This is why I laugh about people holding up the US constitution as some sort of sacred document, when the right to free speech and the right to peaceably assemble has literally never been respected ever in the history of the country.
Not immediately after the country was founded and the Alien and Sedition acts were passed.
Not when abolitionists were protesting slavery.
Not when unionists were fighting for the right to collectively bargain.
Not during WWII when people were rounded up and put into camps for the crime of being Japanese.
Not during the red scare or the civil rights movement, and certainly not at any point after that.
…when the right to free speech and the right to peaceably assemble has literally never been respected ever in the history of the country.
Not immediately after the country was founded and the Alien and Sedition acts were passed.
Yeah, exactly, anyone paying attention in US History class should have picked up on this pretty quickly, that the US nearly immediately showed that it isn’t actually committed to to Bill of Rights with some kind of religious level of universal reverence, even though it is strongly implied that they were.
Bill of Rights ratified in 1791.
Alien and Sedition Acts passed in 1798.
Yes, they were later repealed, but thats only 7 years for a 180 about-face when its expedient.
All your other examples are good as well, what particularly sticks out to me is that we uh, we treated Japanese immigrants, who’d done nothing wrong…we gave them worse internment conditions than we gave to actual German PoWs.
To add to your list, we barely even mention or teach just… how we have done mass deportation of Hispanics before, during the Great Depression… and it doesn’t even really have a name, doesn’t even have little bullet point sub header title.
I guess I got lucky in a sense, by chancing to get a US History / AP US History teacher who was an Anarchist… set me on the path of breaking out of my right-wing upbringing.
This is why I laugh about people holding up the US constitution as some sort of sacred document, when the right to free speech and the right to peaceably assemble has literally never been respected ever in the history of the country.
Not immediately after the country was founded and the Alien and Sedition acts were passed.
Not when abolitionists were protesting slavery.
Not when unionists were fighting for the right to collectively bargain.
Not during WWII when people were rounded up and put into camps for the crime of being Japanese.
Not during the red scare or the civil rights movement, and certainly not at any point after that.
Yeah, exactly, anyone paying attention in US History class should have picked up on this pretty quickly, that the US nearly immediately showed that it isn’t actually committed to to Bill of Rights with some kind of religious level of universal reverence, even though it is strongly implied that they were.
Bill of Rights ratified in 1791.
Alien and Sedition Acts passed in 1798.
Yes, they were later repealed, but thats only 7 years for a 180 about-face when its expedient.
All your other examples are good as well, what particularly sticks out to me is that we uh, we treated Japanese immigrants, who’d done nothing wrong…we gave them worse internment conditions than we gave to actual German PoWs.
To add to your list, we barely even mention or teach just… how we have done mass deportation of Hispanics before, during the Great Depression… and it doesn’t even really have a name, doesn’t even have little bullet point sub header title.
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/09/08/437579834/mass-deportation-may-sound-unlikely-but-its-happened-before
I guess I got lucky in a sense, by chancing to get a US History / AP US History teacher who was an Anarchist… set me on the path of breaking out of my right-wing upbringing.