Goodbye, America | 5 Minute Video
How is America to be defined? By its failures or its triumphs? Today, there seems to be an obsession with the former and a dismissal of the latter. Is this dark vision of the freest and most prosperous nation on earth an accurate narrative or a cynical distortion? James Robbins, columnist for USA Today and author of “Erasing America,” considers that question in this video. How we view America’s past will very much shape America’s future.
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Script:
Do you remember America?
If you read about it in a history textbook, you probably learned about a land of oppression, racism, sexism, income inequality, police brutality, and imperial wars. (Aside from that, it was a great place.)
That is how America is portrayed in most American high schools and colleges—and in America’s media, films, and by its progressive politicians.
In the words of filmmaker Michael Moore, America is “a nation founded on genocide, built on the backs of slaves, and maintained through the subjugation of women to second-class citizenship and economic disempowerment.”
Is that America’s history? Is that who Americans were—and are?
George Orwell understood that the most effective way to destroy a people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.
History is much more than a collection of facts. History, and our understanding of it, tells us who we are as a people in the same way your personal memories and experiences define and shape who you are.
Wipe out your memory, and you wipe out your identity.
When you raise a generation of Americans to hold their country’s past in contempt by exaggerating America’s faults and ignoring its triumphs, then they will have no respect for American institutions or the beliefs on which the nation is based.
It hasn’t always been this way. Until the last few decades, liberals and conservatives alike shared a common understanding of America’s origins, its history, and its mission of spreading liberty—within America and around the world.
They recognized America as the country of the Pilgrims and Jamestown, of the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence, of the individual rights won through revolution and secured in the U.S. Constitution.
This was the country of the frontier spirit and of almost unlimited possibilities; the country that paid for the sin of slavery with the carnage of its Civil War; of economic dynamism and endless invention; of unparalleled individual opportunity; and the country that defeated fascism and communism in the 20th century.
Previous generations took all this for granted and reveled in it.
So what changed?
Starting in the 1960s, a new, so-called “progressive,” narrative took hold that sought not to uplift, inspire, and unite, but to demean, degrade and divide. It sought to replace the pride of American achievement with shame.
Ironically, this all happened while America was making extraordinary strides in civil rights—especially for minorities and women.
But anything less than perfection—which can never exist, given that every society is composed of flawed human beings—is now considered a total failure; and victims of the past are elevated as an indictment of the present.
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Goodbye, america
“White Americans are the only people in the world who lie about their history in order to make themselves look worse”
Usted quiere borrar y olvidar, obviar HECHOS de la Historia…???
Realidades como el comercio de esclavos…??.
No ver el diario trato racista en sus calles…??
Decir que no existen muertos en otros países por soldados de su país…???
El futuro no es "espontáneo". Sin raíces, no son nada, nadie. Porqué no admitir los propios errores…???
It is gone already !
America has flaws, but then so does every nation. We learn from our flaws, and try to do better. No nation will be perfect, because people are imperfect. America has grown so much as a nation. I am not ashamed of America. I am proud to be an American, and I am thankful to God for this country.
This country is polluted with WOKE socialists…and corrupt politicians… Bureaucrats that are entrenched in every agency of our government that are completely above the rule of law. TERRIBLE what has become of our great nation.
Senator McCarthy was right after all uh? Communism was totally infiltrated in USA.
Yay!
Attempts to recognize history as selective were wrong from the start. In American history, freedom and slavery, equality and racism, opportunity and discrimination all exist. Do not insist on a biased view of history, and accept the guilt as well as the glory of the United States.
America is the one of the best countries in the world with all its mistakes and problems, prosperity and development and there's no doubt America is the country of opportunities , the place where liberty and justice for all are .
America!?
I think we have to learn from both sides of history it gives us a broader understanding like a sense of balance so we won’t take too much pride in America I’ll remember America in both ways to have a understanding
One in seven: .1428
WHO BANNED MERRY CHRISTMAS AND THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE?? I WANNA SEE WHERE YOU FOUND THAT!!
1:37 why do you think that? The progressives were fighting against the traditionalists. Ironic? Do you even know what progressivism is? Probably not since your are on here talking like this.
The progressive narrative did not 'replace the American pride with shame', you idiot. It just says that segregation isn't right, and that was the main thing in the 60s for it. The traditionalist narrative is the one that demeans, degrades and divides the people. Who do you think MLK was? A traditionalist? I'm not saying all conservatives are racist, I'm just saying at that time, the conservatives were fighting to keep and conserve the segregation laws, and the progressives were fighting to remove them and progress in to a better society.
So don't learn the actual history of the country? Teaching real history is bad I guess. You know, learning the history of my country doesn't make me who I am, so that was a dumb thing to say.
The little pilgrims who made friends with the natives isn't the full story, not at all. And the US didn't 'defeat facsism and communism'.
