"You can't (shouldn't) just take the good and not the bad with history. You have to (should) take both."
I don't know who you are of course, but you repeat that line a lot in your postings, it makes you sound like a 20 year old that is just now getting into history.
Forty or Forty five years ago, I would be helping your argument, but those days are long gone.
You need to start considering the idea that you have been sold a biased, inaccurate, version of American history.
The American people were not vicious, violent, hateful, scum until the sixties happened.
The American people were always a notch above, always socially ahead, always caring and fair, that is why I am proud of America when it comes to slavery.
I think the greatness of our nation's early people, is best represented by it's short involvement with the institution of international slavery.