[jmj4]

> America was not actually founded solely on "tired and poor masses yearning to breathe free", but on a huge takeover and displacement plan for the native Americans.

America wasn't founded in order to take anything from Natives; this was a very unfortunate side affect. Your right, slavery was a stain on America for nearly a century. And there was racial tension against Irish, Jews, Italians ect, just like it is for Muslims in some sectors of society right now.

But these people were still given an opportunity to flourish through their own doing, and many of them have. The Kennedy's are the most obvious example of an Irish American family doing supremely well despite lingering prejudice towards Irish immigrants. Obviously other examples exist.

The Muslim question you bring up at the end is different. The reason people are so scared is that Islamic Law contradicts the notion of freedom. We can and should allow freedom of religion, but not before we ensure that all people are free. And Islamic Law flies in the face of a lot that is presented in our Constitution.

[dextorious]

> America wasn't founded in order to take anything from Natives; this was a very unfortunate side affect.

I'm not sure. The whole point of the conquest of the Americas was pillaging and exploiting the new continent by and for the European nations. Even the words "conquest, conquistador" etc speak volumes.

America (as in "the US") itself, was just some of those people descendants that declared themselves a new sovereign nation. But they too had to take the land from its previous inhabitants, an operation that started before the US established and declared independence, and continued even after that.

[Symmetry]

"Conquest" wasn't ever a word commonly used by those particular Europeans that ended up later forming the USA, though. That was how the Spanish talked about what they were doing. The English ideology was all about "settling" or "colonizing". The English didn't see the natives as a resource to be exploited by an obstacle to be either ignored to negotiated with. This later caused many problems due to the English and Native Americans having very different notions of property and what buying land meant.

[dextorious]

"""This later caused many problems due to the English and Native Americans having very different notions of property and what buying land meant."""

Yeah, especially as for the English it meant "taking your land for peanuts".