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There are two mistakes we can make about life in North America in the first century of English colonization. The first is the common one which many, if not most, of us grew up with, that the English settlers of the Atlantic seaboard at first lived happy and fraternal lives with the tribes of that coastline until something led to the outbreak of conflict, after which the tribes lost, lost, and lost, and then conveniently melted away. The second mistake is to rush to the other end of the spectrum and paint an idyllic portrait of precolonial life that is only disrupted by the intrusion of arrogant and aggressive Europeans, with the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay taking the prize as the most arrogant and aggressive. As in most movements of interpretation and then reinterpretation, the truth usually lies somewhere between the spectrum’s ends, and even then is generally more of a zig-zag than a fixed point. The long history of the human species itself is a story of incessant movement, displacement, assimilation, absorption, intermingling and—not the least—genocidal conquest, in which the number of saints is perilously small and the percentage of sinners depressingly great. Taken together, it gives historians little reason to be optimists, much less partisans.
Raid and Remembrance
Posted from freebeacon.com
Edited 24 d ago
Posted 24 d ago
Responses: 9
History … fascinating, horrifying, rewarding, a in-depth look into who we really are …
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SPC Michael Duricko, Ph.D
24 d
LTC Marc King: Your statement is infaticaly true and that list continues which is so impotant to consecrate the depth of our total knowledge of the development of the human race. What baffles me is the fact that the Radical Left wants to erase the portions of history that is contrary to their ideological way of thinking. They can tear down all the statues they want, remove certain teaching curriculums and protest for years to come, but, fortunately, history can never be erased.
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A1C Medrick "Rick" DeVaney
23 d
And What Has Happened Cannot Be Changed,
But We Can, Good Or Bad, Learn From It.
But We Can, Good Or Bad, Learn From It.
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Posted 24 d ago
Absolutely correct, History of mankind is not pretty no matter where you look. There are bright spots but there are also terrible dark blotches.
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Posted 24 d ago
We would be well to remember this particularly as the political BS pollutes our thinking
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