McCain Picks Genocide Advocating Statesman as His Role Model

[mikekohr]

McCain, who famously said he does not know much about the the economy, does not know history very well either.
In yet another lame Republican attempt to build a bridge to our past. McCain threw his admiration behind the legacy of Teddy Roosevelt. Roosevelt held elitist, racist views that border on White Supremacy. "Theodore Rex" celebrated and advocated the genocide of Native Americans. Following is cut from the website of "International Brotherhood Days:" http://www.brotherhooddays.com

THEODORE ROOSEVELT:
"I don't go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn't like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth."
-Old Rough and Ready- Theodore Roosevelt 79).

Perhaps the most undeserving recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize of all time, Roosevelt, described the slaughter, the butchery and debauchery that occurred at Sand Creek in 1864, "as righteous and beneficial a deed as ever took place on the frontier." 79).

Roosevelt stated that the near extermination of the American Indian, "was as ultimately beneficial as it was inevitable." 79).

He also believed that "degenerates, criminals and feeble minded persons be forbidden to leave offspring behind them." He feared the better classes of American's were in danger of being outnumbered by the "unrestricted breeding of utterly shiftless....and worthless ," people. It is not a long stretch from "Theodore Rex's" elitist views to Hitler's final solution. Pierre L. van den Berghe rates Roosevelt as among the modern world's top three racist statesmen, the other two being Hendrik Verwoerd, architect of South Africa's system of apartheid, and Adolph Hitler, leader of Nazi Germany. 79).

President Roosevelt eagerly described the Dawes Act as, "...a mighty pulverizing engine to break up the tribal mass." 31).

As President he issued numerous executive orders that transferred over 2.5 million acres of Indian Reservation lands to the National Forest System.

He is fondly remembered as the founding father of the National Park system and hailed as a visionary that loved the beauty of nature. Roosevelt once said, "I hate a man that would skin the land." It is supreme irony that he could see the beauty of Nature, but could not recognize the beauty and dignity of the First People of that land, a people that had preserved the natural wonder of that very same land for tens of thousands of years. But whatever his shortcomings in cross-cultural understanding may have been, he certainly understood the tendencies, traits, and desires of his own culture. For it was his own culture, from which he wished to shield the "last wild places."

http://www.brotherhooddays.com/HEROES.html
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McCain has been one of the few Republican Senators that has demonstrated sympathy and some understanding of Native Americans. It is doubly ironic in that light, that he would pick a knuckle dragging troglodyte like Teddy Roosevelt for his role model and sheds light on McCain's sloppy grasp of the truth or more ominously his willingness to ignore it when it is politically expedient to do so.


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mike kohr

[BrklynLiberal]

1. So sad that Someone who could have done so much as TR could have, had such a narrow view of the

first inhabitants of this country.

I find it amazing that some people could be so dichotomous in their views.

[Alter Ego]

2. Abraham Lincoln was no abolitionist, and George Washington

was one hell of a racist as well.

Our Founding Fathers, as well as some of our most celebrated Presidents in history, are not gods--they're men like any other, with the prejudices of their day well-ingrained into their brains.

[BrklynLiberal]

3. I heard recently that the ORIGINAL version of the Constitution contained a strong condemnation of

slavery, but it was omitted to keep the Southern States in line.

http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_slav.html
scroll down to -
The Founding Fathers and the Constitution

[Alter Ego]

4. The movie 1776 covers a version of that.

The entire South walks out of Congress.

[AllentownJake]

13. Declaration of Independence

actually was the document in 1776.

I believe Mr. Franklin edited out the slavery portion in that document (if the John Adams documentry is to believed) because he was extremely politcally acute and realized that fight was not going to occur at the same time as the Independence fight.

[Alter Ego]

20. Dammit.

Shows how much I pay attention.

[mikekohr]

5. Not Everyone Bowed to the Prejudice and Bigotry of their Times

All to often we pick our heroes, our role models, without examination, without thought. The slave owning Washington was known by the Onondaga People as the "Destroyer of villages and the killer of women and children," Lincoln allowed the greatest mass hanging in US history http://www.brotherhooddays.com/HEROES.html To rationalize their shortcomings is to accept the mantle of their sins ourselves.

