge) that anyone can use to eliminate spam. MySpamSponge is just one of the several free online utilities I developed. Everyone online could benefit from it, as I explained in the page dissecting that smear.

It should come as a surprise to no adult that the lessons doctors learn in medical school cover all parts of the body. Thus, sex is part of medicine, and better doctors learn more about sex, as they do everything else. I graduated in the top 1% of my class in medical school, so naturally I learned more about sex, too. In another article, I analyzed that Media Matters smear, which made them sound like immature children giggling about sex. What are they? Twelve?

What my medical school taught about sex would make your jaw drop and your eyes bug out, but even that was woefully inadequate to help most patients. Med school professors repeatedly stressed that what we learned was just a foundation we should later add to, so I did.

Many of the world's greatest thinkers and doers were especially fond of sex. With research indicating that sex can improve brainpower, the folks who object to discussions of it are manifesting their lack of intelligence, maturity, and wisdom.

My medical school stressed that doctors must be leaders in broadcasting the message that sex is a normal part of life that should be freely discussed, not whispered in hushed tones. The professor who introduced this topic illustrated it with an example of how patients are hurt when their inhibitions don't permit them to open up.

Sexual problems are often manifestations of diseases that require medical treatment, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, pernicious anemia, atherosclerosis, liver or kidney disease, hemochromatosis, and various genetic disorders. Therefore, a sexual symptom may be just the tip of an even bigger problem. Doctors have a professional and ethical obligation to ferret out disease every way possible. Optimally doing that requires openness from patients, which in turn requires doctors to treat sex as matter-of-factly as they would anything else.

In the 1980s, I realized that the acne drug Accutane can produce long-term damage, decimating libido, sexual pleasure, and performance. I was the first doctor to make this connection, and after I began writing about it I've heard from countless people around the world whose lives were shattered by it. My desire to reverse that damage led to years of research that grew into my book, The Science of Sex, now densely filled with over 500 pages of information of use to every adult, since virtually everyone experiences at least one sexual problem in his or her lifetime. In another article, I explained why I wrote The Science of Sex.

As I discussed in explaining how sex is part of medicine, people in the United States are more likely to possess a bizarre dichotomy about sexual attitudes. On one hand, it is perfectly OK to have risqué T&A oozing out of every television program and commercial, movie, magazine ad, product packaging—you name it. Yes, it's completely acceptable to have sexually suggestive material fed to you 24/7/365, as long as your retina is focusing on images of hot young airbrushed strangers who model for corporations that hope to sell you something. But real sex with a real person is somehow so shameful that it can't be discussed in public, or often even in private (as with a spouse or personal physician), without evoking uneasiness, apprehension, dread, and shame.

Isn't this a strange inversion of acceptability? Cheap, inescapable, in-your-face sexuality is routinely exploited by companies that hope to profit from you, but real sex—the kind that makes babies, bonds men and women together, and makes life more enjoyable—eewww! Better talk about it in hushed tones behind closed doors, like the Communists used to do when discussing freedom in the USSR before it disintegrated, or skip that topic altogether, and discuss something more palatable, such as the latest chapter in the sex life of Paris Hilton. Nuts.

Media Matters exploited that immaturity to make it seem that a doctor who knows more about sex is somehow inferior to ones whose bumper-sticker-deep knowledge base runs dry after considering Viagra or drugs like it.

A radio talk show host bitterly complained about how doctors at the local Top 100 hospital repeatedly missed chances to tell him that the high-dose Motrin he took (800 mg three times daily) delayed his healing. On October 4, 2010, ScienceDaily published an article entitled Surprise: Scientists Discover That Inflammation Helps to Heal Wounds. That was no surprise to me. I figured it out years ago and discussed that in my book, Fascinating Health Secrets, published in 1996. By thinking logically (instead of blindly accepting what drug companies say), I figured out many things before mainstream medicine and science woke up. When I am years ahead of others, as I was in this case, small-minded idiots are quick to label such insights as quackery. History is replete with examples of clinging-to-the-past idiots who ridiculed good new ideas and those who have them.

