> > >How do Americans deal with the fact that their country and way of life is a result of driving out the ones who originally lived there?
> >
> > I look at it like this: You're not responsible for what your ancestors did. It's not your fault that your grandmother did something crazy. It would be stupid for someone to feel guilty because his grandfather killed someone. It's silly for white people to feel guilty because their ancestors kept other races as slaves. I'm not saying what the settlers of America did was OK, I'm saying that the reality is that they did it, and we have to make the best of it. America was not the land of the free in the beginning. It's improved dramatically, but we still have a long way to go.
> > Something like that.
> > -Bo
>
> However, should the government be held responsible? Afterall, the government is unbroken since the time of slavery and injustice*, so is the governement at fault, or when those people ask for recompense, can the government look back and say: "It was a younger, irresponsible government. It is not our fault"?
> samhael

While I agree that no one is directly responsible for the actions of their ancestors, I don't think that this takes all responsibility for the consequences of our respective countries' histories away from us.
Just because someone can isn't directly responsible for the prepretration of an injustice or crime doesn't mean that they shouldn't be involved in the solution. Maybe this is overly idealistic. But I'm not saying that every man should go out of their way to right every wrong on the face of the planet, just that, where they can make a difference to improve things, they should do so, and not hide behind the argument that it wasn't their fault. (That sounds really confrontational, and it's not meant to be at all. I have no idea how much anyone here goes out of their way to fix other people's problems, but I suspect that most of you do a great deal more than I do. All I'm trying to say is that, to me, that is the implied result of the 'it's was my ancestors fault, I'm not responsible' argument.) I guess what I'm getting at, is that maybe sometimes it shouldn't be about assigning blame, just solving the problem, and how much any country has done that is a seperate issue. I would rather see the argument be 'it's my ancestors fault, I'm not to blame, but as a citizen of Country X, I will take responsibility for helping to improve my country and fix what injustices I can'. No matter who was initially responsible for the act, as a citizen of your country now, enjoying all it has to offer, you do have a responsibility to make what you can better, not to just take what your country has to give.
The question that grows out of this for me thought, is what happens when your aren't enjoying citizenship in your country, when you are the "victim", the political prisoner, the losers in the war, the Native American on a reserve who doesn't feel that they have many options open to them.
In terms of governments, I believe that they carry responsibility even more strongly. While it might be naive of me to hope that individual people will go out of their way to right wrongs that are not "their responsibility", I think that one of the roles of the government is to make the standards of living for all those within their country as good as possible. It doesn't matter where the problem stems from, when it was created, who was to blame. Blaming someone, looking to those at fault only works when they are still around and can be made to remedy the situation. But in cases like this, where those people are long gone, it's now up to the government to fix things.
A final paragraph [I promise] about the problems of assigning blame and leaving it there. When I first read the initial post, I thought, 'Interesting issue. I wonder how the Americans are going to respond.' It was until later that I clued in that my country (Canada) has a very similar history, I think the original question probably included us. (I just always think USA when I see American, you would have to say North for me to realize that it's me too.)
Obviously, I'm not very proud of myself for that (and I'm not now trying to assign blame elsewhere so that I don't have to fix my own faults). It's just that when things become compartmentalized - the problem neatly identified, the responsibility identified - it tends to be easier to put them away, it stops being an issue relevant to us, and in extreme cases you get things like my reaction. We can't forget the "lessons of history", we have to remember our (collective) mistakes so that we don't make them again.

Maz"sorry for the rambly"er31