Dissing the "Lamanites" on the 4th of July?

[Doctor Scratch]

My dear friends and colleagues:

I certainly hope you're enjoying this 4th of July season. Warm weather. Fireworks. Outdoor grilling. And hey: if you are a Mopologist, a grilled cheeseburger or hotdog, with a nice, cold scoop of jello salad and perhaps some watermelon would count as a major nutritional upgrade from your usual diet of fast-food slop! Three cheers for America!

But it turns out that some Mopologists have other ways of memorializing the country's 250th Birthday--i.e., by undermining Native contributions to the American system of government:

DP, if the Constitution was indeed a divine blueprint, God seems to have relied heavily on Enlightenment philosophy and outright plagiarized the Iroquois Confederacy’s Great Law of Peace, only with much fewer rights for women and a much worse return policy on land. A Native American would likely read your comment with a patient sigh, observing that calling conquest and mass genocide God's will is simply the oldest trick in human history for dressing up human greed as the divine directive.

It's interesting to learn that you're not only anti-Mormon but anti-American, too.

Happy Independence Day!

https://i2i.org/did-the-iro...

https://www.hnn.us/article/...

Gosh... is it really "anti-American" to suggest that Indigenous forms of government might have played some role in what eventually became the US system? Why, on the 4th of July, would you go out of your way to dig up articles that argue--quite stridently--that there is *no* chance whatsoever that "Lamanite" ideas played any role--in any way, shape, or form--in influencing the Framers? I mean, even Congress passed a Resolution--clear back in the 1980s, no less!--honoring Native contributions to US political ideas, and yet here is the Afore, making absolutely certain that any hint of Native contribution is getting smacked down.

I get that there is a certain breed of American who wants to imagine that the US model comes entirely from European stock. But the reality (as usual) is far more complicated. And incidentally: there are plenty of sources--scholarly, legitimately peer-reviewed sources--that contradict the brief (apparently right-wing) sources that he provides links for. He goes on to write that:

I care much more about the ideas behind America

Sure: just so long as those ideas don't come from any "Lamanites." You can't help but wonder if he's fantasizing instead about the hierarchical, stratified world depicted in Added Upon instead.

[Everybody Wang Chung]

There is something profoundly satisfying about watching the Afore’s carefully self constructed mask slip in real-time. It’s psychological fascinating watching the Afore cite the Epoch Times, an outlet so aggressively fringe, racist and ultra-right wing it’s been banned in entire countries. It’s a great publication if you’re interested in climate denial, anti-vax crusades, the white supremacist Great Replacement theory or far-right zealotry. That’s par for the course for someone who posts lynching photos with “funny” captions and claims Black people should be grateful for slavery.

Folks, you truly cannot make this stuff up.

[Gadianton]

I suppose I shouldn't be shocked at the terse retort to "mom's spaghetti". Does the author of the retort imagine that the citation of a libertarian think-tank ends the discussion and constitutes mom's spaghetti getting "beat into the ground"?

Why was the suggestion anti-American? Iroquois influence is the kind of thing a person might expect after reading Peter Novick's epic work, That Nobel Dream.

The libertarian think-tank the Afore links to warns of woke school curriculum indoctrinating everyone into thinking the Iroquois had some form of influence, but they offer no footnotes or sources. The only source they cite is an article on history.com that says,

The Iroquois Confederacy was in no way an exact model for the U.S. Constitution. However, it provided something that Locke and Montesquieu couldn’t: a real-life example of some of the political concepts the framers were interested in adopting in the U.S.

Huh. So what are they so busted up over?

The Iroquois Confederacy dates back several centuries, to when the Great Peacemaker founded it by uniting five nations: the Mohawks, the Onondaga, the Cayuga, the Oneida and the Seneca. In around 1722, the Tuscarora nation joined the Iroquois, also known as the Haudenosaunee. Together, these six nations formed a multi-state government while maintaining their own individual governance.

The point seems to be -- the point that libertarians mangle -- that the Iroquois established a long-standing, working confederacy. In that regard, it offered case positive, example of a theoretical idea for which there was as yet no example of in Europe. There was much systematic study of the United Provinces of the Netherlands and the Old Swiss Confederacy, and commentary within the Federalist Papers on these governments, but with the final assessment being that Europe's efforts had failed.

The Iroquois had succeeded fabulously in pulling the same system off - a confederacy!

The convention delegates were not seeking democracies, but republics and confederations—both democratic and aristocratic.

Right, the old right-wing "It's a republic not a democracy" confusing their reading of the article. The history.com article starts off throwing the word "democracy" around in "catch-all" fashion, which the libertarians take advantage of, but the quotes I provided make clear the point is precisely that the Iroquois had the only known example of a functional, longstanding confederacy.

The extent to which details of the Iroquois government influenced the founding fathers may be controversial, but, this basic point doesn't seem to be. And, reading Brother Spaghetti's comments carefully, he quite cleverly outmaneuvered the Afore. God is all knowing. Even if Benjamin Franklin, with his many interactions with the Iroquois, didn't delve into the particulars of their government, God knew the particulars, and it's quite possible and even likely that if God revealed the American system of government to the founders as the Afore believes, that his revelations consisted of truths gleaned from Europe and also the Iroquois, since it seems to be the case that the Iroquois had yet the best example of such an arrangement the founders were seeking.

[Shulem]

Gosh... is it really "anti-American" to suggest that Indigenous forms of government might have played some role in what eventually became the US system?

