h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions."


I know, I know. That's just a product of the unfortunate attitudes of the time and we should just try to understand the spirit of the document and not necessarily the specific words.

But I still find it a discomfitting bit of racist hate-mongering and I'm sure glad it isn't a founding document of my country, a document " has been celebrated and esteemed all over the world". How can a document containing such racist slurs ever be "esteemed"?


As a footnote, I find this site very enlightening: http://www.founding.com/home.htm

If you slap "indians" into the search engine, it comes back with no results whatsoever. They spend a lot of time in their worshipful guide pages discussing slavery and how "men" means "men and women", but not a single word about those "merciless Indian Savages."

What does it say that a nation's founding document contains such blatant racism and even today it seems to be absolutely unexamined?

<,How can a document containing such racist slurs ever be "esteemed"?>>

I didn't know it had that in it! Wow, thanks for the info...

anhaga, do you spend all your time slagging off Americans? Is this what defines you as a Canadian?

Well to put a little balance in here the idea of racist concepts pervaded many documents for a long time in human history.

Even up to right now many people still hold a high regard for books containing overtly and covertly racist concepts.

The lord of the rings and the Bible are just two. In the UK it was a widely held belief that people who lived in filth and squalor such that it shortened life expectancy and caused immense infant mortality brought it upon themselves because they were inherently bad people.

Somehow through breeding, what we would now call genetics there fate and state were destined by themselves they were lesser, literally inferior people.

This was not just said about natives of the colonies but just as much about the people who lived short, disease infested, over crowded, violent and alcohol addicted lives in the cities of the UK itself.

To me the big issue here is do we erase all such documents or admit to the pernicious racism they contain and by admitting the problem hopefully avoid such primitive thinking being passed on to future generations?

one love

I guess I haven't expressed myself clearly. My point is:

The Declaration of Independence isn't a work of literature, it is a founding document of a society. A significant portion of that society which has contributed a huge amount to that society, particularly with many of the founding political ideas and structures, are the very people who are described as merciless savages in the document. I find it sad that this passage seems to go unexamined and unnoticed. If the words were directed at other ethnicities, I wonder if they would have been ignored. How must it feel to be a Native American, particularly a Native American serving in the military, and to read those words?

My point is not to call for the expurgation, editing, or banning of old texts (we went through that discussion with Tolkien a while ago), nor is my point to slag off Americans by suggesting that a particular American document could stand to be examined more closely (I've made a similar suggestion about something Canadian in an Edited Entry A1076861 [and I have an ongoing campaign about that one in real life]).

I guess I'm really bad at expressing myself on this type of subject: I mean to suggest that an aspect of something has gone unnoticed, is worth examining, and is justifiably troubling, and my suggestion comes across as slagging, a call for censorship or a desire for expurgation. It happened on the Tolkein thread.

I'm sorry.

Of course, this one is in my journal. Part of why it's here is as a reminder to myself. Surely if I were intent on slagging off Americans I would have posted it somewhere else.

Sorry, anhaga. I wasn't intending to criticise. I'm just surprised at the amount of criticism of America there is in your journal, and wondered is this very important to Canadians, that they brand themselves as "Not American". We Irish like to be "Not English". Is it the same with you?

It doesn't surprise me that there is racism in the American Declaration of Independence. But is it important? It's a historical document, not a legal one, surely? It's not part of the constitution or anything.

Some Canadians define themselves as Canadians with "I'm not American". Some pitiful few define themselves as "I might as well be American". I define myself as Canadian because I happen to have been born on this chunk of ground and haven't found any reason to bother leaving, either because of discomfort here or the promise of greater comfort elsewhere.

The abundance of criticism of the U.S. has to do with current events on both sides of our border and the prospect of an increase in discomfort on this side.

Perhaps the Declaration of Independence is not strictly a legal document, but it has a central place in American founding mythology. It is a monument of American history and has provided a number of principals which underly American jurisprudence, particularly property law, which is where the "savages" passage comes into play since it was their property that was being legislated, for the most part, without their consent.

And, as I mentioned in my last post, how must Native American soldiers feel fighting for a country whose founding document refers to them as merciless savages?

" I'm just surprised at the amount of criticism of America there is in your journal,"



Gnomon, I just looked over the last five entries in my journal (the ones that show up on my page without clicking on "show more of my journal entries". They are: a story about a visit to Walmart that doesn't even mention the U.S.; a bitter opinion piece on the U.S. election written the day after; praise and recommendation of a story by a (russian born) American writer; A discussion of the various elected officials that represent my area (perhaps this is how I define myself as a Canadian.); and the bit about the savages in the Declaration of Independence. So, really, considering the appropriateness of the appearance of comment on the American election the day after the election, out of the four remaining entries, there is one positive comment on something American, one negative, and two that are about my life, with no mention of the U.S.

It hardly seems like a huge amount of criticism, especially considering how "in-your-face" American news and products are around here.

OK, but looking a bit further back there are a lot of anti-Bush entries. I suppose that's fair enough.



On the subject of a founding document, we in Europe find such a concept odd, because we all assume our countries have been here forever. The present Irish republic has only been here since the mid 20th century, but Ireland has been around since 8000 BC. So what someone said two hundred years ago wouldn't concern me unduly.

"do you spend all your time slagging off Americans? Is this what defines you as a Canadian?"

I think that, given the times, it shouldn't be surprising that some of us choose to be critical of American policy. Being critical of American policy isn't "slagging of Americans".

Given the number of people who chose to either ignore, accept, or even support the American invasion of Iraq, and the historic armed "intervention" (read invasion) of smaller countries in order to further American interests (usually business interests), the fact that a few of us, some who happen to be Canadian, speak out is a mattter of pride to me.

I choose not to ignore the elephant in my living room.

And before anyone gets it into their head that I "hate" Americans or America, my father was American, by brother and sisters are American, and my family was one of the founding colonial families, many of them fought and died in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, as well as in the First and Second World War.

No, I do not "hate" Americans.

What I hate is the policies that have grown to define America.

I hate the fact that a president has taken it upon himself to invade a country, illegally, and on a pretext that has shown itself to be false, has chosen to lie to the American people and to the rest of the world.

I hate that some American people choose to suggest that it is alright to torture and murder Iraqis "because worse happened under Saddam.

I hate that there are Americans who agree with me who are choosing to leave the US and come to Canada precisely for the reasons that some call me "anti-American for, instead of staying and fighting for what they believe in and making America what it should be.

I hate that my father was forced to do the same during the McCarthy era.

I hate it that I cannot freely go and visit the family that I love in the US because of my beliefs and because someone is aftraid of my belief in Peace and the equality of all human beings.

I hate a lot of things about what America is doing to itself and to the rest of the world.

I do not hate Americans.

Gnomon: I agree that the idea of a founding document is a little odd. And there is no colection of founding documents more odd than those of Canada: An Act of British Parliament from the mid-1800s was our "founding document" until we made ourselves a new one in 1982 (that one doesn't actually apply to the whole country, technically). And this new one makes a point of saying that, in fact, the foundations of Canada go back, through the First Nations, to time immemorial: "The existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canada are hereby recognized and affirmed" and the constitution requires the consent of representatives of those First Nations before amendments may be made to certain parts of the constitution. So, our "founding document" was created more than a hundred years after the official "founding" of the country and it enshrines as an integral part of that foundation the traditional forms of government of all of the First Nations (including the Metis, who only came into existence as a people sometime after 1600) which stretch back into Pre-columbian times.