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Sessions asks all remaining attorneys appointed by Obama to resign

Better late than never: Attorney General Jeff Sessions today asked the attorneys appointed by Obama that remain in the Justice Department to resign.

The article says that this is standard operating procedure, but that is not entirely true. Until Clinton was president most Justice Department attorneys were long term prosecutors who remained in office from administration to administration. They were not partisan appointees. Clinton changed that when he fired them all. I do not know if Bush followed through and did the same thing, but I tend to doubt it. Obama however would have certainly fired any Bush appointees when he took office.

What makes this significant is that it appears to be the first time that a Republican president since Clinton is fighting back and cleaning house of Democratic appointees.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
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38 comments

  • wayne

    Mr. Z., without looking it up–I recall that Bush requested resignation’s & main-stream-media went nutso claiming it was all political.

  • LocalFluff

    The original spoils system, the new administration flushing out all of its enemies from government and installing its own instead, might be a good idea. The alternative is to have a class of bureaucrats, who are not even mentioned in the constitution, as a fourth (secret) power of the government.

    Of course all ambassadors and attorneys must be exchanged! They have to represent the elected president, not some imaginary collective bureaucracy. The wheel has to touch the ground in order for it to lead.

  • wayne

    LocalFluff–
    good stuff.

    Session’s is an excellent appointment. The DOJ however has been politicized to the extreme the past 8 years in particular, and I expect it will be a chore to prune the deadwood. A lot of the loyal Obama people have been busily transitioning into the civil service at every opportunity, so at a minimum he needs to replace everyone within his reach.

  • Cotour

    Related, because its about how convenient politics can be:

    Exhibit 1. http://www.mediaite.com/columnists/nancy-pelosi-american-people-have-right-to-know-whats-in-healthcare-bill-before-it-passes/

    Exhibit 2. https://youtu.be/HIVqInMfghA

    This one woman is very, very dangerous, on top of being possibly clinically damaged. I will defer to Wayne for that diagnosis. To watch her operate is to witness a potpourri of facial ticks, disjointed speech and a Joker like smile. And she is the I think fourth person in line to the presidency?

  • wayne

    Cotour– always hard to tell from a distance, but something is not quite right with Pelosi.

    Reference; who could be in charge…
    Vice-President Pence, followed by Speaker of the House Ryan. Then Cabinet officials in a specific order. ( Secretary of State Tillerson, and Treasury Secretary Munchkin.)

    3 U.S. Code § 19
    – Vacancy in offices of both President and Vice President; officers eligible to act:
    https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/3/19

  • wayne

    C-man,
    yepper!
    (personally, I tend to think she’s a lifelong sociopath and now is suffering cognitive decline.)

    I’ll pile on …

    Mark Levin:
    “Nancy Pelosi and her husband are involved in a corruption scandal”
    8-15-14
    https://youtu.be/vo6CGbjoEio
    11:29

    It’s all that “high-speed rail” cash & Tech-stocks she and her wheeler-dealer husband owns, sloshing around.

  • Wayne: See this link: Nets Ignored Clinton Firing 93 U.S. Attorneys, Fret Over Bush’s 8. Key quote:

    The broadcast network evening newscasts, which didn’t care in 1993 about the Clinton administration’s decision to ask for the resignation of all 93 U.S. attorneys, went apoplectic Tuesday night in leading with the “controversy,” fed by the media, over the Bush administration for replacing eight U.S. attorneys in late 2006 — nearly two years after rejecting the idea of following the Clinton policy of replacing all the attorneys.

    In other words, Bush did not ask for mass resignations.

  • Cotour

    Related, because its about politics and the misleading way that the media misleads the public:

    http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/immigration-debate-colonial-times-article-1.2992478

    This writer points out the similarities between the native Indian’s and their problem in 1610 with the illegal immigrants they had invading their land.

    What the writer fails to recognize, and this is key, if indeed the Indians did call the Europeans “Illegal Immigrants” or not what they came to understand in time was that there land were being conquered and not illegally immigrated to.

