The Past is the Key to Our Future
- Margaret Blare
- Mar 6, 2021
- 7 min read
Updated: Mar 8, 2021
When does the future slip into the past? What happens if America’s days of honor become her shame and the truth become lies? How will America’s history be recorded? Self-righteous or self-loathing? These are the questions we will ponder today.
The United States of America is known as the ”Shining Light” to the world. A place where the American Dream can be pursued for all who comes to her shores. The eutopian home of equal rights, freedom, and democracy.
History remembers a dirty, dusty land with barely a glimmer of light to guide its Founding Fathers. The Mayflower landed that fateful day to wild, untamed territory, but powerful nations are not built without hard work, torches do not shine without “polishing,” and dreams do not come true without waking.
During this blog, we will examine the “tarnish” our ancestors scrubbed from this country and examine what it means to be an American. After all, in order for America to indeed be transformed into that “Shining City on a Hill,” the Dream that lies within its Constitution must flourish upon its Shores. It must change its People from unworthy traitors, criminals, and betrayers of the Crown into honorable patriots and citizens of the Nation. Into people who are willing and able to bear Lady Liberty’s message of Freedom and Liberty to the far reaches of the world as they know it. To lift her torch high as to light those who have lost or need to find their way to freedom, in America or elsewhere around the world.
That is the American Dream.
Lady Liberty . . . What does this monarch actually soymbolize? Liberation? Freedom? Democracy? Hope?
If you think about it? Was Ellis Island, New York the best place for her to lift her arm in welcome? Really? Or is it New Jersey? Wow, even our country‘s iconic footprints of Freedom are a source of controversy. And right out in the open for the entire world to see! Oh well, nobody needs to know that before (and after) 1886, Ellis Island was a fort. No statue, no park, simply Fort Gibson.Yep our welcome mat was a war terminal.
The two islands which comprise Liberty National Park are fascinating from a distance. Can you imagine the young dirty immigrant child straining to see anything through the crowd pushing to the ship’s rail? He looks up and sees a gold flame in a crusty green hand followed by a long harm trailing down to that spiked crown. The broad nose of the statue and the remainder of Lady Liberty is lost in the crush of heads and voices surround him, but he didn’t mind.
He was in America. He was home.
This is the same story as millions and millions of Americans and that number continues to rise each day. I refuse to let this particular history fade into the dust because somebody doesn’t like something they did or said. Every person’s words deserve to be remembered in a country that professes freedom of speech. Their actions deserve to taught in a land made from blood and sweat. Yes, even if they are right, wrong, or indifferent to particular ideas of the formation of the Country‘s ideals taught IN or OUT of a classroom, home, pulpit, business, or diplomatic house of debate or simply because this nation implies dreams comes true simply by walking across a border— win, lose or draw..
IS THIS NEW COUNTRY ONE THAT DID THINGS THE RIGHT WAY? WERE WE MORAL OR CORRECT IN OUR METHODS?
YOU TELL ME.
We are not a nation of perfect people and perfect morals, but we are a nation of perfect ideals. This nation promises freedom, but not free entitlements to enjoy it except to one collective People’s, the Indian Nations. Our nation offers liberty, but it cannot force every citizen to operate within the law to keep it. Is that the fault of the nation or the person? Again, you tell me.
Do we have the RIGHT to erase the past simply because it no longer politically lies within our cultural context, is appropriate to our cause, politically correct, aligns with the new future for America, goals for the People, our race, gender, or status, or our “kind?”
How does erasing who we are and how we became that way HONOR this Country OR ANY of the citizens who gave their lives as well as any possibility for a future on this planet with the People of this Nation?
Or are you one who actually believes their sacrifice was simply benefit your existence? Based on the behavior, the actions taken recently, I would have to say the latter.
What actions? Historical monuments torn from foundations and reduced to rubble. Iconic figures from the past who fought for the rights of those of their own people stripped from their places in history simply because they were on the wrong side, and lives destroyed due to chains of prejudice that which still rule many hearts and minds today on both sides of a conflict which will never end—the trust and truth within the citizens of the Free.
Why would these horrible years to the construction of our Nation be necessary to teach our children and reflect upon as adults instead wiped from the memory banks of the world? Some may say they are a blight on an other GREAT NATION, others may say the first and last, but I say Truth breeds Trust between People.
Pain is never forgotten. And to bury a war—to hide it— to change it— to erase it—is as good as telling those families whose loved ones gave up all they owned and died for it —is a lie. That their entire world was transformed without JUST cause.
