Loki wrote:
Your knowledge of history is somewhat parochial. History is determined by events, which are in turn fueled by the prevailing beliefs of the times. These beliefs reflected the reality of the period.
At the time the Constitution was written, slavery was practiced over most of the world. It was legal in most places and was an accepted part of life; viewed as a normal state of affairs. Slavery began to be seen in a bad light after the industrial revolution made slavery less profitable in many places. Capitalism, rather than morality, began the demise of slavery.
Most of the slaves in the US were brought here by Spanish, Portuguese, and especially English ships. Out of some 12 million slaves transported to the Western Hemisphere from Africa, about 600,000 ended up in what became the US. The rest went to the Caribbean, Mexico, and South and Central America.
You cannot judge people of another era by the standards of this one. Their reality was much harsher than ours, their beliefs correspondingly different. They have to be judged against the backdrop of the physical reality of the time and place in which they existed. The moral code they adhered to was one born of the times. Flogging, public executions and the stocks were also commonplace and accepted as perfectly normal. Witchcraft was the explanation for imperfectly understood scientific phenomena. A person from today who was transported back to the Spain and Portugal of Columbus, Ferdinand and Isabella would quickly find him or herself the guest of honor at an impromptu party thrown by Tomas de Torquemada and his boys.
The Founders were, by the standards of their time, quite enlightened. At a time of monarchies and dictatorships, they advocated a Republic. Liberals say that women and slaves couldn't vote. Slaves couldn't vote anywhere, and to the best of my knowledge, neither could women. The Framers were an aristocracy for the most part, but one who gave a say in government to the middle class of the time, which was property and business owners. This idea of letting the masses govern themselves was, in it's own right, revolutionary for the time and place.
The US has made mistakes. All great nations do. The treatment of the American Indian was despicable by today's standards, but commonly accepted the world over at the time it happened. I would suggest that there probably aren't 20 acres of real estate in the world, (excluding Antarctica,) with any sort of strategic or tactical value that have not been conquered and re-conquered repeatedly. I mentioned the American Indian tribes a moment ago. The fact is that many of them acquired "their" land in the same way that we "acquired" it from them. They stole it, same as us. The pre-Columbian Indian society was not a model of peaceful cooperation. The Iroquois, the Shawnee, some of the Algonquin tribes in Canada, the Lakota, along with cousins Cheyenne and Arapaho, the Navajo, Apache, Yaqui, all were conquering, warlike tribes who either killed, enslaved or drove off the original occupants of the land they claimed. Let us not forget the Aztecs and Incas, either. Both Cortez and Pizzaro were able to conquer the Aztecs and Incas respectively due to lots of help from smaller, weaker tribes that had been victimized by these "civilized" tribes.
In short, every nation had made mistakes, and some of what you think of as mistakes were not regarded as such by the standards of the times in which they happened.
Your knowledge of history is somewhat parochial. H... (
show quote)
All of what you say is true but it doesn't make it right nor does it validate the claim that the US is an exceptional nation that has sought to expand exponentially since its inception. A war like nation with a national Anthem hat reflects its nature with song of rockets and bombs exploding. For over 100 years the US has had a fondness for capitalist imperialism by proxy and been in the business of assassinations , and propping up client state dictators, Tyrants, and corrupt puppet-presidents, who have been aided, supported, and rewarded handsomely for their loyalty to American business interests. American tax dollars and USA backed loans have made billionaires of some, while others are drug dealers who also collect CIA paychecks. But the US government was held responsible for supporting some of the worst human rights violators in history. Their troops receive arms, training and advice from the CIA as well as Latin American terrorist at the school of the Americas Ft Benning Georgia. t is American military that guarantees their hold on power and the fact they provide free access by Wall Street to their countries natural resources.
The USA has over the years, installed financed , supported with cash and arms, 44 bloody dictators. In 13 of those cases the USA actually overthrew a legitimate functioning democracy for the sake of installing one of their own dictators who would be more pliable to US foreign policy. In several cases when the population of a country revolted and overthrew the US installed Dictator, the US sent warship to put down the revolt and install their dictator once again. To the population back home the reason often given was for protecting" freedom " "stability" "controlling the Soviet Union" and so on..........tye CIAplayed a considerable role in the overthrowing of Chilean of President Salvador Allende in 1973 by Augusto Pinochet who is credited with a 17 year reign of oppression and used the Chilean people as Guinea pigs for Milton Freidmans neoliberal economic theories that doubled poverty from 29 % to 40 % in 17 years