Actor Alec Baldwin wallows in hatred for Donald Trump. Recently he told us our president is a curse for the sins of America.
“The slaughter of Native Americans, slavery, Japanese internment, Vietnam. Every hateful, misogynistic, racist notion, intertwined with our basic nature, Trump embodies these. He is us.”
The far left has vomited this sort of garbage for decades. I don’t refer to the Trump hatred. I refer to the hatred of America. Creatures from the far left endlessly condemn this country for its history. A good example: Many of our founders owned slaves. Therefore the country they created is illegitimate.
Further examples: Pioneers from Europe slaughtered American Indians. Therefore… Our culture used to discriminate against women. Therefore… Our ancestors treated black Americans like dogs. Therefore…
The far left demands we feel guilty for these sins. They seed our movies, textbooks, novels and college courses with this thinking. The Bill Ayers, Reverends Wrights, Farrakhan and Sharpton often remind us of sins of earlier Americans. They insist we should lash ourselves with punishment. Various figures from the far left tell us this country is rotten to the core and illegitimate because of the evil in the mortar of its foundations.
I don’t buy it. For several reasons.
First, today’s Americans did not commit these “sins”. They should feel no guilt over what Americans did 100 or 200 years ago.
Second, people committed many of the “sins” of centuries past in ignorance. In ignorance, they killed sick people by bleeding them to death. They decimated those they considered savages. They beheaded gays. They hung people out of superstition. They truly believed themselves superior. How else could the British believe they had a right to rule over the masses of India?
The most “educated” and “enlightened” people of earlier eras believed stuff we disdain today. What most people consider to be human rights today never entered their heads. It is ridiculous for us to judge them only through today’s lenses.
Third, if America is illegitimate please tell me which country is not. If earlier Americans sinned, what country can fling the first stone? Pick a sinless country and historians will list its abominations.
Spain? Spaniards were mass butcherers a few centuries ago. The British? The French, Germans, Russians, Belgians, Portuguese, Chinese and Australians have histories filled with horrors. What country can boast no senseless violence? What country never mis-treated its native people? What country did not punish Jews for being Jews? The equivalent of the “sins” the far left denounces are everywhere in history. But our lefties only see them in our history.
And slavery? America was hardly Slave-Central. And we and the Brits surely did not invent it. In the early years of the nineteenth century three-quarters of all people alive were in some form of slavery or serfdom.
The far lefties cannot afford to be honest in all this guilt garbage. If they were, they would have to condemn every nation on earth.
Fourth, some of America’s “sins” deserve some defense. The far left screams about us waging war in Vietnam. Well, many Americans of that era feared the spread of communism. With damned good reason. It was, and is, barbarous. We tried to halt its spread in Vietnam. And in Korea.
People can certainly argue against war, any war. They can argue that we had no business waging war in these foreign lands. Others can argue that we were honorable in trying to shield millions from the nightmares of communism.
In Korea, we succeeded. People in North Korea live in a nightmare, often starving. People in South Korea the opposite. Only thanks to America’s armies and their sinful fighting.
In Vietnam, the communists succeeded. After 44 years of communist rule the Vietnamese are among the poorest in the world. Number 129th out of 195. They live in a prison camp of sorts. As Human Rights Watch puts it, “Vietnam’s human rights record remains dire in all areas.”
Was America’s war in Vietnam nothing more than sinful? It is open to debate. If South Koreans come to the debate they might well disagree with our far left crowd.
My two suggestions for Alex Baldwin, Robert DiNiro and other far left celebs: Please keep your hatred to yourself. Speak up when you have something constructive to contribute. And…before you spew again, please read a little history. Consider this country in the context of it.
From Tom…as in Morgan.
Find Tom on Facebook. You can write to Tom at tomasinmorgan@yahoo.com. You can watch his four plays TALES FROM THE EMPIRE at that website. You can order his novel THE LAST COLUMNIST on Amazon.