It's plainly stupid to assail greater knowledge or innovation. As an ER doctor, I figured out how to substantially improve the success rate of cardiopulmonary resuscitations (“codes”), which averaged less than 5% for patients taken to an ER for cardiac arrest—what we called outside-the-hospital arrests (OTHA). In other words, over 19 out of 20 OTHA patients ended up in the grave.

You could read every textbook and journal of emergency medicine and cardiology and still strike out 95% of the time. There was no inside-the-box magical answer for how to significantly boost that success rate, but I was so depressed after losing my first patient as an attending ER doctor that I knew I had to find a way to save more patients—and I did. While working in a busy ER that handled codes every day, I've gone over 18 months without losing one patient while other ER docs put patient after patient into the ground.

My premise is simple: better doctors know more and do more for more patients. Any arguments?

Only from the nitwits at Media Matters and their followers, who do their juvenile best to make the world think that a doctor who knows more about sex and other topics is worse than doctors who know less.

Doctors should know more about everything, so why don't they? The answer is obvious: while the average doctor is very intelligent (borderline genius, in fact), they need even more brainpower to help them memorize and especially integrate myriad other facts. I have a two-part solution to this problem:

My sixth-grade teacher said I was “slow” (in front of the class, nonetheless!) and as late as the end of 10th grade, I had such difficulty in school that my plan to deal with it was to drop out and get a job in one of the Detroit auto manufacturing plants.

I mowed lawns and performed odd jobs over the summer as usual, but I also did something very unusual: I serendipitously stumbled upon a way to significantly boost brainpower: intelligence, memory, and creativity. When I returned to school in the fall, I could equal or surpass the performance of the school Einsteins. I got all A's and changed my career plans from working on an assembly line to medicine.

I went to college and did so well in it and on the MCAT exam that I was the one person accepted into my medical school class with just three years of college. My classmates congratulated me after I was accepted into Alpha Omega Alpha—the med school equivalent of Phi Beta Kappa—after my second med school year, which they said was a rare honor reserved for students with exceptional grades. I graduated in the top 1% of my class, the director of my residency program commented that I was the smartest resident they ever had, and one of my bosses said I was the smartest doctor he ever met.

Aren't these implausible accolades for someone who once was a class dunce? And medicine is not my forte; inventing is.

I've been writing for years to inculcate the message that if I can do it, you can, too. In my websites, I mentioned that most of you could do even better than I did since most would begin from a higher baseline, and most would not have to contend with many of the difficulties I faced, such as poverty so bad I sometimes starved and developed diseases stemming from nutritional deficiencies.

If even 1% of U.S. citizens followed my roadmap for going from dunce to doctor, that metamorphosis of IQ and creativity would jumpstart our economy and enable us to pay off a crushing national debt that now seems unpayable. I proposed solutions beyond the usual rehash of freeze-dried ideas from bygone American politicians. Ronald Reagan, who is often idolized by fans of smaller government, passed the “largest tax increase in Californian history” when he was governor. His successor, Democrat Jerry Brown, cut taxes. As President, Reagan “expanded the federal government by about 90%.

I could also help end our epidemic of obesity. I discovered easy, painless, and sometimes even fun ways to lose weight. When I got out of my residency program, I was so fat that I could not see my feet when I stood up. I was happy to be in a profession in which my white coat could camouflage a huge gut. I'd been given free food as a resident (one of the few perks doctors-in-training receive), and I took full advantage of it. Coupled with my virtually nonexistent willpower when it comes to food, I shoveled pecan pie into my mouth breakfast, lunch, and supper, along with two entrées and too much of everything. I rationalized this overeating by thinking of how I might be too busy to eat later, so I should stuff myself now, like a fat chipmunk getting ready for winter. Years of doing that made me look like a Pillsbury Doughboy™ who'd been inflated with an air compressor.

