Making Ice Cream Out Of History
Over the 4th of July weekend, you likely became aware of the political statements from Ben and Jerry’s, the ice cream maker owned by the international conglomerate, Unilever.
Exactly why we should believe the utterings of a company that clogs people’s veins with fat and inflames their system with sugar, is not the point. The Howard Zinn view of America is what has been taught in our schools and they are simply parroting the lines they have learned.
In their statement, they said in essence that we should not be celebrating the Founding of our country because it was based on “stolen” land. We had taken the land from Native Americans, and therefore, the moral basis for the country is despicable, and by extension, America is not worth celebrating or defending.
They have made similar claims about “stolen land” in Canada and Israel.
They went on to suggest that “the land” should be returned, starting with Mount Rushmore. However, Ben and Jerry’s did not announce they were returning the land to Native Americans in Vermont upon which their factory is situated. Their righteous claims about “justice” do not apply to themselves.
Their hypocrisy is not as sweet as their ice cream, so it would seem.
This argument that the nation was “stolen”, coupled with the practice of slavery, are the two cudgels that the Progressive Left has used for years to bash America.
As is typical in these kinds of verbal assaults, the accusation is easy to make but unraveling the complexity of history necessary to refute it is much more complicated and nuanced. Because of time constraints, we will cite the case of Mt. Rushmore (The Black Hills), since in doing so, the argument can be extended to many other cases. After all, Ben and Jerry used it as their example and so their wise counsel requires us to do the same.
The underlying assumption is that the Sioux claimed the land and that their “claim” is “morally valid” and that of the US is not.
Unless land is completely vacant, historically it has always been “occupied” by someone, and history is replete with land being taken by other people either through war or cultural absorption. Nothing really unique in this case, just read the Bible or a good history. It is pretty much the story of mankind. In fact, the Sioux were only the most recent owners since they took the land from other tribes.
What archeologists know about ancient Americans is changing constantly as new research is being done. However, most think that around 1500 AD (that is very recent since Columbus came in 1492), the Black Hills were peopled by the Arikara, who were replaced in order by the Cheyanne, Crow, and Arapahoe. Who “owned” it before the Arikara? So, the Black Hills were “owned” previously by a variety of tribes, known and unknown, who took it by force from other tribes. Therefore, if we are going to return the land, maybe the Sioux should vacate the whole area and go back to Canada from whence most of them came.
If the Sioux kills off another tribe and takes their land, it becomes the “holy land of their fathers”, but if Europeans do the same to the Sioux as they did to others, it is the gravest of sins. Why is that?
What moral principle at work here is that if whites act just as the Red Man did, they are to be judged as horrific while the Sioux get a moral pass. Do we think less of the Sioux because they took the land from the Arapahoe? No, in fact, Ben and Jerry have declared the Sioux the one and true owner. Under what principle of law and morality is that declared?
And while we are on the subject of moral law, aren’t progressives the very ones that tell us there are no moral truths and all ethics are situational? It is kind of hard to be righteous when everyone is free to make up their own morality.
Ben and Jerry have been long-time Marxist advocates for a variety of causes and its Jewish founders have been openly hostile to the state of Israel. Apparently, they like neither America nor their own religious/ethnic group. They like socialism. That is their religion and with whom they identify. But a core tenet of Marxism is hostility to private property. All land should be held in common, right? Stealing as a concept requires that one take private property from someone else. But owning private property is wrong in the first place, according to socialists. One could argue then, that the Sioux were totally wrong to resist encroachment on their lands since private property should not exist. The invading settlers were simply getting their due.
You can see this Marxist impulse at work today in California, where stealing from a Walgreens is protected up to almost a thousand dollars a day, or homeless can squat and poop in front of your restaurant, or they can take over city blocks of Central Phoenix. The land you see, is not really owned. Sqatters, vagrants, or whatever have “rights” to use the property or take property because they “need it.”
These Marxist fumes can be detected in our lack of control of our own borders. The US has no right to sovereign land and thus should not resist the millions of illegal migrants that want to live here. Borders should be “open” as the concept of property and nationhood are immoral. It is funny that progressives don’t apply this principle to the white settlers who were “migrants” coming from Europe.
They “needed” the Black Hills so no further justification is required.
Why are those crossing our Southern border considered “refugees” and have a right to be here, but those Irishmen fleeing British oppression are considered “invaders.”
Moreover, if land cannot be rightfully owned, how can white settlers take anything from “Native Americans.”
While we are at it, the underlying assumption is that there is such a thing as “Native Americans” can be challenged.
Readers may wish to look back at a book review we did some time ago on Kennewick Man. In fact, there is a growing body of evidence that what we call “Native Americans” arrived rather late from Asia to these shores and that they killed off or absorbed other peoples who were already here. And they took their land.
If you want more detail, below is an interesting video on the subject. Of course, scholars are arguing about this subject right now and DNA technology is getting better and better. We know quite a number of people who have done the 23 and Me DNA tests and are quite surprised by how complex human interaction can be. As this is being applied more generally to the history of migration, there are some surprising findings.
Further, there is evidence of a “great dying” that occurred in North America well before the Europeans made these shores. One of the reasons “Native Americans” lost out to the invaders is there were so few of them relatively speaking, perhaps little more than 4 Million in the entire confines of the present lower 48 states. In fact, a good portion of this country was not really occupied.
In other instances, the land was purchased. In research we did for a recent article on the origins of the French and Indian War, which began near present-day Uniontown, Pennsylvania, we learned that Uniontown was founded on July 4, 1776, by a fellow named Beeson on land purchased from the Indians.
Making it even more complicated, both Britain and France claimed the same area, something that would be settled by the Seven Years’ War.
The point is not all land was seized by conquest. We all know the story about the purchase of Manhattan Island, right? There are multiple instances where land was purchased or transferred by treaty.
Not a legitimate purchase you say? Are you suggesting the Natives were too stupid to make a deal and they had no sense of what was valuable to them? If it was a voluntary transaction, is it not culturally racist to assume only one side knew what they were doing, i.e., the white people? Were some Indians swindled? Yes. Did Indians also swindle settlers? Yes.
As you can see, the story is extremely complicated and not the cartoon-like depictions coming from Ben and Jerry, or their mentor, Howard Zinn.
In all of this complex story, are we suggesting that Native people were always treated to the best of our legal and moral impulses? No, we made mistakes, the same ones made by the “natives” themselves. And it should be added, American Indians have made their share of mistakes and to this day, some are hesitant to fully participate in America.
America is an ideal as well as a hunk of land, and we all are always struggling to live up to founding principles. However, most critics of America despise the founding principles themselves more than the failure to achieve them.
We asked earlier a rhetorical question: what is the moral and legal standard being used by Ben and Jerry? It is confusing because they treat indigenous people taking lands from other tribes with apparently a completely different standard than white migrants or the US government. They believe “property” has been stolen, but don’t really believe in private property. We won’t even get granular with the idea that property must be “used and occupied” for agriculture for a valid claim. That was an English idea, in particular, not embraced by indigenous people and those differences in the concept of ownership caused great confusion and terrible disputes when the two civilizations collided. Besides vast swaths of land were not occupied under agriculture but simply roamed over by occasional hunters.
In short, the story of land ownership and transfers in America is incredibly complicated.
If there is a consistent principle being applied by Ben and Jerry it is to say anything that makes America look bad. Emphasize all the flaws, ignore the success, and above all, distort history as much as possible to score political points. That is what all this is really about.
They are free to say what they want, and we are free to disagree. Further, we are free not to buy their ice cream. May Ben and Jerry’s go the way of Bud Light.
