Comments by "Martin Maat" (@MartinMaat) on "How The Religious Right Ruined Everything" video.

I am a 57 year old Dutchman. I attended a christian kindergarten (because it was nearby and other kids in my street went there too). I don't remember much of what the young women who were taking care of us ever told us, it was mainly about keeping us occupied and socializing. The Israeli occupation was fresh and apparently a debated topic at the time. I DO remember my teacher making this exact argument! Like "it was all wasteland and now oranges grow there!", which supposedly made it right. I must have been 4 years old, maybe 5. I found it weird, it didn't make sense to me. I now wonder how the subject came up in the first place.
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@johnlast6066 Statistics do not tell the whole story. If you keep one group poor, people from that group are more likely to steal, yes. "The poor are more criminal than the rich!" (if you look at petty theft and people getting at each other's throats because they cannot afford a house that gives them any privacy). Yeah, duh. What is your point? That this is how it's supposed to be?
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@turipz I feel no urge to defend what the Dutch government did in the past. Fact is, in this age, the Antilles receive money from the Netherlands and no Dutch soldier is shooting at the natives over there or are destroying any houses there. A lot of them live in the Netherlands as full Dutch citizens who can vote. Same with other ex colonies. What words are in religious books or not does not strike me as meaningful when it comes to current human rights issues. Palestinians live where they live, in occupied territory. Most of them never had any part in the politics that lead to he current situation. Claiming they have no right to anything, even taking land from them up until this day, based on "Jews lived here once and our book says it's ours" does not make it right. It is apartheid today and it is violent suppression today. And yes, that is bad. I am ashamed for my country that doing business with Israel is still legal.
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I once had a colleague who had lived in the US explain to me that even using the flag's image on clothing would be disapproved of. The flag needs to blow in the wind, high on a pole and any frivolous use of it was considered blasphemous and a mockery of everything sacred. Well, I guess they moved beyond that idea.
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@matthewkopp2391 Yes. Native Americans were forced to sell land they lived on to the invaders. The natives never considered it to be their land though. The notion of people owning land and its ownership shifting from one person to the next through a transaction was nonsensical to them. You don't own air, you don't own the moon, it is a meaningless concept for environmental entities.
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He was a communist. A damn liberal pinko. Preaching to help the poor and needy... A disgusting radical leftist.
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