'Toward a More Perfect Union': We can teach ugly truths and beauty of America

I believe we should teach American history in it's entirety and not be afraid to discuss our shortcomings but also not be afraid or ashamed of recognizing our great accomplishments. History happened, period, and pretending like it didn't doesn't do any good. Focusing purely on the bad to the point of being ashamed of the present is equally as bad as blindly praising America and giving no credence to our historical atrocities.

History happened....you don't have a time machine and you cannot change the past and in spite of what so many believe you also can't "right the wrongs" of the past today without punishing those of today who were not part of the past.

Teach history but don't try to guilt people today due to history. I'm not going to feel bad about living in America due the atrocities committed towards the Native Americans who were living here before the Europeans arrived. Even if I did "care" what exactly does anyone expect us to do? Leave? Go where? This is our home where are we supposed to go? As cruel as it sounds this is how human civilization has worked since the dawn of man. There are VERY FEW places on Earth where the peoples currently living on that plot of land are the same ones who did so from the beginning. Almost everybody gets conquered and dispersed at some point by someone else and America will likely be no different. Even the mightiest empires throughout history eventually fall and at their snapshot in time they too were "the most powerful empire/country the world had ever seen".

I'm glad that history happened with all of its ups and downs because the end result is me sitting here. As much as our moral conscious wishes we could go back and change certain things we have no idea what that butterfly effect would do to the present day.

 

The problem is that for some reason many people today have decided to hold America up to a completely irrational standard of morality that no other country past or present has been held to. And forgetting to acknowledge the fact that history is history, it's not the present. It was Bill Maher of all people who was recently poking fun at this nonsense.

https://www.real-time-with-bill-maher-blog.com/index/2022/9/16/new-rule-a-unified-theory-of-wokeness

If people would learn how to study and teach history AS history and not judge it through the morality lenses of the present we'd all be better off. But since so many people can't do that we run into this conflict where one side accuses the other of trying to hide it while the other side accuses them of trying to exploit it and make people living today feel guilty about existing because of it. There is no "atrocity" in America's history that is unique to America, not even close. All of the "bad" stuff America did throughout history is the same bad stuff that human civilizations have been doing for THOUSANDS OF YEARS. Most of which is only considered "bad" now in the 21st century with 21st century morality goggles. And in the future there will be new standards of morality and many of the things we consider perfectly normal today will be considered bad too.

If you were born a Roman citizen born during the height of the Empire you too would be running to the streets to cheer on the returning Legion as they marched in their Triumph after slaughtering 100,000 "uncivilized barbarians" and brought home their king in chains to be executed. Pretending that you would be the "good" citizen who would somehow magically know in your heart that was evil and speak out against it because thats how you feel today is patently absurd. No, you'd cheer, and be yelling at your slave to get you another cup of wine.

But no according to some our American ancestors in the 1600s should have been magically born with 21st century brains and known that what they were doing was wrong and never done it. And according to some since they didn't magically know that and did it anyway we should spend ours days in the present time feeling guilty about it. That too is patently absurd.

 

And the Greeks had slaves, and the Romans, and the Africans, and the Medieval Europeans, and the Egyptians, and everybody else throughout history. Sure the Europeans may have expanded the practice but it was a practice that was completely normal and in place throughout virtually every human civilization since the dawn of man. So again the projection doesn't work. No matter how it's spun projecting 21st century morality onto 15th century peoples doesn't work. They were expanding upon an already established practice in human history that in spite of modern understanding wasn't "immoral" during the time according to the people living back then.