In his famous book, Johnny Get Your Gun, Dalton Tumbo makes a very interesting point, “America fought a war for liberty in 1776. lots of guys died. And in the end does America have any more liberty than Canada or Australia who didn’t fight at all?..maybe a lot of guys with wives and kids died in 1776 when they didn’t need to die at all.”
As I am teaching U.S. History, it is amazing how ingrained the belief that the U.S. Revolution was completely justified and worth the bloodshed is in the minds of many students. The question I have as a U.S. citizen and teachers is what kind of message are we sending to our young people? What are we telling them about justifying war and violence? Are we continuing to choose war and conflict in the present because it is glorified in our history?
The reality is that during the Revolutionary War, a large majority of colonists were either Loyalists or did not want to take side in the conflict between the colonies and England. This is a fact that is often obscured in U.S. History. We want to make it sound like everyone was supporting the war effort; they were all just longing for freedom. The reality is that the revolution started by a small group of radicals in Massachusetts and eventually was spread to the other colonies, with many people resisting the revolution.
On one hand, I agree with the goal of the Patriots for self-government. They wanted to be free from the rule of Parliament and the Monarchy, and I truly believed they were justified in that desire. However, should we be teaching our students that this desire was worth the enormous bloodshed? In the end, where does the justification for violence end? There are lot of people that are being heavily oppressed by our own corrupted government and a financial system that favors the very few at the expense of the many. Are they justified to shed blood in the name of their freedom? Of course, all people in the U.S. government would say absolutely not. However, if we follow out the logic and justification of the Revolution, the answer would have to be yes.
We need to teach our young people that violence just creates more violence. Maybe one of the reasons our country has been bathed in so much violence is because from the very beginning we have taught that violence is justified. Perhaps for us to avoid more errors like the War in Iraq and a never ending War on Terror, we need to realize that violence is not a viable solution to create change. There is a greater way. Let’s teach our children the way of Jesus on the Sermon of the Mount. Let’s teach them the way of Tolstoy, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. Real change can come without hate and violence; it can come through love, determination, and a desire for peace and justice among all men.
Essence Restored 