&#62;The white apologist thing is just neo-trendy but true history does not support your conclusion.<p>History doesn't support my conclusion?  We invaded some else's land and nearly wiped them out.  Now what remains are spread out on reservations, little crops of land that had no value to us.  You assertion that "Both where right and both were wrong" is nonsense.  If some other country invaded the US today and started having that kind of  "success" would you feel the same?  American citizens would just be the losers in a bitter battle between two cultures?  Somehow I don't think so.<p>&#62;The grandparent post is right, society has congealed into functional and dysfunctional land masses.<p>No, you and the GGP both confuse what we have now for success.  We don't have "functional and dysfunctional land masses", we have the land of the empires who were always conquering and the land of those who weren't as aggressive.  As is usually the case; the first one to strike wins.  That doesn't mean he is better or has more potential, just that he won.  We can't know what would have happened otherwise.  Perhaps we've ended up in the best situation we could have, or perhaps we could have reached a much higher level of enlightenment.<p>There is no way to know, but I find the framing  of what happened as the best possible outcome (and by extension, everything that was done was correct) arrogant.