There is an American girl singer whose name is Billie Eilish. She was at the Grammy awards earlier this year, receiving an award and she thought it would be a good opportunity to make a statement of hatred toward her own, native country. On receiving her award she made an obscene comment about the ICE agency and added that, “No one is illegal on stolen land.”[1] The stolen land she referred to is apparently the two Americas that make up the Western Hemisphere, implying that they were stolen from their aboriginal inhabitants. The declaration was not in response to any topic of debate but was spontaneous and gratuitous. It’s a specimen of a chicanery being used by anti-American[2] propagandists today, dredging things from the past and deprecating people in the present for them.[3] Her motive for saying that? Someone would have to explain that to me. And someone would also have to explain where the hate comes from that drives this kind of behavior.
Every nation, every culture and race on Earth can be assailed for some occurrence in its past. But the past is of course fixed. It’s over. It’s finished and final and gone and there is nothing to be done about it.
The purpose for making hate-propaganda about these ancient times is not to seek any redress for those long-dead victims, but only to create discord among those living in the present. It’s a con-game practiced by a species of political vandals generally known today by the moniker of “useful idiots.” The only place this kind of propaganda device will take anyone is into more conflict and more hate. It tries to create an antipathy that can never be resolved. It tries to create a frustration that can never be remedied. To carry resentment for things that are embedded in past centuries and are beyond the reach of any remedy puts a burden on the accused and on the putative victim who has been deceived into feeling that kind of resentment. There is no way out of it.
Homo Sapiens is a territorial creature.[4] How territorial? Consider this: Excluding Antarctica, every bit of every continent of the Earth has been invaded and the people in it displaced by the invaders, at least once but more commonly many times. Read the histories of Europe, Asia and the Middle East where land has been taken and retaken so many times that the count of it has been lost. And don’t overlook the history of Israel/Canaan/Judea/Palestine/Israel. Yes, that’s one patch of land; those are just the names different invaders have given it.
From the Mesolithic age of 9,000 years ago man has struggled against man for land. Empire after empire has swept the world, one culture displacing another. None of these has been gentle–and in historic comparison the conquest of the Americas was one of the less oppressive.
An aboriginal of the New World might confront an aboriginal of the Old World with this. He would say something like:
Our home and territory have been attacked, invaded and taken over. The land and resources of the hemisphere have been stolen from us. When we’ve resisted we’ve been overwhelmed with weapons we couldn’t comprehend, swamped with numbers of invaders we could not resist and had our own numbers decimated with disease and warfare. Our language, culture and every essence of our existence have been peeled to the bone and we struggle today to save some scraps of our identity.
To which the aboriginal of the Old World could answer:
What, only once? The land of my ancestors has been savaged the same way but five times. The ancient Celts were there first. Then the Romans came, then the Angles and Saxons, the Danes and then the Normans. They all came in turns and did the same things. And since then the Spanish (King Phillip II and his Invincible Armada) and French (Napoleon) have each had a go at it and the Germans (Kaiser Wilhelm II, then Hitler) have had two goes at it, but by then the descendants of the earlier conquerors and the conquered had learned to work together and defend themselves. Which is what happens when the invaders don’t leave.
And don’t tell me about diseases. The Old World has been depopulated repeatedly by diseases like the Smallpox that followed us to this hemisphere—but much worse by the Black Plague which came all the way from Asia. And somehow your hemisphere has been spared from that plague. You’ve had it relatively easy. Why all the complaining?
Again, people who condemn rather than accept the history of the Western Hemisphere are only displaying their ignorance. And given the vast and rich resources to be found in the Americas those events were inevitable. Had Europeans not come from the Occident then Asians would in time have come from the Orient. In that event the New World aboriginals, with their primitive means, would have had no more success in resisting the course of history and the Oriental newcomers are unlikely to have been any more gentle than were the Occidentals. Judging from their history they would have been much harsher. Vastly harsher. Read the history of the Mongol Conquests. But have a warm and comforting cup of tea within reach to soothe your composure while you do that. It’s not a pretty story.
Welcome to Planet Earth. We live here together in a somber reality. It is not a children’s playground. It is an inhabited world that has gone through stages of development, like a child going through adolescence. Maybe the world will grow out of this land-contesting habit. But have a look at what has been happening in Ukraine since 2023. At this writing that land grab is still going on. And, ironically, that land grab is being made by Russia, the source of the Communist propaganda that influences the weak-minded behavior being described in this essay.
I have not written anything here to dismiss, defend or justify any of the conditions we find on our planet but only to shine a light on them. Jimmy Durante had a charming way of saying it when used to say, famously: “Dem’s da conditions what prevails.” And so we find ourselves.
But we can take heart. Every tragedy, every misfortune, is also an opportunity. When you are conquered you can learn from your conquerors and over the longer term you will take something from the experience. So an English king named Alfred learned by studying the Roman conquest of his land. He was a bookish sort and studied the old records in a monastery that told about Roman battle tactics. When he reluctantly became king he employed those tactics against the invading Danes and inflicted stinging defeats on them. He did not succeed in driving them out of ninth century England, though. Their descendants are still there. Still, Alfred is the only English king know today as, “The Great.”
The Hungarians of the 13th Century showed that they could learn, too. After being savaged by Mongols in 1241 they studied and learned from the experience and, when the Mongols returned in 1285, gave those invaders such a dreadful drubbing that they never came again.
But more often learning from your conquerors means acquiring their culture and knowledge as so many people did from the Romans.
This girl with the “stolen land” remark shows the depth of a very deep ignorance. It gives the impression she has never read a book in her life, certainly not a history book.[5] Such ignorant people are often stupid as well as being ignorant, but not necessarily. The ones who are not stupid demonstrate that fact by learning. Stupid people are not capable of learning; that’s the definition of stupidity.
© Thomas A. Nelson Sr. 2026
[1] Eilish used her appearance at the award ceremony to criticize U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), stating, “No one is illegal on stolen land.” See at: https://www.grammy.com/series-or-collection/2026-grammys-68th-annual-grammy-awards-videos/billie-eilish-wildflower-wins-song-of-the-year
[2] “American” in this sense means all the people in the Western Hemisphere, excepting only the aboriginals.
[3] This kind of propaganda is currently known as “presentism.”
[4] If you really want to see graphically how territorial, check out this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY9P0QSxlnI
[5] Of course, it’s possible she’s one of those unfortunates who graduate from high school without learning to read.
Front and Center 