This is so pig-ignorant, even if the point he is trying to make is that the US was a government structure then unique to the world. You cannot understand the founding of the US without understanding Native America. So much of the philosophy of creating a new state, away from European nobility, was based on an (admittedly 18th century) view of the so-called “Nobel Savage.” I mean, there’s a whole lot wrong with that concept, but the notion of what it meant to be without European government was based on the fact that there were Native Americans who operated outside the European paradigm. If it really had been full of nothing, we’d never have broken off from the UK, or if we did, it would just be another European monarchy.
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The Iroquois Confederacy was a key influence in the development of the structure of US democratic government, not to mention that the English colonies would have failed without the support provided by the natives (both knowledge and direct aid and trade), nor would the country exist without forced African labor. It’s fun watching the historians drag him, but I suspect he’ll never notice, much less learn anything.
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Soo… basically CNN isn’t the commie propaganda machine that MAGAs are depicting? ??
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We built it entirely from scratch, there was nothing here! From the ground up, baby! We didn’t need to steal land from native tribes, genocide their peoples, bring in enslaved blacks, live under a British banner for several decades, enlist the French to assist us with ousting the British, and expand our power under numerous wars of economic expansion in order to ensure this American way of life!
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I’m sure those pesky Native Americans didn’t make the birthing any easier.
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That will be the next level of the argument, right?
“We birthed the nation from less than nothing! We had to clean it up first!”
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I wish I could boycott CNN for hiring this moron, but I already don’t watch CNN because they’re awful.
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Can’t think of much I would put past the American Right at this point.
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If it wasn’t so un-democratic and would likely fail many members of Congress out of their jobs all at the same time, I wish there could be a minimum education requirement to serve, like an entrance exam in college.
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Quoted for Truth.
That’s the thing about santorum, its so icky and hard to remove
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It would require the general public to know about “The Clansman” aka
“Birth of a Nation”, and history in general, not some self serving myth ~
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There are direct, quantifiable contributions made by the native populations, too, though. From aiding the survival of the colonies to the formation of the US Constitution.
Of course what’s so grotesque about his statement is, they did. I mean, it quite literally wouldn’t have happened without them. The argument is convincingly made that without the direct and indirect aid of native populations, the colonies simply wouldn’t have survived, which rather would have put a crimp on the formation of the United States. This was true even when European-introduced diseases killed off local native populations ahead of colonization - their empty homes became vital shelter that made the difference between death and survival. Americans too often like to pretend that the land was empty before Europeans came, but had there really been no native population, the colonies that led to the formation of the United States wouldn’t have existed.
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Cleisthenes thinks there may not be as much American culture in American culture as Rick Santorum thinks…
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Technically he’s wrong. But how much of what’s around today do Native Americans want to claim is from them? 
Here’s a fine opportunity to disavow.
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Absolutely and a good point I should never overlook. Thanks for the reminder.
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A reminder that this is what CNN is paying Santorum for:
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Exactly. Countless place names in this country were passed to non-natives from Native Americans. And that’s just for starters.
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In more ways than one, America is like the house from Poltergeist.
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