Since there seem to be many different perspectives on this site, I thought it might help to remind everyone that we all pretty much love the country equally.
The big gap, however, is in what we consider that country to be and who belongs to it.
So what is an American? How should it be determined?
This is from your heart and mind not somethng implanted in you by the government, media or school system, so please don't use legalistic definitions like "Whomever has citizenship". Law can and have changed endlessly throughout the history of the union, so that would be a really circular, meaningless definition.
So please describe what someone has to do to be a good American....
I don't want to start off with people just nitpicking my positions--create something of your own--so I'll wait until later to share. (Although I'm sure you could find my definitions online if you happened to be a little industrious.
What country?
America is not a Country?
we live in North america
we are owned by a corporation called the United States of America
they give us alot of money to do what they say
thats about it
Words can have several meanings, and it's your job to discern from the context which is meant. In this case, "America" is the short name for the United States of America, the country about which we are to answer the question.
We are not owned. If you think you are owned, please let me disabuse you of that notion. Either of the following two points are sufficient in themselves to disprove ownership:
The USA is not a corporation. It is a government, a wholly separate and more dangerous beastie.
The government gives you money? Where did they get it, and where do I sign up?
As I said, please avoid smart-alecky legalistic answers.
If you "belong" to a poker circle, that doesn't mean that you are a slave to the members of the circle. You are part of a group of people with a common goal.
My question is how do we define "America" and how do we determine who is a good, contributing member of our national community.
Mr. Heal, instead of engaging that poster, why not provide your own, more functional definitions and answers to these questions?
Ok, let me try one more time:
What are "American" values to you? Or better yet, what are your values that you believe should be used in defining America?
As much as leftists like to assume that their are no values or beliefs whatsoever on the right (and vice versa I'm sure), I know full well that you must have some values you want the country built around.
This isn't a trick--I really want to know. I think this is far more important than the specific little exchanges we have about our differences. Common ground is when we go back to what we deeply believe in. Or at least, that's what I hope...
Promoted to the front page.
America is built on this:
"Remove his chains, placing upon a man no undue burden, and be prepared to marvel at his industry and the good works of his gratitude."
The Right values individual rights, Virtue and morality, but the definitions of these things are different for Conservatives and Liberals.
Also:
Unity is important.
The Left values Justice, but has redefined it to mean solely "fairness" and not "fairness and the proper result of wickedness".
After the Democrats won the elections in November, this is what I said I wanted.
And you'd be surprised how much I can find on which to agree with Salman Rushdie.
Liberty is the most important part of being an American.
Although it is often associated with some glorious meaning, liberty truly implies a full spectrum of possibilities. Everything from the hateful scum of the earth preaching their hate from their dilapidated homes that they are too lazy to fix up or work to maintain to the most noble of citizens who spends his entire life fighting for an ideal that brings us one step closer to the dream of true liberty for all.
It is this idea, liberty, that drives many of us to ensure that even our political adversaries have a voice, no matter how repugnant we may find it to be. It also allows others to attempt to demonize and ostracize for the same.
It is a constant fight towards a more perfect society against forces that would seek to take it centuries backwards.
Being an American is neither good nor evil... but it has proven over time that the idea of liberty for all wins over those who'd rather deny liberty to some. Those that fight for that ideal are probably the greatest Americans and exemplify what it should mean to be an American. The fights we have to create a more ideal society over the proper limitations on government, defining the lines where one person's freedom begins to infringe upon another's liberty, and avoiding the mistakes of the past are almost always noble in intent, even if others find them flawed in actuality.
Not perfect, but working towards an ideal. The Constitution itself embodies such a notion with its article on amendments. The compromises of the time left a stain to remind us that we can and should continue to perfect this Union, fought for and built by imperfect men striving for liberty, and not let it perish from this earth.
Being an American means buying into the idea that we can govern ourselves through a political system, that as flawed as it may be, is still a model around the planet for other people. I am often unhappy with the results of elections, but I am willing to go along rather than resort to violent conflict because I believe that our political system eventually works toward the common good if we work hard to create a common good.
I grew up in a Republican household in which one of my earliest memories was campaigning for Goldwater, which also tells you how old I am. My family attended a Southern Baptist church. I believed and took to heart what I was taught about doing what is right, helping other people, not focusing on material possessions, etc. Today I fit on the political spectrum left of center and attend a very religiously liberal church. Such is being an American.
Being an American means that my children have three grandmothers, due to divorce and remarriage. One of the grandmothers barely escaped the Nazis and most of the family was murdered in the Holocaust. One grandmother was a little German girl whose father joined the Nazi Party and served in the army. Another grandmother grew up poor on a farm in the middle of America. Where else in the world would the children of a displaced Jewish mother, a mother who was a poor farm girl, and a mother with a Nazi father marry, have kids, and have family events at which everyone cares for everyone else without anger or hatred from the past?
