The United States isn’t so perfect after all

By Mackenzie Dahlberg

Ever since the United States first became a country, it was a hot spot for most people and families. It was a place to start over, to get a new life. 

As the country gets older, students and even adults in the  country have a tendency to be blinded by the truth. Throughout K-12, we are taught  in history class that the U.S. was a step ahead of every single country when it came to their rights. 

We learned about freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and every other freedom­. These benefits gave most people a reason to immediately buy a ticket to the U.S.

America has done horrendous things that most people know about. Things like introducing the world to nuclear warfare by bombing two different cities, falling into a Civil War less than 100 years into being a country, and completely taking advantage of their French Ally. Not everything the U.S. has done is bad, but the fact that we never focus on them could be mean the demise of the country itself. 

The U.S. also has the tendency to point the blame at other countries, much like a little toddler wiggling a finger at a friend. 

The number one example is the fact that the U.S. has a holocaust museum in D.C. to show people Germany’s faults, even though I’ve talked to people that knew nothing about America’s mistakes like the Trail of Tears, or the use of  Japanese Internment Camps during WW11. 

According to history.com, Japanese Internment camps were started by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. These camps were claimed to be established because of the Pearl Harbor bombing. Anytime between 1942 and 1945, it was the policy of the U.S. government to inter any person that was of Japanese descent. It is said that the internment camps were the harshest violations of civil rights in the U.S. in the 1900s.

Executive Order 9066, signed by Franklin Roosevelt to try and prevent espionage in the U.S. affected 117,000 people’s lives, the majority actually being U.S. citizens. 

Due to many people not knowing about the internment camps in the United States, people don’t know that both Canada and Mexico followed the U.S. in relocation of Japanese residents to camps.

Japanese internment camps were placed closer to the West coast, the first camp operating in Manzanar, California. Between the years that the policy was in use, there were 10 camps opened in California, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Arkansas. To state that the U.S. is better than Nazi Germany wouldn’t necessarily be wrong, but you should know everything before you rate how much better the United States is.

The truth? It’s hard to say. The U.S. isn’t a terrible country, but people in our country have to start realizing that citizens and generations have made mistakes, every one has. 

Those mistakes are to be taken and learned from, so we don’t fall into a repetitive, horrific trend. Citizens should also learn from other countries. There isn’t anything wrong with having things like the Holocaust museum in the U.S., the problem comes when citizens know more about bad things other counties have done instead of the few faults the U.S. has had in the past.

In Germany, they are taught about the Holocaust in Elementary school so that children realize their country isn’t perfect, and that the nation doesn’t want to repeat something like that. 

If they incorporated that in the U.S., patriotism would be diminished, but not completely gone. 

We shouldn’t think the world revolves around the U.S. That is a good thing to learn and know, because we simply don’t. 

The U.S. is still a good country, with great rights and opportunities, but we need to be aware of  our faults so we can make the future better. Most importantly, we need to make sure we don’t repeat the past.