🚀 go-pugleaf

In response to Keith E Jackson (kjackson@cs.tamu.edu) Scott Ferguson
wrote:

=: In article <3nchtm$rbs@gw.pacbell.com>, Mike Vandeman 

=: > Bull.  The REAL taking is the fact that someone took the land away 
=: > from wildlife in the first place, and tried to claim exclusive right 
=: > to it, instead of merely sharing it with the people & wildlife who 
=: > were there originally.  Nobody can be faulted for taking what isn't 
=: > yours.  

=: Oh, so those noble American Indians never killed one another to take
=: land?  They never stole the women of other tribes as slaves?  They
=: never killed off the horse in North America from over-hunting?

=If you had read Mike's post, you would have noticed that he gave
=primary ownership to the wildlife, not the Indians.  I'm not entirely
=clear what you have against the Indians, unless you just want to draw
=attention away from his point.

I would prefer to focus attention on the point that an adult human living
in the USA in the late 20th centuury apparently feels that wildlife has
dominion over the land and that this should take precedence over any
subsequent property rights assigned by aboriginal or socially advanced
civilizations.  On what basis then, would this person found society?  Bear
in mind that every square millimeter of the earth is a potential wildlife
habitat.  The simple act of walking entails the destruction of minute
animals.  The construction of any shelter will cause habitat destruction. 
I would say that Mr. Vandeman is espousing an absurd concept of property. 
   

=The horse didn't exist in North America before the Spaniards came.

The early horses did exist in North America and may have been driven to
extinction (along with the Mammoth) by early North American colonizers.

=But you make a good point.  Almost every human society has destroyed
=the environment surrounding it.  I believe someone has charted rises
=and falls of the Mayan empire to the destruction and recovery of the
=surrounding forests.  Our technology merely gives us the advances of
=bulldozers and toxic waste instead of slash and burn agriculture.
=It's unclear to me why you defend this destruction as a good thing.

I didn't see where anyone was defending destruction of wildlife.  I
thought that the discussion concerned private property rights.  
 
=: This romantacizing of the American Indian as infallible is what is
=: Bull.  I have ancestors who were Cherokee and Choctaw, but I don't
=: fool myself into thinking that the way they lived was *ANYTHING* but a
=: function of their technology.  If you are nomadic hunters, you don't
=: mark off land for farming.  That doesn't make you morally better, just
=: technologically behind.

=The American Indians were primarily farmers, not hunter-gatherers.

This would come as a surprise to the various "Ute" tribes, the Cheyenne
and most pacific coast tribes.

=  "No European who has tasted Savage Life can afterwards bear 
 = to live in our societies."  -- Benjamin Franklin

Ben sure could turn a phrase couldn't he? What tribe did he wind up living
with anyway?  
--
Scott Ferguson
fergie@netcom.com



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From: fergie@netcom.com (B. Scott Ferguson)
Subject: Re: What "takings"? Private property?  Ecology
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Date: Tue, 25 Apr 1995 05:39:16 GMT
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