Nicholas wrote: ↑2019-08-20 12:28pm
loomer wrote: ↑2019-08-17 12:07am
There is an interesting conflict in here between the idea that the standard model of statehood is a bad fit for indigenous governments with the idea that there is a "proper" way in which a states territory can be seized. You have commented repeatedly that conquest is different from colonization and conquest (such has been documented many times for most every inch of Europe) does not require correction the way colonization does. If the indigenous governments were not "proper" states doesn't that undermine your claims?
I agree that the nations continue to exist and had their territories unjustly seized.
It in no way undermines the claim that the seizure of territory was illegitimate, no. I'm not sure why you feel it would. Perhaps you can explain?
It doesn't undermine the claim the states territory was seized illegitimately. The claim I think it undermines is the claim that conquest in some sense a legitimate way of seizing a state's territory and therefor justice does not require that conquest be reversed in the same way it requires that colonialism be reversed. You have used the distinction between conquest and colonialism repeatedly as an answer to the argument that the applicability of your proposal to Europe, where every piece of land has been stolen many times and we have no idea who the legal owner (as you define that) is today, proves your position to be wrong.
Now, I don't actually maintain that conquest is a legitimate method of seizing a state's territory - rather, that's a discussion for a different day. Settler-colonial land seizures operated under a distinctive modality of
legal (and moral, but especially legal) justification from ordinary conquest annexure of territory. This is the basis of the distinction between them that I use to suggest that settler-colonial decolonization is broadly inapplicable to the European context (but not entirely - the settler-colonial project didn't spring from nowhere and its precursors in Ireland, Wales, Cornwall and Scotland occupy a middle ground between plain jane conquest and domestic colonization efforts that make them somewhat more ambiguous. It also contributes to part of the difficulty in understanding Australia's history for the White Blindfolders - they don't really want to understand that the initial invasion and settlement was by and large a domestic subaltern being set to murder a foreign subaltern (most of the First Fleet's convicts and soldiers alike were drawn from these four groups and from people originally from Yorkshire - all of whom constituted domestic subaltern groups to London at the time) because it requires them to reevaluate the 'Britishness' of their ancestors) rather than a strict conquest = fine, colonialism = bad dichotomy. So no, I don't especially think the idea that Indigenous nations had a somewhat tricky relationship to Westphalian statehood in some way produces an inescapable conflict between the idea that settler-colonial land seizures ought to be undone and the idea that annexures carried out under colour of war are another discussion.
It is easy to demand that the subaltern focus on forgiveness and charity - and that's what your position boils down to, because the settlers have nothing to forgive nor any right to give charity. It is also a bullshit position, as is your position that 'justice is logically impossible'. This presupposes the following:
1. Justice either is or is not, rather than a spectrum of possible states of justness;
2. Where justice cannot be obtained in full, it is impossible to achieve;
3. Where something is impossible it should not be pursued.
I dispute all of these notions. Justice, by its nature, is never an on/off 1/0 two-position model. It is always capable of containing a multitude of states of mixed greater or lesser justice and injustice. Nor is it necessary to attain absolute, complete justice (which is in fact never possible - justice is an ideal, not a concrete reality) in order to attain a state with a sufficiently overwhelming justice:injustice mixture as to constitute a just outcome, which we might call - accurately - justice. Finally, even if it is impossible, the pursuit of justice leads to a happier, stabler, fairer society - and thus, chasing the impossible dream is not only valid, but imperative if we wish to have such a society.
You have made the claim that justice is logically impossible in enough circumstances as to render it essentially moribund. This is a bold claim, to say the least - one that would require the fundamental redesign of pretty much every society on earth. So, Prove It. I'll even accept a proof that justice is normatively invalid, since normativity works somewhat differently to ordinary logic. I understand you're not a jurist or philosopher so I won't hold that proof to the highest standards but bold claims require evidence. I'm especially curious to see how you disprove justice while also defending forgiveness and charity - what justification can there be for either other than pure ego, social control, or justice?
I said that justice was impossible. I did not say, nor did I mean that moving closer to justice is not desirable so your three is false. As regards your second point that appears to me to be self evidently true. Something that cannot be obtained in full is impossible to achieve because because anything less then obtaining it in full is not obtaining it. I don't have a clue why you would dispute this.
