I really can't respond to everything in this topic. Let me just say this: your personal experiences are NOT scientific fact. You cannot take testimonials and accurately describe anything. You can use them to add flavor to something, but otherwise, you're not proving anything. (i.e.: Do you trust internet sites selling a miracle penis enlargement pill? Didn't think so).
But this really ruffled my feathers:
Hey, we weren't really talking about the United States, but since you brought this up, let me annotate this video so you don't think it's actually fact.
Before I begin, this is a clip used in
Bowling for Columbine, a Michael Moore film, so off the bat, it's going to be liberally-skewed. However, it's the "crazy, paranoid" type of liberal.
Puritans were persecuted in England. This is true. They were a fairly radical sect of Christians whose views were not compatible with the Church of England (they thought the church's rules didn't go far enough). So they wanted to establish a place where they practice their religion freely.
Yes, relations with the Natives were poor, but this video implies that the English settlers wiped out an entire race in open war. Most of it occurred via the spread of disease. Yes, there were hostilities.
And remember, the Spanish essentially set into motion the annihilation much of what is now Latin America. Not to spread "blame" around, but I want to put it into perspective.
NO ONE WAS BURNED TO DEATH DURING THE SALEM WITCH TRIALS. They were all hanged. Except for the guy who refused to enter a plea. He was crushed to death by stones.
"Killing the British?" lol. No, hostilities began after a number of events (famously: the Stamp Act and the Boston Massacre), which led to full-scale war. And for a while, the British Regulars were killing more of the Continental Army.
Originally, what we wanted was solely representation in Parliament. We didn't want to be free. But, since we weren't able to get that, we opted for self-determination.
The Second Amendment was passed to keep the government fearful of its citizens, not because its citizens were afraid.
Slavery...it's really a long discussion, but let me be brief. First, remember that slavery has existed since the dawn of history. Europeans didn't invent it.
However, in the case of slavery in the Americas, Europeans did capitalize on Africa. Tribes there essentially would capture their enemies, then sell them to the Europeans in an attempt to suppress competition.
That said, only a select few in the American South had slaves. Most white people in the United States were broke as a joke and worked in awful conditions essentially to feed themselves. This went on until the early 20th century. And remember, at first, only white men who owned property could vote, so a significant portion of the American population could not vote.
America did not become the "richest" country in the world until after World War II.
There were slave uprisings, but nothing ever came from them.
AND BEFORE WE CONTINUE: The American Civil War was not a war over slavery. It was a war of states-rights. Not until after the Battle of Antietam when President Lincoln inked the Emancipation Proclamation did the war take the moral tone. Admittedly, it also was to further convince Great Britain not to recognize the CSA as a sovereign nation. Coupled with the fact that the Battle of Antietam proved that the South could not successfully execute a campaign in the North.
PARANOIA ALERT: This movie implies that the Ku Klux Klan and the National Rifle Association are connected. That is completely false.
The Ku Klux Klan was a group of Tennessee veterans who wanted to keep whites in power in the South.
The NRA is a group devoted to lobbying on behalf of gun owners.
Jim Crow laws in the South were prompted by the KKK, not the NRA. This includes a ban on gun ownership.
Rosa Parks sitting on the bus was a watershed moment. But to say that others had not been working for de-segregation and equal rights is incredibly narrow-sighted.
And lastly, suburbs really didn't pop up until after World War II, when returning servicemen wanted a piece of land to call their own and to raise a family on.
The correlation between the movement of blacks to the cities and the whites to the suburbs seems racially motivated, and I would like to explain all of the little details, but that would turn this into a book.
DERP
inb4 "It was just a joke."
tl;dr: You just got QED'd.
GAMER