I am reminded of how much I am truly an American when I have lived for periods of time in other countries. I find so much I admire and would love to have here, but I would never give up my citizenship to become a citizen in another country. My roots go back to pre-revolutionary days. My ancestors were undoubtedly hungry and longing for a chance at a better life. I have that better life. Today that promise is still there. We have many, many more people trying to get into this country than we let in. Our tolerance and acceptance of diversity is greater than in any other country I have been in including the northern European countries.
Yes, some of my ancestors were natives of this country and their way of life and most of their population was wiped out from contact with the Europeans, but their legacy lives on as we watch the tribes achieve a renaissance in art, music, literature and more. How many other countries have allowed their defeated minorities to reinvigorate and flourish?
Slavery is an ugly blemish on our country’s history and one we work to resolve up to today. Yet, today we have the descendants of those who were enslaved serving in elected office all across our land and contributing to one of the richest cultures in the world.
This is why I stay in this country and fight for what I think is right. I work tirelessly for a better community and country. That is what being an American means to me.
Even before I read the unverified Native's comment, I was thinking of the motto we handle so carelessly every day: E pluribus unum (Out of many, one). I'm not sure if that's what defines us, but it is surely what makes us react as we did on 9/11, or as the courageous Coast Guard pilots (among many others) did after Katrina. We give generously in times of extreme hardship, and are just as generous to the outside world, because in our heart of hearts we know that most of our forebears came across one ocean or another. There, but for the grace of God, go we.
Like Native, I am one of the unverified, but I also have at least one 4-Great-Grandfather who was killed by the Natives in Kentucky (before it was Kentucky). My father's family was pure German, emigrating in the mid-1850's to mid-America. My hometown newspaper was published in German until World War I. But when Hitler's menace arose, my father left his second year of college to enlist in the Army, with never a hint of regret, then spent the rest of his life reading every book ever written about WWII, inbetween the demands of raising 8 children (none of which has ever spent a night in jail, to my mother's everlasting joy). It always struck me that he never could make peace with the fact that his family's Fatherland was responsible for such evil. He raised me as a CARDS fan and a Republican, in that order, and his politics were based on direct experience of FDR's policies. But he would never tell even his children who he voted for, because that was a private thing.
My mother, on the other hand, was an amalgam created by mostly Scotch-Irish and English families, one of which was running rum from Barbados in the 1600's, and was later associated with William Penn in Philadelphia. My 5th (or 6th) g-grandfather lived in the house where Franklin's first lightning rod was installed. My mother's father's people were among the Scotch-Irish who migrated from PA to North Carolina before the Rev. War, with one branch and another coming together in western TN soon after the Civil War. Somewhere in the shadows of these lines I have a g-g-grandmother who was 1/4 Indian, but even when Mom was young, that was a secret whispered in strict confidence, and which of grandpa's grandmothers was the "guilty" party was never divulged.
So, maybe I've said all that to say, maybe what makes us American is our tolerance of "the other," because of our knowledge that "the other" is us.
This is my first visit here, thanks to Gateway Pundit. Born and raised in Belleville, transplanted to Corpus Christi, TX since 1981, I'm sort of jealous of all that snow...
Thanks for the question, xian. Don't know if I've contributed much, but you have made this old broad think.
Thank you for your thoughtful and personal accounts. Now that we are moving, please allow me a moment to share my experience as well.
One side of my family is Irish American, but have been here long enough that we have no ties to Irish citizenship and only just remember where in Ireland our family might be from. In one of her supposedly senior moments, but I tend to suspect that she knew exactly what she was doing, my paternal grandmother--the matriarch of the family suddenly revealed that we were not wholly Irish, but in fact her side of the family was entirely British.
There was a minor crisis as this was a major part of many of my father's generation's identity, and they wondered what it meant for them. Us young ones were less affected--we wondered what it mattered--we still admired the anti-British revolutionary history whether it was our ancestors fighting for freedom or oppression. We still admired our fathers and uncles and aunts whether they were Irish or British or something entirely else as they did heroic things to protect the family, even for us later generations who are now Italian and Chinese and who knows what else.
Grandma resolved the conflict by saying a week later, "Oh, I was remembering one of my friend's families. We are actually Irish. Sorry about that." She was a character that one.
Her husband, Grandpa was a police officer, his father a fireman at one point and a stone cutter at another. He helped built some of the behemoths of the near West side. At that time, police officers were terribly underpaid and underappreciated. Yes, even more so than today. He was a working-class racist who harbored stereotypes and prejudices, but also actually lived and worked with and befriended African Americans (not on the force in the beginning but elsewhere). He was an incredible catcher who only made the force during the depression because of his baseball skills--the precinct that hired him needed a catcher.