As regards your point one this is a linguistic question. We are using two words justice and injustice (literally not-justice). While there are of course varying degrees of justice our language forces us into a binary discussion (at least unless you want to invent a bunch of new words for various states of mixed justice and injustice). Now justice is a concept injustice is simply the absence of that concept. So when justice is only partially present the correct description of the state is injustice because injustice covers a wide territory while justice has a definition. It is the same as if we had only two words to describe color white and notwhite. You can make lots of comparisons between different colors and say that one is more or less white then another but if I point at a color and ask what color is that then the answer is either white or notwhite. Unless the color is white the true answer remains notwhite regardless of whether the color I am pointing at is black, neon green or eggshell. The true answer is that the color is notwhite.
My three is not false - you have asserted that we ought not pursue justice, but rather pursue charity and forgiveness, because justice is logically impossible. Now, in logic many things that are self-evidently true must still be asserted if they are a necessary precondition of a logical conclusion - for instance, in order to create the infamous 'I think, therefore, I am' formulation, we must assert the self-evident proposition that 'I think' (itself asserting a proposition, incidentally, that there is an
I that does a
thing called thinking as necessary preconditions of 'I think') in order to give grounds to the conclusion of 'therefore, I am'. However, I dispute that it is in fact self evident that justice is impossible to achieve - I give these three positions only in respect to what seems to be your logic for 'justice, being logically impossible, should not be pursued; rather we should pursue charity and forigveness'.
I instead maintain the following position: Justice can never be achieved
in its full, perfect, unalloyed form because ideal forms do not in fact exist; however, justice, being a spectrum of states of relative justness and unjustness, may still be said to be done or achieved where a state arises in which there is
more justice than less. In this regard, justice is less akin to a 'black or white!' descriptor than a 'hot or cold' one - it exists only by reference to its opposite, but may nonetheless be measured in gradations and we may accurately state that we have achieved 'hotness' and 'coldness' by reference to the opposite and an arbitrary point of neutrality.
In this regards, I strongly disagree that our language forces us into a binary discussion - such a
false imposition (indeed, our language necessarily requires us to take a broader view of justice - we use it in this manner, to refer to outcomes that mix justice and injustice but give greater weight to justice, on a very regular basis. Justice, then, cannot be
innately on-off 1/0 linguistically, philosophically, or practically) in fact goes against the greater spectrum of meaning that our language enables us once we look past the metaphysics of presence and accept the inherent instability, contextuality, and variability of meaning. I don't recommend Derrida's famous lecture on justice to someone without a solid philosophical background (whether formal or informal - the existentialcomics guy'd probably be able to take a damn good crack at it), but suffice to say - justice cannot, in fact, be understood in the strict binary of meaning you propose, and therein lies much of the philosophical tension that has historically plagued the idea.
Now, I'm going to ask you again to give me your definition of justice. You have danced around this, suggesting that you are using mine, but this clearly is not the case now - my conception of justice differs so fundamentally from yours in its composition that to better understand each other, it will be extremely helpful if you give me yours. At the moment I can conclude only that you consider it to be an absolute state that excludes all possible injustice, and little more.
You asked me to prove justice is impossible often enough in the world that the closest we can come to it is to say that the past is past and to work on building new relationships starting from the present which will be closer to just.
Before I proceed into the ideas - no. You have asserted something much bolder than this, which is that justice is
logically impossible. To prove so, you must disprove it using logic - not merely examples where it may be difficult to find the correct balance of justice-injustice. The distinction between them is that the latter do not prove its impossibility but rather, as a precondition of the discussion itself, suggest its possibility even as an impossibility. Similarly, you defeat yourself in your final line - if we 'work on building new relationships [to be] closer to just', then this admits the possibility of justice - indeed,
mandates it. If justice is impossible and we ought instead to focus on charity and forgiveness, we must be doing so with a goal other than justice.
1)Property specifically land, we have discussed this a lot in this thread. I actually agree that in strict justice taking something by violence cannot confer ownership. The problem is that property has been changing hands by violence for as long as human beings have existed. Everything has been stolen again and again and again. In strict justice the owner is the descendant of the first person who settled the property. But only God knows who this is so true justice here is impossible.
This in no way disproves the possibility of justice. It suggests there are situations which the evidence is insufficient for a determination of justice, or on which the conflicting claims to justice may be too difficult to effectively balance - but both of these outcomes rely on the existence of a concept of justice.
2) Human rights, slavery is an evil and an injustice. Strict justice would require that slaves (or their descendants since property claims can be inherited) be compensated by those who wronged them for the wrong done to them. But the wrong is so great that no compensation can right it so justice can not be done. This is not an argument that efforts should not be made to correct the disadvantages people living today suffer from because of the enslavement of their ancestors. This is an argument that doing that is not justice, it only moves us closer to it.
