Sins of the Father
Reggie Jackson struck-out 2,597 times.
Cal Ripken Jr grounded into 350 double plays.
Ricky Henderson was caught stealing 350 times.
Randy Johnson let up 411 Home Runs.
Cy Young lost 315 games.
Brett Favre threw 336 interceptions.
Warren Moon fumbled the ball 161 times.
Michael Jordan missed over 9,000 shots, lost over 300 games, and missed 26 game winning shots.
All of these players are in their respective sports Hall of Fames, and rightfully so. If we solely looked at what these players did wrong, the mistakes they made, the times they tried and failed, we would think that some of the greatest players to every step foot on ball fields, were some of the worst to ever play.
When judging the United States of America, some people only want to look at what we have done wrong, focus on our mistakes, judge us by our past sins, and they completely ignore what the United States has done right, the sacrifices this country has made, and what good we have done and are doing for the world and humanity today.
416,800 United States soldiers laid down their lives liberating the world from Nazism and totalitarianism in World War II.
360,222 Union Soldiers died in the Civil War that abolished slavery from the United States.
116,516 United States soldiers died liberating Europe in World War I.
The United States consistently gives the most in foreign aid than any other country in the world, 50% more than the next most country.
The United States takes in more immigrants than any other country, over 1,000,000 per year.
Since 1980, the United States has taken in over 3.7 million refugees and political asylum seekers escaping totalitarian regimes or war-torn countries. We have been the greatest haven for the displaced and the oppressed in the world.
Over 80% of the immigrants that come into the United States each year are “people of color”.
Black people in America have the highest standard of living than black people in any other country.
The United States spends over $24 billion per year defending other countries.
We have paid the price in both blood and treasure to defeat evil terrorist organizations like ISIS and Al Qaeda that have been terrorizing the world and murdering the innocent.
We get an extremely distorted picture of the United States when we only look at the bad we have done, and ignore the good. Every day since our inception, the United States has been working to fulfill the ideals and promises of our founding principles, and become a more perfect union. We have failed at different times along the way to live up to our founding principles, and other times, we have directly contradicted our founding principles. But now, more than ever, and more than any other country, we are closest to living up to those grand ideals in our founding documents.
What the United States has done well does not automatically absolve it from all of its past sins, but it puts the United States’ past and present in its proper perspective. It is just as distorted to only look at what we have done wrong as it would be if we only looked at what we have done right.
Negative toxic people only see the bad in others, and never acknowledge the good. By doing this, they bring out the worst in others and themselves. They bring everyone they come in contact with down, to their lowest expression of themselves. They have a negative impact on the world around them. The negative people who only want to look at the sins of our past are destroying our country, and potentially depriving the world of one of the greatest influences in history.
The world would be a dramatically worse place to live if not for the contributions of the United States in the history of world events since our founding, and moving forward the world is headed for a disastrous and potentially evil future, if the United States abandons the vision of who we are and what are meant to be in some sort of misguided mea culpa to our past sins.
The United States and its founding principles are needed now more than ever. Those principles will help liberate the oppressed in the world, bring prosperity to the poverty-stricken, validate the disenfranchise, and protect the rights and liberty for all people. But we cannot do that if we destroy ourselves by continuing to focus solely on our past sins instead of focusing on the good we have done and will do in the future.
By the way, Reggie Jackson hit 563 home runs.
Cal Ripken Jr collected 3,184 hits and hit 431 home runs.
Ricky Henderson stole 1,406 bases.
Randy Johnson struck out 4,875 batters with over 300 wins.
Cy Young won 511 games.
Brett Favre threw for 71,000 yards and 508 touchdowns.
Warren Moon threw for over 49,000 yards.
Michael Jordan won 6 NBA titles.
Like America, their accomplishments, what they did well are what we honor and revere about them within the context of their failures.