Quote:vorticity wrote:When I learned US History, my teacher's opinion was that the country had committed three great sins in its existence; slavery, basically everything we ever did to the natives for a century and a half or so post-independence, and Japanese internment. I think that that sounds about right... and it's telling that the aftereffects of resolving the last of those (the civil rights struggles of the 1960s) happened a generation before mine. Yes, there are places where the social repercussions haven't fully shaken themselves out (not this part of the country, I might add), but the legal issue was pretty much settled back then.
Americans, for all their flaws, are much better at recognizing the colossal fuck-ups in their past.
As far as wars of expansion go, how bad they're considered seems to depend on how far back they were. We haven't done that for a good bit over a hundred years (Spanish-American War in 1898 was the last, if my memory serves), so I'd say our reputation is fairly clean on that aspect of things. There may just be people alive who remember it, but for all intents and purposes, our last war of expansion is outside living memory. Everything after that was about defending people we like, or toppling rulers we didn't like- not necessarily shining examples of truth and justice, yes, but morally gray at worst.
Not saying any nation is perfect, just that Japan's about 40-45 years behind us on the whole 'quitting imperialistic expansion' thing, and should be more conscious and- dare I say it?- contrite over it. Like Germany is. Oh, and Russia needs to go back into rehab, since they seem to have relapsed.
My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.
I've been writing a bit.