No, it's not anti-American to credit an Indian with a positive role that may have played out when the government was first formed. To do so would be anti-Indian because it's reasonable to conclude that many an Indian became citizens under the Constitution when the colonies first united and they supported the new system.

Why, on the 4th of July, would you go out of your way to dig up articles that argue--quite stridently--that there is *no* chance whatsoever that "Lamanite" ideas played any role--in any way, shape, or form--in influencing the Framers? I mean, even Congress passed a Resolution--clear back in the 1980s, no less!--honoring Native contributions to US political ideas, and yet here is the Afore, making absolutely certain that any hint of Native contribution is getting smacked down.

Perhaps Peterson is of a mindset that promotes white supremacy insomuch as early American Indians were not deserving of such a role. The promises of the Indians having a role in Zion/America was futuristic and so Indians were not supposed to lead or inspire the superior white man. The Indians were to keep their mouths shut as were the Negros. White men represented God, not black and brown skinned people.

It's interesting to learn that you're not only anti-Mormon but anti-American, too.

This is an excellent example to showcase one of Peterson's classic tricks in putting people down, unjustly.

I wish that bastard would come back to this board so I could rip him a new one.

[I Have Questions]

It’s always a bit odd to watch a self professed Christian like Peterson celebrating an anniversary of when an immigrant population claimed as its own a land that they, the Christians, were trying to cleanse of the indigenous population. The Americas were independant long before an invading force declared it so in 1776.

I’d have thought a Christian would be a little more circumspect, a little bit more aware about such an anniversary and the process of how it came about.

[Doctor Scratch]

To me, if somebody ain't chalky white, he ain't nuthin. When, after years of teachin Araybic and about them Islams, I learned that those there Ayrabs wasn't blond and white and Aryan like my Viking ancestors, that's when I done up and retired.

The vast majority of his “working” life was devoted to Mopologetics. He may have *taught* Arabic-related material, but you’d barely know it based on his blogging or his work with FARMS/MI and Interpreter. (Will Interpreter be producing a film about an Arab leader / prophet, I wonder?)

What’s weird is that despite all his knowledge about Islamic/Arabic history, literature, art, culture, politics, etc., very little of that knowledge finds its way into his posts. Based on his blogging, you wouldn’t be wrong to think that the only worthwhile contributions to art, history, culture, and intellectual progress have come entirely from white Europeans. You would be hard pressed to find any examples where he’s praising a woman or a person of color in that regard. (He’s got his entire corpus of posts at his fingertips to prove me wrong.) The only response he’s ever had to this criticism is the lame one he’s offering now: “I taught Arabic for *many* years!!” Yeah, well: teaching it doesn’t mean that you don’t think it’s inferior to European alternatives.

Moreover, consider what he’s said about “listening to those who leave the Church.” The only reason for doing so is so that he can formulate explanations as to why they’re wrong. Studying other faiths and cultures no doubt works the same way. They’re “inferior” and worth studying because of the way that they help to reaffirm the “rightness” of your own views and allegiances.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

The Afore’s offense at the notion our country was awash in deception and blood is either based in brain rot ignorance or more deceit. Pick your Crown Burger.

🪶

[Shulem]

Crown Burger.

Fresh off the press:

From the IROQUOIS on the New York map you posted.

Unsettling Scripture Iroquois and the Book of Mormon
By Thomas W Murphy

A groundbreaking exploration of the unexpected intersections between Haudenosaunee oral tradition and Latter-day Saint scripture

In Unsettling Scripture: Iroquois and the Book of Mormon, anthropologist Thomas W Murphy delves into the visions of Seneca prophet Handsome Lake, the epic narratives of the Iroquois Confederacy, and the origin story of the Book of Mormon, revealing surprising parallels between Indigenous and Mormon traditions.

Calling Don Bradley, calling Don Bradley, are you there?

[sock puppet]

Must be white to be delightsome. How could non-whites have any good ideas?

[I Have Questions]

To me, if somebody ain't chalky white, he ain't nuthin. When, after years of teachin Araybic and about them Islams, I learned that those there Ayrabs wasn't blond and white and Aryan like my Viking ancestors, that's when I done up and retired.

The vast majority of his “working” life was devoted to Mopologetics. He may have *taught* Arabic-related material, but you’d barely know it based on his blogging or his work with FARMS/MI and Interpreter. (Will Interpreter be producing a film about an Arab leader / prophet, I wonder?)

What’s weird is that despite all his knowledge about Islamic/Arabic history, literature, art, culture, politics, etc., very little of that knowledge finds its way into his posts. Based on his blogging, you wouldn’t be wrong to think that the only worthwhile contributions to art, history, culture, and intellectual progress have come entirely from white Europeans. You would be hard pressed to find any examples where he’s praising a woman or a person of color in that regard. (He’s got his entire corpus of posts at his fingertips to prove me wrong.) The only response he’s ever had to this criticism is the lame one he’s offering now: “I taught Arabic for *many* years!!” Yeah, well: teaching it doesn’t mean that you don’t think it’s inferior to European alternatives.

Oh come now Doctor Scratch, one need only peruse the many scholarly papers and books that Peterson wrote on the topic of Islamic/Arabian history, literature, art, culture, politics, etc to see that he studied it extensively and helped move that chosen field of study forward in key ways during his professorial tenure. Although google seems to be struggling to locate an example of these achievements, I’m sure they exist. Don’t they?