This tweet is so astoundingly transparent and stupid that it isn’t even worth boycotting the ice cream over, though apparently some people are.
It is a core tenet at Ethics Alarms that demands, plans, assertions and proposals that are impossible to realize are not ethical, but are instead incompetent, irresponsible, intellectually dishonest and a waste of everybody’s time, as well as conduct that makes already stupid people dumber yet. “Imagine” is the universal anthem for such statements.
Assuming that the authors of that tweet are not literally morons—and who knows, really—the thing is simply a cry for applause from Woke World. Oh, aren’t these people wonderful! They want to remedy injustice!
To be fair, the suggestion that the U.S. return all of its land to the Native American tribes is only a bit more absurd than slavery reparations, or as Rationalization #22 puts it, “There are worse things.”
Ethics Alarms 
We should be supportive of Ben & Jerry’s position and help them lead by example. I would be happy to help them pack so they could give back the land they currently are occupying to its rightful owners. Who’s with me?
Ugh I hate the “stolen lands” argument. These lands, like all lands that have inhabitants, have been in the possession of innumerable people and tribes who slaughtered each other for the right to these lands. To claim that these lands were stolen is (sometimes) true, but the “rightful owners” are the ones who killed their competitors just before the Europeans showed up, I guess?
Right on. The proper response to silly notions like this is to suggest that the individual – or, in this case, Ben and Jerry’s – demonstrate their resolve by carefully researching the ownership history of all their property and property-based assets, then returning them to the descendants of those people. That should be good for more than a few laughs.
Once that’s done, I will begin thinking about following suit…though I will choose not to.
Virtue signaling is generally pathetic because the signaler always wants everyone else to give something up. Start by doing it yourself and leave me alone.
D’Oh!: https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/slamming-usa-july-4th-turns-ben-jerrys-corporate-hq-stolen-indian-land?fbclid=IwAR0g6hIi-rHAJppH3CLJpJh78jyVM4T6Y83A-4izy1AgQxbe9YgfLChVTTE_aem_AUluiKzZ4QNxqJCha0gEXi2Mt8J7YtN0Px5kOMaCHdSSgeMm7O96m2Xm_qA15vneckI
-Jut
I mean, Ben and Jerry’s could file a quitclaim for their factory property at the county courthouse yesterday, “returning” the land onto the nearest Indian tribe.
Why haven’t they?
Just another example of Twitter’s inability to facilitate an exploration of subtle thoughts.
Does the US exist on “stolen land”?
Sort of.
Apparently, Manhattan was purchased from indigenous people, just not the ones who “owned” the land. That would make the US a good faith purchaser for value.
But, really, that was a fraud perpetrated on the Dutch, or maybe the English. But, we got it from England fair and square in the Treaty of Paris. All of the original states were stolen from England.
We bought the Louisiana Purchase from Napoleon. That was another big portion of the US.
And, the Mexican-American War, contrived as it may have been, was settled legally.
Then, there was Texas.
A huge portion of the US was obtained legally from other thieves.
That is not to say that it is that simple (the whole point of this comment is that it is not). The Indian Relocation Act violated a treaty made with the indigenous people. Jackson violated it. The Supreme Court said so. Jackson defied the Supreme Court, setting precedent for the Democratic Party.
Other treaties were violated.
There is no denying that the indigenous people obtained the short end of the stick in many way. But, any thoughtful person would acknowledge that this is as much a consequence of a tragic culture clash than anything else.
The European explorers came from a sort of rigid territorial culture that was tightly populated in Europe. They encountered numerous migratory cultures that did not view “ownership” of the land in a similar way. In a clash between those cultures, the cultures that were explicitly territorial (Dutch, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, etc.) had an advantage over the indigenous people, as technology gave them greater power to impose their beliefs on the others (i.e. they were better at establishing territorial borders.
Then, there were immune systems. Europe had survived the plague.. Given European social structures, the plague was able to devastate the continent. You might call it a danger of an openly commercial society. That danger was soon visited upon a migratory group of peoples that had probably never experienced such destructive diseases. They were simply and sadly unprepared. In Europe, a population might have been destroyed, but borders and infrastructure might have remained. The Indians were far less prepared for that than the Europeans were when the plague hit them.
(If I were a stone-cold evolutionist, I would point out that European infusion in North America had the same evolutionary impact here that the plague had in Europe. The massive death rate here was less a matter of genocide than it was a matter of survival of the fittest. But, that is not really compassionate or wise when you comprehend the devastation to the Human Culture; with every culture destroyed, the Human Race loses something and it will likely never know what it has lost, or how it may be recovered.)
Add to that, the US tried to do the right thing. They “reserved” land for indigenous peoples (I think the law classifies them as “conquered peoples”) to give them autonomy under the Federal Government and outside the control of the States. It’s a nice idea, but still flawed. You cannot take a migratory people and give them freedom within a boundary that you set aside for them. You get an A for effort, but, at some point, you have to understand that the two cultures have potentially irreconcilable cultures. At some point, even if might does not make right, might will set the path forward. (I don’t know if this sets up an ethics zungzwang-a-ma-jigger, but I am not sure how you can say which party is right and which party is wrong when two parties who can’t live together are forced to do so.). Ultimately, the more technologically advanced culture, with greater immune systems, and a clearer vision of land ownership won out.
Unlike the Canadians and the Mexicans, who both share the notion of national borders with us (the US), many of the indigenous peoples do not or did not (for what it is worth, they should blame Spain and the Mexicans for wiping out the Central American empires (whose social structures were probably closer to Europeans than the North American Indians) have the same concepts and lost out as a result.
It is unfortunate; it really is. But, I am not sure the solution rests in trying to rewind the clock (I am pretty sure it is not), and I am positive that a wholesale return of the US to indigenous peoples is dumb (we would hardly be acting ethically in abandoning the indigenous people to the whims of the bloodthirsty Canadians). In any case, I am not sure that much of this warrants an apology (except for treaty violations, which really warrant some kind of legal resolution).
I would bet that if Twitter allowed for 3000 character Tweets, Ben and/or Jerry might have produced a response like the one above faster than a thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters would have.
But, I would need to know the odds before placing that bet.
-Jut
Is there something going on with names and WordPress? Or do we suddenly have a new and very prolific commenter?
Ahhh, WordPress evidently.
What are you referring to?
ARRRGHHH! NOW I see! On my control panel, I am getting the names as usual…on the posts themselves, all the commenters have been assimilated and are now all called “[1]” Presumably this glitch will be addressed quickly; if not, I’ll be bugging WordPress. I apologize for my Dark Partner.
Obviously the only one who should be called “1” is me.
As usual the Babylon Bee is Johnny (or should that be Janey now?) on the spot with their breaking coverage:
https://babylonbee.com/news/ben-and-jerry-announce-native-americans-may-exchange-white-mans-scalp-for-free-pint-of-chunky-monkey