quote:

They [Indians] didn't have any rights to the land, and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights which they had not conceived and were not using... What was it that they were fighting for, when they opposed white men on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence, their 'right' to keep part of the earth untouched, unused and not even as property, but just keep everybody out so that you will live practically like an animal, or a few caves above it. Any white person who brings the element of civilization has the right to take over this continent.

quote:

At present there exists one State which manifests at least some modest attempts that show a better appreciation of how things ought to be done in this matter. It is not, however, in our model German Republic but in the U.S.A. that efforts are made to conform at least partly to the counsels of commonsense. By refusing immigrants to enter there if they are in a bad state of health, and by excluding certain races from the right to become naturalized as citizens, they have begun to introduce principles similar to those on which we wish to ground the People's State.

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He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

quote:

Originally posted by Andger:
(Or: This culture of death in a nutshell)
(Ayn Rand, 03/06/1974, talk at USMA, West Point, NY)

quote:

Q. At the risk of stating an unpopular view, when you were speaking of America, I couldn’t help but think of the cultural genocide of Native Americans, the enslavement of black men in this country, and the relocation of Japanese Americans during World War II. How do you account for all this in your view of America?


A. [She asks him to repeat part of the question]

To begin with, there is much more to America than the issue of racism. I do not believe that the issue of races, or even the persecution of a particular race, is as important as the persecution of individuals, because when you deprive individuals of rights; if you deprive any small group, all individuals lose their rights. Therefore, look at it fundamentally. If you are concerned with minorities, the smallest minority on earth is an individual. If you do not respect individual rights you will sacrifice or persecute all minorities, and then you get the same treatment given to a majority which you can observe today in soviet Russia.

But, if you ask me, should America have tolerated slavery, I say certainly not. And, why did they? Well, at the time of the constitutional convention, or the debates about the constitution, the best theoreticians at the time wanted to abolish slavery right then and there, and they should have. The fact is that they compromised with other members of the debate and that compromise has caused this country a dreadful catastrophe, which had to happen, and that is civil war. You could not have slavery existing in a country which proclaims the inalienable rights of man. If you believe in rights and the institution of slavery, it's an enormous contradiction.

It is to the honor of this country, [something that] the haters of America never mention, that people died giving their life in order to abolish slavery. There was that much strong philosophical feeling about it. Certainly, slavery was a contradiction, but before you criticize this country, remember that that was a remnant of the politics and the philosophies of Europe and the rest of the world. The black slaves were sold into slavery in many cases by other black tribes. Slavery is something which only the United States of America abolished.

Historically there was no such concept as the individual. The United States is based on that concept. So long as man held to the American political philosophies they had to come to the point even of a civil war eliminating the contradiction with which they could not live, namely, the institution of slavery. Incidentally, if you study history following America’s example, slavery or serfdom was abolished in this whole civilized world during the nineteenth century.
What abolished it? Not altruism. Not any kind of collectivism. Capitalism. The world of free trade could not coexist with slave labor, and countries like Russia which was the most backward and had serfs, liberated them without any pressure from anyone by economic necessity. No one could compete with America so long as they attempted to use slave labor. Now, that was the liberating influence of America.
That [was] in regard to slavery of black people, but at for the example of the Japanese people, you mean the labor camps in California? Well, that was certainly not put over by any sort of defender of capitalism or Americanism. That was done by the progressive left wing democrats of Franklin D Roosevelt.

[It is brought up that she didn't mention American Indians and she returns to the question]

If you study reliable history, not liberal racist newspapers, racism didn’t exist in this country until the liberals brought it up, racism in the sense of self-consciousness and separation about races. Yes, slavery existed as a very evil institution, and there certainly was prejudice against some races, including the Negroes after they were liberated, but those prejudices were dying out under the pressure of free economics because racism in a prejudicial sense doesn't pay. Then, if anyone wants to be a racist he suffers. The working of the system is against him. Today, it is to everyone’s advantage to form some kind of ethnic collective. The people who share your viewpoint, of whose philosophy those catch phrases come, are the ones who are institutionalizing racism today. What about the quotas in employment? The quotas in education? And, I hope to god, though I'm not religious but just to express my feeling, that the supreme court will rule against those quotas, but if you can understand the vicious contradiction and injustice of establishing racism by war, whether it's in favor of a minority or majority doesn’t matter. It's more offensive when it's in the name of a minority because it can only be done in order to disarm and destroy the majority in the whole country. It can only create more racist divisions, backlashes, and racist feelings.

If you are apposed to racism you should support individualism. You cannot oppose racism on one hand and support some collectivism on the other.

But now, as to the Indians, I don't even care to discuss that kind of alleged complaints that they have against this Country. I do believe with serious scientific reason that the worst kind of movie that you have probably seen, worse from the Indians viewpoint, as to what they did to the white man, I do not think that they have any right to live in a country merely because they were born here and acted and lived like savages. Americans did not conquer that country.

Whoever is making sounds there [in the audience], he is right, but please be consistent. You are a racist if you object to that. You are that because you believe that anything can be given to man by his biological birth or for biological reasons. If you are born in a magnificent country which you don't know what to do with but you believe that is a property right, it is not. And, the Indians did not have any property rights. They didn’t have the concept of property. They didn't even have a settled society. They were predominantly nomadic tribes. They were a primitive tribal culture, if you want to call it that. If so, they didn't have any rights to the land and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights which they had not conceived and were not using.

It would be wrong to attack any country, or tribe for that matter, which does not respect individual rights, because if they do you are an aggressor and you are morally wrong if you attack, but if a country does not protect rights, if a given tribe is the slave of its own tribal chief, why should you respect the rights they do not have? Or, if any country which has a dictatorship government, the citizens still have individual rights, but the country does not have any rights. Anyone has the right to invade it, because individual rights are not recognized in that country. And, neither you nor a country nor anyone can have their cake and eat it to. In other words, can’t respect for the rights of Indians. Who, incidentally, for most cases of their tribal history made agreements with white men and when they had used up whatever they got through it, through the agreement of selling certain territory, came back and broke it and attacked white settlers.

I will go further. Let’s say they were all beautifully innocent savages, which they certainly were not, what was it that they were fighting if they opposed white men on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence. Their right to keep part of the earth untouched, unused, and not even as property, but just keep everybody out so that you have to live practically like an animal, or a few caves about it. Any white person who brings the element of civilization had the right to take over this country and it is great that some people did and discovered here what they couldn’t do anywhere else in the world. And [what] the Indians, if there are any racial Indians today, do not believe to this day, is respect for Individual rights.

I am incidentally in favor of Israel over the Arabs for the very same reason. There you have the same issue in reverse. Israel is not a good country politically, it is a mixed economy leaning heavily towards socialism, but why do the Arabs resent it? Because it is a wedge of civilization, an industrial wedge, in a part of a country that is totally primitive and nomadic. Israel is being attacked for being civilized, for being, specifically, a technological society. It's for that very reason that they should be supported. That they are morally right because they represent the progress of man’s mind just as the white settlers of America represented the progress of the mind, not centuries of brute stagnation and superstition. They represent the banner of the mind and they were in the right.