Quote:
Originally Posted by Joe Obenberger
Don't get me started on the Iroquois. You can't mention their name and freedom of religion/speech in the same breath!
"However, the Iroquois began to win their war with the Hurons. They destroyed a large Huron village in 1648 and on March 16, 1649, 1200 Iroquois captured the mission of St. Ignace and then a few hours later captured another Huron village where they seized Brébeuf and his fellow Jesuit Gabriel Lalemant and brought them back to St. Ignace. There they were fastened to stakes and tortured to death by scalping, mock-baptism using boiling water, fire, necklaces of red hot hatchets and mutilation. According to Catholic tradition, Brébeuf did not make a single outcry while he was being tortured and he astounded the Iroquois, who later cut out his heart and ate it in hopes of gaining his courage.[1] Brébeuf was fifty-five years old."
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_de_Br%C3%A9beuf |
How a people treat captors during war is hardly an example to look to, which you know of course. If we judge our standard of Free speech on how we apply it to those we defeat or take captive in war then we would have to say we have none.
Look at the way we treated the Indians in general, 200 + years of genocide as official policy.
Look at how our troops (or at least some of them) treated the Vietnamese. My Lai was NOT an exception necessarilly.
Look at the officially sanctioned torture of the "terrorists" captured in Iraq and Afghanistan.
We afforded none of them the right to free speech much less the right to life.
The Iroquois were vicious warriors but they has a tradition of free speech, tolerance of other's beliefs and democracy within their society and our founders were quite familiar with the Iroquois government and it's structures.
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