I wanted to lose weight once I began working as an attending ER doctor. I no longer had free food, but I had enough income to support my appetite in overdrive. I often ate an entire large pizza by myself, along with a pound of breadsticks oozing with grease. With my Mom not around to say no, one cookie became one box of cookies. I'd smother a plate full of hot dogs on buns with a pound of cheese and call it a snack.

I was fat and getting fatter, but then I discovered easy, painless ways to lose weight—perfect for someone like me with virtually no willpower. A year later, I was thin (29-inch waist) but regaining some of the strength that once enabled me to beat the captain of the high school football team and three others at the same time in an armwrestling contest. (I never exercised during medical school or residency.) The following picture, snapped by my Mom as I washed my new 1990 Plymouth Laser while visiting her on a weekend, attests to the success of my weight loss efforts:

(text continues below this image)
Kevin Pezzi washing car 1990

People who think medicine must taste bad to be good are naturally skeptical of weight loss without willpower, but during that year I lost my blubber, not once did I starve myself or feel as if I were dieting. If it took willpower, I couldn't have done it, because I had none.

I've since learned many other ways to easily lose weight, so even though I am now much older and don't exercise after injuring a shoulder and breaking my neck, I am still in very good shape. I could teach my weight loss without willpower methods to the nation so we could all shape up. Since obesity contributes to so many diseases, that would save us countless billions of dollars and improve lives in priceless ways. If the government kept 99.99% of the savings and gave the rest to me, they would be happy, I would be happy, and Americans would be happier and healthier. Insurance companies could reduce their premiums, so healthcare would be more affordable. Thus, this would be another win-win-win situation.

Win-win-win is my mantra. I want everyone to win: those on the left, those on the right, and those in between. Media Matters and their partisan brethren strive for political victories that give an ephemeral advantage to their side until fed-up voters choose Republican candidates in subsequent elections who in turn disappoint voters. As the balance of power shifts back and forth, American prosperity dwindles, and people lose their hopes and dreams.

I don't have all the answers, but I have enough solutions proven to work and others certain to work, that listening to me is more worthwhile than listening to the partisans who can help themselves only by hurting others. Media Matters and the dupes who fall for their destructive thinking are bound to fail as miserably as those on the right who think that victory is beating the opposition. So, like crabs in a bucket, they tear others down, but those others are not enemies, they are fellow Americans.

Media Matters is the poster child of unfairness. They have some valid points about Fox News and conservative media (I agree), but they make a mockery of their call for fairness by being even more unfair. They lie, distort, and twist words, as they did in my case, and they revel in ad hominem attacks and character assassination.

What a waste of their brainpower! A few years ago, I went on Facebook to preach to the conservative choir, and—bam!—who did I meet but a man with a knack for expressing liberal ideas in such a way that I instantly knew he was correct and I was wrong. By sincerely listening to others and considering that they may be correct and I may be wrong, I've substantially changed my opinions on many topics. By listening to liberals with a good heart and brain, some of my inveterate conservative opinions evaporated like water hitting a red-hot grill. Media Matters and others who want to change hearts and minds would do well to emulate that approach.

More politicians need to emulate what my relative, President Arthur, did once in office: put politics aside and do the right thing. Everyone else should do the same: help others instead of tearing them down. The win-win-win solutions I champion are better for everyone. I know that—everyone with common sense knows that—but I don't have the multi-million-dollar budget of Media Matters, so how do I get the attention I need to disseminate my ideas?

If you read many of my articles, you won't need to put your thinking caps to figure that out: I do it by purposely saying contentious things. I know that people are ruled more by their emotions than minds, so I trigger their emotions and then impart the take-home messages. If you remember nothing else, remember this: win-win-win is indeed possible.

