Could genocide ever take place in the United States?
TRUTH OF YOUTH
May 9, 2005

“Genocide: The systematic and planned extermination of a national,
racial, political or ethnic group. Today, I don’t think genocide
should be possible here in the United States.

… Well, ideally, that is. … The United States has already
committed genocide in the past. Remember the Native Americans? They
haven’t always run our casinos, they used to own this entire country.

The question should not be ‘Could genocide ever occur in the United
States.’ It should be ‘Could genocide ever occur again in the United
States.’ Think about how quickly people jumped on the bandwagon to go
to war in Iraq, even with such flimsy reasons that were later proved
to be false.

Yet, even with that reality thrown in our faces, we continue to fight
and continue to support ‘our country.’ Why? It’s all nationalism, the
belief that your country is always right, and the willingness to do
anything for it. Yes, it’s possible, and we need to wake up a bit as
a county to ensure that it never happens here again.”

Trish Marx, sophomore, Oakland High School.

“Contrary to common belief, man is not basically good, but is
deceitful and wicked. This sinful nature has sometimes led him to
commit gruesome acts of violence. Man’s past is filled with many
abominable acts, one being genocide.

One of the motivating factors in the genocidal occurrences in Rwanda
and Germany was an extreme level of human selfishness. When a people
think more highly of themselves than others, terrible consequences are
certain to follow. America’s selfish ideology, suggesting
consequence-free sexual relations, has already taken the lives of
millions of babies in what is deemed as a constitutional right.

By definition, genocide is the extermination of a culture or racial
group. Is abortion much different than genocide? Do the millions of
unborn children constitute a culture in their own right? If America
continues on her present course, genocide will most assuredly lie in
her future.”

Austin Clark, senior, Umpqua Valley Christian.

“When genocide has occurred in the past, it has been because a
government makes its people believe that an entire group of people is
inferior or corrupt. Governments have a way of making their nation
believe what they tell them, regardless of what it is, so I think that
this could easily happen again.

I could easily see our government telling its people that an entire
race, nation, or religion are terrorists, for instance. From this, the
government could make us believe that every single member of this
group is corrupt, and so we would not object to their
extermination. In many of the genocides in the past, such as the
Holocaust, most people did not really know the extent of the
problem. Germans knew that Jews were being gathered, but they thought
it was for work camps, not genocide. Governments have always been very
deceiving; this is still true today, and will most likely always be
the case.”

Lacey Bitter, senior, Roseburg High School.

Truth of Youth, which appears in Monday’s News-Review, is an
opportunity for teens to express their opinions. If you would like to
submit a question, write to Erin Snelgrove at P.O. Box 1248, Roseburg,
OR 97470 or e-mail her at _esnelgrove@newsreview.info_
(mailto:esnelgrove@newsreview.info) .