America’s Shame?

In the movie America:  Imagine the World Without Her, writer and producer Dinesh D’Souza addresses many of the accusations raised by members of leftist groups who attack the heritage of America.  Such groups accuse America of being an imperialistic nation built on slavery, theft, and conquest.  Going back to Columbus, leftists ask, Didn’t Columbus enslave over 500 Native Americans and take them back to Portugal with him?  The answer is Yes, but that had nothing to do with the United States of America.  The discovery of this New World may have given the Pilgrims a place to land, but it does not mean the acts of the discoverer are the fault of those who came after.

Well, they may reply, Americans stole land from the Native Americans.  That is true—acquisition of the Black Hills by way of the February Act of 1877 was in direct opposition to the Fort Laramie Treaty signed in 1851.  Tribal lawyer Richard Case presented this argument starting in the 1920s.  Then in 1956, attorneys Marvin Sonosky and Arthur Lazarus took over the case ending with victory in the 1980s.  The United States supreme Court planned to award the Sioux Nation 105 million dollars as compensation.  However, the Sioux Nation rejected the award because they feared in so doing they would officially be selling their land. This manifests that the United States government attempted to right an unjustified decision made many years before.

Leftists also tend to point out that America gained quite a bit of land as a result of the Mexican American War.  However, they fail to mention that the United States believed it had been attacked on its own soil.  The government claimed that U.S. territory lead all the way to the Rio Grande, citing the Treaties of Velasco.  They sent a secret representative, John Slidell, to Mexico City to insure the Rio Grande was the border of U.Ss territory and to purchase California.  Mexico was in no shape to negotiate, as the presidency and other ministries had each changed hands four times in 1846. The Mexicans considered Slidell’s presence an insult.  Slidell thought Mexico should be chastised and returned to the confirmed U.S. territories.  President James Polk ordered General Zachary Taylor to move his forces south to the Rio Grande.  This resulted in the Thornton Affair where Mexican soldiers attacked a patrol and killed 16 American soldiers.  The war began May 13, 1846, with America rising as the victor two years later.  Even though they decimated the Mexican forces, the- U.S. returned a little over half of Mexico’s land, paying a little less than half of the original offer.

The bottom line is that many times facts are hyperbolized for the purpose of twisting us against our own country.  With a little clarification, one can see that America is not always the villain it is often painted to be by those intending to remove our liberties.