No, you're talking in vague abstractions without referencing specific period of brutality in humanity's history. Platitudes prevent you from making an actual judgment about a given event.<p>&#62; "It's quite possible for the Native Americans to have been savages, and the Europeans to have been savages (with better weapons), and for one group of awful people to have murdered another group of awful people."<p>Conquistadors, went to the Americas and slaughtered millions. Regardless of your assertion that both could be "savages", one group <i>initiated</i> and subsequently conducted systematic violence against another group over several decades. You're honestly saying you can't judge that as "bad"? What if you were among one of those indigenous groups that were killed? I know I would not appreciate it...<p>But of course we can't make concrete judgments about that.