November 23, 2006

How does one expect to be forgiven, when one does not acknowledge there has been blood on their hands?

The myths of America, give moral attributes to the ideas upon which the United States was founded. Moral contradictions are not very often discussed without the dissenter being accused of being a foe to America. The morality of the idea is often mistaken for the morality of the person associated with it. As with the presumption, that America has always been an ethical nation. You can assume that, if you only look at America beginnings in relation to Europe or its system of government. What happens when you look at ground level and the actual people involved? Most people would say that certainly some of our passed actions were horrible, but that’s OK now. We had nothing to do with it, not caring if those descendants can accept the invisibility derived from those actions. Their ancestors have been vilified and then slowly written out of history, even if they have made contributions. I believe in the future there will be no indigenous people, no slavery, no racism and no immigrant mistreatment in our history. Our country will seem like the “Lollipop Land” of the enlightenment.

I am asked to forgive and forget, because things have changed. How can change be permanent, if there is not any knowledge or interest of what happened before these changes? I would like to think you have at least thought about it. I had read a statement similar to this, “that westward expansion had expanded property rights.” Not getting into the argument of what this statement meant, I thought, didn’t the indigenous people have any property rights and weren’t our spoils from genocide? I would like the acknowledgment that our system can have failures because this is a government of men. We should understand, there has to be dissent, especially about the past. We shouldn’t make saints of our founding fathers or subsequent leaders or mistake them for their ideas. We have to keep the memory of the bad as an ethical reminder. I think without serious thoughts of our past, we will lose our conscience. When there becomes a lack of conscience, I feel the ideas of the nation will succumb and America will become a remnant of the past.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is an excellent artical it expounds upon racial and social divides in this country that are continually swept under the carpet to hide this countries repugnant past. Until these issues are addressed, we will continue to have a future that will be held back because of it's past.