Comments by "Jack Haveman" (@JackHaveman52) on "PragerU" channel.

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  13.  @davidmays8974  And if you'd sailed with Columbus, you'd have been complicit with Columbus. People LOVE to think that they're SO good but it's damned easy when you don't live in a time or situation where these things were happening. My parents grew up in Nazi occupied Netherlands. Do you know who the Nazi soldiers were? They were ordinary people, just like you and me. One time farmers, shop keepers, factory workers, living ordinary lives and they found themselves doing some of the most atrocious acts in our recent history. These same ordinary Germans went into my mother's home when she was 11 years old and took ALL their food. They almost starved to death. Had you or I been one of those soldiers, we'd have done the same. We're just not in that situation. The Spanish had no problem with slavery. No one did at the time. It was a part of life all over the planet. The Aztecs were taking slaves and them brutally murdering them in religious ceremonies and doing it by the hundreds. Funny how NO one calls that brutal. Columbus wrote that the native Tainos had told him about the fierce and warlike Caribs, who used to raid the Tainos for cannibalistic rituals and capture and enslave their women. Once again, I don't hear you complaining about THEIR brutality. No one is perfect and that includes you. If you think that you wouldn't have been goose stepping in the Nazi ranks had you been born in Germany in 1925, you're only kidding yourself. Any honest person has to admit that they'd have done the same. It's the dishonest ones who puff out their chest and point fingers at everyone else thinking that they're better than others. Once you believe that, and it appears that you do, you'll find that you'd be quite ready and willing to do horrific things to those who you believe are worse than what you are. It's the way of humanity all through history. You haven't learned a thing except to believe that you're superior to "those people" over there.
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  14.  @micahlucero8123  That's a great appeal to emotion. My parents grew up in the war in the Netherlands. My grandfather had to be institutionalised due to severe mental illness and left 4 small children alone with my grandmother. They had little to nothing to eat, yet Nazi soldiers would take half of the little food that they had left for the war effort. They would live on eels, caught in the canal across the road, for weeks at a time. She hated fish till the day she died. My mother left home at 12 to work for food and lodging at another couple's home about 30 miles away. If she didn't, she may have starved to death. Human history sucks. We have to know about it, learn about the mindset that brought it about. Your rant is why people build the resentment that keeps them locked within themselves and when they find the power, to react viciously. My mother experienced the wrath of the German people, who resented those who kept them poor and struggling for centuries. My parents didn't let their experience turn them into resentful and vengeful people. They immigrated to Canada, worked their butts off to provide a good life for me and my siblings. That's how you defeat "oppression". I know indigenous Canadians who went to those schools. They've done well for themselves. Built their own families, homes, had good careers and aren't railing on about how tough they had it. They talk about the schools.....the good, the friends they made but also the bad. They don't let it define them. They're strong, living their lives in dignity and appropriate pride. Others don't and I see them living lives of resentment and addiction. You can blame others but others aren't going to fix life for you. My parents and my native friends, who've been successful and lived full lives, prove that. Resentment can bring as much misery as any "oppressor" Don't become your own subjugator. You may find that oppressor the most difficult one to escape from.
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  20. @Dillon Duncan It isn't Palestinian territory and they've never had that territory. The Ottoman Turks controlled the area for almost 400 years and they got it through military dominance. During that time, the area was populated by Muslims, Jews and various Christian sects. Then the Turks lost WW1 and the British took over. The British were the ones that suggested the 2 state option. Why? Because the land that they controlled, the Levant, was populated by these various groups. This has NEVER been Palestinian land, exclusively. Also, it isn't about ethnicity. It's about religion and if every Jew in Israel converted to Islam, the conflict would be over. In fact, Gaza is an Islamic state and Islam is the official religion. It is guided by Islamic law and it is a separate entity and self governing. Israel is not encroaching on Gaza. It's accused of building settlements on the West Bank, also never a part of Palestine. The West Bank was taken from Jordan in the 6 Day War and has been controlled by Israel ever since. If anything, that area should be returned to Jordan, just as the Golan Heights, also taken from Syria in the 6 Day War, would be returned to Syria. The West Bank is where Israel has been building settlements.....no territory taken from Jordan. It's NEVER been Palestine, either. Also, this thing about the Jews and financial success is the same logic SJWs use against white people and colonial success. It's bigotry disguised as righteous grievance against historical events and progress.
