There is a huge difference between how, and for what causes, people used to fight for in the past in this country, and how we do so now.
In essence in the past people were fighting for their rights as human beings, as guaranteed under the US Constitution. With no dependence or trust to any group except for those that were willing to help in their own interest and in their own rights. Now we have people basically going out for their ‘cut’ what they feel they are due by a society that has treated them poorly. Not their rights, and that everyone must conform to them because they feel that they have a legitimate grievance.
Which is their right to do so, they have the freedom of speech, the press, and to assemble. But, I can wonder at the difference that it is causing in the national debate right now.
Through every other time in our history we have had movements based on fighting within the law, within due process, and with peace and humility to try to get the rights…that they already had, under the US Constitution. All of the big debates. Tragically the Civil War was the exception to the rule.
Sometimes they had to use the power of the law to help them, and sometimes the ‘law’ and the power of the Federal and other Governments were against them. And yet they fought. For the rights that were afforded them as humans, and as American Citizens.
Martin Luther King, and the Civil Rights movement through the 50s, and 60s, are an important example of this. Fighting for their right to not be discriminated against by government institutions, to be afforded the same right to a seat on the bus, to get the choice of whatever they wanted to do. They were fighting mainly for their right to choose, what to do and where to go.
To not be discriminated against by any perspective organization.
Or in the case of labour they were fighting for their right to make the wages that they thought that they should make. To work, or not work, if they so chose until conditions had improved for them. And often it was the Government who stood in the way of such change as that.
But now in a good part of society, and by a lot of different groups of minorities are now being fighting for the things that they are owed. That they feel that they have been owed since the beginning. Through things like affirmative action, reparations, redistributing the wealth, giving someone else something so that we may make up for all of our sins.
Or they are fighting for their own rights, but with no regard to the rights that they may be taking away from others.
It’s an interesting difference, one that I am not sure of the full implications of. I blog, you decide 😛
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