A Sad Reflection . . .
Traveling through the southwestern United States (as I've done this past week), I cannot help but reflect on how much of human history can only be told through the vocabulary of violence and greed. New Mexico, like other southwestern states, is littered with the remnants of broken Native American cultures; A sad reminder of mans' inhumanity to man.
Imagine having over 95% of your population wiped out through a campaign of genocide. The few that are left are forcibly moved to isolated parts of a country that was once theirs. Economies are destroyed. Health care and education are reduced to subsistance levels. Survival now depends on government handouts. This is the plight of Native American peoples.
Even in our modern "enlightened" times, little has changed. Native American cultures exist as a form of human curio, for the entertainment of vacationers. The most prominent characteristic of modern Native American economy is the gambling casino, an exploitative repository for one of the worlds' great vices.
How would you feel if this was the recent history of your people, your family? One consistently recurring lesson of history is the failure of genuine benevolence in human rulership. In all ages good government has constantly been foiled by self-interest, shortsightedness, greed, corruption, nepotism, and especially the lust to obtain and retain power. God’s Word, the Bible, correctly describes the result of all human rule, saying: “Man has dominated man to his injury.” (Ecclesiastes 8:9) To the thinking traveler, that lesson rings clear.
Imagine having over 95% of your population wiped out through a campaign of genocide. The few that are left are forcibly moved to isolated parts of a country that was once theirs. Economies are destroyed. Health care and education are reduced to subsistance levels. Survival now depends on government handouts. This is the plight of Native American peoples.
Even in our modern "enlightened" times, little has changed. Native American cultures exist as a form of human curio, for the entertainment of vacationers. The most prominent characteristic of modern Native American economy is the gambling casino, an exploitative repository for one of the worlds' great vices.
How would you feel if this was the recent history of your people, your family? One consistently recurring lesson of history is the failure of genuine benevolence in human rulership. In all ages good government has constantly been foiled by self-interest, shortsightedness, greed, corruption, nepotism, and especially the lust to obtain and retain power. God’s Word, the Bible, correctly describes the result of all human rule, saying: “Man has dominated man to his injury.” (Ecclesiastes 8:9) To the thinking traveler, that lesson rings clear.
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