Difficulty in paying compensation does not render justice impossible. Again, the idea that we
ought to pay compensation on the grounds that it 'moves us closer to justice' necessarily relies on the possibility of justice to function. It is in fact an argument
for the existence of a thing known as justice, not against it; and if our motive in paying compensation is justice, then this payment is in fact an expression of justice, even if an inadequate.
One might just as well suggest that murder proves justice impossible, but this too would be false.
3) History, true justice involves right relationship and relationships spread through time, so a truly just relationship must be just over its entire length. Two reciprocal injustices (as Straha suggested with the idea of weighting African American votes as 20) do not make justice, often they actually move us further from it.
This is a rather baffling take that requires a truly extraordinary formulation of justice, so I again call upon you to define - even in a loose way, like mine - the idea of justice. However, it too does not disprove the idea of justice or establish it as logically impossible - rather, it merely suggests an unjust relationship will always be unjust, but leaves open the possibility of a just relationship. This, then, leaves open the possibility of justice!
I could also point to ecology, the fact that true justice is just both to individuals and to communities but that is enough.
I don't think it is enough. If you wish to assert the bold position that justice is logically impossible, use every tool you have to prove it - I invite you to! The issue of collective vs individual justice and the idea of justice as owed to the natural world are areas of tremendous fascination to me, working as I do in legal theory around collective and individual rights and reform of law to better enable the recognition of the ties of Country (and its distant whitefella cousins) and ecology as being subject to the norms of justice and law in and of themselves.
I would sum up my position by saying that justice is an ideal that we cannot reach but which we want to get closer to. In the world in which we actually live full of grievous and historical injustice which cannot be made right the choice we actually have is either to pursue an eye for an eye which makes the whole world blind and is generally a greater injustice then just letting things be or try and move forward building a new relationship based on forgiveness and charity. The latter moves us closer to justice and therefor should be pursued.
Now, this is where things break down again. If justice is an ideal that we cannot reach but which we want to get closer to, we do not in fact want to set it aside to pursue charity and forgiveness independently of justice. Nor, I note, does justice require 'an eye for an eye' - my definition of justice in fact declaims such thinking by requiring a consideration of the effects of creating a delict to avenge a delict; a situation in which the whole world is blind is not justice accordingly.
Your final conclusion, bluntly, does not work. Again, you declaim the goal of justice and say to pursue forgiveness and charity. But if we are to pursue these things because they move us closer to justice, then we do not pursue them on their own merits, but
as elements of justice. Your position - 'we should not seek justice, but forgiveness, because that moves us towards justice' - is broken, as it still calls on justice as the ultimate good that these lesser goods serve!
This is not a radical change - it is a change of focus from the specific to the general, to explain why the specific is just. The practical policies I advocate remain the same - the restoration of land and sovereignty to Indigenous peoples, with safeguards where appropriate for settler peoples. These are the specific norms of justice I propose versus the general norm of justice I laid out to explain why the requirement of safeguards and limitations is not, in fact, unjust. The radical change you perceive is no such thing.
We have been going around and around with this and not getting anywhere. So instead of trying to argue this further I will just observe that I do not understand how to reconcile the safeguards (especially democracy) which you are advocating with the "restoration of land and sovereignty to Indigenous peoples." In the world in which we actually live those appear to me to be mutually contradictory.
The restoration of land and sovereignty can occur without the creation of an injustice - this is the purpose of the safeguards that ought to be put in place. This restoration is a restoration in justice, and as such cannot exist unfettered to the extent that it permits further injustice except where such injustice is necessary to create justice. This is why the two are not mutually contradictory: Justice is the ultimate goal - justice for the Indigenous peoples, for settlers, for the land itself. Massacres are always unjust; therefore, protections must be established (personally, I rather doubt they'd follow even without those protections, but it soothes the settler mind and also creates a firm line in the sand, a proud declaration that
this time, and from now on, things will be done right); ethnic cleansing is always unjust, therefore, protections must be established, and so forth - the very same justice that states that the dispossession of land on unjust terms must be protected against and resolved when protections fail dictates these protections exist.
Fortunately, I do not intend to suggest that common practice proves something is just. I wondered, however, whether you simply had an anglo-centric bias that precluded this awareness, since it is a necessary consequence of your position that jus soli citizenship is a fundamental right that every state that does not permit jus soli citizenship is in breach of the rights of millions of people.
