great post. nails it.
quote:
"My opinion is that if it offends any group of people then it should be at least considered to be changed."
Your opinion is misguided. Being offended is the price we pay for living in a free society. By constantly bowing to those who are easily offended, we are covertly restricting expression, and thus limiting freedom.
"The last thing I have to say is just look at History. We royaly screwed Native Americans, pure and simple."
We???? Nope. I didn't screw anyone. I refuse to take one iota of blame for something that occurred more than a century before I was born. I feel about as much responsibility for what happened to the Indians as I do for the Irish Potato Famine or the Crusades.
Further, the history of U.S./Native American relations is infinitely more complex than the kneejerk liberal claim of "the Indians were screwed." The view that the Indians were a monolithic, peace-loving people whose harmonious way of life was destroyed by the evil white man is simply false. Native Americans were in fact hundreds of different tribes, mostly nomadic, and some were quite war-like, viciously attacking settlers without provocation.
Also, North America cannot accurately be said to have "belonged" to the Indians. Before North America was "discovered" by Europeans, the land was extraordinarily sparsely populated (I believe the number was one person per every 600 acres). And again, the Indians were not a single people with an attachment to the land; each tribe was an autonomous unit, and nearly all led a rudimentary, nomadic life. While certain tribes surely had and have legitimate claims to certain lands, to act like America was the sole property of the Indians is wrong under any reasonable definition of ownership.
Finally, it is a lesson of history that you can only possess land to the extent you can protect it, and that land often changes hands by force. Injustices were obviously committed against Native Americans, but it doesn't make the U.S.'s possession any less legitimate.