One of the most classic signs of tyranny is when the people dare not publicly criticize their own government. But even the regimes that most violently crushed all dissent and criticism pretended to support freedom of speech.... - [More]

Posted: May 1, 2013 in Documentary, Recommended

LearnLiberty | People at the time knew that it was wrong, that it was illegal, and that it was unconstitutional, but they did it anyway. Historian Amy Sturgis explains why the forced removal of the Cherokee Nation to “Indian Territory” (modern-day Oklahoma) was wrong on both moral and legal grounds. How can the Trail of Tears provide lessons to us today? We can’t look aside and ignore the Trail of Tears as an example of something that was just part of the mid-19th century mindset. It is a story about how a group that had power gained at the expense of a minority unable to defend itself. The Trail of Tears set precedents we can only hope to avoid repeating.... - [More]

Posted: April 2, 2012 in Videos

AngryHateMusic | In 1838 the U.S. Army forced approximately fifteen thousand Cherokees to relinquish their native land in Georgia and march more than 800 miles west to Indian Territory, where they were to be resettled. It is estimated that more than four thousand people, or 25 percent, perished on the journey. Another thousand are said to have died soon after resettlement. The path the Cherokees’ were led down is known as the Trail of Tears.... - [More]

Posted: May 28, 2011 in Articles

The United States is one big reservation, and we are all in it. So says Russell Means, legendary actor, political activist and leader for the American Indian Movement. Means led the 1972 seizure of the Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters in Washington, D.C., and in 1973 led a standoff at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, a response to the massacre of at least 150 Lakotah men, women, and children by the U.S. Seventh Cavalry at a camp near Wounded Knee Creek.... - [More]

Posted: January 26, 2011 in Documentary

Independent.org | The civil society of the American West in the nineteenth century was not very violent. Eugene Hollon writes that the western frontier “was a far more civilized, more peaceful and safer place than American society today” (1974, x). Terry Anderson and P. J. Hill affirm that although “[t]he West . . . is perceived as a place of great chaos, with little respect for property or life,” their research “indicates that this was not the case; property rights were protected and civil order prevailed. Private agencies provided the necessary basis for an orderly society in which property was protected and conflicts were resolved” (1979, 10).... - [More]

Posted: October 5, 2010 in Articles