If you ever want to see people act like lemmings, just start watching their social media posts. The members of the Grant County meme brigade are a perfect example. The topics about which they make their posts will be identical. Whatever the topic is that the creators of the memes decide they want to promote, the lemmings repost their often factually incorrect memes and act morally superior. And it's ironic that they act morally superior because that's kind of the underlying theme of my column today.

Recently several members of the brigade have begun posting about how the indigenous people of North America were morally superior to the Europeans that invaded their lands. That they lived in harmony and cared about the land in ways that we are apparently not capable of appreciating or emulating. We know the truth to be completely different from that fantasy. The indigenous people were violent just like the rest of the world. They enslaved each other after fighting wars. When the Europeans arrived, they were living relatively simplistic lifestyles.

Many of the indigenous people that lived in what we now call the United States were nomadic in nature. Those that were stationary did build some impressive structures, had a decent understanding of agricultural practices, and in many cases had a basic understanding of astronomy. But if you compare the technological and scientific advances of the Americas to those of Europe, northern Africa, and Asia, the indigenous tribes were not nearly as advanced as many like to believe they were.

The desire expressed by many of these virtue signaling members of the brigade is that we return to the lifestyle of the indigenous people. Life would be so much simpler and in harmony with the earth. But would we have the technological advances that have made our lives better such as advancements in healthcare, infrastructure, agriculture—pick your area of expertise. Would they still be living the same lifestyle that they were when the explorers landed on these shores? An argument can be made that they very likely would be, given that there are still cultures living the way their ancestors did 1000 years ago.

I think one of the reasons the explorers and some of the people today are so impressed with what civilizations such as the Incans, Mayan, and Aztec accomplished, is that they held a demeaning view of those cultures. They saw them essentially as backwards groups of people and anything they did beyond living in a cave was seen as quite an accomplishment. Kind of like watching your toddler take their first steps. Those steps are uncertain, unstable and compared to an adult quite rudimentary, but we get so excited because our expectations were low. I would argue that many of the progressives today still see those cultures in the same light. Similar to how they see certain demographic groups in today's society being incapable of accomplishing things on their own without the help of the government.

We know that many of these cultures were just as violent as any culture anywhere else in the world. They fought with each other, they enslaved each other and when they were provided with the technology brought by the Europeans, they acted in the same way that many Europeans did. They were extremely violent and, in some cases, more sadistic than the Europeans. Many of them stood alongside the Buffalo hunters to slaughter the herds of bison. Who's to say if they had developed firearms on their own they would not have done the same thing of their own volition?

What many of these people don't realize about themselves, is that they're actually talking about living by some principles and values that they believe the indigenous people held dear And used to guide their choices in life. The truth is, that people around the world, no matter what area of the world in which they live, basically share the same values as everyone else. They want to make their lives better, they want to make their lives easier, they want to live in peace and harmony, they want to be happy, they want to be free. They don't want to destroy each other, they don't want to destroy the environment, they appreciate the world in which they live because that world can provide them with many of the things they need and want. And most of us understand that if we destroy the environment, it will destroy us. But part of that process is learning by trial and error

While the members of the caring and progressive left believed that somehow the indigenous tribes were morally superior to us, the truth is that they were not. The only difference between the indigenous people and the explorers that landed here is that the explorers were more technologically advanced. They could produce wonderful things more quickly and on a larger scale while they could destroy things more quickly and on a larger scale than the indigenous tribes. I don't disagree in some ways that we would like to go back to a simpler time or wish some of these technological advancements didn't have such an impact on our lives. But then again the truth is life was hard back then, too. The challenges were just manifested in a different way.