Your second point, I'm afraid, is nonsense - your argument at 1) necessarily presupposes that jus soli is in fact the sole valid form of citizenship law. If every person has a right to live in the state in which they were born, then jus soli is an innate right of every person that cannot be derogated, eroded, or rescinded without it constituting a breach of a right. So you may not have intended to argue this, but you have - and so the flailing about 'all other ways' is pretty well irrelevant.
Now, let's use an example here of a nation that gave its citizens right to a territory it did not control. The Polish Government in Exile during WW2 extended Polish citizenship to the children of its people born in London, Paris, etc, despite having no effective territorial claim over Poland at that time. Would you deny that this jus sanguinis citizenship was valid?
In light our comment about what I have implied about jus soli citizenship let me try and expand my position and hopefully clarify it into something that we can agree on. My premises about citizenship in general are roughly as follows:
I think those five points cover the basic roots for my position regarding citizenship. The default is jus soli because jus soli is most commonly a just outcome and with jus soli someone slipping through the cracks and ending up with no right to live anywhere is almost impossible. When reality doesn't match jus soli changing one's citizenship should be possible.
Jus soli may most commonly be a just outcome, but where that citizenship conveys irrevocable rights to land that was illegitimately and unjustly obtained
at the expense of those it was obtained from, this is not in fact a just outcome.
As regards your example of Poland's government in exile in London. At the time you are talking about Poland had three governments; in London (backed by the UK), Moscow (backed by the USSR) and Warsaw (backed by Germany). On what grounds would you say that the government in London had the right to grant citizenship if the government in Moscow or Warsaw denied it?
On the same grounds any other government has a right to grant citizenship, of course. On what grounds would you say that it has no right?
Let me ask what about other governments. If Louis XX, the King of France, were to form a government and start handing out French citizenship to anyone who paid him, would those be valid? Can the government of China in exile (in Taipei) give valid Chinese citizenship to people?
If Louis XX can create a functioning state, he is able to grant citizenship in that state, yes - on what basis would you suggest he cannot? Note that I do not say French citizenship - I say the state he creates. If he creates such a state, we would be forced to consider it as distinct from the Republic of France. This is in fact the situation with the government of the Republic of China - it grants citizenship quite regularly, and this citizenship is valid within the state of the RoC - indeed, I believe it has granted a fairly indisputably valid Chinese citizenship to some 20 million people! The validity only comes into question as it concerns the PRC, but within its own state, RoC citizenship is indeed valid Chinese citizenship!
In sum your theory about governments in exile has too many practical problems to be actually workable. If you want to claim it is just, I will concede that and add it to my list of examples of why justice is impossible.
It is not 'my theory' - it is historical fact and practical reality. Governments in exile can and do issue citizenship, both by birthright and as part of the ordinary process of granting citizenship.
Land ownership in the absence of a state's law to regulate it is controlled by the law of the jungle or might makes right. I find the hypothetical you are suggesting absurd in the absence of a government and therefor cannot discuss it because the situation you describe is impossible.
I think you can discuss it. I think you don't want to, because it's leading you to some uncomfortable conclusions. You also make an erroneous statement here - that land ownership in the absence of a state law is 'the law of the jungle'. Said ownership may be, and routinely is, governed under local customary law rather than state-based law. However, it is central to the point being made that the seizure is unlawful but no legal remedy exists, so fair enough.
I could discuss it but I refuse to do so because in abstracting from reality to make your example you have removed everything about reality from which I would support my position and it would be incredibly stupid for me to argue based on an example from which you have removed the foundation on which my argument is built.
And yet the example I give is essentially the nature of settler-colonialism: Theft, recognizable as such under the ordinary precepts of the law, for which no legal remedy is available to the person who has been robbed. It is coloured by a variety of pretenses - e.g. the Terra Nullius doctrine - but these pretenses have been universally found to be invalid and thus, not law. This, then, renders it nothing more than theft - a theft for which no legal remedy is available.
Humans don't live in the absence of government so trying to explain this in the absence of either a formal law or an informal custom regulating property rights is absurd. Your example is an impossibility.
My example is deliberately absurd, but is intended to prove a point. In this instance, there will still be law and custom regulating property rights. You, however, are the one making the claim that this - that any pregnant guest, lodger, etc's children ought to obtain a right to the land they are born on despite the rights of those already present - ought to be. Defend it, or concede it. I will accept an argument on a state level here, if you prefer, but either way - defend the position or concede it. You feel jus soli ought to trump all other factors - prove it should.