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  36.  @nono-hp5kx  I never said he was perfect. He was a product of his times and those times included the enslavement of those who couldn't defend themselves. It was a way of life. Had you lived back then, you may well have been a slave owner yourself. People owned slaves throughout our written history. It wasn't until a few hundred years ago that the anti-slavery movement started in earnest. The entire idea of individual rights for all is a new concept, that developed slowly when the printing press was invented and Bibles were written in the languages of the average person. The idea of individual salvation in heaven slowly morphed into the individual rights and freedom here on earth, eventually settling into an idea that was separate from religious thought and applied to everyone on earth, no matter what religion or ethnicity. However, it was a slow evolution. It's so easy to sit here, on our computers, to rag on people who lived in a different time, under different circumstances and life pressures. Almost every person in antiquity was a monster by our standards. That's a reality and it's arrogance to believe that we would have behaved any differently than they did. All of that has no bearing on what Columbus achieved. When he returned to Spain and told everyone of what happened on that journey, human history changed. It was one of the biggest moments in our history. It has affected almost every human living on earth today. Columbus was not this big leader that invented slavery. Read the story of Spartacus and how prevalent slavery was during the Roman Empire. Columbus was just acting as normal people did in those times. We learned about Columbus is schools but it was just the main events. The year, what islands he discovered, the names of his ships and how many voyages he led. There is so much that has to be taught that only the superficial is covered of almost every topic. We learn the nuances of our own accord and interests. Ultimately, we learn the things we do, not just as a tool for survival, but as a mirror to hold up to ourselves. We're learning about ourselves. How we got to where we are today. Why we think and act as we do. How vulnerable and corrupt we can be, yet deeply caring as well. If you can't learn that from a good education, it's wasted on you and worse, it becomes a weapon to use on others. That's when the conflicts begin, today. Self professed morality fighting the evil others.
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  39.  @JhutaNabi  So you live in a culture that eats it's own young in religious ceremonies. Everyone that you know does it. You've been going to these ritual events since you were a small child and it's important to everyone that you know, that these rites are adhered to. Are you evil? By our standards...yes you are. However, you don't see how. This is important or the gods will be displeased and the balance of life will be thrown into chaos and it might destroy everything that you know. You've been told this since birth and you can't even imagine being different. You don't want to destroy the world. So, what do you do? Save the world or the child being sacrificed. Those are the dilemmas that our ancestors faced. We came from nothing and its been a learning curve since then. Our beliefs are handed down to us from our past and changing those beliefs are fraught with dangers and disruptions of the social norm. We have to acknowledge that those ideas were wrong but understand the position that these people were born into. Slavery wasn't being challenged 900 years ago. Everyone did it. The idea that it could be wrong was almost bizarre in the context of your world. Would YOU be the one that would bring to light that maybe this is wrong? I doubt it very much. You're a product of your environment as much as your individuality, probably more so. Almost all of us would have supported slavery back then. We may not like to believe that but it's just the way it is. Someday, our descendants will be looking back on us and shaking their heads at how evil we were.
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  47.  @erenjaeger1738  "why can you admit there's never such a good thing as "christian nation" Why can't you admit that there's no such thing as a GOOD nation. The only things that separate the Christians from others is the scale of their evil side. The only difference between the, for the example that we've been using, is that the Spanish had a greater population, more advanced weaponry and a degree of immunity to diseases that the Aztecs didn't possess. Had the advantages been the other way around, do you really think that the Aztecs would be no less brutal than the Spanish. It's a matter of scale. I'm NOT Christian. I want you to understand that. I'm looking at this from the outside. There's one thing that Christians are supposed to do and that is to "love they neighbour". Not your Spanish neighbour or your Aztec neighbour, or Dutch, Bantu or Libyan neighbour. You're to love your neighbour, no matter what. "Love thine enemy", "Turn the other cheek", "Bless those who curse you". If someone, who calls themselves Christian, kills for personal gain, to appease his God or out of national interests, he's not following the tenets of the faith as it is written in the Christian Bible. So why do they do those crimes anyway? Because they're human. Humans will destroy what they touch and Christianity makes that very clear with the words "Man is born in sin". It's the only religion that carries it that far. That's why we can call out both Cortes along wit his men and Montezuma and his nation of Aztecs. Both groups are human and as such they are failures in doing the right thing. However, the tenets of Christianity does offer an understanding of human good and evil. It's why the abolition of slavery was initiated by those who were Christian. It was their Holy book that made them realise that slavery was an affront to human dignity. That doesn't mean that a Christian nation is going to be good because that's impossible. It will not happen. All we can hope for is to try to do better and to STOP pointing at others as the evil ones. That in itself is evil.
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