    If you fail to learn from history, you are condemned to repeat it. Let us not be naive, Democrats, Liberals, Leftists, Marxists, globalists, what ever they call themselves, they insist that we all be naive and just plain stupid. All in the pursuit of their sick agenda, anything for the agenda. ANYTHING.

  • Cotour

    PS: This entire argument goes directly to S.O.M. theory where the public’s morality is leveraged against them. Everyone wants to be seen as “fair” and “just”, our law demands it. You never allow your enemy to define what you will and will not say, think or do. These Democrat, Leftist, Liberal, Marxist, Globalist, how ever they define themselves are enemies and are not playing by the rules that we are required to play by.

    While your practicing your cultural morality your enemy is conquering you, because there are no rules in war. If your enemy is at war with you and you fail to recognize that fact, then you are doomed.

    The Constitution is not a suicide pact as Lincoln so very well pointed out.

  • ken anthony

    A disappointing thing about Bush is he did not purge the govt.

    The mistake the right makes is being short sighted. They think it’s all about their next election. It isn’t.

    Win or lose, lefties will end up in a position of power with tax money flowing to them. That has to stop. The right just doesn’t get it.

  • Edward

    Cotour wrote: “What the writer fails to recognize, and this is key, if indeed the Indians did call the Europeans “Illegal Immigrants” or not what they came to understand in time was that there land were being conquered and not illegally immigrated to.

    American Indians did not use the land in the same ways as the Europeans. There was far less competition between these two groups than there is from immigrants to the US, legal or illegal. The article points out that the Europeans were looking for shiny metals, but the native people did not care, because that wasn’t what they treasured.

    Because of the direct competition for the same resources between both immigrants and US citizens, the US developed laws to regulate the amount of immigration, the activities of those immigrants, and the amount of resources expended upon those immigrants. Thus, the balance that existed between the American Indians and the immigrating Europeans also existed between the US citizens and the immigrants from around the world. Resources were not overstressed in either case. US citizens generally welcome, befriend, and help immigrants who come legally.

    With the allowance of self-declared immigration (illegal immigration), all such regulation and balance has been lost. Our resources, including jobs for our teenage children and policing of criminal illegal aliens, are overstressed, causing harm to citizens and legal immigrants alike.

    What is generally unknown and unreported is that many American Indians welcomed, befriended, and helped those Europeans who were supposedly “conquering” the land. In the early British colonies, no battles occurred, no conquests happened, and no immigration laws existed among the American Indians for the Europeans to break. Europeans learned to respect the various rules of the various native tribes. Back in the early 17th century, almost everyone got along, right up to the Plymouth Colony getting instruction as to the idiosyncrasies of corn, and the colonists inviting their Indian neighbors to a feast following the bountiful harvest. A few warring American Indian tribes and the slaves that the British monarchs foisted upon the American colonies were some exceptions to this peaceful coexistence.

    As for the spread of diseases, there were several plagues that spread throughout Europe in the second millennium. One cause was that Europeans were travelling the world, bringing back new diseases from other parts of the world. It was not just the American Indians who lacked resistance to “white man diseases.” White man also lacked resistance to many of the world’s diseases, too.

    Speaking of diseases, if liberalism is a mental disease, as Micheal Savage says, then Sessions is draining the swamp in order to save us from the ravages of this plague.

  • Mitch S.

    I agree there needs to be turnover but I hope Sessions isn’t throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
    I’m thinking of Preet Bharara the US Attorney for the Southern District in NY.
    He’s done a very good job going after corrupt pols in NY, including some such as Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (Democrat), who were considered untouchable.
    I hope there is a strong replacement lined up and the momentum isn’t lost.

    BTW Don’t be surprised to see the fired Preet become a new star in the Dem party…

  • Mitch S.

    Off topic, but if you want to hear a businessman’s take on Trump’s trade ideas (and other topics) have a listen to fashion exec Mark Weber.
    (Later in the show he has a cutting takedown of Target’s CEO)

    https://audioboom.com/posts/5695610-3-11-17-angry?t=0

  • Darwin Teague

    Bush fired 8 or 9 and the world ended.

