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The roots leading to and the founding of the United States of America are riddled with inaccuracies and myths to fit the concepts of what Americans claim to hold dear. It begins with Christopher Columbus and how he was hailed as a “hero” for finding the “New World.” The world was not new and had been inhabited by indigenous peoples for centuries. One of the biggest boosts to the myths was spawned with the Puritans coming to the Colonies in pursuit of religious “freedom”: however, that freedom was only for themselves. They lacked tolerance and kindness toward anyone who disagreed with their brand of faith.

As you all know, the Colonies broke away from England to establish a country to “establish justice,” prominently stated in the Preamble to the US Constitution. The Preamble also states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." Later, the Pledge of Allegiance echoed this sentiment: “with justice and liberty for all.”

Even taking “men” as a general, outdated, sexist term for all humankind, these proclamations are a lie and applied to rich white men. If you had money or the wherewithal to gain it, your life was better ensured, your liberty extended to the right to vote and speak your mind, and pursuing happiness was at your discretion. Women and people of color were not created equal, were denied their “rights” (which means that they were really “privileges” and privileges extended to white men), and the happiness of women and people of color was dependent on the white men who oversaw them as wives, slaves, and oppressed minorities.

If a person’s religion was not mainstream, he/she also suffered although the Constitution ostensibly guarantees freedom of religion; it seems that the freedom to choose consisted of Column A or Column B of Protestantism. Thomas Jefferson writes, “But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god” (https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/jeffersons-religious-beliefs), but that is seldom “advertised” when fundies discuss the religious beliefs of the Founding Fathers.

Over the decades and centuries, these ideas were challenged and the challenges resulted in the Civil War and amendments to the Constitution that allowed women and people of color to vote. The legal changes did not change social and cultural conventions, however, and women, people of color, and poor people continued to be second class citizens.

In recent times, I thought we were working toward equilibrium; now, I fear that we will lose any gains we have made.

I love America. My Irish ancestors immigrated to the colonies in the 1730s. My seventh great grandfather fought in the Revolutionary War. While the Constitution did not originally mean freedom for all, many people were working to toward making the incomplete ideal the complete ideal.

Happy Birthday, America. You are too old to still be feeling the pangs that accompanied your birth, and I fear that your old age will be fraught with fear, division, and the destruction of the even limited ideals that started the grand experiment.

Gwendolyn2018 9 July 4
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10 comments

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0

Still a better history and track record than 80% of all other countries.

@Gwendolyn2018 Name a country that was doing it better in the 1700s than this country was? People should be grateful to live here....the mere fact that you can join an atheist/agnostic community without fear of being beheaded should tell you that.

@Gwendolyn2018 I didn't say it was great for women here in the 1700s...I just said it was like that everywhere....and in many places, it was far worse. Also, we have no need for socialized medicine here....it should be 100% privatized and the government should stay out of it. I mean, seriously, have you ever had to deal with the VA or Tri-Care? Awful. Privatize it!

0

I want imperialism and colonialism to be seen for what it is.

0

It's a good post. For a long time there was a kind of idealism about the concept of the USA. I remember my mother's stories about emigrating in the 1950's, even then a lot of people felt that there was such a thing as a land of opportunity.

But I think the wars between then and now have shaped worldwide perception of the USA into something more negative. I think it started with Vietnam, and has continued with the idea that the USA has some ideals about how the rest of the world should be running itself, with Iraq and Afghanistan, and Israel.

3

Very good post and topic, as with all empires on. This planet or any other . Empires will rise and they will fall . And this is all i will say for now

@Gwendolyn2018 im glad i made some sense , i like controversial topics

@Gwendolyn2018 yes i get that..

6

"Make America Great Again". Are we great again yet? Totally laughable.

7

This is a country that was built on stolen land by slaves. We would not have risen to power without the mass use of industrialized slave labor for a large part of our history. The treaties that the the native people were forced into were repeatedly broken as we expanded. Their children were forced into bording schools to give up their culture and language to become civilized Christian Americans. Very bad things were done in the name of science and medical experiments to get us where we are now. I am lucky to be born in the USA and white. I can say as I want and not die of simple diseases. It does not make me proud though.

MsAl Level 8 July 4, 2018

@K9Kohle789 I'm not fond of missionaries for the most part. I just listened to a fascinating podcast about the history that tribe on "behind the bastards".
[Behind the Bastards] Part One: The Accidental Genocide of the Andaman Islands
[podplayer.net] via @PodcastAddict

[Behind the Bastards] Part Two: The Accidental Genocide of the Andaman Islands
[podplayer.net] via @PodcastAddict

4

History of the world is the biography of the great man... A great man always act like a thunder. He storms the skies, while others are waiting to be stormed. Thomas Carlyle

History is written by the victors - Winston Churchill (a drunk)
History is more or less bunk - Henry Ford (a fascist)
History, with all her volumes vast, hath but one page -Lord Byron (a drug addled murderer)
History teaches us that unity is strength, -Haile Selassie ( a man who thought he was god)
history of humanity has been a continuing struggle against temptation and tyranny - JFK (Drug addict, serial womanizer, Marilyn Monroe fan and drunk)

A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history. - Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi, one anorexic loony in a nappy and we lost the whole bloody empire - Margaret Thatcher (attributed)

"JFK (Drug addict, serial womanizer, Marilyn Monroe fan and drunk)". None of that (if even true) makes him any lesser a great man, just another flawed human..

@jlynn37
Accurate. All great men (leaders) have appetites.
We just hear about them as opposed to people not in the limelight.

@bigpawbullets I am glad I am not in the limelight as I would be thrown to the wolves very quickly. I have been a very "bad" boy (at least in most of societies eyes) in my 50 years as a single man. I have had a LOT of fun and would change very little.

@jlynn37
I salute your hedonistic lifestyle!

3

Excellent post. Right to the point. It mirrors my sentiments exactly.

4

Wonderful post for this day. I have often felt though that we are a young country and have yet to feel the horrors that many European countries have felt. How we handle these things will say a lot about who we are. Also through history no republic had lasted more than 300 years without huge changes. I hope our changes will ultimately be about equality for all people.

No democracy (Rome, Greece) has lasted very long. All political entities pass away...unless of course there are Incas, Carthaginians, Etruscans, etc. that I do not know about. 🙂

4

The country was founded on hypocrisy and it fuels the engine to this day. Our hypocrisy is why so many countries don't respect us.

I agree. Lots of pretty words in the Declaration and Constitution but it has bore little fruit.

@jlynn37 Disappointingly true.

@jlynn37 What exactly in the Constitution are just pretty words and have borne little fruit?

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