The schools here don't make the US look bad, like you guys think, it actually does the opposite. Anyway, if they were making it look bad, why would they still have the daily pledge of allegiance? They always taught that it was good with freedom. The Christopher Columbus stuff was just summed up as him finding the US and making friends with the natives of it. That's it. He was portrayed as a good guy. The slavery thing was just the underground railroad and some famous ones who rebelled and saved others. That's most of the slavery taught to me from the schools.
Also you know the 'progressive narrative' you were talking about from the 1960s was about civil rights, right? MLK was a progressive. Progressivism is moving forward and improving from past mistakes (can't do that if you don't learn the actual history), rather than keeping the bad traditions, like the segregation and lack of rights for others. Basically you are saying that segregation laws should have stayed and teaching the bad things the country did is evil and 'not respecting the country'.
Very smart.
We really need to foget the pass go and working on the present moment instead , otherwise we will make the situation get worsen . Yes America history is ugly , yes America used to have slaves , yes they killed millions of people before , yes trump is suck , but look if you compare this country to other parts of the world…( NOT the best ) but it's better then most of them…and I know some of you hate the US I TOO don't really like the US , but it's gonna be pizza with pinapples on or an over cooked one . U choose .
Well, I know I’m going to bust some bubbles, but America is under God’s judgement for rejecting the King James Bible and for attacking Israel.
Attacking, correcting, and replacing the King James Bible was America’s first lethal faux pas and this didn’t start in the 60s or 70s it goes as far back as the mid to late 19th century…and from there God’s blessings went WHOOOSH out of this nation.
To 0:46, yeah that is what George Orwell believed, but what he meant by that was not that making people believe that history was horrible would destroy a people, but that making people believe history was AMAZING would destroy a people. That was kinda the ENTIRE POINT OF THE BOOK "1984". STOP twisting peoples words for the benefit of yourself.
Henry Ford paid his workers 5 dollars a day, which was good money in 1914. He had two problems, how to stop his high rate of turnover and how to sell more cars.
By building the cars on an assembly line, he could make them relatively inexpensive but still somewhat out of reach of the average American. So doubling the wages
of his employees produced more people who could buy his cars and also produced people who weren't going to quit. He created the American middle class.
He did it to sell more cars, yes. But I don't see how his employees were being exploited. They had a very good standard of living. They could now buy homes, cars and luxuries.
I wish everyone in america can go back to loving our country just like the north korea and china
This is some pretty good history erasure from someone who cites Orwell at the beginning of the video.
the dislikes came from ppl who have been succesfully brainwashed by bigtec-cough-couch- big brother
Mr. James Robbins, I agree with everything except your dating of when things began to change. You put it in the 1960s, but that is only when it first became visible. In the early 1900s the Fundamental Christians removed themselves from the secular debate, basically because they didn't feel up to debating Darwin. Only they didn't just remove Christians from political and scientific debate, but entertainment, the field of law, and medicine, not to mention the various branches of the media and education. Without Christians in these areas godless people stepped in and raised up a generation that knew little about the God of our Fathers, the Creator of the Universe, or even basic honor and respect. These were the children of the 60s. So you see, it's a long struggle getting back to where we should be because some Christians just took their ball and went home many years ago. Now as a Christian today I find my work cut out for me, but I also find the liberal's teachings highly inadequate.
America is the greatest nation on earth with the greatest acheivments and history 🇺🇲❤🇺🇲❤🇺🇲❤🇺🇲❤🇺🇲
Personally, I’ve been on three different continents. This is the best country on Earth!!!
i don't quite understand this:
if american citizens hate their country so much, what's stopping them from getting a passport, packing up their entire life and emigrate to another country?
Beat the snot out of that strawman.
Moore is a fool. Slavery kept the South feudal while the North industrialized. Slavery enriched slave owners but slow the economic development of the South. The industrial might of the North is one reason the South was defeated.
Back when he was Soviet premier, Nikita Khrushchev told Americans that their children and grandchildren would be communists. Thirty years ago when the Soviet Union fell, that idea seemed to have been proven wrong, but now it looks like he may not have been that far off after all.
America has always been problematic. We're judgemental, quick to hate and condemn. It tends to color our good traits.
We have two awful political parties, neither of which seem interested in working Americans and citizens. The Democrats have become far worse in the past dozen years. We desperately need change.
unfortunately there is no way out of it. the bible clearly says the end to this corrupted system will come…and soon.
The only constitution that actually codified the ownership of slaves was the Confederate constitution, as in the constitution of the Confederate States of America. A country I might add that only lasted for four years before it was destroyed
❤️🇺🇸
This is legit 1984 shit. Never have I ever seen so much lies in a video.
The pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock. Not Jamestown. Jamestown was the Virginia Company.
Who's destroying America? The professors in the colleges and universities. Their teachings have spread, slowly at first, but steadily accelerating, until they have now infected all our institutions – schools, media, entertainment, sports, government, and now, even the military.
Those who will not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it, but those who cannot forgive the past will never escape it. Understanding of the sins in our past, while also acknowledging the truth and core upon which this nation was founded (a truth she failed to live up to, at least at first) is the key to making this a better place.