  • Mitch S: Preet Bharara was also the attorney who prosecuted conservative activist and author, Dinesh D’Souza in 2014, getting him sentenced to 5 years probation and 8 months in a community confinement center. His crime of making illegal campaign contributions appears to be a trumped up absurd charge, created because D’Souza was a strong and effective critic of Barack Obama.

    He should be fired. He used his power to go after people because of the political beliefs.

  • wayne

    PJTV: How D’Souza Was Criminalized for Making “2016” Film
    Bill Whittle interviews Dinesh
    https://youtu.be/O9AtUdsXXoM
    (14:55)

  • wayne

    C-SPAN: House Committee Grills Obama’s DOJ On D’Souza Prosecution
    https://youtu.be/a3XgH5C5P_g
    (5:42)

    January 2016– DOJ refuses to provide the case-file of the D’Souza prosecution, to the House Oversight Committee

  • Cotour

    Edward: While you site many technical differences between the Indians / Colonists and the Americans / “Illegal Immigrants” the point here is that the writer is attempting through semantics, word play and definition morphing to equate the two situations. To what end? To create in the general public’s mind yet another false equivalency using our everyday pedestrian morality. Who here or in the general public thinks the Indians got a good, fair and moral deal from the Europeans? (Hands, hands, do I see any hands? No one?)

    The conquering of country’s and lands and the usurping of cultures lies in Strategy Over Morality (S.O.M.) I.E. war, and not in false equivalencies based only in morality as someone looking at a situation in ideal terms sitting on their couch eating nacho chips and salsa might come to conclude.

    In the end the Indians were absolutely conquered and the land of America was absolutely taken and made their own by the Europeans. Period. That fact is not going to change any time soon BUT this raw S.O.M. inequity is being leveraged by the Left in false equivalency story’s in the media to justify the illegal immigration situation in “OUR” country, and its not for the best. OWN IT< LOVE IT< DEFEND IT.

    There is a vast difference between being invaded by illegal immigrants who might pose a long term threat to the country which may in time result in being conquered and the end result of actually being conquered. This is the other point that this writer conveniently chooses to not flesh out, over time "illegal Immigrants" all of a sudden could become the majority just like the Europeans and the Indians. (Ask a Frenchman) Then what do we have? Sharia law?

    Not to sound entirely like a xenophobe, my understanding about America and the Constitution and the freedom and prosperity that it promotes is that it is like an infection, an infection that once you have it can never be "cured". Freedom is like an infection and once you experience it you tend to want to preserve that thing that you have come to love and appreciate sooo much.

    You come to America, with all of its contradictions and inequities, to become an American and anything that has the potential to disturb that natural course of events must be held as being suspect and a threat to the country. I see articles like the one I sited as one of those threats and it is based in Leftists doctrine and the now publicly recognized One World Government / New World Order agenda that has been until this point in time invisible to the general public.

    Its about time, its no longer a "conspiracy".

  • Mitch S: Let me add that Bharara also subpoenaed Reason magazine in an attempt to intimidate it and silence it.

    Bharara is clearly grand-standing with the intention of next running for office. His brown-shirt tactics make him a perfect modern Democrat. They will love him in fascist New York.

  • Steve Earle

    Wasn’t there recent reports that Preet Bharara was getting ready to Indict DiBlasio? Is there some deal going on with Trump and DiBlasio? I hope not, but with Mr. Art of The Deal you never know….

    Based on the links above it appears Mr Bharara was an equal-opportunist striving to appear as a Hero of the People while really only being true to his own elevation.

  • Steve Earle

    Cotour wrote:
    “….the point here is that the writer is attempting through semantics, word play and definition morphing to equate the two situations. To what end? To create in the general public’s mind yet another false equivalency using our everyday pedestrian morality….”
    “…..In the end the Indians were absolutely conquered and the land of America was absolutely taken and made their own by the Europeans. Period. That fact is not going to change any time soon…”

    ***********************************************************************
    Correct and well said.

    What’s interesting (to me at least) is that we never finished “conquering” the Indians. If we had there would be none left after forced assimilation and killing those who refused to be assimilated. They would all be “Americans” now.

