The headline of this article is a play on one of the popular catch phrases that liberal protest groups (ie. ANTIFA, BLM, etc.) love to shout during their numerous campaigns of public disruption.

I’ve noticed that these alt-left groups love to take simple, inane phrases and parade them around without any solid backing to them. I myself know for a fact that America has indeed always been great. I am very saddened that many people cannot accept this, that they feel the need to directly work against this idea.

From its inception, the U.S.A. was different. The Founding Fathers knew it, the people of America knew, and soon the rest of the world would come to know it too. We set about to create the first truly free nation. Ruled by the people, for the people. As I have mentioned before in my article on Columbus Day, some people love to focus solely on the horrible parts of history. There are many, don’t get me wrong.

These horrible acts are the ones that seem to us to make the most impact on history, but in reality the good and the neutral acts are all equally important (if not equally recognized to be so).

A major talking point that people on the alt-left use is the “genocide” of the Amerindians by European settlers. While it is true that atrocities such as Wounded Knee and the Trail of Tears have left scars on America’s psyche, the type of takeover of the American continent seen during the colonial period is just an exacerbated version of what is a recurring theme in history.

The Turks took Byzantine Greek lands through decades of conquest and settled their own people there, the Romans did the same to Europe, the Japanese to the Ainu, the Bantu to the Bushmen; I could go on but I think the point is made. Conquest and war are as much a part as human history as they are human nature. All peoples across the globe practice these two primordial ideas, including the Native Americans.

The other major talking point they use is the issue of racism. Racism was built into the roots of the nation. African slaves were considered to be inherently lesser than Europeans. There is no excuse for this and it was horrible, but again I must point to history. Every major empire throughout time from China, to Egypt, to Rome, and most recently the European empires have used slavery to build their economies and power base. What I am saying, is that unfortunately, it was necessary if America was to be a powerful nation.

What I propose is that we should focus as much on the great parts of history as on the bad. Citizens should still be able to be proud of the nation they were born in. In fact, I believe this is absolutely necessary to a nation’s success. China has killed millions of their own people over the last century, so has Russia, but there are no massive anti-government, anti-patriotic movements to be seen in those countries. One only has to look to the Poland marches to see what true patriotism means.

So why don’t we focus on how we fought a long, bloody war to end slavery in America? Why don’t we focus on how we defeated Germany and Japan, defeating fascism and basically saving the entire free world. Even less explosive topics such as the opening of the Panama Canal, our leading role in the U.N., our long Cold War against the Soviet Union that eventually resulted in its collapse.

As a nation, we have many things to be proud about.

I like to think of America’s socio-cultural words in terms of the “American ideal”. To me, this phrase encapsulates all of the ideas traditionally associated with the U.S. and what being a citizen of it entails. The “American ideal” was at first only attainable by rich, educated, white, men.

As time went on however, more and more groups were eventually pulled in. First being all white men in the early 1800’s, then black men in the North after the Civil War, then women of any race in the 1920’s, then every individual of every race after the Civil Rights Movement, and more recently individuals of the LGBT community.

Every individual in America has the same rights, the same freedoms, the same opportunities. No other country can claim this. We are the freest in every sense of the word; religious, racial, social, sexual.

So if everyone has equal rights and opportunities, what could there possibly be to complain about? Not much. Then why does the alt-left continue to nag on issues resolved decades or centuries ago? I, as well as most Americans, are still trying to figure that one out.