>>All 4 (US, Canada, Mexico and Brazil) expanded without the consent of the native peoples. I would imagine without the majority consent of them today. In North America we drowned out their protest with ethnic cleansing, forced relocation, occupation via settlements. They been swallowed up.
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>What's your point? We are talking about consent of the governed NOW. All human societies have a past full of violence and conquest, and IMHO to spend time wringing hands over it is futile.
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>Grow or die. The law holds true in the natural world as well as the human world. Any species or society can grow only at the expense of another, and when that species or society stops growing, it becomes a target for more active and robust species or societies.

That's where I have a problem.
A "species" and a "society" are not at all the same thing.
Sure, it can make thinking about 'conquering' some other entity more palatable, but that doesn't make them equivalent. But there is nothing "natural" about "society" except that different societies have evolved differently just as animals have evolved differently. You say, by your statement above, that all societies essentially have to be the same.

I look at some polynesian island where the natives were quite happily going about their lives in a society that suited them. Along comes the white man with basically 1 interest - what can I get for myself and my patron out of this place - and all of a sudden a totally different set of rules starts to operate. Which, by the way, wasn't 'grow or die' but rather change or die. And these poor people had no idea what changes were required because they didn't understand the concepts of property or production or efficiency or money or whatever.

That society was growing (obviously) but at a far slower rate, albeit a rate that was perfectly satisfactory to them. Under a whole different set of priorities.

So what you really have, at best, is "grow MY WAY or die". I'd like to think that humans can grow to allow differentiation of societies.