    Instead we drove them from the Lands we wanted at the time and then let them have Land we didn’t want but still within the borders of the USA.

    What we were left with is essentially a Nation within a Nation, or more accurately, several Nations within a Nation. If you go to any of the many Indian Reservations you will find a situation most would call crazy. With a set of their own laws and courts, but also falling under the US Constitution. They are required to follow some State Laws but not others, some Federal Laws but not others. (You and I can’t build a Casino, but they can a mile down the road?)

    We are seeing a similar situation happening in slow motion already in this country. “Dearbornistan”, “No-Go Zones”. Sharia Law Courts allowed to operate, etc etc….

    There may be more alike between the Indians and the Muslims than we realize.

    IMHO it was a mistake to allow the Indian Nations to create and maintain segregated areas not subject to our Laws, and it will be an even bigger mistake if we repeat that with Muslim Immigrants, Legal or Illegal.

  • Edward

    Cotour,
    You asked: “Who here or in the general public thinks the Indians got a good, fair and moral deal from the Europeans?

    The American Indians were fairly treated as friends and neighbors, at that time in history. Generally, they also treated the Colonists fairly and as friends.

    It was not until the United States was controlled by Democrats in the 19th century that the Trail of Tears happened. Under the Democrats there were various wars on American Indians, often not distinguishing between tribes or between friendly vs. hostile tribes or nations.

    I learn from your comment, Strategy Over Morality existed even in the 19th century, that it was a Democrat strategy or philosophy, not a conspiracy, even back then.

    Today, after decades of cowboys and indians movies and tales of “Little Big Horn” battles, the general public has the idea that all American Indians were always seen as an enemy.

    You wrote: “In the end the Indians were absolutely conquered and the land of America was absolutely taken and made their own by the Europeans. Period.

    Yes, that happened in the end, under Democrat rule, but it did not happen in the beginning, which is the false tale that people believe.

    The Daily News link that you provided, far above, gives the false impression that the Pilgrims were evil Indian killers, reinforcing the lies that are told by progressives about the Pilgrims and other early British colonists. The opinion piece in the link equates the early British colonists with today’s illegal immigrants — claiming that the colonists, who were not competing with the Indians, as a problem. It does not distinguish the good colonists from the late-comer, greedy Democrats.

    Compare and contrast these early colonists with current immigrants from Mexico, whose advocacy group La Raza (loosely translated as The Racists, or translated by the the National Council of La Raza as The People, suggesting racial superiority) has been hijacked and now often advocates for the annexation of various US states to Mexico.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Council_of_La_Raza#Criticism
    I hear more and more Mexicans talking about la raza—to build up their pride. Some people don’t look at it as racism, but when you say ‘la raza,’ you are saying an anti-gringo thing, and it won’t stop there. Today it’s anti-gringo, tomorrow it will be anti-Negro. We had a stupid guy who just wanted to play politics with the union, and he began to whip up La Raza against the white volunteers, and even had some of the farm workers and the pickets and the organizers hung up on la raza.” — César Chávez

    Ironically, these same immigrants left Mexico for a reason, yet now La Raza advocates for bringing Mexico’s corruption here.

    Some immigrants to the US want to naturalize and be good US citizens. Some just want to be here, either temporarily or as permanent non-citizen residents. Others have nefarious intentions.

    You wrote: “Freedom is like an infection and once you experience it you tend to want to preserve that thing that you have come to love and appreciate sooo much.

    The Pilgrims left Britain for a reason: religious freedom. They did not advocate bringing Britain and its religious intolerance here.

    Freedom is like the cure, not the infection, because once you are cured you do not want to experience the disease, again. When you have always been healthy, you do not want to be ill. That is why you love and appreciate freedom so much and tend to want to preserve it. Few people want to preserve disease or tyranny. Just ask your local Soviet or post-Soviet emigre.

