It started off as a new take on the TBT (Turn Back Time?) trend on Facebook. Using a creative meme, on July 3 Liberal America asked its Facebook fans:
If you could change only one thing in the history of our country, what would it be?
And the answers started pouring in so rapidly more than three every minute for the first five hours we could barely keep up!
To make it easier for you to follow, Liberal America thought to offer a summary of the responses that so many provided, which we offer below in a chronological arrangement:
1. The Genocide of Native Americans
One participant referred to this as European Illegal Immigration, and some said Columbus should never have sailed the seas.
2. Slavery and Racial Prejudice
The most frequent reply was slavery. Other discriminations were specified, too, such as gender, sexual orientation, and nationality. One commentator pulled no punches in her assessment; if she could go back in time:
Women, gay folks, non-Christians, and people of color would have the same rights as middle-aged, white, male Jesus freaks.
3. The 2nd Amendment (and the Constitution overall, too)
The 2nd Amendment should have been more specific if included in the Constitution at all, some said. The Constitution should be more specific, too, offered some, and should even restrict the formation of political parties.
4. Lincoln Assassination
Those who offered this reply also wove it with relevance to slavery and the Civil War.
5. Delay in Equal Rights for Women
What took the 19th Amendment so long, some asked. Why was it even required, and why is there still female discrimination today?
6. Hiroshima
The U.S. should not have used the atomic bomb to end World War II, some said, especially since it kicked off development of nuclear weapons by many other nations.
7. McCarthyism
The “red scare” of the early 1950s would be omitted from our history if some Liberal America fans could go back in time.
8. Vietnam
The overextended non-war warfare, which claimed thousands of young men’s lives and created a generation of protestors, wouldn’t have happened if it were up to many Facebook friends of Liberal America.
9. Kennedy Assassinations
Many said they would prevent the murder of JFK, RFK, or both of the Kennedy brothers. (One respondent would change the National Security Act of 1947, he said, and because it led to the corporatist-military structure that later resulted in Pres. John Kennedy’s assassination.)
10. Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination
Dr. King would have continued his effective and motivating activism in the U.S., making further and faster improvements in the civil rights of everyone, if some respondents could have the opportunity, they said.
11. Election of Ronald Reagan
Reagan’s election started the wave of neocon negativities that affect our nation to this day. If some Liberal America fans had their way, though, Ronnie never would have won that 1980 election. As one respondent put it:
Brain-dead, former B actors with Alzheimer’s disease should be outlawed from being president.
12. The 2000 Election (and the president that resulted from that debacle)
Al Gore would have won the election in 2000 if Liberal America readers could change history, very many said. No dangling chads, no Supreme Court selection by a Bush v. Gore decision and none of the maladies that the Bush Administration brought upon us, either.
13. 9/11
Just one of Bush’s blunders, but it’s by far the one that Liberal America fans would choose to prevent.
14. Invasion of Iraq
Another George W. Bush reference. It was baseless, pointless, and by now we know that attacking Iraq was fruitless, too, because it made no positive changes. Liberal America’s Facebook fans would never have allowed it to happen.
15. The Tea Party Takeover of the Republican Party
Well, Republicans, you’ll never be able to say that we liberals aren’t sympathetic. Shoot, we’d go back in time to block those Tea Party radicals from their takeover of your GOP.
16. Citizens United v. FEC
It was just over four years ago that the U.S. Supreme Court decided to officially let money decide all elections, and some respondents said this infamous decision would be the one thing they’d change in history. Many also specified changes to SCOTUS, as well.
Please remember that this is just a brief recap of the responses and that many more have been offered in the short time it took to prepare this summary.
