20 The person who sins is the one who will die. The child will not be punished for the parent’s sins, and the parent will not be punished for the child’s sins. Righteous people will be rewarded for their own righteous behavior, and wicked people will be punished for their own wickedness. – Ezekiel 18:20 NLT
There is a systematic destructive critique of America taking place in the broader culture—the critique is built around the argument of THEFT!
Our 7th grade grandson came home from Rosemont Ridge School in West Linn, Oregon and said his English teacher communicated that “we (the white people) owe the Native Americans reparations because we stole their land. We need to pay back in reparations for the years of theft.”
Reparations means the making of amends for a wrong one has done by paying money to, or otherwise helping, those who have been wronged.
As a parent or grandparent how would you respond to this statement and accusation? I would encourage you to seriously consider and find a valid answer to this critique because your kids, probably at this very moment, are being indoctrinated with it. I am discovering a hidden reality— most parents and grandparents and, yes, even Christian parents, are not aware of what their children are being taught on a regular basis.
Here is a brief and factual answer to the argument of reparations:
The Indians stole the land from other Indian tribes who stole it from other tribes who stole it from people like the Norse, Carthaginians and others before them. It is called the conquest ethic—land is yours if you can take it.
At the very least, please consider providing this abbreviated answer to your kids, grandkids, or to the people in your webs of relationships. We must learn to speak and think on our feet because much of life takes place as we go about our daily routines.
The Conquest Ethic Explained
The conquest ethic has dominated countries since the creation of man. The concept of “theft” only makes sense when there is a built-in- infrastructure of ownership, property rights, and morality. Theft requires that someone legitimately owns something, so that it is possible for someone else to illegitimately take it. If I steal your car, and it turns out that it wasn’t your car—you stole it from someone else—then I have indeed committed theft, but not against you, only against the person who actually owns the car.
The following is from Dinesh D’Souza, who provides a concise definition of the conquest ethic taken from his book, America: Imagine A World Without Her.
“Theft, with respect to the Indians, is rendered problematic because the Indians themselves had no concept of property rights. The Indians held that no one actually owns land—land is the common property of all. Who then gets to use the land? Naturally it is the one who is occupying it. This picture is further complicated by the fact that there were two types of Indian tribes, the sedentary agricultural tribes and the nomadic hunting tribes. The sedentary tribes cultivated the land and seemingly by occupation they were its rightful owners. The hunting tribes, since they moved around, occupied no particular place. Over time, however, the hunting tribes used their martial skills to defeat and displace the sedentary tribes. They then became the new sedentary tribes, and their claim to the land was also based on occupancy. Of course, there were constant clashes among tribes—no one wanted to be ejected from “their” land. Everyone understood, however that there was no real basis for complaint since it wasn’t “their” land in the first place. When everyone is a renter, use is solely according to possession. This is the conquest ethic in its purest form.” – America: Imagine a World Without Her, p. 96.
We hear over and over again the mantra from the academician liberals that America is the evil colonial power that has dominated the poor Indian.
The Native American indictment can be summed up this way: the white man systematically killed off the Indian and stole their country. There is never a mention of the good that is brought to those same countries by the colonization.
Charmaine White Face is a Sioux Indian and a spokesperson for the tribes national council. She hates Mount Rushmore and wants to see it disappear. To her, the faces of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt are faces of tyranny, conquest, and genocide. This type of hatred is also found in some blacks because of slavery, and Mexicans because they accuse America of stealing their land.
This hatred is one of the reasons we are seeing statutes of American Historical figures being torn down all over America today (June, July and August of 2020). This violence is rooted in the false notion of theft!
For example, take Mexico’s argument for theft. Mexico lost the Mexican War which originally arose over a border dispute between Texas and Mexico. Texas used to be part of Mexico but broke off because of tyrannical laws imposed by a Mexican dictator. Texas opted to join the United States. Mexico lost the war and ceded the disputed land in a treaty where the United States paid money and wrote off Mexican debts.
The Sioux position conveyed by White Face is that the land needs to be returned; it needs to be tribal land again. What White Face refuses to grasp is the understanding that there were other tribes before the Sioux and other tribes before them that ravished and took by force other Indian tribes who were living on the land. Some of the tribes were more dominant than others and those that became stronger would defeat the weaker and smaller tribes. The Sioux indeed got land in the typical way that Indians got land—by defeating and displacing the previous inhabitants. Stronger tribes like the Sioux, the Apache, and the Comanche have always done it and the weaker pacific tribes like the Hopi, and the Pueblo have always known it.
