From Stalin to McCarthy to Nixon to Watergate to Reagan to Bush, the outright lies of the MSM have distorted our own understanding of the very world around us.
The head of the snake is the AQTimes.
Posted on 07/18/2006 7:45:03 AM PDT by Pokey78
Here's dinner Tookie?
Good article. Thanks.
I remember a mention in an article somewhere a few years ago about a nineteenth-century memoir by a transported british convict who escaped in the 1830's and spent twelve years with the Australian aboriginies. According to him the clans were incessantly warring, almost none of the men lived to middle age.
Quite the contrast to the popular image of recent decades.
Superb article.
In the last 30 years archaelogists have decided that the cliff dwellings of the American Southwest, with their obvious defensive purpose, actually had nothing to do with warfare.
Apparently, after many centuries living in indefensible pueblos on the mesa tops, they just decided, for no particular reason, to move into the incredibly inconvenient but highly defensible cliff dwellings.
From Stalin to McCarthy to Nixon to Watergate to Reagan to Bush, the outright lies of the MSM have distorted our own understanding of the very world around us.
The head of the snake is the AQTimes.
recommending Mark Ritchie's "Spirit of the Rainforest" (again) for further thoughts along this line.
Keeley wrote a book called "War Before Civilization," which I read some years back, which covers this subject (doubtless why Steyn quoted him). It's an eye-opening dissection of the "noble savage" myth. Can't wait to read Wade's "Before the Dawn."
Hobbes on man in the state of nature:
"No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."
Some of my ancestors were the Huron, and the Iroquois did the same to them. Of course, our problem was that we allied ourselves with the French white men, who were not very good fighters even back in those days.
Of course, we were not as good of fighters as the Iroquois, so that may have had something to do with it.
Bingo. Hobbes nailed the nature of man better than all the pointy heads in the world combined.
When Einstein heard of Fermi's chain reaction, he said "now everything has changed except man himself." While civilization may have reduced our tendency to commit mayhem, it has also vastly increased our capacity to pursue it if we choose to do so.
There has been war since Cain killed Abel. There is NO peace in the heart of ANY man, white, black or otherwise. Just like there will be no peace in the Middle East till God decides otherwise.
Bump for later.
REALLY good article.
Bump and thanks for the marvelous Steyn ping, Pokey!
Sunkenciv, this seems right up your GGG alley. . .
After Braddock's defeat in the French and Indian War, young Washington survived, but the camp-follower women did not. One pregant young lady was dismembered, she and her infant thrown in a pot, and they were eaten. Historian Alan Eckert points out that they ate her a bit underdone because they were in a hurry.
The Indian in "Last of the Mohicans" who eats the heart of the English commander is not a bad portrayal of a lot that went on. (The whites had their moments, too, such as the murder of Chief Logan's family, and the massacre of the Moravian {Christian} Indians.)
The point is that they weren't pure and peaceful savages.
I understand that these traditions were totally rejected by one noble warrior who came on the scene and was disgusted by this behavior....a guy named Tecumseh.
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