Challenging opponents is one of the keys to keeping them honest, so I don't disagree with organizations or individuals who rebut false claims. Heaven knows, our media is certainly awash in distortions of the truth that cleverly obfuscate reality. When I was wholly conservative years ago, I thought that only liberals lied to advance their agenda, but conservatives do it, too. That's something I couldn't see for the life of me back then, but is now clear as day. It's not that conservatives don't lie, but they do it by cleverly shrouding the truth by confusing correlation with causation, ignoring history, wrapping the flag around complex issues, myopically thinking that might makes right, often trivializing the basic rights of noncitizens and animals, and sometimes turning a blind eye to justice. In time, I will write a book elucidating the misconceptions that enable conservatives to believe what they do, as I once fervently did as a pure conservative.

For example, conservatives often think it is preposterous to suggest that racism is still alive and kicking in the United States. As someone who has been purely conservative and purely liberal, and now an amalgamation of both yet distanced from their partisanship, I think we've done a much better job of covering it up than eradicating it: something I plan to do in an upcoming book.

One of my liberal friends said she was horrified by the rampant racism she witnessed in an area of the country while she stayed there to earn a Ph.D. What she saw was no figment of her imagination.

Here's another problem suggesting that we have a long way to go before racism is extinguished: some healthcare providers intentionally murder black patients. I discussed that several years ago in one of my ER websites.

Shout racist if you are losing the debate

Media Matters can blast me for saying things that aren't politically correct, but those mistakes were purely the result of my ignorance that stemmed from a good education in science but a poor education elsewhere. I worked overtime to remedy those gaps and, in doing so, I discovered that the conservative spin I once fell for was just as woefully distorted—sometimes more so—than the lies of the left.

Blah, blah, blah … everyone knows that lying is part of the political game. Is there a better way? Yes. With win-win-win, there's no need for lying. When everyone benefits, there is no loser and hence no desperate loser willing to lie to get ahead.

Now for the ultimate intelligence test: which political party, and which group of voters, will be the first to embrace win-win-win? The one that does will be the ultimate political victor that will help everyone become winners.

Wounded Knee Massacre aftermath

Three weeks after the Wounded Knee Massacre. Dead Lakota in foreground; U.S. soldiers in background. Whitewashed (no pun intended) history books gloss over this atrocity and others like it, such as what the British did to people—including children—in India and elsewhere, or what Japanese soldiers did before and during World War 2. Their leader, Emperor Hirohito, killed more people than Adolf Hitler. Hirohito's men committed shockingly brutal crimes, such as raping children and then spearing their vaginas. Here is proof and more proof.

Hitler's war crimes generate justifiable outrage, yet I rarely see anyone even mention what Hirohito's men did, let alone condemn it. Virtually everyone knows of the Nazi Holocaust, but we don't have even a name for the more numerous—and arguably even worse—Japanese crimes. If an impartial person were to analyze this, he might conclude that the lack of outrage stems from a racist devaluation of people with more melanin in their skin, or otherwise look different. I think the same factor explains why so few Americans are troubled by what was done to Native Americans.

The following image shows a Native American woman (left photo) in 1908. The U.S. government had no problem depriving people who looked like her of their rights, and even killing them. But what if they looked like the model on the right? Would anyone stomach slaughtering them?

Native American woman in 1908 contrasted with a modern model

Absolutely no way. The soldiers who did that would be given hell, not Medals of Honor.

No one with a conscience needs a court to judge wrongdoing; one needs only consider the Golden Rule ethic of reciprocity and then put themselves in the shoes of others, asking if the treatment they received is something one might object to if one were on the receiving end of it. One would need rocks in his head, or evil in his heart, to think that what we did to Native Americans was fair.

The world has countless sociopathic Hitler-Hirohito-Stalin-Chairman Mao wannabes in addition to oodles of leaders who think war is the best way to settle disputes even though it never proves who is most right, but who has the most might. If we snuff out one ruthless dictator, another takes his place. After centuries of war and many trillions of dollars spent killing hundreds of millions of people, we aren't even close to snuffing out war.