Later he played on a semi-pro team that was almost exclusively black (or whatever term was used at the time). He was a product of the time--great at respecting individuals he knew, but poor at respecting unknowns of a different background.
They were lovingly Irish Catholic and fiercely progressive, as that was when the Church was more about principles than justifications. That's not to attack--some still are--but a lot are more corporations these days.
He had a hundred odd stories about his time on the force, some funny, some violent, some racist, some disgusting and some heroic, but all amusing.
On the other side, my family is Chinese. If you are familiar with Chinese immigration at all, you must be familiar with Taisan, the poor rural province that's only export of note was its sons. If you know an old immigration Chinese family there's a good chance they are from Taisan.
Of course, you all know the history of immigration to our country--wide-open, welcoming borders with morality that demanded free education for some, but closed, racist restrictions on other groups.
We were one of those groups, but it is my belief that the divine smiled on our country with the great earthquake in San Francisco. This is not to say that I believe that a loving, just God would choose to smite our nation with such a deadly disaster, but rather than the Lord works in mysterious ways and has an affinity for pulling the just and good from the bad.
This was no exception as in the quake, the records building that the U.S. government kept in San Francisco burned to the ground and few records, if any, were saved.
And the Chinese, banned from immigration since the exclusion, and forbidden from marrying or owning land, did not pass up this opportunity. These so-called "Paper Sons" dared the government to enforce these unjust, racist, hateful laws and proceeded produce or purchase duplicate papers.
And our government (the U.S. one of course) resolve to stop this plague of so-called inferior peoples by setting up concentration facilities on Angel Island and Seattle where, unlike Ellis Island, they were held days and weeks, and sometimes months rather than the minutes and hours that it took on the Eastern border.
They interrogated and threatened and sometimes drove them to their deaths. But my grandfather, like many others studied hundreds of pages of documents so that he knew every last obscure ridiculous detail that they might ask him about the man he claimed to be.
It took 10 days of internment at Seattle, but he made it. Not without a price, however--he had to leave his wife and son back in China. Toiling year after year in Chicago with his family so far away.
And then the war came and he couldn't go back and they could not come here, and the Japanese ravaged the countries side killed many of their friends and destroying the food supply. Driving them so desperate so that they had no choice but to eat the family dog while the Nationalists oozed corruption and spent their American sponsor's money on luxuries for themselves and their women. So when you here some uncreative hack of a comic make some cliched joke about Chinese eating dogs, I hope you will feel a moment of remorse.
Then Mao came and for all of his atrocities, he actually wanted to drive away the raping and pillaging hordes of Japanese, and feed the hungry. So while I have no love for him, I hope you'll forgive me for understanding my grandparents' affection for him.
When the war ended, Grandpa returned and got grandma, but still didn't know what to expect upon his return to the States. Then planned and planned, but decided that it would not be safe to bring an undocumented child. So she had to choose between going with this man whom she barely knew or staying with her now teenaged son. The ultimate decider was the unborn child growing inside of her.
They traveled, her now nearly nine months pregnant and the baby came just week after they resettled in Chicago.
That baby was my mother.
Now I go a couple days a week to the Wrigleyville three-flat they built with his line cook wages for around $17,000 in 1959, and clean a few things out of it. I find the artifacts from a couple who never threw away anything that might possibly have a use--the real, true recyclers. I sort through their lives which were dedicated entirely to work and the well-being of their children. And I thank God they had the few opportunities and bit of luck they did because otherwise it may have all been for naught.
I think about how if one little thing had gone wrong, how I wouldn't be here, or I wouldn't have had the privileges I did.
Most of all, I respect that they loved unconditionally, and when their understandings of the world around them were challenged, they sought to evolve their wisdom rather than twist the world to some narrow paradigm.
For me, these law breakers and law enforcers; these racists who accepted whomever sincerely loved their children; these Catholics who really did believe all of that ritual because the underlying value was one of love for even the "littlest" people; these language pioneers who made up whatever communication they could to get through the day; they are an America.
Those folks with the badges and uniforms who tried to deny my family entrance into the country on the basis of their skin color--who were upholding the laws of the land--they are also an America.
It's not too hard for me to choose which one I have more respect for or wish for us to pursue as a nation.
Nice story. No offense, but your story is the typical one. My ancestors are all from Europe, as far as I know, but then again, I really don't care. Many of them came here before it was called America, and many much later. But when I think of my country's history, it is your story, not theirs, that echoes.
Your grandparents' habit of keeping anything that could be of use is one I, unfortunately, learned from my parents.
