Quo Vadis GOP?

[Josquius]

Also consider what uninhabited means to a settled agricultural group vs a hunter gatherer group.

[viper37]

I think the key function of settlers in the North American context was to perform ethnic cleansing. The "wilderness" is a post-fact rationalization.

The author of 1492 made the claim that when western settlers arrived large portions of North America were uninhabited because of diseases.

It depends when and where.

There was multiple waves of settlers.

When Mexicans made first contact in the South of US, they depopulated large area there.

When Cartier made first contact in the North, he depopulated large area there, since by the time of Champlain, there was no one in the valley.

But Champlain met people in Nova Scotia and hostiles in Massachussets.  And English settlers entered into conflict with locals in Massachussets pretty early on.

And as the French settlements grew and they started trading, they met plenty of Indian villages for which they drew maps.

So, the claim that "there was no one" when settlers arrived is dubious.

[viper37]

To our Europeans ancestors, I'd say anywhere where Europeans are not. If you are the first white to show up you are settling wilderness.

Vancouver became a city in 1886, just before the railway reached it.

By the early 1900s, all of Canada's major cities were linked by the railroad.  There were no roaming Indian bands, no American attacks, no rebellions.

I don't know if CCs ancestors were in BC or elsewhere in the West, but they weren't far from a railroad station as that is how settlers coming from the UK were sent West.

They had stores, they had a church, schools, a postal officer, all of this land belonged to Canada, not the Hudson Bay Company.  I wouldn't say it was wilderness, it was actively being developed.

[Tonitrus]

I think the key function of settlers in the North American context was to perform ethnic cleansing. The "wilderness" is a post-fact rationalization.

The author of 1492 made the claim that when western settlers arrived large portions of North America were uninhabited because of diseases.

Some of the books I enjoy reading are first-hand accounts of explorers/settlers, etc (Lewis & Clark for example...I bought their complete/un-redacted journals some while back).  Especially the Pacific Northwest (my homeland). 

One of the common themes I have noticed in them is accounts of multitudes of abandoned/unused native villages (some even speculated do to disease) and those that were inhabited having the lingering after-affects of smallpox.   

[OttoVonBismarck]

I think the key function of settlers in the North American context was to perform ethnic cleansing. The "wilderness" is a post-fact rationalization.

The author of 1492 made the claim that when western settlers arrived large portions of North America were uninhabited because of diseases.

I'm not familiar with the book but in some contexts this is true for North American colonization.

One of the most striking contexts is actually the English colonization of North America--particularly in New England.

Due to IMO poorly explaining this in many basic education courses on American history, there is a really low information narrative around the Plymouth colony, the Mayflower settlers etc that they were not just some of North America's earliest English colonists, but that they were essentially landing on virgin lands Europeans had no real contact with.

The reality is that European whalers, trading groups, and various exploration groups had been in regular contact with Native Americans all up and down the North American seaboard for several generations. In fact they even sometimes setup deliberately temporary outposts for trade and other economic activity. [For example, there were settlements on Newfoundland, that while not the first permanent, continuously inhabited settlements, did predate Plymouth, Jamestown and even Roanoke Colony in terms of English settlement of North America.] There were actually lots of itinerant camps and outposts used by Spanish, Portuguese, English etc traders / fishing crews etc that were heavily active throughout North America going back even to the late 15th century.

When the early English settlements that were intended to become permanent colonies started to be established in the very early 17th century, there had been significant contact with Europeans for many of these native groups for a long time. This had devastating biological consequences in the form of the transmission of deadly diseases. One of the early "lucky" successes for the Plymouth Colony was they actually found a significant native food store, that helped them immensely in their first winter. This native food store was not associated with any living natives, because the village that created it was massively depopulated from disease and abandoned not long before the Plymouth colonists landed--again, because European diseases had started spreading rapidly throughout the native population.

Large scale settlement of the "West", beyond just trading posts, here the West really means anything West of the Appalachias, absolutely benefitted from the fact that disease had moved Westward far faster than major European settlements did. Regions like the Northwest Territory, large swathes of the Mississippi River Valley, etc were ravaged by disease and had much lower native populations by the time large scale white settlement occurred than it would have had say, 150 years prior.

[viper37]

Lower population, yes.

DeSoto's expedition devastated the natives' settlements there in the south.

But in Massachussets, Champlain was greated by a hail of arrows and lances as he tried to land to prospect the terrain for a colony.

The British settlers founded the Plymouth colony in 1620.  By 1675, they were at war with the Wanpanoag of the same area.  I wouldn't say it was a land with no one.  There were frictions from the start. 

There were much less people then there should have been because of the disease, and the Iroquois 5 nation league, with less direct contact to the settlers, at first, benefited from this and attacked the other Indian nation.

As the US expanded, they kept entering into conflict with other nations and sign treaties to have them cede their lands.  The French faced similar problems once they started colonizing around the Great Lakes area.

In the Great Plains area, I know less about the population.  I know they were nomads, I know they faced epidemics and warfare from tribes moving west before the settlers came in, but I don't think it was as empty as Yi's book claims.

But like Josquius says, nomads have a different way of occupying land than agricultural settlers.  They have small encampments to follow the bison herds mostly.

[The Brain]

I think there can be a clear delineation.  Settlers go into wilderness to establish organized society, immigrants join the established society.

What do you define as wilderness?

What settlers go into winderness to establish an organized society?  My ancestors came to Canada to take up an offer to "settle" on land to set up family farms.  None of my ancestors cared one wit about creating  an organized society.

Are you a Kaczynski?

[Solmyr]

George Santos charged: https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/09/politics/george-santos-charged-justice-department/index.html

[Solmyr]

Now arrested.

