Post 0

Saturday, December 22, 2007 - 9:07am

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On the other hand...

(Grand Forks Herald)

Means' empty gesture still makes point

Dorreen Yellow Bird

Published Saturday, December 22, 2007

Dorreen Yellow Bird is a reporter and columnist. Her columns appear Wednesdays and Saturdays on the opinion pages of the Herald.

A group of Lakota Indians notified the State Department in Washington this week that, in the words of activist Russell Means, “We are no longer citizens of the United States of America, and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us.”
In my humble opinion, I think THAT ship has sailed.

http://www.grandforksherald.com/articles/index.cfm?id=61340

Lakota group secedes from U.S.

Rapid City Journal

By Bill Harlan, Journal staff Friday, December 21, 2007

329 comment(s) Normal Size Increase font Size

Political activist Russell Means, a founder of the American Indian Movement, says he and other members of Lakota tribes have renounced treaties and are withdrawing from the United States.
http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/articles/2007/12/21/news/local/doc476a99630633e335271152.txt

Meanwhile, from USA Today

The new country would issue its own passports and driver licenses, and living there would be tax-free, provided residents renounce their U.S. citizenship, he said, according to a report from Agence France-Presse.

http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2007/12/lakota-withdraw.html

According to Agence France-Presse:
A delegation of Lakota leaders delivered a message to the State Department on Monday, announcing they were unilaterally withdrawing from treaties they signed with the federal government of the United States, some of them more than 150 years old.
They also visited the Bolivian, Chilean, South African and Venezuelan embassies, and will continue on their diplomatic mission and take it overseas in the coming weeks and months, they told the news conference.
Lakota country includes parts of the states of Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming.
The new country would issue its own passports and driving licences, and living there would be tax-free -- provided residents renounce their US citizenship, Means said.

And in a the course of a few minutes, this has been picked up in Azerbaijan and Turkey. Gee ... now, how to get straight that Russell Means is not the Tribal Council? ...

Contra re: Newsbusters and Free Republic:
("MSM" = "Mainstream Media")
MSM Exaggerates American Indians Claims of Seceding From USA
NewsBusters.org ^ | 12/21/2007 | Warner Todd Huston
Posted on 12/21/2007 12:57:04 PM PST by Pyro7480
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1942933/posts

Post 1

Saturday, December 22, 2007 - 3:26pm

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http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE2D71F38F932A05756C0A961948260

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0575184/

Means certainly gets around. I wish him luck on this new venture. I might even move there.

Post 2

Saturday, December 22, 2007 - 5:27pm

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Instead of Russell Means, the "party of principle" nominated Ron Paul and Andre Marrou and garnered 431,750 votes.

Thanks for the link to IMDB. Among Means's many credits are:
Pocahontas (1995) (voice) .... Powhatan
The Last of the Mohicans (1992) .... Chingachgook

Ah, well...

Post 3

Saturday, December 22, 2007 - 9:18pm

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Aren't native American tribes already sovereign. They don't pay taxes, and act as separate states. Well, they do in Washington state anyway. I just figured it was the same for all tribes. But, I have been wrong before.

Post 4

Sunday, December 23, 2007 - 3:50am

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From the aforementioned IMDB site comes this quote on the Means biography page:

All European tradition, Marxism included, has conspired to defy the natural order of all things. Mother Earth has been abused, the powers have been abused, and this cannot go on forever. No theory can alter that simple fact. Mother Earth will retaliate, the whole environment will retaliate, and the abusers will be eliminated. Things come full circle, back to where they started. That's revolution.

This environmentalist quote does not exactly make me a fan of Means.

Post 5

Sunday, December 23, 2007 - 4:42pm

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I like the old Spanish proverb that Branden quotes somewhere: "God said, 'take what you want and pay for it.'"

Or, there's "Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed," which, I think, is from Rand.

Means' quote can be taken to indicate hostility to science, and technical progress, or simply to the European idea of somehow "dominating" nature, which itself has to be checked for nuance in order to be sure what he is actually saying. Part of the mixed bag of European philosophy - of which I am a great fan, BTW - is the idea that somehow we can defy nature and reality and force things to be the way we want, not the way they actually are.

Within that faulty concept, which is a variant on subjectivism, not objectivism, we find sub-variants such as the socialist movement to create the "new socialist man," starting with the utopian socialist communes of the early 19th century, thru the takeover of Harvard by the Unitarians, the conspiracy to create a national mandatory state school system, where the values of the new socialist man could be induced, generation by generation, or the NAZI philosophy that essentially posited that there is no past. I.e., we can create, modify, destroy our past thru acts of will, as depicted in "1984."

As opposed to the objectivist concept that things are what they are, regardless of how we feel.

If Means meant these kinds of wish-fulfilment philosophical aberations, then more power to him. Maybe I will pose the question to him directly and invite him to clarify his position here.

Post 6

Thursday, December 27, 2007 - 6:26am

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I have had the idea that one of the few possible legal ways to create an Objectivist state might be to partner with Indians and create a "free" state of some kind. If it works and attracts business, perhaps it can aquire more and more land through purchasing land - hence growing until it becomes larger and larger. This would be a plan to ultimately change the world from the ground up, slowly but surely.

Post 7

Thursday, December 27, 2007 - 12:00pm

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Until ye get invaded for claiming unceded land [even if ye did buy it].....

Post 8

Friday, December 28, 2007 - 6:27am

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You would have to buy it like we bought Alaska from the Russians and such - so that would be different yes (and harder to do).

Post 9

Friday, December 28, 2007 - 8:24am

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"he idea that somehow we can defy nature and reality and force things to be the way we want, not the way they actually are.

Within that faulty concept, which is a variant on subjectivism, not objectivism, we find sub-variants such as the socialist movement to create the "new socialist man," starting with the utopian socialist communes of the early 19th century"

Oh goodness. Do you think that the socialist communities somehow "violated" nature? How?

You seem to be implying it's in man's nature to be free. You have about 7,000 years of human history to explain then.

I know "social metaphysician" is a popular insult around Objectivist circles, but if you hadn't noticed, it is possible to violate man's freedoms. Meaning that they must not be metaphysically given. Violating metaphysical truths is impossible.

Post 10

Friday, December 28, 2007 - 9:11am

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"'Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed,' which, I think, is from Rand."

That phrase is usually attributed to Francis Bacon (1561-16236), philosopher.

Francis Bacon

Rand's modification was (from memory) something along the lines of: "Nature, to be apprehended, must be obeyed."

[Edit: "Just as man's physical existence was liberated when he grasped that 'nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed', so his consciousness will be liberated when grasps that nature, to be apprehended, must be obeyed - that the rules of cognition must be derived from the nature of existence and the nature, the identity, of his cognitive faculty. - Ayn Rand"
Rand Quotes
(Edited by Jeff Perren on 12/28, 9:14am)