So what. My family got here between WWs. Nobody is trying to pin anything on you. But it is the REALITY of this country that it was declared with a lot of high minded ideals that never tried to live up to. There’s an ongoing continuum of these bad things happening with full involvement and approval of the government. Indian schools ended in OUR LIFETIME (early 1970s), “kill the Indian save the man” was the official motto of government backed schools kids were sent to without parental consent in our lifetime.
And of course there’s the stuff that still goes on. Trigger happy cops never getting in trouble. The Patriot Act allowing the government to just declare somebody a terrorist and hold without charges or trial indefinitely.
Pretending the bad stuff didn’t happen, and doesn’t happen just enables it. Taking credit for the good and ignoring the bad ALLOWS the bad. You can’t learn from mistakes you won’t acknowledge. That kind of deliberate ignorance is why history repeats itself.
The primary idea, the essential essence which was declared, was that people had a right to separate from an existing government and to form one that suited their interests.
It is called the "Declaration of *INDEPENDENCE*", not the Declaration of Equality among men."
"All men are created equal" was just a flowery line that Jefferson inserted into the text, and the people of the colonies saw it as only applying to themselves, and it was only later that they began to think it should be applied to the slaves.
July 4, of 1776, the only thing the Declaration of Independence meant was the States had a right to secede from the Union. (United Kingdom.)
Show me a country which is perfect.
The correct comparison is not to an impossible utopia, but to practical alternatives.