Is our historical past something to be ashamed of?

Santayana: Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it...

We've done a lot of Great, Good and Wonderful Things. We have done a lot Sick, Disgusting and Deplorable things. Perspective is always important and we should not sugar coat our History or take the Victors Propaganda Stance. 21 years in Military Intelligence has made my View of US History very Nuanced to say the least.

I am not ashamed of our history.The present is more shameful to me.

Stop the Madness! Keep our history alive. It is just that our History. When history is forgotten you are doomed to repeat it. How are we as a supposedly enlightened culture even considering this?

CPT (Join to see), thank you for your post, it is a good read, our countries history is what it is for a reason. The good, the bad and the ugly is what makes our country unique and strong. Are there certain things that could of been done differently, yes, but that's just part of our countries growth. Technically our history as a country still is relatively short compared to must countries. Although our country still has a lot to learn and we are going through some current growing pains, I wouldn't want to be part of any other nation.

CPT (Join to see) Some of it, for sure. A fact that isn't discussed much is that we killed more Native Americans than the Nazis did Jews. That's definitely something that we should be ashamed of....and, it's not something we should erase. We SHOULD remember it. We SHOULD strive to be better, and we OWE those victims the only thing we can now give them: acknowledgement. Slavery as well, of course. Nobody outside of German radicals is trying to erase the Holocaust from the history books, and we shouldn't our atrocities, either. Horrible as they are -- and they were -- they are part of our history, part of our institutional upbringing, as it were. Nothing will change that. Not removing flags from buildings, not giving handsfuls of survivors land and conveniently forgetting about them. We should own our history -- all of it. Because we can't escape any of it.

We are a people who set some very high ideals and then struggled throughout our history to meet them, sometimes we achieved them and at other times we fell short. It was our revolution that was the beginning of the end for Monarchies around the world in favor of Representative governments. In 1776 we declared that all men were created equal, in 1861 we went to war over slavery, in 1920 we extended the right to vote to women, and in 2015 we finally allowed same sex partners to marry. If we can learn from the bad and emulate and expand on the good, continue the struggle to expand liberty and justice for all… we can still be the greatest nation this world has ever seen.

I'm against removing history in the sense of "cleansing" it. We do have a sh*tty history as Americans, but it's helped define us and in some cases make us better than the rest. If you're going to move something into another area where it's still there (Jeff Davis statue for ex), I have no issues with it. But to destroy it is dumb and ignorant on ALL parts.
I saw a picture like this one on FB where the poster mentions how blacks want to bring up slavery as an issue for current ills, when he claims neither he nor his family had slaves. A commentator to the post said that you expect blacks to forget and get over slavery being it happened over 150 years ago, blacks also owned slaves, yet the holocaust happened over 70 years ago, Jews sold out their own, and it's still set as a standard of pain and suffering and it's ok for them to invoke it? The debate went on and on, but the bottom line for me is, we need to embrace our past both good and bad. No one should have a monopoly on suffering or success. That's not what history is. History shouldn't relegated to certain months that you can tune out when it's not "your" month. Our country isn't and will never be perfect; but it's the ONLY one we have and we need to acknowledge our faults and our successes.

Understanding our history is so important because it ties citizens to the values upon which our nation was founded. It also shows how we have struggled to reach those ideals and how we have fallen short. But it also should provide hope that we can change because we have changed in the past. I am not sure there is one civilization, empire, kingdom, or country that has done more good in the world based on my knowledge of history. Feel free to correct me if you think I am wrong. Our American spirit does come from our past and if we forget that, we lose the moral basis for our values. Unfortunately, I think this is already happening in our schools and universities.

The good things in our past deserve pride. The vile things in our past deserve shame. But all things need to be remembered.