Socialism starts at home
Lead Summary
By
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By Jim Thompson
HCP columnist
I got to thinking, we don’t have to travel to Scandinavia, Cuba or Venezuela to study the effects of socialism. We can do so right here at home. And we don’t even need a passport.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs can trace its roots back to the Second Continental Congress in 1775 (all such data in this article and subsequent quotations come from Wikipedia).
In 1789, Indian relations were placed within the War Department. The Bureau of Indian Affairs was reconstituted in 1824 by Secretary of War, John C. Calhoun. In 1849, the Bureau was transferred to the Department of the Interior.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs is largely an exercise whereby the federal government looks after Native Americans – just like the Left desires for the rest of us. Such a stance fosters an attitude that we (or the Indians) are too stupid to look after ourselves, so the government will take over and watch out for us.
How has this worked out?
“One of the most controversial policies of the Bureau of Indian Affairs was the late 19th to early 20th century decision to educate native children in separate boarding schools, with an emphasis on assimilation that prohibited them from using their indigenous languages, practices and cultures. It emphasized being educated to European-American culture. Some were beaten for praying to their own creator god.”
Wow! I was wondering where Lenin got his ideas.
Today’s Left wants to allow native languages, but as for any other traditions such as which bathroom to use, which god to worship and how we address people regardless of their birth gender, they are all for making us fall in line, just like the Bureau of Indian Affairs was doing over 100 years ago.
Does this mean we’ll be beaten if we don’t fall in line?
Of course, most socialist governments have moved beyond beating the malcontents – they just kill them.
But long run, how did this work out for the Bureau of Indian Affairs?
With the rise of activism in the 1960s and 1970s, there were a number of protest actions taken by Native American leaders, including the occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs offices in Washington, D.C.; the Wounded Knee Incident of 1973; the Pine Ridge shootout and more.
“Cobell vs. Salazar, a major class-action case related to trust lands, was settled in December 2009. The suit was filed against the U.S. Department of Interior, of which the BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] is a part.
“A major responsibility has been the management of the Indian trust accounts. This was a class-action lawsuit regarding the federal government's management and accounting of more than 300,000 individual American Indian and Alaska Native trust accounts. A settlement fund totaling $3.4 billion is to be distributed to class members. This is to compensate for claims that prior U.S. officials had mismanaged the administration of Indian trust assets.
“In addition, the settlement establishes a $2 billion fund enabling federally recognized tribes to voluntarily buy back and consolidate fractionated land interests.”
This seems about right. The federal government has been stealing our Social Security contributions for years.
Wikipedia reports “The Bureau is currently trying to evolve from a supervisory to an advisory role. However, this has been a difficult task as the BIA is known by many Native Americans as playing a police role in which the U.S. government historically dictated to tribes and their members what they could and could not do in accordance with treaties signed by both.”
So, essentially, we have in place a system for Native Americans that follows the socialists’ principles and which predates any socialist government experiments anywhere on the planet.
It adopts a stance that it knows better what is good for a certain class of people, and it will take care of them. This is exactly what the Left is attempting to impose on the rest of us in this country. Except the Left wants to make sure we are unarmed, emasculated and unable to protest.
They have learned the lessons of the Bureau of Indian Affairs well.
The Left can’t wait to get us all on one big reservation.
Jim Thompson, formerly of Marshall, is a graduate of Hillsboro High School and the University of Cincinnati. He resides in Duluth, Ga. and is a columnist for The Highland County Press.
HCP columnist
I got to thinking, we don’t have to travel to Scandinavia, Cuba or Venezuela to study the effects of socialism. We can do so right here at home. And we don’t even need a passport.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs can trace its roots back to the Second Continental Congress in 1775 (all such data in this article and subsequent quotations come from Wikipedia).
In 1789, Indian relations were placed within the War Department. The Bureau of Indian Affairs was reconstituted in 1824 by Secretary of War, John C. Calhoun. In 1849, the Bureau was transferred to the Department of the Interior.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs is largely an exercise whereby the federal government looks after Native Americans – just like the Left desires for the rest of us. Such a stance fosters an attitude that we (or the Indians) are too stupid to look after ourselves, so the government will take over and watch out for us.
How has this worked out?
“One of the most controversial policies of the Bureau of Indian Affairs was the late 19th to early 20th century decision to educate native children in separate boarding schools, with an emphasis on assimilation that prohibited them from using their indigenous languages, practices and cultures. It emphasized being educated to European-American culture. Some were beaten for praying to their own creator god.”
Wow! I was wondering where Lenin got his ideas.
Today’s Left wants to allow native languages, but as for any other traditions such as which bathroom to use, which god to worship and how we address people regardless of their birth gender, they are all for making us fall in line, just like the Bureau of Indian Affairs was doing over 100 years ago.
Does this mean we’ll be beaten if we don’t fall in line?
Of course, most socialist governments have moved beyond beating the malcontents – they just kill them.
But long run, how did this work out for the Bureau of Indian Affairs?
With the rise of activism in the 1960s and 1970s, there were a number of protest actions taken by Native American leaders, including the occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs offices in Washington, D.C.; the Wounded Knee Incident of 1973; the Pine Ridge shootout and more.
“Cobell vs. Salazar, a major class-action case related to trust lands, was settled in December 2009. The suit was filed against the U.S. Department of Interior, of which the BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] is a part.
“A major responsibility has been the management of the Indian trust accounts. This was a class-action lawsuit regarding the federal government's management and accounting of more than 300,000 individual American Indian and Alaska Native trust accounts. A settlement fund totaling $3.4 billion is to be distributed to class members. This is to compensate for claims that prior U.S. officials had mismanaged the administration of Indian trust assets.
“In addition, the settlement establishes a $2 billion fund enabling federally recognized tribes to voluntarily buy back and consolidate fractionated land interests.”
This seems about right. The federal government has been stealing our Social Security contributions for years.
Wikipedia reports “The Bureau is currently trying to evolve from a supervisory to an advisory role. However, this has been a difficult task as the BIA is known by many Native Americans as playing a police role in which the U.S. government historically dictated to tribes and their members what they could and could not do in accordance with treaties signed by both.”
So, essentially, we have in place a system for Native Americans that follows the socialists’ principles and which predates any socialist government experiments anywhere on the planet.
It adopts a stance that it knows better what is good for a certain class of people, and it will take care of them. This is exactly what the Left is attempting to impose on the rest of us in this country. Except the Left wants to make sure we are unarmed, emasculated and unable to protest.
They have learned the lessons of the Bureau of Indian Affairs well.
The Left can’t wait to get us all on one big reservation.
Jim Thompson, formerly of Marshall, is a graduate of Hillsboro High School and the University of Cincinnati. He resides in Duluth, Ga. and is a columnist for The Highland County Press.