  • Cotour

    Edward,

    We are on the same page for the most part for our purposes in discussing the on going assault of the media and the elite political class that in the end threatens us all. In the end when all is said and done the Indians got screwed, lets not repeat history out of political correctness and confusing the terms “Illegal immigration” with Conquest.

    I have recently developed a 17 question Yes or no “What I know and what I believe as an American” quiz with accompanying detailed answers and scoring related to immigration and what people think they know and believe about America. I will post it here as soon as I figure out the proper way to configure it for the web site. Several friends have taken it and it has really provoked conversation. Another friend took it to a prison where the prisoners are really enjoying the conversation that it is inciting (Provoking and inciting are probably not the best choice of words here).

  • wayne

    The American West:
    A Heritage of Peace
    https://mises.org/library/american-west-heritage-peace

    “There is certainly no doubt that Native American tribes suffered greatly at the hands of government and quasi-government operations aimed at “civilizing” the West, but the unrelenting focus in recent years of these murderous exploits illustrates for us a larger agenda surrounding how we acquire modern perceptions of the American West.”
    “This agenda is one of convincing Americans that the American West was inherently violent, unusually unjust, and generally unfit for civilized human habitation.”
    “Excluding the Indian wars of the mid to late 19th century which were lopsided affairs conducted by the United States government, we find that the allegedly inherent violence of the West was not noticeably any greater than that of points east.”

    -“True settlement of the West was not dependent on the soldier with the rifle, but on the blacksmith, the school teacher, and the saloon owner. The federal soldiers could have murdered every Indian between the Mississippi and the Pacific (which would have suited civil war heroes and Indian fighters like Generals Sherman and Sheridan fine) but in the end, it is not armies that settle frontiers. Private citizens build the towns, dig the sewers, and ship the goods that make a decent life possible.”

    “Many more people have died in Hollywood Westerns than ever died on the real Frontier…[i]n the real Dodge City, for example, there were just five killings in 1878, the most homicidal year in the little town’s Frontier history: scarcely enough to sustain a typical two-hour movie.”

    “As with Dodge City, the excitement in the Old West in general has been much overstated. All the big cattle towns of Kansas combined saw a total of 45 murders during the period of 1870-1885. Dodge City alone saw 15 people die violently from 1876–1885—an average of 1.5 per year. Deadwood, South Dakota and Tombstone, Arizona (home of the O.K. Corral), during their worst years of violence saw four and five murders respectively.”

  • Garry

    Thanks for the link, Edward; for me the paragraph that starts explaining the key ideas is

    “The truly important question is whether or not human beings on the Frontier were less prosperous, more violent, and generally more barbaric than their counterparts in more ‘civilized’ parts of the world. If this can be proven to be the case, then the case for active government, commercial regulation, and an aggressive police apparatus is granted much more currency in the minds of Americans. And certainly, this is what critics of Frontier society have been attempting to do for a long time.”

  • Garry

    Sorry, I meant to thank Wayne

  • wayne

    I’m fairly sure Bharara will be OK. I’d be surprised if he wasn’t working for a hedge-fund or a bank, before the end of the month.
    A broader question on Bharara– how does he afford all the stuff he owns, on his Federal salary?? It’s amazing how all these people become rich.

    More Stuff Cronies Say
    https://youtu.be/OgovCuEmosg
    (1:14)

    Garry–
    Good eye-balls.
    I almost pasted that exact paragraph, but was trying to keep it short.

    Cotour– I’d like to see your Quiz when you have an opportunity.

    Edward-
    Good stuff.

    Steve– many good points.

  • Mitch S.

    Thanks all for the info on Preet.
    I didn’t realize he was behind D’Souza’s prosecution.
    And the Reason thing.
    So conservatives may have wanted to see him face the consequences of his being Obama’s henchman.
    I also suspect that the Trump admin didn’t like having a politically motivated Dem as NY US Attorney when the Dems are out to get Trump by all means possible.

