Excellent post. I think there are a lot of people who think like OP about America right now. It’s understandable, but it’s not like every other country doesn’t have their own baggage as well.
As you pointed out, slavery was a staple to many countries before the industrial revolution. In fact, if you look at slave routes in the 1700-1800s, Peru imported the most slaves because it was cheaper to work them to death and simply buy new ones.
The native Americans were also, as you pointed out, screwed. Spain committed atrocities against those in Mexico and South America similar to the English. The French were a little more friendly with the fur trade, but had they tried colonizing the continental US instead of selling to the Americans in the Louisiana purchase, I don’t see how any country would have let the natives keep all that land (could you really imagine natives still living as they did back then in 2010+)?
Think of it in terms of your own analogy to Nazi Germany OP: what did the Germans (and the world for that matter) do at the end of World War II? They rebuilt the country and restructured Europe. Sure, Germany was split into two countries until about 1990, but the German people rebuilt their country and their heritage from the ground up and made it a better place. If you like America and her ideals, you can fight for those while still fighting against the parts of her history that are unacceptable to a modern civilized society.
IIN I sometimes feel ashamed to be an American?
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Excellent post. I think there are a lot of people who think like OP about America right now. It’s understandable, but it’s not like every other country doesn’t have their own baggage as well.
As you pointed out, slavery was a staple to many countries before the industrial revolution. In fact, if you look at slave routes in the 1700-1800s, Peru imported the most slaves because it was cheaper to work them to death and simply buy new ones.
The native Americans were also, as you pointed out, screwed. Spain committed atrocities against those in Mexico and South America similar to the English. The French were a little more friendly with the fur trade, but had they tried colonizing the continental US instead of selling to the Americans in the Louisiana purchase, I don’t see how any country would have let the natives keep all that land (could you really imagine natives still living as they did back then in 2010+)?
Think of it in terms of your own analogy to Nazi Germany OP: what did the Germans (and the world for that matter) do at the end of World War II? They rebuilt the country and restructured Europe. Sure, Germany was split into two countries until about 1990, but the German people rebuilt their country and their heritage from the ground up and made it a better place. If you like America and her ideals, you can fight for those while still fighting against the parts of her history that are unacceptable to a modern civilized society.