Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
If you've done awful things in the past, by all means....confess; go to therapy; get it off your chest and move on. If other people have done awful things in the past, that's on their conscience, (or should be), not yours.
If you're a child molester, you deserve to be punished. If your grandfather was a child molester, you don't. If you feel you 'owe' the world something, why not do good deeds?
If you consider people members of groups, rather than as individuals, then of course, everybody did "awful" things in the past; but if you believe in 'group guilt', then apply it evenly, across the board. Accept the guilt that you're due, rather than enter a 'guilt contest' to see who can accept the most. Most people won't accept any at all. If you have a conscience, you're way ahead of most of the world.
Quote:
Originally Posted by allydriver
Why should the non participants feel the least bit guilty?
It's not that we should feel guilty for something we didn't do, it's that Americans should realize that the country they live in was not justly acquired or built. We stole the land from natives and slaves built the country.
In other words, we are quietly reaping the benefits of attrocities without recognizing it, that's why I feel guilty.
Turkey - Armenian Genocide
N.Korea - 40 years of starving its citizens
Russia - Lenin and Soviets killed tens of millions
China - Mao and the general starvation resulting from his central planned economy
Vietnam - Killing all capitalists and confiscating their wealth and property
Germany - Nazis
Cambodia - Pol Pot
Mymar/Burma - killing all gov't dissidents
Argentina - during dictatorship, killing gov't dissidents, giving their babies to award party loyality
Muslims in the Sahel region of Africa still to this day are slavers
Africa in general
It's not that we should feel guilty for something we didn't do, it's that Americans should realize that the country they live in was not justly acquired or built. We stole the land from natives and slaves built the country.
In other words, we are quietly reaping the benefits of attrocities without recognizing it, that's why I feel guilty.
"We" did steal the land from the natives, as a society...yes. My wife is a 'native', so I get at least partial credit for 'making things right' . Other than that, Dallas, (and you sound like a good person), can you name a country, offhand, which WASN'T stolen from its natives? Iceland, maybe...I can't think of any others. Very few groups, let alone individuals, today live on land which didn't once belong to someone else. 99% of the time, the 'transfer of title' involved force and coercion.
Slavery? Yes, we had it (some of us...not anyone remotely related to me). So did a large portion of the human race. We, here, voluntarily ended our slavery, and have spent considerable effort and money, over many years, in trying to atone for the injustice "we" did. My family wasn't even IN America when "we" had slaves....so I'm not sure just how much guilt I bear..but I'm willing to 'make it right' any way I can...within reason.
A lot of us recognize the atrocities of the past, are well aware of them, and are determined not to repeat it. Take it from my wife of 40 years...she may have "lost" a continent, but given the choice, she'd rather be living now, in this society, than back "then", in pre-Columbian America. The past is gone, and all who lived in it are now dead. Live a good life; be kind; be sensitive; profit by not repeating the wrongs of others. You'll do just fine...and wil still be WAY ahead of most of the human race...believe me.
We agree macmeal, I was just trying to force people to recognize that the U.S. isn't above reproach when it comes to human rights.
Understood. In fact, I'd say NO country is above reproach; it's just that the majority of them don't care to discuss it, have no interest in atoning for anything they've done, and simply see themselves as 'blameless' on all counts. Self-reproach is a rare quality among nations; it speaks well of the national character, in my opinion.
Just as your purpose was to force people to recognize our complicity in past wrongs, mine is to remind us that admitting our wrongs shows that we're on the way to making up for them. Hopefully it will also insure we don't repeat them.
It certainly sounds like that to me. If we are so bad why do so many people try to get in and so few try to get out? For some reason I hear all those things about the penning up of the Japanese but very few of those who are really worried were around on December 7, 1941. Those of us who were small children at that time were afraid of Japanese after that attack at Pearl Harbor.
People talk all the time about slavery and I don't agree with them. No intelligent farmer really mistreats his work animals and that is what slaves really were. You hear about beatings , starving and all those things and surely on plantations it took place but in more cases than not it was overseers who usually got replaced.
I agree with you that it is mostly young progressives who get so excited about this subject and that is because it is the kind of crap they hear from progressives in school.
No intelligent farmer really mistreats his work animals and that is what slaves really were.
I agree with you that it is mostly young progressives who get so excited about this subject and that is because it is the kind of crap they hear from progressives in school.
Slaves weren't work animals, they were people.
Are you saying that we shouldn't teach Civil Rights in school?
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
crocodile tears for the world
. Other than that, Dallas, (and you sound like a good person), can you name a country, offhand, which WASN'T stolen from its natives? Iceland, maybe...I can't think of any others. Very few groups, let alone individuals, today live on land which didn't once belong to someone else. 99% of the time, the 'transfer of title' involved force and coercion.