Is there a better way? Yes, and I have it. I'll later explain how we can declare war against war and win, extinguishing it and other forms of evil, such as the racist devaluation of Native Americans that enabled the United States government to massacre unarmed American Indians and then dump their bodies in a mass grave. Awarding them Medals of Honor for the Wounded Knee massacre is like awarding Boy Scout marksmanship merit badges for shooting schoolchildren during recess. “Native American activists have urged the medals be withdrawn, as they say they were Medals of Dishonor. According to Lakota tribesman William Thunder Hawk, "The Medal of Honor is meant to reward soldiers who act heroically. But at Wounded Knee, they didn't show heroism; they showed cruelty."

Indeed they did. “Soldiers used the Hotchkiss guns against the tipi camp full of women and children.” (source) Hotchkiss guns shot rounds with a cross-sectional area over a dozen times larger than that of elephant rifles. Using that gun on unarmed men, women, and children is a crime against humanity, so awarding Medals of Honor to those butchers is an outrage. The U.S. government loves might makes right and hates to admit its mistakes, so it refused to rescind those Medals of Honor, thereby tarnishing their luster, and its luster.

Kit Carson is celebrated in American culture but committed atrocities against Native Americans so heinous even he later deeply regretted them. Before he saw the light, his scorched earth tactics starved them into submission, killing many in the process, along with butchering countless animals.

“I think that there's something in the American psyche, it's almost this kind of right or privilege, this sense of entitlement, to resolve our conflicts with violence. There's an arrogance to that concept if you think about it. To actually have to sit down and talk, to listen, to compromise, that's hard work.”
Michael Moore

“Honest discussions – even and perhaps especially on topics about which we disagree – can help us resist hypocrisy and arrogance. They can also help us live up to the basic ideals, such as liberty and justice for all, on which our country was founded.”
David Price

From the Wikipedia: “Socrates questioned the collective notion of "might makes right" that he felt was common in Greece during this period. Plato refers to Socrates as the "gadfly" of the state (as the gadfly stings the horse into action, so Socrates stung various Athenians), insofar as he irritated some people with considerations of justice and the pursuit of goodness.”

Notes:

