While ignorant political takes are no stranger to Ben & Jerry’s, they took things over the top on July 4th, when they appealed to the inordinate feeling of guilt of their fellow leftists.
If the name Ben & Jerry’s sounds familiar, yes, they are the brand of ice cream that you don’t buy because it’s way too expensive, bad for you, and not really that great.
Anyhow, here’s their crappy take:
Like many with a cereal box understanding of history, Ben & Jerry’s apparently believes that Native Americans were a peaceful lot until European colonists showed up, broke treaties by violently attacking them without provocation, then seized their land for themselves.
To get right to the heart of it, the Native Americans were not peaceful. The tribes were pretty much in a state of perpetual war with each other, and they were not gentlemen about it. They were so over-the-top that the ancient Assyrians would have wanted them to chill out.
What they’d do is gather raiding parties then proceed to attack enemy villages while they were asleep. The Native American tribes were in a constant state of war and were continually “stealing land” from each other. After European colonists showed up, the natives lost a game they were already playing to those who were better at it.
Also, Native Americans kept slaves. When a tribe conquered a village, an expected outcome for the conquered people (out of the many that were not off the table, such as torture) was to be enslaved. And there was no sign that this practice would have ended without the settlers showing up and eventually issuing the Emancipation Proclamation.
As many natives that may have been lost warring with the colonists, more were apparently lost to disease. Native Americans didn’t have the same immunity to viruses that were accidentally brought across the Atlantic with the European settlers. When these settlers moved across the land, they sometimes found entire villages which were empty.
Now, if Native Americans still held the land, would we have been better off with their culture?
Travel south to Central America, and you’ll find the Mayans, who performed human sacrifices. There were also the Aztecs, who also performed human sacrifices, but using war prisoners.
And if they remained the dominant culture of the land, do you suppose that Native Americans would have developed the same science and technology that helps ensure that life as we know it isn’t a living hell? After all, we’re talking about cultures so primitive that many of them, at the point of their discovery by Europeans, still hadn’t developed the wheel.
I don’t know about you, but I like the advances that were made possible because a bunch of violent tribesmen were displaced by the civilized and industrious. I like antibiotics because I prefer that small scrapes not be fatal. I like modern agriculture because I like having a full belly, me and billions of others. I like automobiles because I have places to go to. I like climate control because I don’t like trying to sleep in a puddle of my own sweat. I like smartphones because having access to the summation of human knowledge appeals to me.
But hey, if Ben & Jerry’s is serious about returning “stolen indigenous land”, it’s on them to demonstrate how serious they really are. A cadre of Jewish students are calling the ice cream company out, daring them to make good on their own words:
Will Ben & Jerry’s surrender the land their corporate headquarters is situated on to Native Americans? I have my doubts. When leftists like Ben & Jerry’s shoot off their mouths like this, it’s usually just to virtue signal. They don’t actually believe what they’re saying. If they did, they’d act accordingly.
Magnetricity 