Start Paying Attention! It's Long Over Due!!!!

We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. - George Orwell

By Rich Kozlovich Updated 12/3/21 6:39AM
 
As a history buff I'm more aware of all the warts and blemishes of American history than most - and there are a lot of them.  How do I know that? Because we publish where we’ve erred in our history books for everyone to see!  It's no secret, it's not hidden, it's history, and the reason why is we're a free nation.   A nation that fundamentally believes in transparency.  If a nation can't recognize and expose the history of it's errors and flaws of character - it can't fix them.  A nation meaning the people, not necessarily the government. 

We're criticized for practicing slavery at one point, and rightly so.  But so did the rest of the world, including Africa.  And it's still being practiced in Muslim controlled nations.  We've spent hundreds of billions to fix that and over 625,000 young men's lives in a devastating civil war that ended slavery.   No other nation on Earth has ever paid such a penalty.
 
At one time you couldn’t find anything in Japan about the atrocities they committed in China in what is known as the Rape of Nanking where hundreds of thousands of civilians were murdered.   Or how they murdered over 250,000 civilians in China over the Doolittle Raid over Tokyo.  In the town of Ihwang, “They shot any man, woman, child, cow, hog, or just about anything that moved, They raped any woman from the ages of 10 – 65, and before burning the town they thoroughly looted it.”

Then we have the modern Stalin apologists who claim that no one killed all those millions of people in Russia, and if millions did die; it wasn't Stalin's fault, but if millions did die, and Stalin did order those deaths, they claim murdering millions was necessary because he was trying to save millions more from the maniacs within his government.  Imagine that, and it gets worse.   According to these leftist misfits, Stalin and Baria, his chief of the secret police, were in reality the heroes, not the villains, and all the evidence to the contrary constitutes a conspiracy of lies.  

Whatever our faults - compared to the rest world's nations - we stand tall.

We’ve entered a long period of historical ignorance here in a country where there’s more information available from more sources than ever in human history – and we’re ignorant of it.  For me that goes beyond frustrating.  Thanksgiving has now come and gone, and it's clear the meaning is also gone.  

Our foundational structure as a society and culture is predicated on:

• Free speech
• Freedom of the press
• Religious freedom
• Freedom to petition our government
• Freedom of assembly

All of which is guaranteed in our Constitution and all of which is now under serious attack.  What happens when the enforcers of law are the breakers of law? 

Why is it so many in leadership roles in government, the media, entertainment and industry insist America is a racist swamp keeping people down?  If that was so then I think this question is in serious need of answering.

Why is it all these minorities keep wanting to come here even if it means violation of our immigration laws, and why aren't our minorities wanting to move there?  

It's been estimated that from 1959 to 1994 16,000 Cubans died at sea trying to escape–that’s an average of almost 500 people per year.  Why would they leave that socialist "paradise" risking the treacherous 90 miles to freedom on a makeshift, ill-equipped boat or even a raft, in order to come to this racist swamp?  Because America isn't a racist swamp, and as Trump said these countries are crap holes.   

They risk everything to be free, and that freedom is in America, with all our flaws, the world's shining example.  Not Cuba, China, Russia, Venezuela, and a host of other crap holes these leftists unendingly praise.  

Which bodes well another question.  Why aren't these prominent leftists, who are always condemning the United States, including successful minorities like Colin Kaepernick moving there?   I would like to see that question asked, and their answer.  

George Friedman posted an excellent article today in Geopolitical Futures, From the Earth to the Moon, discussing what it took to accomplish that mission and the character of the people who performed that task, all of which I think is a reflection of what really America is.  In the final two paragraphs he ends with this:

There are many things I regret in America, and so many I admire. But none brings greater glory than the courage and hubris of Apollo 11 and the rest. When the history of Athens is told, the tale is of Plato and Aristotle and the navy that destroyed the Persians, not the oppression and cruelty Athens showed. It is the triumph, the glory of Athens, that is remembered.

We are too close to the Apollo missions to understand them. It seems banal to speak of it. We speak incessantly of the sins of America, but when America is remembered in 2,000 years, it will be not for its failures, which it shares with all nations, but for its glory, in opening the universe to humanity. Hopefully, some will remember the harsh discipline of its pilots and engineers, who suppressed fear to carry out the mission. Their obsession was their duty. We are too close to them to realize their place in history, but those who come after us will grasp what they did and understand the fact that others did not do it. That’s glory.

I agree with his analysis but I also hope America will be remembered for how it brought more people out of misery, suffering and squalor than any nation in history.  That's glory!