  1. American torture: For 400 years, Americans have argued that their violence is justified while the violence of others constitutes barbarism
  2. Perpetrators of genocide say they're 'good people'
  3. Does putting the brakes on outrage bottle up social change?
  4. Everyone Has Property Rights, Whether They Know it or Not
    Excerpt: “In an article marking Columbus Day—the day Conservatism Inc. beats up on what remains of America's First People—Ryan McMaken debunked Ayn Rand's specious claim that aboriginal Americans "did not have the concept of property or property rights." This was Rand's ruse for justifying Europeans' disregard for the homesteading rights of the First Nations. … Columbus Day has become an occasion for neoconservatives, conservatives and their followers to vent their spleen against American Indians. And woe betide the deviationist who pens anything remotely fair or sympathetic about, say the genocide of the Indians, the trail of tears, or the relegation of Indians to reservations. Berated he will be for daring to lament the wrongs visited on the original inhabitants of this continent …”
  5. Conflicting histories harm negotiations, researchers say
    Excerpt: “ … past histories are harmful in negotiations, particularly when an event in the past benefited one party at the other's expense. In those situations, the party that got the short end of the stick tends to believe that they are owed retribution. The party that triumphed in the past, in contrast, tends to think that the past is irrelevant — bygones should be treated as bygones.”
  6. How Do Evil Organizations Get Workers to Go Along?
  7. Herd mentality: Are we programmed to make bad decisions?
    Excerpt: “A natural desire to be part of the 'in crowd' could damage our ability to make the right decisions, a new study has shown.”
  8. Why Don't TV Audiences Care About Suffering in Other Countries?
  9. One of the foremost history lessons I learned was that “Columbus discovered America.” I and other students heard that so many times we never questioned it, but it is obviously erroneous and racist, tacitly suggesting that only discoveries by white men count.
  10. American History Myths Debunked: Columbus Discovered America
  11. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
  12. How the Osage Indians were murdered for their oil: David Gramm reveals how, well into the 20th century, Native Americans were being hounded to death for their mineral wealth
  13. “We're at War!” — And We Have Been Since 1776: 214 Years of American War-Making
  14. The Trial of Henry Kissinger: Everything America did terribly wrong is not in our distant past, as brainiac Christopher Hitchens proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
  15. Mt. Rushmore Site Should Be Returned To Indigenous Native American Tribes, U.N. Official Says
    Comment: I once would have disagreed with that U.N. Official, but now I wholeheartedly say “right on!” Putting monumental sculptures of Presidents who helped conquer this land and the American Indians who inhabited it eons before White Men arrived—doesn't that strike you as wantonly insensitive? Imagine if al-Qaeda invaded the United States and subjugated the Americans it didn't kill by using superior force: the ol' might makes right principle the U.S. is so fond of, except if an enemy used superior force against us. Now imagine if al-Qaeda erected a comparably large sculpture of Osama bin Laden in Washington DC, lording it over us as Mt. Rushmore lords it over American Indians. Don't you think the remaining Americans would be highly offended by that bin Laden sculpture? Yes, Mt. Rushmore means something, but doesn't it mean even more to do the right thing?
  16. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (book)
  17. Buffy Sainte Marie - Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
  18. Buffy Sainte Marie - Now that the Buffalo's Gone
  19. General Miles sent this telegram from Rapid City to General John Schofield in Washington, D.C. on December 19, 1890: “The difficult Indian problem cannot be solved permanently at this end of the line. It requires the fulfillment of Congress of the treaty obligations that the Indians were entreated and coerced into signing. They signed away a valuable portion of their reservation, and it is now occupied by white people, for which they have received nothing. They understood that ample provision would be made for their support; instead, their supplies have been reduced, and much of the time they have been living on half and two-thirds rations. Their crops, as well as the crops of the white people, for two years have been almost total failures. The dissatisfaction is wide spread, especially among the Sioux, while the Cheyennes have been on the verge of starvation, and were forced to commit depredations to sustain life. These facts are beyond question, and the evidence is positive and sustained by thousands of witnesses.” (Emphasis was added to highlight how even a U.S. General said that Indians were coerced into signing treaties—exactly my point in this article: that the U.S. government used might makes right (force and the threat of more force) to take control of this land from those who lived here thousands of years before White Men arrived.)
  20. Trader post scandal