Here, in a nutshell, we see the problem of asserting a “we got here first” land claim: almost inevitably, there was someone who was there earlier who can assert the same claim against you.
This is the PREDOMINATE derogatory message our youth are receiving on a consistent basis in the world of academia… even in our grade schools. Perhaps the quarantine due to Covid 19 is not so bad after all! 🙂 They will not be as indoctrinated by the bias anti-American left and, hopefully, parents will become more informed as well.
More Clarification About the Argument of Theft
“America is not a legitimate country because it has been built on the backs of the oppressed.”
The core idea of theft stems from the doctrine of anti-colonialism. Colonialism is the advancement, dominance, and control of one country over another, or one people group over another. It is rooted in the false ideology of Liberation Ideology which is simply described as, “The oppressed always has the right to overcome the oppressor. The oppressor is anyone who is in authority, namely the rich, and today, “whites”, and especially white men.
[Please look to my three-past articles on my blog daleebel.org about Liberation Theology/Ideology. Click “load more” at the bottom of the first page and continue to click on “Load More” until you see the red icons with three people raising their fists.]
Listen to Frantz Fanon, a leading anti-colonialist whom past president Obama claims he read avidly in college:
“The wealth of the imperial countries is our wealth too…The well-being and progress of Europe have been built up with the sweat and the dead bodies of Negroes, Arabs, Indians, and the yellow races…Europe is literally a creation of the Third World. The wealth which smothers her is that which was stolen from the under-developed peoples. This awareness produces a double realization: the realization by the colonized people that it is their due and the realization by the capitalist powers that they must pay.” Look to Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press 1963), pp. 76, 101-103.
So, what should be done about this perceived reality? A few progressives—the real radicals, the ones who are not afraid to speak their mind—do not hesitate to say it: “America should be destroyed.” At the present time this is evident from the evil behavior of the rioters in the cities of the United States destroying businesses, taking over police precincts, and calling the defunding of the police.
This is not about the value of black lives, of course black people matter, as all lives matter. It is not about the false claims that blacks are targets of genocide or are recipients of racism. This is a flat out lie and an over-exaggeration at best. Nine unarmed black people were killed by police in 2019 and all of them were involved with the police with some violent behavior prior to their killing. While death rates of policeman are up 28%. The organization “Black Lives Matter” is rooted in Marxism. Period. They are about over-throwing America under the guise of “social justice.” I would consider them a semi-terrorist organization.
Black Lives Matter has given millions of dollars to Planned Parenthood, movements to defund the police, and consistent support of anarchists who are destroying portions of our cities.
The abortion rate for precious black babies is fulfilling Margret Sanger’s desire to “control the breeding of human populations by increasing desired characteristics and by eliminating through abortion those considered less desirable.”
In a 1921 article, she wrote that, “the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.”
One of the ways to reduce abortions, many black people both for and against abortion argue, is to address the difficult circumstances that lead so many black women to end their pregnancies. One of the central issues ought to be to address the absence of men in the black communities. They are around to impregnate women who willingly participate in sexual activity but often do not stay involved.
It is true that, amount all racial groups, abortions have dropped over the last 15 years. But black women continue to have the highest abortion rate at 27.1 per 1,000 women compared with 10 per 1,000 for white women, according to a study published in the American Journal of Public Health.
Every major city with these massive sociological problems has been run by Democrats and Democratic policies. They have created “Democratic Plantations” in cities across American that have fostered dependency and hampered personal responsibility. Since Lyndon Johnson’s “great society,” poverty, illiteracy, the abortion industry, violence, drug abuse, and unemployment have skyrocketed in cites across America. Generally, all of this is blamed on America collectively, but the reality is these are progressive programs that enable those in cities just enough to keep them locked up in the vicious cycle of the plantation.
Black Lives Matter also supports the destruction of the nuclear family and defunding the police. They use intimidation to coerce white people to admit their white guilt for simply being white. How ridiculous is that? You have no idea if I was racist in the past but, because I am white, I must have been. This is the dogma of ‘guilt” at its most absurd point. BLM also supports the eradication of the nation of Israel by supporting the Muslim Palestinians. Any Christian who knows their Bible and understands Bible prophecy grasps the conflict that Israel has and will face from certain Muslim extremists.
Politicians likeIlhan Abdullahi Omar, who has served as the U.S. Representative for Minnesota’s 5th congressional district since 2019 is also a proponent of the demise of America.
Omar, by the way, is a Muslim and the Koran specifically calls for devout Muslims to do their part to bring in a Caliphate, (the complete political and societal dominance of Islam). This is called “political Islam,” in today’s terms, and it teaches that Islam should have a transforming influence in all the disciplines of a society like: the world of academia, social structures, the political arena, the military, observing Muslim holy days, and, yes, even what one eats and how they dress.
