Sound Bites -- Provocative excerpts from primary and secondary sources (some with audio commentary)
111-120 of 333 Sound Bites. [show all]
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111) A holy war, in the broadest sense of the term, is any war that is regarded as a religious act or is in some way set in a direct relation to religion. (Carl Erdman, The Origin of the Idea of Crusade. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1977. 3. Translated from Die Entstehung des Kreuzzegsgedankens by W. Kohlhammer. Verlag: Stuttgart, 1935. )
112) Only Christian Europeans could offer the Indians a rationalized existence, which the Indians by the Law of Nations were obliged to accept. European domination benefited the Indians by providing them with the civilizing doctrines of Christianity. In the bargain, the Indians gained freedom to travel (until they were forced onto reservations), to engage in commerce (until they were dispossessed of everything worth selling), and to go peacefully about their other "civil pursuits" (until they were killed or imprisoned for resisting violations of their human rights). (on the Law of Nations in practice: Robert A. Williams, Jr., The American Indian in Western Legal Thought: The Discourses of Conquest. New York: Oxford UP, 1990: 106. )
113) Another common charge against the Indians, which became the basis of the most popular eighteenth- and nineteenth-century justification for dispossessing them, was that they were wandering hunters with no settled habitations. . . . But agriculture was also a conspicuously essential part of Indian subsistence; and we may regard with suspicion much of the literature of justification which overlooks this aspect of native life. . . . It was the Indians who taught the settlers techniques of agriculture. . . . The literature of justification similarly tends to overlook the fact that the Indians were, for the most part, town dwellers. (Wilcomb E. Washburn, "The Moral and Legal Justifications for Dispossessing the Indians." Seventeenth-Century America: Essays in Colonial History. Ed. James Morton Smith. New York: Norton, 1972: 22-23. )
114) Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. (Matthew 28:19 )
115) Thus were the European worthies who first discovered America, clearly entitled to the soil; and not only entitled to the soil, but likewise to the eternal thanks of these infidel savages, for having come so far, endured so many perils by sea and land, and taken such unwearied pains, for no other purpose under heaven but to improve their forlorn, uncivilized and heathenish condition -- for having made them acquainted with the comforts of life, such as gin, rum, brandy, and the small-pox; for having introduced among them the light of religion, and finally -- for having hurried them out of the world, to enjoy its reward! (Washington Irving, History of New York. New York: 1809 [Book I, chap v]. )
116) Can history be understood in moral terms? Of course it can, but should it be understood in moral terms? For those who are in positions of power, the myth of an objective history allows the silencing of the voices of those we consider lesser than us. A moral history is a complex history, and writing a moral history is a harder job than writing one that doesn't account for the injustices committed during times of strife and war. I've often heard people use the saying that "the past is another country," and I now understand those words. We are alienated from a past we have romanticized, but we feel just as alienated from a past which tells us that we all have blood on our hands. A moral history is responsible for carrying the many voices in the historical record, which allows us not to destroy our American mythologies but create and add new ones. (Mehnaz Choudhury, Lehigh University )
117) A fondness for power is implanted, in most men, and it is natural to abuse it, when acquired. (Alexander Hamilton, The Farmer Refuted, 1775 )
118)
[...] Laura asked, "Where did the voice of Alfarata go, Ma?"
"Goodness!" Ma said. "Aren't you asleep yet?"
"I'm going to sleep," Laura said. "But please tell me where the voice of Alfarata went?"
"Oh, I suppose she went west," Ma answered. "That's what the Indians do."
[...]
"Why do they go west?"
"They have to," Ma said.
"Why do they have to?"
"The government makes them, Laura," said Pa. "Now go to sleep."
He played the fiddle softly for a while. Then Laura asked, "Please, Pa, can I ask just one more question?"
[...]
"Will the government make these Indians go west?"
"Yes," Pa said. "When white settlers come into a country, the Indians have to move on. The government is going to move these Indians farther west, any time now. That's why we're here, Laura. White people are going to settle all this country, and we get the best land because we get here first and take our pick. Now do you understand?"
"Yes, Pa," Laura said. "But, Pa, I thought this was Indian Territory. Won't it make the Indians mad to have to---"
"No more questions, Laura," Pa said, firmly. "Go to sleep."
(Laura talks to her parents after Ma sings her a song titled the "Voice of Alfarata," a song about a Native American maid, in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie )119) The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them. (George Orwell, qtd. in Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Books, 1993: viii. )
120) On the Friday next after the feast of the Assumption of Blessed Mary, he [King Richard] ordered that two thousand seven hundred of the vanquished Turkish hostages be led out of the city and decapitated. (James Brundage, Crusades: A Document Survey. Milwaukee: Marquette UP, 1962: 184. )