I think I have dealt adequately with jus soli above. Since we are into the absurd, and since non-citizen hereditary residency has historically almost always ended in injustice. Explain what just outcome you see for those who are denied jus soli citizenship and don't acquire citizenship elsewhere by blood? Do you suggest these babies just be thrown in the nearest ocean?
Far from it. What I suggest is that they have a right to residency on the land that was stolen - you are the one who believes otherwise! Rather than casting them into the sea, what I suggest is that their citizenship rights attached to Land A
cannot be broken by the illegitimate seizure; thus, they remain citizens of a state, or in the personal example, inheritors of the property and its attached rights.
The analogies you use are properly resolved in accordance with the laws of the state in which the incidents you describe occur. All else being equal it seems reasonable to assume that those laws reflect the citizens of that state's view of justice.
I think squatters rights is an important idea in this context that hasn't come up yet. If you stay on a property for a certain period without the owner attempting to evict you, you acquire ownership of the property. In modern states it is usually a bit more complicated but also only takes a few years.
Certainly, but squatters rights are usually rendered invalid if the property was not abandoned but was inhabited and seized by force. In fact, it is usually considered absolute grounds to render squatter's rights invalid if there has been any substantial act of violence towards people with a legitimate right to the property. This is the case both in our hypothetical and in the settler-colonial states - neither was empty at the time of occupation. On what basis do you feel it is acceptable to convey squatter's rights following the murder or forced displacement of the original inhabitants by those who would claim said rights?
It is acceptable to convey squatter's rights following the murder or forced displacement of the original inhabitants whenever the original inhabitants or their heirs can not be found or when sufficient time has passed that the people now on the land can not be reasonably held responsible for the murder or forced displacement of the original inhabitants (usually one generation).
This is a tremendously fucked up view to hold and one not borne out in law. If I kill the inhabitants of a building, squatters rights are prohibited to me - the inhabitation that invokes squatters rights must be
peacable. No peace = no squatters rights. This is the principle by which squatters rights can be attained - the peacable occupation of land that was otherwise going unused. If it was in use and you murdered the inhabitants,
it was neither unoccupied nor peacable.
Further, you again rely on the idea that the right of the people who lived there is extinguished generationally. This is false in the case of inheritance where no valid squatters rights or abandonment of the property has taken place - the right to ownership attaches to the original owners children. This is the closest situation we have to settler-colonial states today - people were violently forced from their property, which was not empty, and there is an
ongoing crime in their continued dispossession by the murderers and their descendants. Their descendants are, in fact, in breach of law by continuing to possess the property unlawfully.
You have acknowledged that it would be an injustice to expel the settlers from Australia and North America. If their right to live on the land isn't based on squatter's rights what is it based on?
The injustice is not because of a right to stolen land. The injustice derives from the fact that to kill or render a person stateless without very good cause is unjust - this, ironically, does require a tempering of an otherwise unmitigated right to dispossess the squattocracy. People with nowhere left to go are entitled to humane treatment, and this is the case for Australian and American citizens - there is, on the whole, nowhere else we belong to. We cannot then be expelled without creating an injustice nearly as great as the originating invasions and theft - the spectre of mass statelessness that people keep returning to.
This is also why I have not found a single serious decolonization proposal that suggests such a thing. Bluntly, the situation is accepted as this: We descendants of settlers are here to stay, so unless a genocide is to happen, we cannot be gotten rid of but must be lived with, preferably on good terms rather than bad. The right to reside in and on the land must be considered distinct from the property rights acquired illegitimately, and originates not in squatters rights or any other kind of property law, but out of the basic human right to exist. This right cannot be considered superior to the original property rights of the Indigenous nations and states that were displaced, and thus, the specific land is to be returned but the right to reside peacably upon the general land of the nation retained.
In the absence of the ability to have recourse to a court and the use of the state's monopoly on violence to end person B's illegal and unjust occupation of person A's land the state is failed and the just outcome will (in accordance with the definition of justice you provided above) be that outcome which best serves the social happiness of the community while righting as many wrongs as possible. This will be settled by negotiation among all members of the community when a state is able to assert its monopoly on violence and so end the anarchy in which person B is able to take and hold person A's land by force.
The state need not be failed - if indeed one single incident of a failure of the courts to be available and of private citizen violence can create a failed state then we in fact live in nothing
but failed states! Our inhabitants occupy a functional state - perhaps one in need of law reform, but functional. This point of yours amounts to little more than 'this is impossible and I will not argue it' and is thus entirely unsatisfactory.
