Who is this clown Gard is talking to over there, Ed Joyce – was that his name? I couldn’t make it out well in the noisy Starbucks. Well, someone should tell him that:

a.   In Canada virtually no pre-European peoples were conquered by force of arms. Virtually all land was divided up by treaty contracts. Like any contract lasting in excessive of a century there have been disagreement and challenges over the years about meaning and accusations of fraud and bad faith on both sides. But no resort to mass murder. The process, indeed, continues quite civilly to this day.

b.  Now, I could be wrong about this, and my Yank cousins are welcome to correct me if they’d like. But my understanding is that the majority of pre-European peoples subject to military conquest in the U.S. were those that sided with the Brits in the War of Independence. I’m sorry, but if you’re going to oppose a peoples’ struggle for freedom through force of arms, you’ll have to suffer the consequences of losing that war. That’s just my opinion. Of course that doesn't excuse everything the Western settlers did, but it puts much in a more appropriate context than the usual white-guilt trippers acknowledge

c.   By what standards exactly, in any case, do we say that a nomadic people “own” all the land over which they wander? One hardly has to be a hardcore Lockean to see a big difference between the essential parasite life of the nomad living off a wild herd and the husbandry life of those who own, protect, care for and cull a shepherded flock? And, incidentally, it’s only the latter situation that leads to the development of property rights – as Smith and Hume so elegantly describe. (I know that the deontological liberatarians will take umbrage with the last remark. So be it. The archaeological and anthropological evidence is what it is.)

d.  Also, someone should explain to Ed(?) that the simple historical fact is that rural life is impoverished life. It always has been and always will be. It’s no surprise that for thousands of years people have flocked and continue to flock into cities. There are vastly more options to trade and innovate, advancing the interests of one and one’s family. And speaking of family: we now see that Paul Ehrlich’s panicky “population bomb” prediction is not going to happen, precisely because of the continued mass migration into cities. Urban people just don't have as many children as rural people do. (Really, what hasn't Ehrlich been wrong about?) A society with a large rural labour force is a poorer society. One need not excuse the enclosure acts to dismiss this kind of communitarian romanticism.