Yesterday, I wrote on the claim that leftist rioters were making a massive stink over how California was stolen land. As I made clear in an article, the land wasn't stolen from Mexico at all. In fact, it was purchased for $15 million by the U.S. government after Mexico lost a war it started with the U.S. over the annexation of Texas.
Read: California Is Not Stolen Land, and It's Not the United States' Fault Mexico Is Bad at War
As I noted in a follow-up article, this history isn't exactly hidden, but even if the rioters did learn this history, it wouldn't matter. The only thing they care about is hating America and being able to harm it in any way they can.
Read: The Rioters Don't Actually Care About Immigrants and They Definitely Don't Care About Mexico
But let's dissect the logic behind this idea. It's one that's bothered me for a long time, because the whole "we exist on stolen land" idea is flawed at its core.
You've heard it said from leftists that we stole land from the natives and, therefore, it's rightfully theirs. I disagree, because if you want to go down that route, you're going to run into some pretty big complications about ownership, as "native" is a pretty broad term. Tribes on tribes on tribes had been warring with one another for ages, and by the time the Europeans arrived.
We're talking thousands and thousands of years here. If you think California is actually Chumash land, you're wrong, because they took it from someone else, and the tribe before them took it from someone else too.
What a lot of leftists don't like to admit is that war and conquest were a pretty standard part of life for Native Americans before Europeans arrived, and Europeans were better equipped and technologically developed for the natives to make much of a difference in combat.
As they say, them's the breaks.
But the point is that, with that kind of "logic," you can't nail down who actually "owns" one plot of land or another because you don't have the information about who got there first or even who in America has that blood still in them. Even if they do, it's so diluted at this point that it wouldn't be surprising to hear that a large portion of Americans have some percentage in them.
But I can deduce who belongs because my thinking is a bit different.
I'm from Texas, and I have always said that I am "Texan." That's my regional identity, both in birth and in upbringing. I was instilled with Texas values, grew up around Texas traditions, and my manner and habits of speech are very Texan. My father is the same, and so was his father.
This is my land. My ancestors might have sailed here from England a long time ago, but I'm not English, my ancestors were.
I grew up around kids just like me who are all also Texan, and they come from many different ancestral backgrounds. African, Mexican, Indian, Irish, Chinese, Korean... their ancestors all arrived in the states at some point either relatively recently or a long time ago, but we aren't them. We're Texan. We didn't ask to be born here, but by the grace of God, we were.
We don't owe anyone anything. Social injustices, as defined by leftists, are not inheritable. I never kept slaves nor would I want to as I was born in an era where the evils of slavery are fully laid out thanks to retrospection by a society that moved on. I owe reparations to no one in the black community, and no one I know in the black community was ever a slave.
Moreover, we're here legally. Before anyone thinks I'm making a case for Dreamers, let me be clear. My parents did illegally border hop to give birth to me in the United States to take advantage of the law. I find putting a child into a situation where they can be left behind as their parents have the danger of being deported disgusting, and frankly, isn't the noble act it's often sold as.
But aside from all that, what would be the end goal for the left? Where would you draw the line?
Would we all just be forced to return to the places of our earliest ancestral origin? Would the black population be forced to return to Africa? The Chinese to China? The Mexicans to Mexico? Would we have to draw up new lines for countries? Who would do that, and how would you know who belonged where? Would we just be living in isolation, our populations completely homogeneous? We would only be allowed to inbreed?
Do these "social justice" obsessed people ever truly stop to think about what they advocate for?
I think if they did and were truly introspective about it, they would find that a lot of their ideas are purely stupid.
