PC Run Amok

Today is Thanksgiving, a day to enjoy friends and family, and whatever specific traditions you and yours enjoy on this holiday, and to reflect on what you have to be thankful for. For those of us who do believe in God, it is a day to give Him thanks for the blessings in our lives. For those who do not believe in God, or simply don't think in those terms, it is still a day to reflect on the good things in the world. It's a great day when people get to remember that, however bad things may get, there are things to be thankful for. Personally, I have a great deal to be thankful for, and I do give thanks to God for it.

All that being said though, sadly, in this age of Political Correctness run amok, some simply cannot leave it alone. A California group, dedicated to "Native Americans" (which I'm sure doesn't include me, cause, you know, a single American Indian ancestor, and well over 10 generations in this country for most of the others just doesn't qualify to make me a native) has come up with a list of 11 Thanksgiving "Myths" to debunk. Of course, the entire thing is set to make the original American Colonists look as bad as they possibly can. Admittedly most Americans likely have an over-romanticized image of the "Pilgrims" (it does correctly point out that they were not known as Pilgrims at that point in History.) However, they weren't simply as bunch of murderous bullies either, which is how they are painted by this article.

Now, I don't mean for it to seem as if I'm surprised that a group like this would put this stuff out there, I'm not in the least. Where this becomes outrageous is that this list was forwarded with official sanction to the staff of the Seattle Public Schools, primarily to get across the point of "Myth #11: Thanksgiving is a Happy time." The claim being that Thanksgiving is actually a day of mourning for "Native Americans" as it commemorates 500 years of betrayal in exchange for friendship. There are quite a number of problems with that statement, let me see if I can hit them all. For one thing, even some Indian tribes have spoken out on this, saying that Thanksgiving is a happy day spent with friends and family, just like it is for any other American, and that they don't view it as a day of mourning at all. Also at issue is that not all American Indian tribes greeted the newcomers as friends, so defending yourself against someone who is trying to kill you is hardly betrayal. Furthermore, this is based on the idea that Thanksgiving is supposed to be a day to celebrate the Pilgrims, when, as I said at the beginning, it is a day to be thankful for the good in our lives.

The point of the whole thing of course was to say that the original settlers never were friendly to the Indians at all, which is, of course, not true. There were friendly relationships, and many settlers did attempt to pay for the land. And we also need to remember that, however things worked out, History is seldom as simple as "Group A was right and Group B was wrong."

Of course, the same people at the Seattle Public Schools who forwarded this drivel have also been credited with once defining "individualism" and "planning ahead" as "cultural racism." Honestly, I don't get the planning ahead part at all, but let me take a kick at the "individualism" line. Knowing that all people are individuals, and are different from one another on a person by person basis is, in fact, the proof of the idiocy of racism. If we were in fact to say that all persons of race A were one way, while all persons of race B are another way, and all persons of race C are a third way, and so on and so forth, which is of course stereotyping, then racism would make sense, as the generalities would be true, and if you disapproved of a certain behavior which was practiced by every single person of a specific race, but not by any other, then the racism would be, at least to some extent, justified. Of course we know that this is not true. Each person is an individual, and deserves to be treated as such. The fact is that these people don't want everyone to not be racist, that's not good enough. You see, to be acceptable, you must be racist against whites, especially if you are white. If you don't hate yourself, then you must hate everyone else, or so the twisted logic goes. Utterly ridiculous.

While I find all of this pretty outrageous, let me not dwell on it anymore, it is, after all, Thanksgiving, and as I said before, Thank God I do have a great deal to be thankful for.