But there were many others that rose above the tyranny of their times, men like Thomas Morton, Silas Soule, Batolome de las Casas;
See "Heroes History Forgot," http://www.brotherhooddays.com/forgottenheroes.html The courage of their words and deeds are magnified a hundred-fold by the crucible of their time.

Who remembers them today?

mike kohr

[Alter Ego]

8. No, not everyone.

John Adams was the only member of the original Continental Congress who did not ever own slaves.

[kimmylavin]

7. And FDR.

Arguably one of our greatest presidents, he was the one who locked up Japanese-Americans during WWII.

[mikekohr]

9. In My View FDR Was Our Most Accomplished President

but the internment of Americans of Japanese descent was the greatest misstep of his administration and one that has relevance and immediacy in today's political climate. The official government apology issued to these internment victims was justified and long overdue.

The man FDR appointed to oversee this travesty, the hard-line Dillon Meyer, was subsequently appointed by Harry S Truman to head the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Meyer single handedly undid the unprecedented progress FDR's administration made in regards to bringing justice to our relationships with the First Nations of this land. Meyer's paternalistic, authoritative, arrogant qualities led directly to the disastrous Eisenhower's policy of "Termination," of tribal sovereignty that reverberates yet today.

mike kohr

[Thothmes]

11. In addition

the man who lobbied heavest for the interment, the governor of California Earl Warren, was later appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court by Ike.

[Thothmes]

10. And authorized the assination of foreign officials.

[Renew Deal]

6. Good luck with that.

:banghead:

[mikekohr]

12. There is no time like the present to shed light on the truth, regardless of how uncomforatable

it may be.

"The truth shall make you free." John 8:32

Senator Barack Obama talks of the "Fierce urgency of now." Now is the time to speak the truth.

mike kohr

[AllentownJake]

14. Yes he did that

and also did some other things that we would not agree with today.

He also was one of the first Presidents to go after monied interest as well.

Of course if you can find a President who didn't do something terrible in their term of office I'll be surprised. I don't count guys who served less than one year.

[mikekohr]

15. No one is claiming Teddy Roosevelt did not accomplish good things

But the level of depravity he advocated and celebrated reaches a very low and dark place in human behavior. In advocating the denial
of "undesirables," to reproduce he was advocating the practice of eugenics. That's never acceptable on any level or in any era and certainly should disqualify anyone from winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

TR's advocating of genocide is also non-starter in my book. And in his celebrating Sand Creek as noble and honorable I would point out that the slaughter of hundreds of defenseless women, children and elders is not acceptable under any circumstances or in any era.

It is unacceptable to celebrate the mutilation of the bodies, such as breasts cut off and impaled on sticks, vagina's cut off and stretched over hat brims and over saddle horns, fetus' cut from stomachs of pregnant mothers, scrotum's cut off to make tobacco pouches (one Colorado state legislator continued to use a tanned scrotum taken from a victim at Sand Creek as a candy pouch into the 1980's). These were among the atrocities occurred at Sand Creek. It is these horrors that Teddy Roosevelt celebrated and advocated.

Terrible? Something worse than terrible I think.

mike kohr

[AllentownJake]

16. Find one of our Presidents before

1932 that didn't advocate that...and FDR was there for Dresden, Truman for Hiroshima, Johnson for Vietnam, Clinton didn't act on several genocides (I guess not committing them and sitting by and letting them happen is progress)

[mikekohr]

17. If you find one let me know

maybe that's one of the many reasons why I am so hopeful for Barack Obama and what his presidency will mean to this nation and to the world community of mankind.

mike kohr

[AllentownJake]

18. Hopefull

but cautious. We aren't in the position to help anyone else out till we help ourselves out first and we are 1 to 2 bad things happening from becoming a 3rd world nation.

[mikekohr]

19. I can think of a number of ways to help ourselves

1). Stop spending 10 billion dollars a month in Iraq. The final cost of this war (excluding the human carnage) will be between 2 and 3 trillion dollars. Its time for Iraqi's to step up to the plate.

2). Elect Senator Obama president along with increased Democratic majorities in both house, and implement Obama's tax cuts that will relieve the pressure on those families making less than $166,000.00.

3). Put People before profit, principle before party, and reward work over wealth.

mike kohr