A great nation cannot be made possible without strong core values it is built upon. Strong core values create a basis of a country’s aspirations and morals. The founding fathers of the United States of America (US) established this country to be a model nation by exemplifying their tenets: liberty, equality, and justice. However, that cannot always be seen. One has seen America utilize internment camps, atomic bombs, McCarthyism, and segregation throughout history. Not to mention, the misogyny and racism prevalent in events and organizations such as the The Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) and the American Dream. The United States of America failed to exhibit liberty, equality, and justice through international and domestic from World War II (WWII) till present day.
To treat one with liberty means to live in autonomy, especially from a higher power such as the government. At the start of WWII, America took political action in order to defeat the Axis Powers by creating the Selective Service Act of 1940, legalizing the enrollment of 900,000 men between the ages of 21 and 36 to mobilize a military force before declaring war (Miller). With that said, those men were stripped of their use of the first amendment as they were unable to freely choose to fight or not. In the heat of the war, the US failed to adhere to this core value through the forced housing of innocent Japanese civilians in Japanese internment camps during WWII. “Throughout WWII, Americans feared the Japanese, who were our enemy along with many other countries apart of the Axis Powers. The War Relocation Authority created ten internment camps that held many Japanese people captive. Following the attack of Pearl Harbor, Americans believed that another surprise attack would soon be administrated” (Niiya). The Cold War shortly succeeded WWII and tied into the Red Scare, a time in which fear of Communism proliferated. Fear drove Americans to persecute many innocent civilians as a result of McCarthyism, a term coined by Senator Joseph McCarthy meaning “The persecution of innocent people on the unsubstantiated charge of being secret members of the communist underground and the imposed ideological conformity that this wide-ranging witch-hunt brought to American public life” (Vassilev). During WWII and the Cold War eras, America has treated its peoples unfairly. Many were stripped of their rights to practice or preech their beliefs. With that said, America failed to promote liberty during these times.
The demonstration of equality by the US throughout history fails to be ubiquitous. The events taken place during WWII, postwar America, and the Civil Rights era exemplify this. The Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC), developed in 1942 strived to recruit women in order to support the war effort, excluded women of color, therefore lacking equality amongst women. Japanese-American and Hawaiian women were not granted jobs or given the same training as their male counterparts till three months after the WACC’s foundation (Hirose). The American Dream was a defining movement of postwar America that followed the WWII era. The idea of a stable family consisting of a working husband, stay-at-home mom, children, and a nice house perpetuates female stereotypes, therefore lacking equality amongst American women once again. Patience Coster of “Work and the 1950s Woman: 1938–1960,” regarded that though postwar America was a time in which many women did obtain jobs, fields such as business, law, and banking were seen as “tough,” therefore unable to be done by women. Women were seen as submissive and needed to be aided by the help of a man” (Coster). The idea of “separate but not equal” was a defining theme of the 1950s to 1960s under the de facto law of segregation. “African-Americans were treated as second-class citizens. As a result, African-Americans were required to sit in the backs of busses as well as yielding their seats to white passengers. There were separate waiting rooms, train stations, and water fountains” (Purdy). The treatment of women, African-Americans, and many Americans reveal that America has not treated its people with equality.
The practice of justice involves behaving according to what is morally right, which is yet another core value America fails to demonstrate throughout history. The bombing of the two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, demonstrated not only the technological advances of the United States, but its failure to promote justice. While there is controversy on why the decision was made, the simple answer was to end the war in the Pacific as soon as possible, all while protecting Americans. The goal of the American government was to coerce Japan into surrendering. With that comes 50,000 fatalities from the initial hit of Hiroshima alone” (Harry S. Truman and the Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb). As mentioned before, McCarthyism led to the tragic deaths Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who were accused of passing secrets amongst the Soviets during the production of the Manhattan Project. The Rosenbergs innocently lost their lives in Ossining of New York in Sing Sing Prison of 1953, though the couple plead the fifth amendment and held their innocence (Schwartz). The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a vital event of the Civil Rights era that failed to exemplify justice. The Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955 occurred after African-American Rosa Parks refused to give up to a white man. Parks was arrested shortly after the incident. Edgar Daniel Nixon, then president of the National Association for the Advance of Colored People, called for a meeting in which he encouraged black community leaders to hold a boycott in protest to her arrest” (Altman).
The United States of America’s mandation of issues such as the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Montgomery Bus Boycott, and the segregation of African-Americans all lack liberty, equality, and justice. Throughout history, America has shown that they have not treated all with the strong core values that it was founded upon. With that said, the actions taken place are reprehensible. America demonstrated hypocrisy throughout history by not adhering to its once strong core values of liberty, equality, and justice throughout several eras.