> open arms and provided food and shelter etc for them. This is all very
> well, but then, in later times, the "white men" did their
> level best to
> wipe out all the Indian inhabitants of America and didn't get far from
> achieving this objective. Is this really something to carry on
> celebrating? Surely it really represents something that should be
> remembered as America's shame, not a celebration?

Well, I guess it's official--this off-topic thread has now gone into the
pontification toilet.

Substitute various combinations of "Spanish", "British", "Incas", "Boers",
"Celts", "Normans", "Saxons", etc. etc. and everyone in the world is
descended from blood-thirsty murdering land-grabbing horse-stealing....
Clearly the only thing to do is cancel *all* holidays of any sort, since all
of them are in one way or another derived from something that someone
did--or simply was--that cost someone else something. For good measure, we
should all go put ourselves in jail for the "crimes" of some
n-th-generation-removed ancestor. Or at least have the decency to have
ourselves neutered, so that we don't propagate the shameful heritage of that
ancestor to another unsuspecting generation.

I think not.

Steve


Steve Dirickson   WestWin Consulting
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