"There are many shades in the danger of adventures and gales, and it is only now and then that there appears on the face of facts a sinister violence of intention – that indefinable something which forces it upon the mind and the heart of a man, that this complication of accidents or these elemental furies are coming at him with a purpose of malice, with a strength beyond control, with an unbridled cruelty that means to tear out of him his hope and his fear, the pain of his fatigue and his longing for rest: which means to smash, to destroy, to annihilate all he has seen, known, loved, enjoyed, or hated; all that is priceless and necessary – the sunshine, the memories, the future, - which means to sweep the whole precious world utterly away from his sight by the simple and appalling act of taking his life." The narrator Marlow in Joseph Conrad Lord Jim

To say that we cannot undo history is not to say that we should not recall genuine injustices. For instance the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, signed on September 27, 1830 but proclaimed on February 24, 1831. The first "removal treaty" under the Jackson-era Indian Removal Act, between the Choctaw and the United States Government, it traded some 11 million acres of fertile land in what is now Mississippi for 15 million acres of barren scrub in Oklahoma. Or else.

Now the Treaty did give those Choctaw who chose to remain in Mississippi U.S. citizenship, the first significant non-European group to receive it. And that is a path that should have been taken far more, and with far better goodwill on the part of citizens and governments in the United States and Canada. But it would also have been essential to leave the Choctaw, as citizens, in possession in fee simple of the land they had once held traditionally. And that was not something the American government was willing to do. Instead, each Choctaw who remained where he or she was got one "section" of 640 acres, plus a half section for older and a quarter for younger children. The rest of the land was, well, stolen.

The Choctaw were the first of the "Five Civilized Tribes" to be subjected to this unfair process and sent along the "Trail of Tears" to Oklahoma where, of course, the land was not of equivalent quality in any case. (The other four were the Creek, Cherokee, Chickasaw, and Seminole.) Around 15,000 of them went to Oklahoma, which is actually a Choctaw word (it means "red people"). And there the Choctaw were promised in the treaty "Autonomy of the Choctaw Nation (in Oklahoma) and descendants to be secured from laws of U.S. states and territories forever" which of course did not happen either. As to the roughly five to six thousand who stayed, they were harassed, abused, and encouraged to move to Oklahoma into the early 20^th century.

I believe the rise of the United States to superpower status militarily, economically and culturally has been an enormous boon to the world and to Canada. But there were aspects of it, from slavery to foreign policy misdeeds to the "Indian removal policy", that remain wrong even as part of a story that turned out very well.

One Choctaw chief, George W. Harkins, wrote a letter to the American people that included the poignant phrase "Much as the state of Mississippi has wronged us, I cannot find in my heart any other sentiment than an ardent wish for her prosperity and happiness." I share his sentiment. But surely one should also wish that for the descendants of those who were dispossessed.

Not by restoring conditions of life as they had been in 1830 or 1430, but by compensation to individuals for wrongs to their direct ancestors that can reasonably be demonstrated in court, full citizenship without social prejudice, and frank recognition of the historical wrong as an outrage not only to those directly affected, but to all decent people.

My latest for The Rebel:

The audio-only version is available here: [podcast title="Ask the Professor, Feb 24, 2017"]http://www.thejohnrobson.com/podcast/John2017/February/Ask_Professor_80.mp3[/podcast]

In my latest National Post column I satirize people's ongoing faith in government's compassionate efficiency despite all their experience with its actual performance.

Past time, actually. Long past. So I'm delighted to see that, to mark the 150th anniversary of Confederation, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute has just reissued the paper Citizen of One, Citizen of the Whole that Brian Lee Crowley, Bob Knox and I wrote back in 2010. Perhaps it is the mark of an unredeemable nebbish to be proud of a paper on such a topic as free internal trade. But with governments including our federal one struggling with difficult policy choices to increase economic growth, it continues to amaze me that this juicy low-hanging fruit has gone unpicked.

In the paper, to which Brian has added a new introduction, we argue that it is not just economically sensible for the federal government to fulfill our Founders' vision by using their clear Constitutional authority to strike down petty protectionist interprovincial trade barriers. It is also a moral obligation.

What a great way to celebrate Canada's 150th birthday.

"The mark of a great historical event is that it changes people or, more precisely, the way they think, so that they are never quite the same again." John Kenneth Galbraith The Liberal Hour

Back in 1836 the Battle of the Alamo began on February 23. It was a Pyrrhic victory for the Mexican government, because after a 13-day siege they stormed the Alamo Mission and killed everybody inside, prompting outrage, a surge of enlistments in the "Texian" army and a decisive victory for the latter at San Jacinto in April that secured Texas independence. And a lot of people are still bitter.

There are seriously people in the United States who dream of restoring much of the southwest to Mexico, to say nothing of Mexicans who want back what they believe was "stolen" from them in 1836 and then in 1848. Germany even used it as bait to try to lure Mexico into World War I in the middle of its own brutal civil war, which Mexico's government at the time was at least too intelligent to fall for. But I cannot understand the appeal of getting Texas back inside Mexico.

In the first place, can anybody seriously claim that Texans would be better off if the place had remained Mexican, that they would be freer or wealthier? And the United States as a whole would have been diminished without Texas, even if it did fight on the wrong side in the Civil War. But on the whole both Texas and the world are better off for the outcome in 1836.

Ah but, say some, these "Texans" were interlopers, white people who moved in in large numbers after 1821. Which may be true, but they were invited in by the Mexican government and if they then decided they did not like that government, anyone who believes in the consent of the governed must concede that they had a right to do something. And anyone who believes their discontent with the Mexican government was unfounded knows little of the history of Mexico. (Though it must be conceded that the Mexican government did prohibit slavery, something many immigrants flagrantly ignored.)

There’s another point here, even more fundamental. If we are to deny Texans the right to inhabit Texas in 1836, we must surely also deny Mexicans the right to inhabit Mexico, which was acquired from the "indigenous" occupants by Imperial Spain in a manner even less attractive than the settlement of North America. Now it would be quite a feat to undo that injustice, particularly as a large part of the population of Mexico has both European and aboriginal ancestry and you cannot really tell someone their left leg can stay but the rest of them has to go "back" to a place their last ancestor left in the 17^th century. And then… and then… it gets worse.

You see, the Aztecs who occupied much of Mexico when the Spaniards showed up were warlike, aggressive and in many ways horrible including their ritual human sacrifice of their enemies on a spectacular scale. They too have no right to the land which they stole, even if it’s very hard to return it to the descendants who were never born of people whose hearts they ripped out of their living chests and sometimes then ate their flesh and made their skin in to ceremonial robes.

The same problem arises, if slightly less starkly, with almost every revisionist attempt to undo some particular injustice in history real or imagined. It triggers a domino effect that only stops once records are not available, in which in any case we are compelled to take from the blameless to give to the nonexistent.

To say so is not to excuse injustice or aggression. But it is to say that our duty is to try to prevent them in the present, not to seek to remedy the real past in imaginary ways.

So yes, remember the Alamo. But do not try to put it back into Mexico. It does not belong there.