Two small books that I recommend for you to read are: The Islamization of America, and Islam Unveiled by Abdullah Al-Araby. I had the privilege of talking in person with Abdullah, an Egyptian Christian who grew up under the dominance of Islam in Egypt. He is heartbroken over the fact that his culture was destroyed by Muslims and communicated his grave warning about what he is seeing take place in America. At an earlier stage in my ministry I gave out over 300 of his books to inform people within my sphere of influence.
As one Muslim cleric said to Archbishop of Izmir: “Thanks to your democratic laws we will invade you; thanks to our religious laws we will dominate you.”
History teaches us that determined minorities always managed to impose themselves upon the conviction of the silent majority” (Islam Unveiled, pages ix-x, & xi).
The Mainstream Theft Motif
There is another strain of the Theft Motif, and that is far more mainstream, and it is the progressive view that many Democratic leaders like Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton, and Joe Biden and now, Kamala Harris, espouse. This mainstream progressive thought agrees with the diagnosis of America being guilty of theft, but it provides a different remedy.
The mainstream progressive remedy is guilt and atonement.
Americans, in this view, should feel guilty about what they have done and continue to do. Moreover, Americans—especially those who are productive and successful—must realize that their wealth is illegitimate and must be returned to its rightful owners. This white guilt propaganda is rooted in the false notion that the white person must pay for the sins of slavery. America’s national guilt over slavery continues to benefit the Democratic Party — the progressives, and it especially benefited Barack Obama, who ironically is not himself descended from slaves.
We see these feelings of guilt and atonement rooted in many white people and even Christians who submit themselves to the false notion that they must atone for their ancestors sins.This atonement persuasion is absolutely contrary to the Bible. For example:
29 “The people will no longer quote this proverb: ‘The parents have eaten sour grapes, but their children’s mouths pucker at the taste.’ 30 All people will die for their own sins–those who eat the sour grapes will be the ones whose mouths will pucker.” – Jeremiah 31:29-30 NLT
This critique of America is rooted in the Liberation Ideology’s foundation which is “groupism.” Redemption according to this ideology is the deliverance as a group, blame is on the group, and the problem is because of the particular group… namely, whites.
The Bible teaches that each person is responsible for their own sin and must face the consequences for their individual behavior. Depending on the severity of their sin or crime, judicial justice determines the consequences. The concept of so called, “social justice” is not the Biblical form of justice. Once again social justice is a construct that rests in the group.
What Can We Do?
Of all people Christians ought not to be pulled into the atonement argument. We ought to simply speak up and into circumstances that warrant a comment or two. Here is what I say even to non-Christians.
“Christ has atoned for my sin by dying on the cross for me personally and He did it for all the days of my life and into eternity.”
When I talk to Christians, I reference the following Scriptures:
“For God’s will was for us to be made holy by the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ, once for all time” – Hebrews 10:10 NLT
“For this reason, he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people.” – Hebrews 2:17 NIV
Here are some other statements I make to a variety of people including people outside of a belief in Christ.
“I don’t feel one bit responsible for the sins of my past ancestors, or so-called Christians. I have enough of my own sin to deal with. I do agree that those behaviors were wrong, but I do not have to give people reparations for something they did.”
“I am not responsible for slavery nor is the present white person.”
“Over 500,000 white men gave their lives to free the slaves in the Civil War. If we are to give reparations let’s give them also to the white ancestors of those who died in that war to free black people.”
“I’m not racist, homophobic, or prejudice and I refuse to accept that assessment of me, especially based on the color of my skin. If you think I am— you are the one who is racist.”
“By labeling me as intolerant or racist based on the fact that I have white skin is flat out being racist. You’re the one who is racist and intolerant.”
I believe we as Christ-followers ought to speak up and respond to these preposterous accusations that are unfounded and unbiblical. We can learn from the Apostle Paul as to how he spoke up when he was accused falsely. In Acts 23:1 he speaks up to the Sanhedrin (similar to our supreme court except in religious matters) to defend his character against the false accusations about him.
1 “Gazing intently at the high council, Paul began: ‘Brothers, I have always lived before God with a clear conscience!’ Instantly Ananias the high priest commanded those close to Paul to slap him on the mouth. 3 But Paul said to him, ‘God will slap you. You corrupt hypocrite! What kind of judge are you to break the law yourself by ordering me struck like that?’” – Act 23:1-3 NLT
Clearly, we live at a time for the need for overt courage!
Attempting to be Courageous with you!
In Christ,
Dale