The question of whether the United States has lived up to the ideals it was first meant to define is an interesting one. The United States is one of the youngest countries in the world, with none of the history of the countries of Asia or Europe.
And what history there was, was erased when the Europeans came to North America and wiped out the native populations in one of the worst genocides of the last few hundred years.The ancestors of many of these people then went on to set up a system which valued the ideals of justice and equality. But have these ideals been reached? This paper will explore this topic.In this country’s infancy, the founders decided to create a society they believed to be superior to that of any other. When the founders decided they had to be free of the influence of England, they wrote the Declaration of Independence and in it claimed that all men were equal.
They reasoned that God had given all men rights that no one was justified in taking away. Included in these rights was right to pursue life, liberty and happiness. But it is interesting to note that these unalienable rights, as they called them, applied only to men, and for that matter, only white men.Women and all people of color were excluded from many of the ideas written in the Declaration of Independence. It took nearly 200 years to grant these rights as universal to all people of the United States. And up until the 50s and 60s, the promise of domestic tranquility granted in the Constitution was regularly being abused.
Certain segments of the population of the country, especially African Americans, were regularly lynched and harassed. So the protections granted in the Constitution only really protected a certain kind of person.Even when injustices such as slavery and lynchings were taking place, many of those in positions of power saw nothing wrong with them. Many of these individuals saw slavery as a natural part of society.
They reasoned that since slavery has been used in many different sorts of societies, and slaves are biologically inferior to any other group of people, then it was justified to use them in the United States. It was not until a couple hundred years later that people began to see these injustices for what they were.But interestingly, it was not the politicians that did anything, but mass movements of African Americans and women that forced the change until eventually, all people got the right to vote and be equal.But one injustice that remains with us today is the economic inequality that is so pervasive on our society. Many people and their children are living under the poverty line.
This is a problem in many countries throughout the world but the difference is that the United States is the richest country in the world. In the richest country in the world, it seems sad that there are so many poor people.And much of it is not their fault. Many poor people work more than one job and still find it hard to get by, while the CEO’s of the companies that these people work for are making millions, if not billions of dollars that they will never share.
This amounts to the inequality that both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were set up by the founders to protect.The United States may not have slaves any longer, and it may give all people, including African Americans and women the right to vote, but inequality is still with us, as evidenced by the fact that poor people do not have access to the same benefits as rich people.To completely eradicate inequality and have a country that we can truly call just, we must, now that we have ended slavery, find a way the bridge the economic gap and allow people to live more full lives. Only then will America be truly the greatest country in the world.
