Every piece of land, everywhere, has been occupied, lived on, hunted, fished, and worked by someone who came along before the someone who is there now. The piece of land I sit on as I write this formerly belonged to another family who built the house and outbuildings and raised a family here. Before that, it was part of a homestead by a family whose name still appears on plat maps of the borough. Before that, there's scarce evidence that any Natives occupied this land for any length of time, but absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, so it's possible.
None of that matters. I bought this land. I pay taxes on it. It's mine. But there's a pervasive mindset among the woke left that any piece of land, anywhere, should belong to the same group of people who lived on it immediately before the current residents. That leads to all sorts of nitwittery, from "land acknowledgement" to "stolen land" claims. These claims are overweening hypocrisy. Case in point: From the just-concluded Grammys, someone named Billie Eilish, who I am told is a singer, launched into a rant about stolen land, which apparently doesn't apply to her opulent Hollywood Hills mansion.
Lefty pop star Billie Eilish is facing calls to hand over her ritzy Los Angeles digs to a Native American tribe or illegal immigrant after she declared “no one is illegal on stolen land,” at the 68th Annual Grammy Awards ceremony.
The “Wildflower” singer, 24, is being accused of virtue signaling for the anti-ICE remarks she made while accepting the award for Song of the Year on Sunday night.
Sorry, Miss Eilish, but that land isn't stolen, and the people you refer to are here illegally. We are a nation of laws, not a nation of pronouncement by feather-headed celebrity nitwits.
Here's the onion:
“What about if we all showed up to her mansion and said we are going to live there now? It’s stolen land right? She doesn’t own it,” wrote one X user in response to Eilish’s comments.
“Meanwhile, she’s chilling in her … Hollywood Hills fortress with armed guards and a moat of privilege. If the land’s so stolen, sis, hand over the keys to the nearest tribe or migrant family,” wrote political commentator and YouTuber Brandon Tatum.
Of course, Billie Eilish doesn't worry about, or even seem to notice, her own jaw-dropping hypocrisy. I have very little doubt that she also rants and raves about wealth and income inequality, often likely doing so from the very mansion referred to, which is built on land once occupied by the Tongva people. She isn't making any plans to return her land and the mansion upon it to the Tongva, even if she could find any. That being the best case, she should heed the old caution, "It's better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."
The nerve of these people! We've covered this mindset extensively, right here at RedState:
Read More: The Ridiculous Way Leftist Educators 'Celebrate' Thanksgiving - With a 'Day of Mourning'
Hot Takes: Democrat Talking Points About 'Stolen Lands' on Columbus Day Don't Go According to Plan
Here's the thing, and I'm going to tell you: I suspect, strongly, that these people fall into two categories: Either they are profoundly ignorant of history, of the law, of the societal impact of illegal immigration that their fame and wealth shield them from, or they are making these lunatic pronouncements deliberately to curry favor with their fellow travelers. This statement by a 24-year-old singer and other, similarly hypocritical pronouncements certainly have the young and woke sitting up and clapping like trained seals, and that probably translated into more album sales.
We should note that the two categories are not mutually exclusive.
Here's the thing: Yes, some unfair things were done, always have been done, when a more technologically advanced people move into the territory of less technologically advanced people. It happened when Rome invaded Gaul and Britain. It happened when the British fanned out and established an empire on which the sun never set. And it happened when pilgrims descended from European settlers moved into the American West.
But we, the living, are not responsible for any such unfairness. There is no original sin in land ownership. I'm not responsible for the acts of my ancestors, and for that matter, neither is Billie Eilish and her ideological brethren; it's not their claims I take issue with, nor their ignorance, but their hypocrisy, their complete inability to see the beam of their own claims in their eye.
We see this from the left all the time, from Al Gore's Tennessee mansions, to Bernie Sanders' lakefront estates, to John Kerry's expansive homes, to Leonardo DiCaprio's private yacht. "Do as I say," they shout at us, "not as I do."
These pious pronouncements are wrong. They are historically wrong. They are legally wrong. They are morally wrong. But Billie Eilish is oblivious.
“As grateful as I feel, I honestly don’t feel like I need to say anything, but that no one is illegal on stolen land,” Eilish said from the stage of the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles.
“F**k ICE, is what I wanna say,” the singer concluded.
'Tis a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. That's all.