    Excerpt: “The Congressional investigation by the House created a rift between President Ulysses S. Grant and Col. George A. Custer. Before and during the investigation, Col. Custer was associated with aiding and writing anonymous articles for the New York Herald that exposed trader post kickback rings and implied that Belknap was behind the rings. Moreover, during the investigation, Custer testified on hearsay evidence that President Grant's brother, Orvil, was involved in the trader post rings. This infuriated President Grant …”
    Comment: Cronies of the corrupt Grant administration made fortunes cheating Native Americans. Fearing their careers would be ruined in retaliation, few Army officers objected, except Custer, whose Congressional testimony led to the impeachment of Secretary of War Belknap.
  21. Support 'Wounded Knee Medals of Dishonor' Petition
  22. Trials of the Cherokee were reflected in their skulls
    Comment: I saw a bumper sticker today that read: “Can you trust the U.S. government? Just ask the Indians.” (Ask the Native Americans would be more accurate.)
  23. Indian Givers: How Native Americans Transformed the World (Don't be misled by the title: Indians were givers, not Indian givers.)
  24. Native Roots: How the Indians Enriched America
  25. George Washington, estimated to be one of the richest Presidents in American history, had almost 60,000 acres and over 300 slaves. He is often viewed as a demigod, leading me to wonder why someone who is supposedly so good could be so misguided, thinking that his right to a better life justified ruining the lives of over 300 people. On another topic, consider this: do you think it is a coincidence that über-wealthy Washington became our first President? Or might it be evidence that the ruling class had a stranglehold on American politics, and hence Americans, from the get-go?
  26. Genocides in history: Americas
  27. List of Indian massacres
  28. Words on paper don't give governments the right to rob us
  29. Remembering the worst crimes against humanity, ever: Exclusive: Ilana Mercer asks, where is 'Victims of Communism Day'?
  30. Infamous study of humanity's 'dark side' may actually show how to keep it at bay
  31. How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World: A Handbook for Personal Liberty
  32. Study Reveals Human Drive for Fair Play based on Human responses to unfairness with primary rewards and their biological limits
  33. How Fairness Is Wired In The Brain based on The Right and the Good: Distributive Justice and Neural Encoding of Equity and Efficiency
  34. Sense of Justice Built Into the Brain, Imaging Study Shows based on Limbic Justice—Amygdala Involvement in Immediate Rejection in the Ultimatum Game
  35. Justice In The Brain: Equity And Efficiency Are Encoded Differently
  36. Study Reveals Human Drive for Fair Play
  37. Are Humans Hardwired For Fairness?
  38. 'Moral Realism' May Lead to Better Moral Behavior
  39. A Pinch of Opportunity Makes Deep Inequality More Palatable
  40. Chimpanzees Successfully Play the Ultimatum Game: Apes' Sense of Fairness Confirmed
  41. Humans share fairness concerns with other species
  42. How Do We Make Moral Judgments? Insights from Psychological Science based on (1) Liberating Reason From the Passions: Overriding Intuitionist Moral Judgments Through Emotion Reappraisal and (2) You See, the Ends Don’t Justify the Means: Visual Imagery and Moral Judgment
  43. People Can Put A Price Tag On Economic Justice, Economists Say
  44. Skeletal Remains of 24,000-Year-Old Boy Raise New Questions About First Americans
    Excerpt: “ … "Native American ancestors could have been in Beringia -- extreme northeastern Russia and Alaska -- any time after 24,000 years ago and therefore could have colonized Alaska and the Americas much earlier than 14,500 years ago, the age suggested by the archaeological record."”
  45. Dolphin Cognitive Abilities Raise Ethical Questions, Says Emory Neuroscientist
  46. October 25, 2022: US Army bullets unexpectedly found at 1918 Mexico border massacre site: A ballistics analysis has raised new questions about the role of the US Army in the 1918 Porvenir massacre, where Texas Rangers killed 15 unarmed Mexican boys and men

Ironic juxtaposition of a discriminatory sign next to a banner proclaiming “God Bless America – We are proud to be Americans” (from a bar in Birney, Montana August 1941):

no beer sold to Indians
The views expressed on this page may or may not reflect my current opinions, nor do they necessarily represent my past ones. After reading a slice of what I wrote in my various websites and books, you may conclude that I am a liberal Democrat or a conservative Republican. Wrong; there is a better alternative. Just as the primary benefit from debate classes results when students present and defend opinions contrary to their own, I use a similar strategy as a creative writing tool to expand my brainpower—and yours. Mystified? Stay tuned for an explanation. PS: The wheels in your head are already turning a bit faster, aren't they?

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald

Reference: Imagining dialogue can boost critical thinking: Excerpt: “Examining an issue as a debate or dialogue between two sides helps people apply deeper, more sophisticated reasoning …”

Comments (1)

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Comment #199 by Anonymous
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January 25 2012 10:50:48 AM

Excellent Synopsis!

I agree wholeheartedly with this well-researched and well-written treatise on a topic that often would be viewed as controversial and left on the dust-covered historians' shelves in a vault, so that nobody would dare speak about it.

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