Bryan Fischer is a Dolt (Evil Injun Edition)

Dear Bryan,

It’s been far too long since I did an overly-long post elucidating how you are a dolt. Not that you haven’t done doltish things in the interim, but mostly they’ve been that dull, boring “Oh, the Gays are Anti-Christian Faggots” and “Oh, the Muslims are Anti-Christian Terrorists” varieties, and after a while mocking that doltiness does, in fact, get old.

Plus, y’know, I’ve been busy.

Fortunately for me, Bryan, you keep coming up with new and improved ways to prove, once again, how you are a dolt. Take, for example, this gem: Native Americans morally disqualified themselves from the land.

(By the way, Bryan, what’s with that “Unless otherwise noted, the opinions expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Family Association or American Family Radio” disclaimer at the end of all your articls? Has the AFA ever kept you from posting your doltishness on their website, or broadcasting your doltitude on their radio show, or listing you as their Number One Blogger, or identifying you as Director of Issue Analysis? Come on, AFA, man up!)

In all the discussions about the European settlement of the New World, one feature has been conspicuously absent: the role that the superstition, savagery and sexual immorality of native Americans played in making them morally disqualified from sovereign control of American soil.

Maybe that’s been absent from the discussion (since the actual conquest of the New World by European immigrants and their descendants, at which time it was bandied about as a convenient excuse) largely because it’s nonsensical, racist, and goofy.

There is no such thing as “moral disqualification” (or qualification) for sovereignty.  You even mention a different set of qualifications for sovereignty in your next paragraph, Bryan, and morality has nothing to do with any of them.

International legal scholars have always recognized that sovereign control of land is legitimately transferred in at least three ways: settlement, purchase, and conquest.

Hmmm … does that mean the huge number of undocumented workers in this country have a claim to sovereignty over it?  I suspect you’d disagree.

Does that mean that foreign investors (Chinese, Saudis, whomever) in debt or property have a legitimate claim to “sovereignty” over the US?

Is conquest a “legitimate transfer” of sovereignty? Effective transfer, sure, but generally considered unlawful.  Or did the Ottomans advancing into Central Europe have a legitimate sovereignty over the lands they conquered? (I suspect you’d disagree, since they were Muslims = Anti-Christian Terrorists.)  If we invaded, say, England and, at gunpoint, took over Cornwall and populated it with Americans, would we have legitimate sovereignty through conquest and settlement?

Europeans have to this day a legitimate claim on American soil for all three of those reasons.

Geez, Bryan … racist much?

Because, you know, we’re not Europeans (often used as perjoritive term by the Right when it deals with “socialism” and the like, but still proudly hailed by the Right as a synonym for, y’know, “Whites” … especially when it’s Northern Europeans being referenced — Slavs and Latins need not apply).

They established permanent settlements on the land, moving gradually from east to west, while Indian tribes remained relentlessly nomadic.

Silliness. Many American Indians (I’ll go ahead and use that term rather than constantly correct you with “Native American” or “First People” or the like) had permanent settlements.  This was more true, in the 16th Century, in Central and South America, but even in North America there were permanent settlements, as well as what were considered tribal lands.

Yes, there were nomadic tribes as well, esp. in North America.  The population there was, technologically, some thousands of years behind Europe, meaning hunting-gathering and nomadic lifestyles.  That doesn’t mean they couldn’t exercise “sovereignty” — just that it was militarily easier for the “conquest” method of the Europeans and Americans to succeed.

Does Might Make Right, Bryan?

Ah, but to jump to the end, that’s the point.  You think it does, because cultural and “sovereignty” success is, to your mind, a matter of God’s blessing.  God blesses a country, thus it succeeds.  Indeed, even if it succeeds by conquest and an endless array of broken treaties and death, that’s okay, because its success demonstrates God’s blessing.  Right Makes Might.  Might Demonstrates Right.

So Israel is justified in its conquest of Canaan because God said it was the thing to do, and they succeeded, so they were Right.  Killling and enslaving is all made Right because God gave His blessing, you would argue.  Similarly, the Exceptional Nation known as the United States must, because it has God’s blessing, succeed, justifying anything done against the American Indians (search for moral justification here), and we know this because success can only come with God’s blessing.

Which makes it odd, Bryan, that you worry about the Islamic conquest of the United States.  After all, if they succeed, then it’s God’s … er, Allah’s will, right?

Much of the early territory in North American that came into possession of the Europeans came into their possession when the land was purchased from local tribes, Peter Minuit’s purchase of Manhattan being merely the first.

Yes, sometimes European settlers purchased territory.  If they’d done that with all their territory, then we’d today consider it fair, and just.  Mutual decision-making, negotiating, treating one another fairly.

