Freedom and ignorance

Everyday you hear people talk about, tweet, post etc., about how our freedom is what makes us great, how we fought for our freedom and anyone who opposes us must die a painful death.

Well there are two sides to that story, the one side, the most commonly used, our independence from England and we deserved to live here.
The other side, that is rarely spoken of, is how we stole this country from the original settlers, the real first Americans, the Native Americans. "We didn't steal no land from them, we wanted to show them how to live life and they didn't wanna listen so we had to show them how strong and powerful we are so we went and took this land, MERICA!" - Literally someone said this to me. I went on to ask him about the largest genocide in the history of humanity, and when it was. He went on to talk about hitler and the jews. When I told him he was wrong he laughed in my face. I then began to tell him about the real largest genocide in history. The American Genocide of the Native Americans. He continued to laugh in my face. Refusing to face the fact that white people killed more than 12 million Native Americans. I kept providing facts, he kept denying them. Calling me Unamerican for believing that our great country would do that. His best argument was that there weren't even 12 million and when we came to America the whole east coast was deserted. Again, face-palm. After he was tired of being proven wrong, he changed the subject to the war on terrorism and if we weren't over there killin "them dang Muslims" they would be here now trying to kill us all. I asked him what he thought we should do and his response was simple, "blow them all up". When I tried to explain to him that not everyone who is muslim is a terrorist, he once again called me unamerican. If it is unamerican to not want to kill innocent people, then i'm not sure if I want to classify myself like that anymore.

The ignorance in this country and the belief that we are still the "greatest country in the world" is the biggest downfall to our society. We take pride that our country has the strongest military in the world. Yet we are okay with being the fattest country, okay with being 28th in education and the list goes on. We refuse to admit that our government system is a joke, and corupt, and if you even utter the words 9/11 in a negative fashion you are a crazy conspiracy theorist who should be a shamed to call himself an american. Well, you're right, I am ashamed. We always promise peace to places all over the world yet we are always involved in conflicts. Our leaders preach about how people around the world should have their rights, yet in our own country people are getting arrested, beaten, and sometimes killed for practicing their rights. Our society is to ignorant to face the facts, to realize that their ignorance is the reason why we allow our government to get away with anything they want. We are taught to fear them, well, they should fear us. We let those of power represent who we are, when they are not the majority, we are. We the people have a right to stand up for ourselves because even though we stole this country from the Original settlers, our founding fathers gave us the right to control our government. I guess we are just to ignorant to realize that.

I sometimes wish we never took over this land, or at least not the way we did. If we would have learned to adapt to the Native ways of this country, there would be no hatred, no government, no jail. We would learn to live with nature instead of on it. We could learn a lot from the native americans, because they are not the people we were taught they were. They were the most peaceful, loving people to walk this earth, and we killed 12 million of them. just like we killed Martin Luther King, Ghandi, John Lennon, JFK and others. Maybe George Carlin was right, I guess we just aren't ready for that yet. Someday, someday soon, I really hope we are. Because this life we are living is not the way it is supposed to be lived.

a reply to: solemind4

I must tell you despite all the purported issues around freedoms being taken, people being jailed, mass protests etc..my life is pretty damn good.

I'm in my 40's and I have a great family, my kids have some great friends and luckily their parents are mental cases, awesome neighbors and I'm satisfied with my job.

Sure their is a lot of stuff going on both here and abroad but I can't complain. I wouldn't say I'm numb to everything but despite getting sucked into the occasional dysfunction/paranoia of ATS things are going well for a lot of people. I give what I can and help who I can help and that's all any of can do to make this world a better place.

You can say I'm ignorant but every now and then you need to step back and take a look at what you have...I just did after reading your post...and thanks.

And just remember that our founding fathers were just as crooked as the current leaders...the only difference is that today our leaders have much more to gain with a larger reach. People left England to have a better life and live free and fast forward today we are now continuing the colonization not through us physically sitting our ass in a country but through other means to occupy and control..

You should google the dark side of our founding fathers...

a reply to: chrismarco

I appreciate your opinion, and I can't say that my life is bad either cause it is far from it. I'm 22 years old with a family that loves me and great friends as well.

I can admit to being ignorant is well. Ignorance is something that I feel we all have to over come because it's natural to want to stand your ground when someone is saying youre wrong and that is fine. People don't realize how good we have it and how fast things can change and that's why I try and keep an open mind in arguments because I am not always right, if ever, but it is nice to see for myself how things work and not just be told what to believe.

I will have to look that up, because as I have said in other threads, in school we only learn about the good our history has done.

a reply to: solemind4

S&F to you! You are for sure the 1st American I have heard talk this way. I agree with you a 100% and pretty much say the same when ever discussing the USA.
Actually way back in school I had a professor who argued that America is an "illegal/criminal" country. H based his arguments on the fact; - that unlike the French revolution, the American revolution was a revolution of a "colony/province". This very fact makes it a criminal event and not a revolution. Unlike France a few years later the people revolted against the "system". However during the American revolution, the people in the UK had no intention to "revolt" against the "system".
One of the most disturbing documents that I had ever seen so was the deceleration of war in 1812 where in one line it says that; - loosely quoted: "The purpose being to remove the British powers from the continent and finally remove the natives as well..."
This read pretty damn close to the Wansee conference of 41 where the "final solution" was debated.
Quite disturbing little tidbits of history that are unfortunately never taught in the class room.

Isn't the French and British the ones who killed the most Indians? And anyone who thinks that we Americans are free must not pay taxes.

originally posted by: Fylgje
Isn't the French and British the ones who killed the most Indians? And anyone who thinks that we Americans are free must not pay taxes.

No. because the real genocide began wit the push west wards, - AFTER the USA had been established. On top of this the French had a pretty good relation ship with the Indians. Most of the French settlers and explorers were strongly involved in the fur trade. The French additionally seemed to appreciate that the native women had less of the afflictions of the "white sickness": "Not tonight my dear; I got a headache..."