Conrad Black: Canada is afflicted by a pandemic of defective moralizing on native issues – National Post
Conrad Black: Canada is afflicted by a pandemic of defective moralizing on native issues
June 13, 2015
Stephen Maher wrote here Thursday that (apart from those that were already extinct), “aboriginal people across Canada have attacked (me) for writing that ‘even the First Nations should be grateful that the Europeans came here’” and “for rejecting the idea that they were the victims of attempted cultural genocide.” Maher disputed my point that the “Europeans have made vastly more of this continent than the original inhabitants could have done.” He accused me of exaggerating the “gulf” he admits existed between the European and aboriginal civilizations and dilated on the accomplishments of the Aztecs, Incas, and Mayans (which are not at issue and are not relevant here).
Nothing remotely close to the 50 million native people he claims could have perished in North America from European-carried diseases, as that is about 10 times the native population at the time the Europeans arrived. There was a tragic and unknown vulnerability to these diseases, but there was never a policy to infect natives with diseases, other than possibly in the one incident in 1763 that Maher mentions, that which was the act of British authorities in what soon became American territory (and was unsuccessful if it was really attempted — all that is known is that it was discussed).