    I knew that as Steve said ” Mr Bharara was an equal-opportunist striving to appear as a Hero of the People while really only being true to his own elevation.”
    That just goes with the territory. US Attorney and State AG positions are seen as political jump off points,
    (Rudy, Spitzer, Christie etc etc) and I have little doubt Preet was positioning himself for higher offices.
    But that’s how the system works. It isn’t based on the morality of the participants (though the voters need some sense of morality/ethics), it’s based on opposing self-interest.
    It was in Preet’s interest to take down NY State king makers. He was chipping away at Cuomo and had NYC mayor DiBlasio in his sights. Naturally knocking out the top of the NYS Dems leaves room for Preet to move up but at least the poor taxpayers get some deeply entrenched swap creatures cleared out.

    So I’ll go with you guys that it was reasonable to sweep him out, but I hope it doesn’t result in DiBlasio etc geeting off the hook.
    Enjoy a real NY take on the firing from Curtis Sliwa (a NYC conservative/head of the Guardian Angels)

    https://audioboom.com/posts/5696209-03-10-17-drive-at-five?t=0

  • wayne

    Mitch S.– thanks for that Sliwa link. Only previewed the first few minutes, but will download the whole thing.
    I occasionally catch a few minutes of (the end of) his show, if I’m awaiting the live stream for Levin on WABC radio.
    -He does have some great verbiage!

  • Edward

    I suspect that the wild, wild west mythology mostly comes from the Union Pacific’s “Hell On Wheels” travelling town, which followed the rail head of the UP’s Transcontinental Railroad construction effort. It had saloons and brothels for the railroad workers to spend their wages, and it had gunfights, Hollywood style. It was an out of control lawless town, similar to Obama’s America (e.g. Chicago in Obama’s America). With the railroad right there, communications with the rest of the world was practically instantaneous, so stories of that particular town would be able to spread rapidly and become the reputation of the entire west.

    I am sure that the gunfight at the OK Corral did not help the reputation of the west.

    For the most part, the west was more like the TV show “Little House On The Prairie,” which was inspired by Laura Ingalls Wilder’s semi-autobiographical book series. The real west is an example of how civilized people can largely get along in pseudo anarchic societies. We do not need large, overbearing government to assure that we all get along, and the evidence seems to show that the more overbearing the government the less we get along. The Democrats’ Trail of Tears is a good example.

    Because of the Obama administration, law and order and adherence to the US Constitution have not been high in priority for the Federal Government. This is why it seems like a good idea to replace the attorneys who have been so badly influenced by that administration (I would have said corrupted, but they may have been corrupt before joining Obama’s henchmen — thanks for that word, Mitch).

  • Edward wrote, “The real west is an example of how civilized people can largely get along in pseudo anarchic societies. We do not need large, overbearing government to assure that we all get along, and the evidence seems to show that the more overbearing the government the less we get along.”

    This is one of the nicest summations of the American settlement of the west I have ever read. Very correct, and precisely to the point.

    Since moving to Arizona I have spent a lot of time reading local histories about the original settlers here and what life was like, in the real west. What I found is that it was a remarkable ordinary and civilized existence. It was tough, and required brains and courage, but in general it appeared safer and more civilized than my experience living in New York City in the 20th century.

    And this civilized west required almost no law enforcement at all.

  • wayne

    Edward/ Mr. Z.–
    You both would get something out of this–

    “An American Experiment in Anarcho-Capitalism: The Not So Wild, Wild, West”
    Terry Anderson/ P.J. Hill
    Montana State University 1979
    PDF available at–
    https://mises.org/library/american-experiment-anarcho-capitalism-not-so-wild-wild-west
    Very nicely done, 21 pages, with a heavy Public Choice theory bent.

    “Whether or not the American Frontier was a place anyone would want to live is of great importance in the story of American liberty. An essential and remarkable characteristic of the Frontier West, of course, is that it was more or less self-policing. In most cases, it was little more than a loose confederation of municipalities and local governments held together only by economic interests and a dim loyalty to a far-off national government that in the early days of the Frontier was virtually invisible, and in later times was still represented by little more than small bands of cavalry. In other words, it was a quite libertarian society where political power was locally controlled, economic dealings were virtually unregulated, and defense of an individual’s property was usually the responsibility of the individual.”

