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Jewish World Review / Oct. 26, 1998 / 6 Mar-Cheshvan, 5759
Don Feder
Plymouth caves to Pilgrim foes
PLYMOUTH, MASS., styles itself as America's hometown. After its shameful surrender to
a militant gang last week, it should change its name to the multicultural mecca or PC
Wonderland.
In the streets of Plymouth on Thanksgiving Day, 1997, a group of 200 or so
professional Indians and their radical allies staged a protest of Pilgrim imperialism.
They've been holding these sulk fests every year since 1970. Once, they attacked the
Plymouth Rock monument. On another occasion, they disrupted a church service.
Last year, they planned and provoked a confrontation with police.
In consequence, 23 demonstrators were arrested. Protesters sued the police for using
excessive force.
The Plymouth board of selectmen reached a settlement with the Indians last week. The
town dropped all charges, and the Indians ended their suit.
Plymouth also agreed to pay the protesters' legal fees ($20,000), set up a $100,000
educational fund to teach a revisionist history of the settlement of America (including
showings of "Dances With Wolves," perhaps?), and spend $15,000 on two plaques.
The memorials, which will be erected on public property at taxpayers' expense, speak
of the "genocide of millions" of Indians, "the theft of their land and the relentless assault
on their culture," as well as the ongoing "racism and oppression" of Native Americans.
Police spokesman Paul Boyle called the deal "a payoff to criminals and terrorists."
Linda Teagan, the lone dissenting voice on the board of selectmen, said the agreement
"violated whatever I believe in as far as justice and honor and logic is concerned."
Hereafter, the Indians will be allowed to march on Thanksgiving without a permit, giving
them a right no other group (Irish Americans, Italian Americans) enjoys in the town.
Emboldened by their success, Mahtowin Munro of the United American Indians of New
England promised a larger, and presumably more obnoxious, gathering this year.
The protesters -- who are self-appointed spokesmen for the roughly half-million
descendants of indigenous people -- are malcontents whose only agenda is
resentment.
The implication of their annual "National Day of Mourning" is that America should never
have happened.
Would the world really be a better place if nomadic hunters and herders with a Stone
Age culture (that hadn't managed to invent the wheel or a written language) had
remained the sole proprietors of this continent?
Would present-day Native Americans be better off with an average life span of 35
years (most of it spent grubbing for food), periodically starving in a fertile land, fighting
bloody wars with primitive weapons, exterminating or enslaving other indigenous
people, and (in the case of the Iroquois and certain Plains tribes) practicing human
sacrifice?
They lost this glory and gained citizenship in the greatest nation on Earth. Not a bad
bargain.
As we approach the beginning of the third millennium, would humanity be happier
without the American experiment in representative government and human rights (the
Constitution is a direct descendant of the Mayflower Compact), without America's
steadfast defense of freedom in this century and without the industrial engine of
prosperity created on these shores?
Memo to Mahtowin Munro: Your ancestors were defeated. Get over it.
Yours is but one chapter in a sad saga of more powerful groups dispossessing the less
powerful. My own people were enslaved by Egyptians, overrun by Babylonians,
subjugated by Syrian Greeks, conquered by Romans, evicted by the Spanish and
oppressed by most of Europe for much of a millennium. It's called history.
Regrettably, the Plymouth protesters aren't alone. Afrocentrists (still whining about an
institution that ended 133 years ago), Hispanic activists (who insist the Southwest is
stolen property) and other perpetually aggrieved minorities are also coming, hatchets in
hand, to demolish the greatest experiment in genuine diversity the world has ever
known.
By their gutless cave-in, the Plymouth selectmen have sanctioned this assault on our
heritage and threat to our future. Shame on them. It's a pity Plymouth Rock can't be
moved to Omaha or some other place that understands and honors its symbolic
significance.
Days before the event, an organizer warned that there would be a few "surprises."
After a speaker urged demonstrators to "take back the streets" (the rhetoric was
vintage '60s), they paraded without a permit, blocked traffic and refused police orders
to disperse.
What would they say today?
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