General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: A question for older DUers and those who study history: Were repubicans always this nuts? [View all]JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)Where do you find land that was not stolen, labor that is not stolen or underpaid?
Geography includes the study of migrations. Isn't every migration a sort of theft of land?
The fact is that people move around and throughout history people have taken the land that they moved into.
The Romans did it, and then the vandals and Gauls and others in Europe did it back to the Romans.
The Vikings did it. Ghengis Khan did it.
That's history.
And the feudal system? Stolen labor. Then back a little further, the Greeks and Romans had slaves. The early recorded histories talk about slavery and servants. Labor has always been stolen, borrowed. Way back until you get to maybe communal or hunter gatherer societies.
We live in a relatively enlightened world in which we at least try to pretend that we don't have slavery any more and that we don't steal land. (And yes, I know -- Iraq, and on and on, we do steal land and we do take advantage of workers.)
Is it wrong? Yes. But what is new and what can give us hope is that we know and admit that it is wrong. And some of us are even trying to change things a bit.