There’s a great post up at The Unrepentant Individual about what it really means to be an American.
America is a wonderful thing. But when I say this, it is the America that each person holds in their hearts of which I speak. This America is held in the heart of the trust-fund baby who believes that he needs to ?earn? his right to that fund. It is held in the heart of the inner-city youth striving to be the first person in his family to make it to college. It is held in the heart of the immigrant, coming here with nothing but the shirt on his back, who is going to work his butt off to earn himself a living and send checks home to help his family. And it is in the heart of every liberty-loving member of an oppressed group, regardless of what country he?s in, that is striving to bring the idea of liberty and the American dream to his own shores.
When I say that I love America, I think of an idea. America, in my mind, is the country that has most closely followed that idea. But that is not cause for me to love my nation when it fails in that ideal, or to refrain from criticism when I think we move farther from it. It is my goal to do what I can to see America the nation become America the ideal. I think that the ideal on which America was founded is the best we, as humans, have yet discovered, and I look forward to seeing that ideal triumph on our shores and abroad.
What he said.
