The Right to Believe

The United States of America is referred to as 'the Melting Pot' of the world. We were nicknames that because of our mixed culture. Immigrants from all over the world came to the United States to escape poverty and religious persecute. They expected a free world, that is not what we gave them.

I used to admire that in America, we had freedom of religion. I was taught that other countries would kill or lock up people because what they believed in was slightly different or 'wrong'. I was told that in this nation, that would not happen.

If that is the case, why did we chase the Christians across the country because we thought they were utterly wrong? Why did we lock up Japanese people, who had been full citizens. in concentration camps? We believe that religion is your choice, and it is, but if the Government doesn't like it, they will do something about it.

I've heard it said that those were different issues because there wasn't a law against it. But there was, and still is. The first amendment of the Constitution states that all citizens have freedom of religion. It's been there ever since we broke away from Great Britain. We wrote that amendment because we were tired of them persecuting us for our religious differences.

Others say we still aren't that bad compared to other countries like Germany in World War Two. We are as bad. The Germans thought it was justifiable to lock Jews in concentration camps. We thought it was acceptable to lock away Japanese citizens because of World War Two. We did something similar to them. The only difference is we are 'great people' and they are 'monsters'.

People don't think it is as bad because we didn't kill hundreds of people. But we did. Even worse, we gave people the ability to kill certain people legally because we thought their religion was unacceptable. The people previously mentioned still don't think it is as bad because we were at war with that country. Wrong again, the people we gave permission to kill were full American citizens, we killed them because we didn't like their religion. Again, people may say that if those religious people attacked first, we had every right to kill them. They didn't attack us first, they didn't even fight back. We mercilessly slaughtered.

Our Declaration of Independence states, "All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." But are we? Religious persecute has been going on for hundreds of years in current and past empire. It's still going on today, who are we to think that we can change that?