Rick Moran writes for PJMedia.com about teaching young people to love America.
We know what this constant emphasis on America’s sins does to a child’s views of America. How can you love a country when the only things you know about it are evil? …
… No nation or human is all good or all bad. In the case of America, the scale is definitely tilted toward the good. Not seeing that — not teaching that — is the biggest problem with educating children about America today.
For most of America’s first 200 years, the entire world was a dark, brutal place where the strong dominated the weak, women were chattel, blacks were seen as subhuman, and most immigrants were seen as invaders.
This had nothing to do with America or its founding. It’s how the entire world — people of every race, every religion, every society — saw the human race. To nitpick and find exceptions isn’t relevant to the fundamental proposition that ordinary people were oppressed and kicked around. That is, until America was invented.
Until a declaration citing the freedoms humans were entitled to by divine right and a Constitution of rules that favored the people over the powerful were written, there was literally no hope for women, for blacks, or for the oppressed in Europe. There was no template, no guidebook before America was born for people to find and fight for freedom.
No, America is still not a place of sweetness and light. But neither is it the dark, oppressive hell that the rest of the world used to be. And the reason it isn’t has nothing to do with Karl Marx and everything to do with George Washington.
… [T]ell your kids the stories of America that will inspire them. And stories that will make them think. You’ll be doing them and future generations a great service.
