Does lighting fireworks on the 4th of July make you a patriot?

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• If you want to talk about history, save us the one-sided lecture we've already heard. You act like atrocity is uniquely american history. I'm going to remind you of some things:

  1) Genocide is NOT what happened to the natives. Genocide is the *intentional* destruction of a race or ethnic group. The introduction of smallpox was not a planned endeavor, and the disease itself primarily affected white settlers. Just as europeans preferred to buy slaves from the coast of africa so as to avoid going inland and contracting foreign diseases to which they are not accustomed, natives had not been accustomed to diseases brought across the atlantic. This made them highly susceptible to smallpox. Even counting europeans alone, over 400,000 died yearly from the disease during the early 1800's. Needless to say the disease was very efficient at killing aboriginals. However, Europeans did not yet have enough knowledge of bacteria and viruses at that time to purposefully spread a disease through the use of blankets.

  2) Natives were mostly pushed or bought out. The vast majority of interactions between europeans and natives didn't involve any violence. If the europeans wanted the natives to be gone, they would be GONE. Point blank. We all know europeans had *vastly* superior technology and fire power.

  3) You can count the countries that have never been fully conquered on one hand. Native tribes conquered and enslaved eachother for millenia. Fact: They were warring savages, not nomadic hippies. Also a fact: Europeans made this country worth coming to. Europeans created the culturally diverse melting pot we live in today. Had natives retained control of america, it would still be a desolate wasteland. Want the proof? Look at any reservation. High crime rates. Primitive medical care. Flawed infrastructures with few jobs. Funny how non europeans bitch about what europeans did hundreds of years ago to colonize this land, yet these same non europeans come here SOLELY for the benefits and opportunites that europeans created. How many people come to the US to live on reservations?

• 4) Slavery and genocide have occurred all over the world since the dawn of our species. It is anything but unique. Every color of man has been on both ends of the slave trade. Europeans did not invent slavery, however they WERE amongst the first to abolish it. Want to know when the African country of mauritania criminalized slavery? 2007. But let's keep focusing on the mean ol' Europeans. It's not like western Europe is the most peaceful geographical region in the world or anything... Lol.

  5) The richest man in history was a Black muslim slave owner (musa keita l of Mali) who ruled over a century before the development of the transatlantic. Muslims pioneered a plethora of slave trades including the transatlantic (trade of non muslim blacks with europeans), the barbary slave trade (trade of europeans between muslims of the northern provinces of the ottoman empire) and the arab/islamic slave trade (trade of mainly blacks between arab and Berber muslims). The latter is still active in many muslim countries including Mali, Mauritania, and Sudan. Yet people just loooove babbling on about american slavery, which constituted an infinitesimal portion of history - and most people don't know a damn thing about that specific trade. Even if you want to relegate history to the transatlantic, you should know that free Blacks owned Black slaves at a much higher rate per capita in the states than Whites did (26% vs <2% at the height of the trade) and that less than 4% of the Black slaves shipped west came to the US. Most went to the caribbean and south america (brazil alone bought 8x as many slaves.)

• Good website for reporting. Horrible for information. Reminds of me of that time you guys said racist hate crimes towards hispanics were on the rise LOL. Hispanic on White violence is still 8:1 btw.

• Your statement that people who light up fireworks are anarchists is inaccurate. I do believe you have have misunderstood what an anarchists is and have equated it with someone wanting total chaos. An anarchist is manly a person who wants to self govern themselves via a stateless or classless society. Setting off illegal fireworks does not mean that they want to govern themselves or want a stateless society, this statement is just inaccurate in all its aspects. Perhaps another word is more suited for your opinion piece.

  • What the writer meant by anarchist is that the people lighting up illegal fireworks don't really acknowledge the laws even when those laws are meant to protect. While I wouldnt assume everyone doesn't care about the law, I would say there are some actual anarchists in a way.

    • Anonymous, I know what the writer meant and I know what you mean, either way both uses are incorrect. Just because one breaks the law does not make them an anarchist, anarchist also have laws and social agreements depending on which flavor of anarchy you follow. There has been a systematic attack toward anarchist to mean chaos and breaking of the law, and this is the usage that the author is using. There has also been a systematic attack toward socialism, communism, or any other type of ism that isn't capitalism and the American way of life.

      Reminds me of that old video about Metallica vs Napster, where they say money good, Napster bad, but in this case Money good, everything else bad.