And the Europeans proved superior in battle, taking possession of contested lands through right of conquest. So in all respects, Europeans gained rightful and legal sovereign control of American soil.

Again with the Might Makes Right.  The Mongols “rightful and legal sovereign control” of most of Asia.  Germany’s quest for Lebensraum gave it “rightful and legal sovereign control” of Central Europe.  The Aztec hegemony over Meso-America gave it “rightful and legal sovereign control” over the tribes it conquered.  The Roman had “rightful and legal sovereign control” over Palestine.  Yay!

But another factor has rarely been discussed, and that is the moral factor.

Like the “moral factor” of the Mongol, German, Aztec, and Roman conquests.

In the ancient tradition of the Hebrews, God made it clear to Abraham that the land of Canaan was promised to his descendants. But he told Abraham the transfer of land to his heirs could not happen for 400 years, for one simple reason: “[T]he iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete” (Gen. 15:16).

The Amorites, or Canaanite peoples, practiced one moral abomination after another, whether it was incest, adultery, sexual immorality, homosexuality, bestiality or child sacrifice, and God finally said “Enough!”

We know this, because the people who conquered them (the Israelites) said so.  Whatever a conquering people say about the people the conquer must be true, because conquerers have “rightful and legal sovereign control” of the conquered territory and, obviously, have God’s blessing. QED.

By the time he brought the nascent nation of Israel to the borders of the land flowing with milk and honey, he had already been patient with the native tribes for 400 years, waiting for them to come to the place of repentance for their socially and spiritually degrading practices.

Isn’t God omniscient?  Why would God be “patient … for 400 years”?  Didn’t He already know the outcome?

His patience was not rewarded, and finally the day came when the sin had reached its full measure. The slop bucket was full, and it was time to empty it out. Israel under Joshua was God’s custodian to empty the bucket and start over.

Yes, the Canaanites were slop buckets.  Classy!

(Waiting for Bryan to draw a connection between slop buckett Canaanites and Muslim Palestinians.  Maybe later.)

The native American tribes at the time of the European settlement and founding of the United States were, virtually without exception, steeped in the basest forms of superstition, had been guilty of savagery in warfare for hundreds of years, and practiced the most debased forms of sexuality.

Hmmm.

“Basest forms of superstition” means, I assume, they weren’t Christian.

“Guilty of savagery in warfare for hundreds of years” surely stands on contrast to the Europeans who were … guilty of savagery in warfare for hundreds of years (but with gunpowder!).

“Practiced the most debase forms of sexuality.” Um … I’m sure Bryan will tell us all about it later.

One of the complaints listed by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence was that King George “has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”

Unlike the Israelites who slew (according to the Old Testament) “all ages, sexes and conditions.”

The Lewis and Clark journals record the constant warfare between the nomadic Indian tribes on the frontier, and the implacable hostility of the Sioux Indians in particular.

As opposed to the Germans and the French, or the French and the English, or the Catholics and the Protestants, or …

The journals record the morally abhorrent practice of many native American chiefs, who offered their own wives to the Corps of Discovery for their twisted sexual pleasure. (Regrettably, many members of the Corps, Lewis and Clark excepted, took advantage of these offers and contracted numerous and debilitating sexually transmitted diseases as a result.)

Ah. Hospitality. Sort of like Lot offering up his daughters to the men of Sodom, rather than violating hospitality he had promised to the visiting angels.  How morally abhorrent!

The native American tribes ultimately resisted the appeal of Christian Europeans to leave behind their superstition and occult practices for the light of Christianity and civilization.

“Hi. We’re here to take your land. And we’re violating all the treaties we sign with you. Hey, want to change your religion to ours? Really, He’s a cool, kind, beneficent deity whose teachings we adhere to vigilantly.”

Yeah, that’d go over well.

They in the end resisted every attempt to “Christianize the Savages of the Wilderness,” to use George Washington’s phrase.

They rejected Washington’s direct counsel to the Delaware chiefs in 1779, “You do well to wish to learn our arts and ways of life, and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ.”

Thomas Jefferson three times signed legislation appropriating federal tax dollars for the evangelizing of the Native American tribes. It all came to nought, as one tribe after another rejected the offer of spiritual light and advanced civilization.

Jefferson (any opinions about his editing of the Bible, Bryan) and Washington (any opinions about his rather distant, non-participating church attendance, Bryan) were leading nations whose expansion depended upon assimilation or removal of the Indian population.  You don’t think, Bryan, they might not be the most unbiased judges of the matter, do you?

Missionaries were murdered in cold blood, including Marcus Whitman, who was tomahawked to death in his own house in 1848 by the Cayuse and Umatilla Indians in what became the Oregon Territory.