[Hamilcar]

George Santos charged: https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/09/politics/george-santos-charged-justice-department/index.html

I can't believe they did this to the first black female senator!

[Sheilbh]

Hope this doesn't stop the investigation into his stealing puppies from the Amish

[The Minsky Moment]

Only Santos could commit a fraud that was itself fraudulent.  The man is like a mobius strip of mendacity.

[Syt]

https://www.businessinsider.com/florida-law-ends-automatic-due-payments-for-teachers-unions-2023-5

Florida teacher's union sues DeSantis over a new law that forces teachers to pay union dues through mail-in checks

Florida's largest teacher's union sued Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday over a bill he signed into law that will require teachers who want to be in unions to mail in checks every month.

The union accused DeSantis of punishing "disfavored unions" through the law given that the new, "draconian" restrictions applied to some labor groups but not those representing firefighter and police officers — groups that back the governor politically.

Under the new law, teacher union dues would no longer get automatically deducted from their paychecks, as they do in most unions across the US. The law was widely panned by Florida Democrats as "union busting" and Florida Education Association president Andrew Spar described it as "political retribution" during a press conference Wednesday.

The law imposes additional responsibilities on unions, including mandating new reporting to the state on the number of employees eligible for membership and how many ended up enrolling. Those with less than 60% membership would need to reapply for certification.

On average, roughly 60% of teachers in Florida are paying dues toward their unions, a Florida Senate analysis found.

The changes will make it harder for unions to exist and pile red tape onto teachers, Florida Senate Democratic Leader Lauren Book said in a statement.

"We can trust teachers to make their own personal choices in how they spend their hard-earned money, and attempting to silence the groups that advocate for better pay and better working conditions is unconstitutional and undemocratic," she said.

Politically, the bill's signing represented a win for DeSantis, who has battled teacher's unions since the COVID pandemic and first proposed the change to union dues in December 2022. 

Teachers' unions have been one of the governor's top foes, particularly starting in the fall of 2020 after they resisted his push to reopen schools during the pandemic over safety fears, and after DeSantis banned mask mandates in classrooms.

Even Charlie Crist, a former congressman and DeSantis' failed 2022 Democratic challenger, picked Miami-Dade's teachers' union boss, Karla Hernández-Mats, as his running mate. School unions tend to give to Democrats over Republicans in political races.

DeSantis accused unions of being "political organizations" that weren't "looking out for the interests" of parents and students.

"The school unions have become very partisan," DeSantis said Tuesday. "That's not what school is about."

DeSantis' crusade to reshape public education in Florida has led to conservative accolades and liberal backlash, helping the governor consistently rank in second place in polling for a hypothetical 2024 Republican presidential primary behind former President Donald Trump.

The governor hasn't said whether he'll run, but he's expected to announce a presidential bid sometime this month or next once he has finished authorizing Florida's budget and signing more bills into law.

During the November elections, DeSantis made reshaping school boards one of his top priorities. Among DeSantis' other most controversial education policies are bills he signed into law to limit the way race, gender, and sexuality are taught in public schools. He has defended the changes on the grounds that parents should have a say on what their children learn, though it has led to confusion in certain districts, including book removals.

The governor also expanded vouchers for families to use state money to pay for private or charter schools, while public school educators in Florida lament that they're deeply underfunded and understaffed.

The new Florida anti-union law creates another hurdle for organized labor in Florida, whose "Right to Work" status is enshrined in the state constitution. Under current law, Florida workers can opt out of joining a union, which in turn restricts unions from collecting dues from employees who benefit from negotiated worker protections, as well as pay increases and healthcare benefits.

During Tuesday's press conference, DeSantis stressed that he planned to approve more than $1 billion in teacher pay increases when he tackles the state budget. The amount is $252 million higher than the state's current level.

Florida comes in at 48th in the nation for average teacher salaries, according to the National Education Association.

"Gov. DeSantis talks about empowering teachers, but what we see is the opposite," Spar said in a statement Tuesday. "Florida's critical shortage of teachers and staff has only grown worse under this governor's policies, and we fully expect that trend to continue."

The group filed its lawsuit in federal court in the Northern District Court of Florida, under the First Amendment's free speech provisions, the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause, and the contracts clause of the US Constitution. The case was assigned to District Judge Mark Walker, an Obama appointee and the same judge Walt Disney World asked to weigh in regarding its lawsuit against DeSantis.

DeSantis framed the anti-union move as "paycheck protection" for teachers, saying it would "lead to more take-home pay."

On Tuesday, he signed other measures into law, including one that would give teachers the right to ban phones from their classrooms and another that created term limits for school board members.

This bit:

DeSantis accused unions of being "political organizations" that weren't "looking out for the interests" of parents and students.

"The school unions have become very partisan," DeSantis said Tuesday. "That's not what school is about.

Unlike police unions who obviously look out for the interests of citizens and have no partisan interests, I guess? 

[The Minsky Moment]

DeSantis accused unions of being "political organizations" that weren't "looking out for the interests" of parents and students.

"The school unions have become very partisan," DeSantis said Tuesday. "That's not what school is about.

Unlike police unions who obviously look out for the interests of citizens and have no partisan interests, I guess? 

You seem to be missing the point.
School is supposed to be about teaching Christianity, fake stories about American history, and sheltering kids from reality.  Teacher's unions are getting in the way of all that.  Also books.

Policing is supposed to be turning out votes for the governor and making sure the wrong sort don't wander into gated communities.  Police unions are doing just fine with that.

[viper37]

The GOP has lot its whistleblowers in Biden's case

Ah, apparently, they managed to lose 9 out of their 10 witnesses who saw acts of corruption by Biden and his family and the 10 is hiding somewhere.  Depending on whom you ask, they may or may not know where to find him.

Must be the Clintons again.