Your turn: Yes, our country's history is flawed but we've never had it so good

There was a letter recently in the Register-Mail about the alleged failure of the nation to address its flawed history.

I believe that the argument would have been more pertinent in the early Civil Rights days but is less so today.

I also think the author went too far in alleging that there is a widespread desire to return the nation to an era when white people ruled and when Black people were kept quiet. We have moved well beyond that.

Many Paths: Truth put on trial and democracy under siege in America

I remember the Civil Rights struggles well. In 1961, I was among the demonstrators who integrated the movie theaters in Austin, Texas.

That offended many people, including the university administrators who fired everyone they could identify. (Anonymity is one of the advantages of going to a large school, so I kept my jobs and graduated.)

My roommate and I gave overnight refuge to Civil Rights organizers, who shared stories of their experiences.

In 1963 I spent a day at Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee headquarters in Atlanta, meeting staffers and organizers and answering the telephone when one caller after another expressed displeasure with the integration of the swimming pools.

Years later, when I began teaching at Monmouth College, the first sign I saw coming into town was “Impeach Earl Warren.”

Three years later, civic leaders came to President Duncan Wimpress and demanded that he fire me for having accompanied The Rev. Paul McClanahan when he took students to study the riots in Detroit and Chicago, then talked to church and civic groups about what we found.

That type of racial animosity is rare today despite efforts to show that it is everywhere just below the surface. It is certainly not found in Monmouth today.

I am no longer seen as a provocative liberal, but as a hopeless conservative.

I do not think that I have changed much, but I will take today’s microaggressions any time over the macroaggressions of the past.

The writer’s criticism of our constitutional system of limited government is not only wrong, but backward.

He was correct in saying that slavery thrived in the era of limited government, but that was only in states where no dissenting opinions were allowed.

If the last two presidents before the Civil War had possessed the power and views that he wanted them to have, they would have arrested the abolitionists and enforced the Fugitive Slave Law.

It is a widespread error to think that dictators would agree with one’s own opinions.

Experience shows that it is usually rather the opposite.

The carnage of the Civil War was real for everyone, regardless of ethnicity or skin color.

In the end, as Lincoln said in his second inaugural address, “Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bondman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword. ..."

The latest estimate of deaths, based on census information, is from 650,000 to 850,000.

My abolitionist ancestors lost two brothers in combat. If there is silence about these events, it is because history is often considered irrelevant to the issues of our day.

History is seldom taught well, and often looking for something to criticize that can be connected to today’s problems.

When the good and bad aspects of the past are compared to the good and bad of today, I’d say that we never had it so good.

I urge parents and teachers to tell young people all the history, the good as well as the bad, not just the bad as well as the good.

William Urban is a retired Lee L. Morgan professor of history and international studies at Monmouth College.

This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: Your turn: Despite flawed history, we have it pretty good today