Hacker News Reader

Comment by Ygg2 | Hacker News Reader

I'm pretty sure that's Australia, right?

America started as land of religious zealots.

Everyone loves to forget that America was also a British penal colony[1]. They also love to forget that America also has the highest rate of incarceration in the developed world[2].

Stop with the "Australia is a penal colony" bullshit.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_colony

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcerat...

Australia was a penal colony... Botany Bay was a penal colony...

I'm confused by your asking to stop spreading ... truths? Sure, people don't mention that America was also a penal colony, but that doesn't mean Australia wasn't, too.

And, Australia was sort of the British replacement for their American penal colonies.

The people who were here thousands of years before Puritan nutcases started getting dumped here to get them away from the civilized people, would beg to disagree, if they hadn't mostly been genocided away. Thats probably what OP was referencing.

America started as a bunch of vaguely Asiatic foragers crossed over more or less in Alaska a couple thousand years ago. The noob bible thumpers arriving a couple centuries ago wiped out the first wave pretty effectively but they hardly "started it".

I'm pretty sure that "America" was being used to refer to the United States, not the entire New World or even the particular portion that the United States happens to sit on.

>Thats probably what OP was referencing.

You think OP was calling American Indians thieves?

"America started as a bunch of vaguely Asiatic foragers crossed over more or less in Alaska a couple thousand years ago."

It was more like 18,000 - 12,000 years ago, and perhaps earlier, well before civilizations, or even their agricultural precursors appeared anywhere on the planet. You're talking about walking across the Bering Straits a solid 10,000 years after the last ice age ended.

But thanks for the explainer.

Tell that to the U.S. founding fathers...

Mostly, we started as a land of commercial opportunists taking advantage of royal grants. The religious zealots just played better in the history books of 100+ years ago, so they get most of the attention.

It's a good point; the British government was the root source of the thievery. Perhaps we started as a nation of mercenaries.

If you ignore the fact the various tribes stole from each other. Native Americans weren't a single, homogenous mass, and they certainly weren't Noble Savages ignorant of the ways of war.

If you steal a quarter from Bob, and Bob steals a marble from you, are you saying it isn't theft (morally) for me to come along and take your quarter and Bob's marble and all your other toys while I'm at it?

Is it stealing to exchange a grain of sand for your quarter? The Dutch bought Manhattan for around $1000 adjusted.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com