I’ll be the first one to note that the idea of the Indians as Pocahontas-like peaceful nature-dwellers is silly. The American Indian tribes were as prone to warfare and violence as any other group of humans.

Of course, the treatment of heretics and folks of “different” religions within, oh, say, Europe is pretty exciting and violent, too.  Whether it’s the slaughter of heretical groups like the Cathars or the Waldensians, or the warfare between Catholics and Protestants (consider the civil wars and near-pogroms of opposing faiths in England itself).

Were the American Indians any more violent and savage and cold-blooded than the anti-Protestant crusades of “Bloody Mary”? Or the persecutions of the Huguenots?

God explained to the nation of Israel that because of the “abomination(s)” of the indigenous Canaanite tribes, the land had become unclean and “vomited out its inhabitants (Lev. 18:25).”

Yes, the Israelites certainly wrote that God said that to the Israelites.

Is this to say the same holds true for native American tribes today? In many respects, the answer is of course no. But in some senses, the answer is yes. Many of the tribal reservations today remain mired in poverty and alcoholism because many native Americans continue to cling to the darkness of indigenous superstition instead of coming into the light of Christianity and assimilating into Christian culture.

If only they were good European Christians, the wouldn’t have to suffer the poverty and alcoholism of the Rez.  Because the only problem facing them is that they are not Christians.  Because, of course, poverty and alcoholism are unknown among Christians.

Oh, wait, Good Christians aren’t poor.  Or alcoholic.  Because Good Christians are blessed, so anyone who is poor or alcoholic must not be a Good Christian. QED.

(And, of  course, American Indians who are actually Christian are rewarded with a total lack of alcoholism or poverty, right, Bryan?)

The continued presence of native American superstition was on full display at the memorial service for the victims of the Tucson shooter, when the “invocation” (such as it was) was offered by a native American who sought inspiration from the “Seven Directions,” including “Father Sky” and “Mother Earth,” rather than the God of the Bible.

Yes, people who aren’t Christian insist on not invoking the Christian deity.  The nerve of them!

Sadly, this column will likely generate a firestorm of nuclear proportions among wingers on the left rather than the thoughtful reflection the thesis deserves.

No, Bryan, I think I’ve given it all the reflection it deserves.

Your “thesis” is that “Christianity is the One True Religion. Anyone who doesn’t acknowledge that is Cursed at best, Evil at worst. We know this because the Christian Bible says so, and Christianity says the Christian  Bible is real, so it must be true.”

Even worse, the reaction will likely obscure the sobering lesson for today. America in 2011 is as guilty of “abominations” as the native American tribes we replaced. We have the blood of 53 million babies on our hands through abortion. We have normalized sexual immorality, adultery, and homosexuality, all horrors in the eyes of God, and are witnessing a surge in incest, pedophilia and even bestiality in our midst.

God warned the ancient nation of Israel not to lapse into the abominable practices of the native peoples “lest the land vomit you out…as it vomited out the nation that was before you” (Lev. 18:28).

Time eventually ran out for the Canaanites, because they filled up the full measure of their iniquity. Time ran out for the native American tribes for the same reason.

The only question that matters today is this one: how much time does America have left to repent of its superstition, its savagery and its sexual immorality before it is too late, before we will have filled up our own slop bucket and will have morally disqualified ourselves from sovereign control of our own land?

Based on our indebtedness to the Chinese, not long.  After all, “purchase” is a legitimate basis for “sovereignty,” right?

But what’s your point, Bryan?  If America is evil, it should be destroyed, and certainly cannot be blessed by God.  So whoever takes advantage of our “moral disqualification” will surely be God’s chosen nation / race / corporation.  You should rejoice in that, Bryan!  That’s their foretold destiny!

Thomas Jefferson wrote at the time of the Founding, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.” It is long past time for us once again to tremble for our country.

Jefferson, of course, was speaking of slavery, a practice condoned for the Israelites against the “vomitous” Canaanites.  He wasn’t speaking of the immorality, sexual license, etc. of the American people, except in that particular sinful act … except, of course, it couldn’t be sinful for the Israelites because, after all, they were ordered by God to take slaves from the people the conquered (except when they were ordered by God to kill them instead).

But that does raise an interesting question, Bryan: now that you’ve condemned the American Indians to poverty and alcoholism for their wickedness, sexual immorality, and lack of Christianity … who are you picking on next?  If you ask me, I’d suggest you claim that African-Americans deserved to be slaves in America because they, y’know, wandering around topless, just like in National Geographics, and they believed in superstition, and it was the White (Christian) Man’s (Profitable) Burden to free them from their sin by shipping them to this country for some good, honest labor and baptizing. Just like the Israelites treated the Canaanites, right, Bryan?  Except with more cotton picking.

I’ll be waiting …

UPDATE: Bryan expands on his thesis: