Europeans didn’t migrate or wander or sojourn or gather here. They fled here. They didn’t come to the Americas; they ran from Europe, from the thousand landless, homeless, feudal miseries that together were their days. They ran not so much to give to their children what they never had as to not have to inherit what their parents and grandparents bequeathed to them. This fantasy of energetic, optimistic people seeking the freedom to be their own true selves, freed from the old feudal constraints to prosper and multiply in natural contentment—this is retroactive PR, selling to us a history that
...more