But this:
It's not too hard for me to choose which one I have more respect for or wish for us to pursue as a nation.
is poison. It is the same country. Those folks with the badges denying your East Asian ancestors entrance were your European ancestors who played on the police baseball team. Just as my ancestors who supported Abolition, then later Prohibition and Women's Suffrage were also believers in eugenics. It's all the same. That's why they called it a melting pot.
This talk of the two Americas is divisive and ill-informed demagoguery from self-serving politicians. You would do well to keep away from it.
Nice story. No offense, but your story is the typical one.
Um, I have no idea what you are trying to say here. There is no such thing as a "typical" American story. I would have thought you could have figured that out even just by thoughtfully reading other folks' posts. If this was something other than a poorly constructed barb, I'd love to hear what you are trying to do beside attack me for sharing.
It's not too hard for me to choose which one I have more respect for or wish for us to pursue as a nation.
is poison. It is the same country. Those folks with the badges denying your East Asian ancestors entrance were your European ancestors who played on the police baseball team. Just as my ancestors who supported Abolition, then later Prohibition and Women's Suffrage were also believers in eugenics. It's all the same. That's why they called it a melting pot.
Of course they were. But once again, other than picking a stupid fight and then trying to win it, what is your point?
My point was that we do have to make choices about what our values as Americans are, and I think that an America that excludes contributors due to their skin color, ethnicity, or nation of origin is one, in this marketplace of ideas that I rate lower than others.
Clearly, you disagree if you find that to be poison.
Choices between different potential Americas is exactly what has brought us change in the country over time--both good and bad.
The last line of your post is your typical condescending crap that is great if all you care about is scoring points in an argument, but does nothing to advance the discussion. "'Two Americas' was used by a politician! This post discusses more than one America! They must be the same thing!" Give me a break...
xian said: "I think that an America that excludes contributors due to their skin color, ethnicity, or nation of origin is one, in this marketplace of ideas that I rate lower than others."
But surely you'd agree that we need those men with badges to exclude contributors due to their intentions, right? I'm glad that your grandparents made it to this great country, and think nothing less of you or them for the means that got them here. But, your grandfather's intentions were good and honest, and the man with the badge probably saw a clear conscience in his eyes, rather than a man reinventing himself for nefarious purposes.
Absolutely, but that's another lesson in terms of why we need our marketplace of ideas. Good intentions + no empathy leads to horrendous atrocities. It's one of the most important lessons we can understand--you or I or any of us could be a death camp head or we could be a divine prophet--both exist in our realm of possibilities.
Let our choices be empathetic and wise.
Well, I can see how you'd be offended, so I apologize for my wording.
My point was that you are just like the rest of us, and there is only one America, not two.
Perhaps you do not see the contradiction in saying that there are two Americas, one where people divide and other where they don't, and that you side with those who do not divide? But that is a minor point, compared with:
My point was that we do have to make choices about what our values as Americans are, and I think that an America that excludes contributors due to their skin color, ethnicity, or nation of origin is one, in this marketplace of ideas that I rate lower than others.
Clearly, you disagree if you find that to be poison.
What you are doing there is applying a fallacy of misused disjunction (specifically, a false dilemma):
X: There are two Americas, the one I don't like which excludes ideas based on race, and the one I like which does not.
L: That is poisonous. There is only one America, so quit trying to divide us.
X: You disagree with me, so you side with the ones who exclude based on race!
I disagree with your premise that there are two Americas, and reject your implication that I am a racist. In fact, it is one of my closest held beliefs that people should not be discriminated against nor should be given favors based on their group.
I didn't say that. I suggested that there are decisions to be made about what our country stands for. This was the whole point of the thread--a point that everyone else seems to have found to be abundantly clear--they provided beautiful, moving accounts of their values and beliefs based on their experiences. I'm still not clear on why you did not--only providing half of a weak attempt which is mostly based on buttressing conservatives and attacking the left. That is against the very spirit of this thread.
Moral relativism is all fun and good, but surely we must discern to some degree that things like "child cannibalism" are not American value, and it is by no means divisive to make such a designation.
Likewise, there is little doubt that racism and inequal application of the law were embraced as American values for large parts of our history--some people had property rights while others did not. Some received due process while others did not. Some received marriage benefits while others did not.
It is not divisive to say that these represent different paths for America.
In fact, that is the very nature of the marketplace of ideas that Jefferson conceived of. Naturally, within that framework, you are free to decry it eloquently and attempt to sway us against it--which you have I might add, albeit not too eloquently.
There are three hundred million different Americas, and each of them have their merits. Ignoring their existence will do nothing to facilitate the country's healthy growth.
Okay.
The America I like is the one we've got. Except I want the Chief to stay, theatricality and all.