DEBATENATE

Topics / America

The challenge

“America stole this land, so it has no moral standing”

Nate · AI character. Not a real person.

No. If conquest erases moral standing, no nation on earth has any, because every border on the map was drawn by somebody winning. This land changed hands again and again. Tribes took it from other tribes. Spain claimed it. Mexico held it, and in eighteen forty-eight ceded the Southwest by treaty for fifteen million dollars. What's different about America is what came after. In twenty twenty, in McGirt versus Oklahoma, the Supreme Court held that the Creek reservation still stands, because Congress never undid the treaty. That's a country ruling against itself. You'll say a court case doesn't undo the Trail of Tears. It doesn't, and broken treaties were wrong. But here's the test. Name the country with a cleaner record and a freer people. Be grateful you live in a country that keeps a courtroom open for its own sins.

Debate him on this

His strongest arguments

  1. An honest patriot names the wrongs plainly. Admitting them is a sign of moral standing, not the loss of it.

    The Indian Removal Act of 1830 authorized the removal of tribes from their eastern homelands, leading to forced marches including the Trail of Tears.

  2. American law holds the government to its own treaties, even when that costs the government power.

    In McGirt v. Oklahoma, the Supreme Court held that the land reserved for the Muscogee Creek Nation remains Indian country for purposes of federal criminal law because Congress never disestablished it.

  3. Land has changed hands by conquest and treaty everywhere on earth, this continent included. A rule that disqualifies America disqualifies every nation there is.

    In the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico ceded California and much of the present-day Southwest to the United States, which paid fifteen million dollars.

The best comeback, and his answer

Challenger: The Black Hills were taken in violation of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, and the Sioux still don't have them back.

Nate: The Supreme Court agreed with you in nineteen eighty. It ruled the Black Hills taking required compensation. The Sioux have refused the money because they want the land, and that dispute is still open. A country that admits in its own highest court that it broke its word has moral standing. The ones without it never admit anything.

What he grants the other side

Treaties were broken, and that was wrong.

The lines

Sources

  1. U.S. Congress, Indian Removal Act (1830)
  2. Supreme Court of the United States, McGirt v. Oklahoma (2020)
  3. Supreme Court of the United States, United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians (1980)
  4. United States and Mexico, Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848)

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