Tear Down The Walls
Their currently is a climate in these United States of
America for building more barriers and walls between people. As if we didn’t already have enough man made, legal, social, religious,
and other types of barriers. That includes the building of physical and
emotional walls. One candidate for the
office of President of the United States advocates building of a wall along the
border between the United States and Mexico.
In thinking of the history of the development of the United States one
thinks of what would have happened if Native Americans had constructed a wall
along the Atlantic shoreline to keep settlers out?
When history does not favor those in authority, history is
ignored, overlooked or even changed to rationalize past behaviors. I still think of those families now well off
economically in this country who have ancestors who may have taken advantage of
Native Americans and/or who owned slaves in this country. Do those families talk about that part of
their family’s history? Is that history
discussed at family reunions? On
occasion the government of the United States has apologized for various
incidents where the government authorized or contributed to mistreatment of
people. Our government needs to once and
for all purge itself of past incidents it never truly have disavowed. The annihilation of the Native American
culture was a Hitleristic type act. In
this country we have all types of museums but is there a museum celebrating and
remembering the Native Americans and what they contributed to the land
currently known as the United States of America?
There are many who support the Presidential candidate who
wants to put up physical walls to keep people out of the United States. They know from the experiences of Native
Americans that giving people from outside the country an opportunity to improve
their lives may take away opportunity and resources from those people already
here. The descendants of those European-Americans
do not want to be in the situation that Native Americans were in.
The world has long been a globe consisting of borders, lines
drawn on maps to separate us into our appropriate quadrants. Countries, cities, towns, states. We have taken what God gave us and due to our
human faults developed a system where little is shared. We need our individual “stuff”. We refuse to take actions that can bring us
closer together. We often find it hard
to just disagree and compromise on issues that we cannot agree on. We hide behind our labels, “conservative”,
“liberal”, “socialist”. Democrat,
Republican, Independent. “Majority
rules” is seen as some perfect method of resolving issues. If more than half of a group favors one
direction on an issue, somehow that is the correct choice? History has shown that is not always the
case. The only thing majority rules
proves is that we firmly believe the principle regardless of how faulty it is.
If something is a foundation of your belief, you really don’t want to look at
it with skepticism and doubt.
The time seems appropriate to start moving towards actions
and decisions that bind us more together.
Continued belief in a system where there is a “loser” or a group of
people are pushed to the side does nothing for us as a collective. Conflicts continue, wars continue. Isn’t it time for another approach?
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