The Next President Of The United States Is Donald J Trump

[Final-Fan]

StarDoor said:

Final-Fan said:

1.  While the epidemics were incredibly devastating to native populations, it's very wrong to think that white settlers just moved into empty spaces.  They forced native populations aside.  Ever hear of the Trail of Tears? 

2.  Claiming that the native tribes were so different from European powers that diplomacy was just impractical ignores the existence of advanced societies like the Iroquois Confederacy. 

3.  Your "blame the diseases" argument also did not acknowledge the fact that, while Eurpoeans did not deliberately inflict the great majority of the epidemics, there was a non-trivial use of disease as biological warfare, as the Wikipedia article you cite mentions. 

4.  "Right of conquest" arguments break down where broken treaties are considered.  Unless you think dirty dealing and betrayal count as part of conquest. 

All you've done is counter my general arguments with highly specific exceptions.

1.) True, native populations were forced aside by whites. But how was this different than the tribes fighting among themselves? It's not like they were all innocent victims. Even the Iroquois Confederacy subjugated other tribes through warfare and forced adoption.

2.) My point about diplomacy is about sovereignty. Did any of the indigenous tribes have a state, in any meaningful sense? What power did they exert over their territory? You say the Iroquois were advanced, but they didn't even have a writing system for their language. How can diplomacy ever be fair if only one side can record the treaties?

3.) 90% of the natives were killed by accidental disease spread, but we should ignore that because less than 1% were killed by purposeful disease spread?

4.) Broken treaties are even more irrelevant, unless you think that white Americans are the only people to have ever broken treaties in human history. How much land do you think was taken because of broken treaties? How much land do you think the indigenous peoples "owned" in the first place? The entire continent? If you only count land that they lived on and used for agriculture, hunting, and gathering, it would just be around 3% of that.

Whites have never committed a unique crime. If they had the opportunity, every Old World population would have done the same thing to the indigenous Americans, if not worse. Unless you drop your anti-white bias, I won't argue this with you any further.

Highly specific exceptions?  Exceptions to what? 

Let's be honest here.  Looking back, I don't think the topic was even well defined.  I do not blame you, or myself, for this, but I think it is true.  The post I responded to, it seems to me, went through several points: 
"The only other thing you could be objecting to is the land itself being stolen from natives, but that doesn't hold up either. The various native tribes in North America did not have a state in the modern sense, and thus could not have had any meaningful diplomacy with the European colonial powers; the difference in the level of political organization was too great. Given how sparsely populated it was, especially after the outbreaks of disease, the New World was terra nullius for all intents and purposes. The right of conquest was universally recognized for almost the entirety of human history up until 1945, so you're going to have to vilify a lot more people than just white Americans if you want to push irredentism."

I will attempt to summarize what I see as your main points below.  Feel free to correct and clarify, since the object of what I am doing right now is to do exactly that (clarify). 
On the topic of land being stolen from Indians: 
a.  Diplomacy was not practicable due to differences in societal/cultural/diplomatic development/complexity, therefore whites had little recourse other than brute force.  (In my eyes this ignoring the widespread existence of, and breaking of, treaties.  One case of particular note is the fact that Britain more or less honored their agreements until the Revolution, but in their settlement with the new USA, they pretty much ceded Indian lands without notice to or negotiation with the affected tribes.  America ran roughshod over them.) 
b. None of the tribes, individually or in combination, amounted to having a state anyway.  (If we go down this path I'd like to clarify what qualifies, and what the relevance is if the European/Euro-American powers agreed at the time that there were organized entities that treaties could be negotiated with.)
c.  Disease essentially depopulated the continent to the point that whites were practically moving into empty territory.  (I'd like to know what sources you derive this claim from.  There seem to have been too many wars with Indians to justify it for me, pending your evidence.) 
d.  "Might makes right" has been the way of the world up until 1945.  (I think it had been going out of fashion quite a bit before then.)
e.  If we're being asked to give the land back, there are a lot more ancient territorial disputes to go around. 

What, exactly, is the point you are trying to argue here?  That it was okay to seize Indian land because they couldn't be negotiated with?  That it was okay because they weren't a real country?  That it was okay because they weren't even there?  That it was okay because everybody else was doing it too?  And who was even suggesting that the land should be "given back" to anyone, as if that was realistically possible on either the giving or the receiving end? 

Other than that, I think following arguments can mostly wait; however, there is one thing I really want to follow up on, regardless of whether it is made irrelevant to the main discussion:  your point that over 90% of them were killed by accidental disease, not deliberate extermination.  That is indeed one figure given for the initial wave of epidemics after first contact, and I won't dispute it in that context, but in the following centuries, do you have evidence to point to this as the single most impactful factor regarding the plight of the natives?  (Disease felled more Civil War soldiers than battle, but I think it would be pretty fatuous to minimize the impact of battle casualties as a result.)