"do your duty..."
so, i'm watching all the groundbreaking news this morning (ie, the daily show and colbert report) and i see this news clip on the report. they've taken a short segment from some real news show where the reporter is complaining that white babies are outnumbered by latino babies. this means that in the not-too-distant future, the population will shift to a latino majority. the reporter then said, "~so do your duty: make more babies~" (indirect quote). isn't that eerily familiar to a white supremicist attitude? i'm getting flashbacks from "gangs of new york" here, with bill the butcher (historically, there was such a man) trying to keep all the mics from coming over from ireland. and today the united states population has a very high percentage of scotch-irish.
i don't see how we, as a nation, can be so calloused to those seeking a better life in this nation. virtually all of our ancestors arrived here for exactly the same reason - unless, of course, your ancestors were brought in by the boatloads to work as slaves. or, i don't know, maybe your ancestors already lived here and had their land ripped from their grasps by the manifets destiny-believing 'new americans'. the mexican and american indian peoples were here first and our ancestors took this land from them by force. how can we now deny them the right to live on the land of their forefathers?
honestly, i can think of only one real precedent for the way the early americans treating this land native inhabitants. the bible. it's basically the same approach the israelites took againstthe canaanites. they believed that their god had told them to take the land of canaan away from its natural inhabitants by killing every single one of them. that was their solution - genocide. and all for the sake of the 'promised land'. they were promised land that already belonged to someone else. but just like manifest destiny centuries later, they believed their god had told them it was theirs to take. and since israel did so, their has not been a single year of peace in that land except under king solomon. even today, the conflict rages on due to the near-genocide and seizure of land thousands of years ago. is that really the history we americans are desperately seeking to follow? and the best part is that the bible only claims israel made one mistake in all of this bloodshed: the massacre wasn't complete, they failed to kill all of the canaanites.
i don't see how we, as a nation, can be so calloused to those seeking a better life in this nation. virtually all of our ancestors arrived here for exactly the same reason - unless, of course, your ancestors were brought in by the boatloads to work as slaves. or, i don't know, maybe your ancestors already lived here and had their land ripped from their grasps by the manifets destiny-believing 'new americans'. the mexican and american indian peoples were here first and our ancestors took this land from them by force. how can we now deny them the right to live on the land of their forefathers?
honestly, i can think of only one real precedent for the way the early americans treating this land native inhabitants. the bible. it's basically the same approach the israelites took againstthe canaanites. they believed that their god had told them to take the land of canaan away from its natural inhabitants by killing every single one of them. that was their solution - genocide. and all for the sake of the 'promised land'. they were promised land that already belonged to someone else. but just like manifest destiny centuries later, they believed their god had told them it was theirs to take. and since israel did so, their has not been a single year of peace in that land except under king solomon. even today, the conflict rages on due to the near-genocide and seizure of land thousands of years ago. is that really the history we americans are desperately seeking to follow? and the best part is that the bible only claims israel made one mistake in all of this bloodshed: the massacre wasn't complete, they failed to kill all of the canaanites.
posted by scøüpe at 7:58 AM
6 Comments:
i don't think it's so much supremecist as nationalist. Which is also a bad word, according to my 7th grade history teacher. (leads to fascism, nazism, & all other kinds of evil...)
as for the fate of the canaanites, i sea your point (liberal as it is), but i was never ballsy or cocky enough to question GOD's judgement.
i guess maybe they all deserved death, like sodom & gomorah, or the entire cast of "pepper dennis."
to play devil's advocate, (not to try & steal that role away from you), one could say that the strife in the mid-east could also have been avoided if hitler had been successful w/ his "final solution". the only difference between that & what Israel did to the canaanites is the will of GOD.
so i guess if you discount the will of GOD as a cause for action, as you seem to have done for the purpose of this post, that argument would hold true.
BTW, having grown up (mostly) under the same roof as you, i fully understand the temptation to outright dismiss any reported commands from GOD's lips as manipulation of a people's faith.
the other reason for unrest in the middle-east is the apparent lack of faith in abraham. by sleeping with his hand-maid, hagar, and fathering ishmael he actually gave birth to israel's greatest foes throughout the the rest of history. ishmael was 14 when isaac was born. he was saved from certain death by god after abraham sent them out to the desert to die. afterward, he became a great hunter and fathered twelve sons who became twelve great nations. this lineage gave birth to the arabs and to the islamic religion -they still hold ishmael, abraham's firstborn son, to be a holy prophet.
it appears to me that the arabs and the canaanites and many other groups who clashed with the israelites are given a bad name simply for not being part of god's "chosen people". that hardly seems fair to me. if god chose the descendants of isaac and not those of ishmael is it really their fault? or did they just get the short end of the luck of the draw? every story's protaganist has to have an antagonist, right? how do we know that ishmael didn't just get the shit end of the deal in history? after all, as napoleon once said, "what is history, but a fable agreed upon."
don't forget, though, that the new covenant is'nt just for the israelites anymore, but for jews and gentiles alike. so, regardless of who got the shitty end of the deal, God has still shown common grace to all mankind.
right, fro. americans aren't part of the "chosen ones", but by allting ourselves with, rather than against them, we make ourselves a better place in history. not that GOD will necessarily bless America for supporting Israel, but @ least we don't have to worry @ Him choosing them over us, should there be a conflict.
what i mean is that ishmael seems, to me, to have been blessed as well. (i will make you a nation, etc.) if his descendants were willing to be friendlier w/their cousins, i don't think there'd be such a problem. but it still (always) comes down to a choice they make, not an arbitrary ruling from on high.
BTW, "common grace", fro? slightly oxymoronic, no?
"common" as in available for everyone: God causes the rain to fall on the wicked and the righteous, etc. Doesn't always lead to salvation, but it's still grace in that we're given things that we don't deserve and couldn't muster up on our own.
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