The State insists Person A's land claim is legitimate. On what basis can person B's illegitimate land claim extinguish this right and the right of inheritance?
The basis is time. Possession is nine tenths of the law and there is a point at which the economic benefits of stable property rights and the history of caring for, paying taxes on and living in a property should in justice overcome a just and legal but long defunct claim. Exactly how long this takes is a question that will vary widely depending on local circumstances and which should be defined by the local state's law.
Possession may be nine tenths of the law, but as any lawyer will tell you, it's the other tenth that matters. Now, you wish to assert time as a sufficient basis, and that is your right, but if you wish to assert it you must also be willing to assert that an act of violent dispossession breaks all other property rights. Otherwise, the ordinary laws of ownership remain involved and property may thus be passed down essentially indefinitely - so time alone is insufficient, because time cannot, in the absence of a severing of extant property rights, legitimate theft.
Further, why on earth should a history of 'caring for, paying taxes on, and living in a property' acquired
illegally through force outweigh the original right to that property where the people dispossessed of that land were perfectly capable of caring for, paying taxes on, and living in that property?
I find your recourse to personal relationships and personal property here interesting because many pages ago on this thread it was argued against your position that the number times the land in Europe had been stolen proved that simply returning stolen land to its rightful owners was a completely impractical proposition. You responded that conquest and colonization were different things and only colonization (which generally did not occur within Europe) required the radical remedies you recommend. How do you square that with the idea that all state level theft is the same as the theft of personal property. The theft of personal property happens the same in both colonization and conquest?
It's not a recourse, but rather an illustrative example. I'm perfectly happy to argue it on the state level as well, but as you have a very warped notion of what constitutes a state that may not work too well. Now, conquest and settler-colonialism are in fact different things - do you disagree? I also don't recall saying that conquest does not require remedy - I seem to recall, in fact, saying rather that we are only concerned at the present with settler-colonialism, which is a rather significant distinction.
I square it quite easily. Motive, method, and underlying claim to legitimacy or lack thereof are the factors that create the distinction between conquest and settler-colonialism. Settler-colonialism is built on the idea that the land was not in active use, that its inhabitants did not have a rightful claim to it, and that accordingly, it was not theft. This idea is fundamentally incorrect, and it is thus theft without any other justificatory factor - and, unlike in cases of conquest, settler-colonialism
fundamentally relies on the model of state dispossession mirroring private to a far greater extent that conquest (indeed, in conquest, very often the individual is not stolen from directly but rather one power structure steals another power structure's rights - the ordinary person quite often experiences relatively little direct theft of property and instead suddenly finds herself subject to a German or a Saxon or a Frenchman, but otherwise in circumstances much the same as the day before!)
This seems repetitive and I am running out of time so just two questions.
1) If conquest requires correction how do you determine who is the just owner of any part of Europe? Something like 3000 years of written history records a lot of conquest and the heirs in the first cases are impossible to identify.
2) Are the property rights of a society's elites inferior to that of others? Do you hold that the property rights lost by kings when their kingdom was conquered or inherently inferior to the property rights of peasants?
The last bit of this post seemed repetitive to me and I am running out of time so I snipped it. If I cut anything you think isn't dealt with above please let me know.
Nicholas
The conquest discussion is one for another thread, I'm afraid, and I won't be engaging with it further. I will however explain why: Pointing to 3000 years of written history of theft to justify another theft functions only to evade an
ongoing, actual crime by reference to historic crimes. In the settler-colonial states, people's rights are being infringed on
now - it is not mere history, it is an active, ongoing delict that the common law and morality demand be addressed. We might well have that conversation around conquest another day, but it can have no more relevance on whether we ought to address the crime before us than arguing that sixty years ago your grandfather got away with murder to suggest you should be allowed to kill people now. It is a morally defunct position that does nothing more than try to justify an abuse by another, older abuse. It is a kind of colonial whataboutism - a suggestion that because other peoples have done bad things,
we oughn't be better, and cannot be held to account for what we are
actively doing.
For all these reasons, I will not further discuss the issue of historical conquests validity in the context of decolonization. The exemption is modern cases of annexation - we are not concerned with historical debate here, we are concerned with an active, ongoing genocide and associated delicts.
"Doctors keep their scalpels and other instruments handy, for emergencies. Keep your philosophy ready too—ready to understand heaven and earth. In everything you do, even the smallest thing, remember the chain that links them. Nothing earthly succeeds by ignoring heaven, nothing heavenly by ignoring the earth." M.A.A.A