  • pzatchok

    I really wish people would forget about that whole Indians were present at the first Thanksgiving thing.

    Yes they taught the Europeans about native foods but the idiot Europeans didn’t eat them until after the starvation times almost totally wiped them out.

    After that they were at odds with the natives and didn’t trust them enough to even want them around. Though they did trade with them, they just didn’t want them in town. Well grounded fear of simple theft. The natives wanted everything made of metal and the settlers didn’t have enough metal tools to even go around among themselves.
    The natives found it honorable to steel. As long as it didn’t harm the victim and you were willing to trade for the item back to the original victim. Of course the original victim could always steel it back and thus get not just the item back but the honor of the theft well done.
    This game was also used as a sort of welfare system among friendly allied tribes. The hungry lesser off tribe would steel food from a better off tribe. The food would get to where it was needed and honor was saved.
    The Europeans didn’t understand or play this game.
    The whole time the Europeans were starving the Indians expected them to steel from them and were willing to let the thefts be forgotten.

  • Edward

    pzatchok,
    You bring up the problem of cross cultural communication. I took a class on this subject in school. The primary problem arises due to the people from each culture assuming that the other culture is the same as their own. Different behavior by the others confuses all and can offend many. In this case it seems to have resulted in a few cases of starvation, a tragedy brought about by poor communications skills between new cultures and a reluctance by the Indians to cause the Pilgrims to lose face by donating the needed food. I doubt that the Indians could have helped those who died of disease.

    That the American Indians and the colonists did not go to war over their differences is telling. Both cultures were tolerant enough to put up with the idiosyncrasies of the other.

    And yes, the Indians were invited and came to the first Thanksgiving feast. It is documented in William Bradford’s diary. The celebration lasted three days, and the 52 Pilgrims had 90 Indian guests from a neighboring village. Probably the same ones who showed these farmers the idiosyncrasies of corn and how to catch the local fish.

    The only idiocy of these farmers was in being talked into trying out the socialist economic system (this was before socialism had a name). They realized the folly of the system, faster than any other society on Earth, so these were not stupid people, and they switched to the known successful private-property free-market capitalism economic system despite their contract to give group ownership socialism a seven-year chance. Their Thanksgiving celebration was to thank God for the successful economic system.

    Indeed, that we have moved closer and closer to socialism, especially under Obama, despite the mounds of proof that it has never, ever worked in all of history, in any location, or under anyone’s guidance, shows that it is modern Americans who are the idiots for allowing it to creep into so very much of our once-successful economy.

    No wonder we need to get rid of Obama’s attorney henchmen. They are far more likely to enforce socialist policies on us than private-property free-market capitalism.

  • ken anthony

    A hard working Indian employee of one of my friends in SD had several jobs (besides working for my friend he had a profitable bar band.) He also had a safe where he kept his paychecks rather than cash them. The bank was constantly contacting my friend to confirm that some six month or year old paycheck was ok to cash.

    Why did he do this? Because he was a hard working Indian in a culture where you were forced to share with family. When he got married he was able to take his wife on a honeymoon to Hawaii. If he cashed those checks sooner (or even just invested the money) his relatives would have bled him dry.

    Cultural differences are real and phony equivalences are just a way to lie.

    My stepson was raised in Sevastopol, Ukraine. At 12 (he just turned 27) his cultural heritage was anything not locked down was ok to take (or build tree houses on other’s property.) I can still see a little of that still in him. My housekeeper is just the opposite. She has a hard time accepting anything she didn’t work for.

    The left and right are two entirely different cultures. I wish they both had more of my values.

    Most native Americans were peaceful, but I’ve stood on a the ground of a former village in SD where a tribe was totally wiped out by another tribe (complete genocide. They no longer exist.) Europeans were not here at the time.

  • Cotour

    Ken,

    Excellent and relevant points all.

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