And that, my friends, simply allows a war — thought to be won — to be fought once again.
Not with guns and knives but hate, bias, and discrimination. Vicious rhetoric, impulsive acts, and nonsensical plots to achieve rights and dreams already won but simply forgotten as if the river of American blood had never ran across the Mason-Dixon Line.
Instead, fresh blood is pouring again for an old cause. And this war will never be over as long as long as the Truth is buried and Trust is a fleeting thing in America.
Who is doctoring the history books and leading the march for the destruction of American people? Many consider it to be the ones barking, crying, or owning about racism, injustice for prisoners, voting issues, etc. But is that who is behind the disappearance of our history? I don’t think so..
What about those behind the assassinations of President Abraham Lincoln and President John F. Kennedy? Who convinced and helped President Nixon commit crimes against his Office and his country? But most of all, those who are composing their own version of history as it is to be remembered especially the American Civil War, focusing only on slavery as the main cause when in fact, it entailed much, much more.
Now why would anyone today want to do that? Do you know? It comes back to the three reasons ANYBODY does anything in life. Do you remember what they are? POWER, MONEY, or LOVE (SEX).
What does obliterating the original reasons for the Civil War gain? Well, let’s look at the original reasons first. Reasons such as Trade Routes, French and Spanish Trade, Tobacco, Sugar, Cotton, and Spice production, and above all, the major source of goods, services and immigration (besides Ellis Island, Baltimore, and Canada.) These facts not only were a serious threat of the South winning the Civil War that are NOT mentioned or even emphasized in the history books today. But did you know that France pledged allegiance to the South which in and of itself threatened to dissolve their treaty with the North (the U.S. Government). France was also persuading to bring Canada into alliance with the South which would strategically place Washington, D.C. in a weak if not fatal position for winning the War. Those details are not mentioned in the history books any longer although they occurred. All that is read about now is Slavery and President Lincoln’s desire to abolish it.
What did focusing the Nation on Slavery in the middle of the conflict do for President Lincoln and the Civil War? Redirect the attention of the conflict OFF the original reasons that the fighting began in the first place— the trade wars– money, not liberty.
Please do not misunderstand what I am saying! By no means, am I implying that liberty is not a reason to go to war, it is. However, I am saying that the Civil War did not start because of Slavery. It was ended because of it though.
IT IS TIME WE STOP ROMANCING THE PAST, EXTRACTING WHAT WE WANT, TEARING DOWN OUR HISTORY BECAUSE WE DO NOT WANT TO EXAMINE THE TRUTH OF WHO WE WERE, ARE, AND COULD BE.
IT’S PAST TIME TO EXAMINE THE TRUTH THAT LIES WITHIN EACH OF US REGARDING OUR PAST.
1. We subjected the Indian NATIONS to enormous cruelty, genocide, and racial subjugation. They are still on the reservations the Government placed them on in the 1800s. Their women and children are being raped and murdered and the cases and numbers are not tracked by the FBI. The cases disappear as fast as the women.
2. Only 500 of 7000 Rare Diseases in the known database are funded by the U.S. Government and are coded for diagnoses and treatment in the U.S. Healthcare System. The remainder have little to no funding, research, or assistance available for any US citizen who has or possibly has the disease.
3. Prejudice against a mixed-breed man, woman, or child of any tribe, culture, or race is the worst form known on earth. Why? They fit in no culture without the other becoming a stumbling block for them or those around them. Hate, vitriol, and bullying are the first words and emotions usually to greet these citizens rather than life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
4. Racism is based on color, creed, or condition. Racism unfortunately is not dead in America. It is found in families, friendships, churches, workplaces, neighborhoods, towns, cities, counties and parishes, states and regions— in other words, lives, loves and everywhere. It isn’t limited to one tribe, one color, or one race. It comes with breeding, teaching, training, and raising. Oh, and personality. The only way to stop the cancer of racism in America is to cut it out at its root.
To Realize We can All be Racist and Not Racist at the Same Time.
We are Americans. That means we are all different but that doesn’t mean any of us are “better.” We can be PROUD of our heritage and where we came from! That doesn’t need to make us greater or egotistical. It simply makes us Americans!
And we ALL must remain AMERICANS FIRST!
AND TRUST THAT THIS NATION CAN BE WHAT WE CLAIM IT TO BE. NOT WITH REWRITING OUR HISTORY, BUT BY ACCEPTING IT AND BEING BETTER BECAUSE OF IT, NOT WORSE.
Truth and Trust: A Journey with God: Blog by Renee Blare
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