In this PragerU video, host Dennis Prager introduces a short dialogue with Jeff Finn‑Paul, an American historian teaching at Leiden University. Finn‑Paul critiques the common college narrative that the United States was founded solely through genocide, stolen land, slavery, and environmental destruction, arguing that this portrayal is inaccurate and harmful. He warns that teaching such a uniformly negative view of America undermines civic confidence and damages the global perception of the United States as a beacon of democracy, potentially encouraging autocratic regimes to question the value of democracy itself. Prager then briefly references contemporary cultural debates over Columbus‑related names (e.g., Columbia University, Columbus, Ohio) and sports team names, framing the left as consistently wrong on these issues. The clip serves to challenge the “stolen land” narrative and defend a more positive view of American history and its global role.
Well, are we living on stolen land? It's given by a professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands, Jeff Finn Paul, an American who is teaching at the Dutch university. Let's start it.
If you attended college, this is what you were likely taught: America was founded through acts of genocide accompanied by larceny on the grandest scale. Columbus and the Europeans who followed him sailed to the New World with the intention of exploiting whomever they found and, if necessary, enslaving or exterminating them. Soon afterwards, they began importing Black bodies from Africa. They then built the world's richest country out of a combination of slave labor, stolen land, and environmental destruction. Did I miss anything? As an historian, I can assure you this view is inaccurate in most particulars. But getting the story wrong is only part of the problem. The bigger problem is this: if you teach generation after generation that their country, their society, and their history are uniquely awful, they are likely to believe you. This is a sure route to societal failure. This has consequences not only for America, but the entire world. Many in the US seem to have no clue just how much of a city on the hill the US is still perceived to be, and how important that American beacon is to millions of people living under autocratic regimes. If the image of the US is fundamentally delegitimized, If its entire raison d'être, its reason for being, is tainted, then increasing numbers of people will wonder whether democracy itself is worth the trouble. So let's correct the record before it's too late.
All right, we'll stop there. You want— you should see the rest. Are we living on stolen land? It's a PragerU video. It's an important one, obviously. So they— Columbia's keeping its name, as I pointed out, named after Columbus, Columbia University. Columbus, Ohio is keeping its name, but the Cleveland Indians and the Washington Redskins, they couldn't keep their names. It is fair to say that the left is as close to always wrong as possible.
