Quote:
Originally Posted by betenoire
Based on your / Arthur Schlesinger Jr's definition of an American...well, I am an American. Except that I'm not and wouldn't want anybody to confuse me with one (the reason for this is probably 60% because I think that the US isn't a great place and 40% because I want everybody to know that I'm Canadian.)
I think that someone like me views a certain type of person as American BECAUSE OF people like Sarah Palin and -their- ideas of what it is to be an American. Palin has her idea of a white, christian, homey American archetype and views that as something positive. People from outside of the US (that would be me) hear/see Palin and because her and people like her are SO GODDAMN LOUD we begin to also see the white, christian, homey American archetype - but we do not view it as something positive.
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And in the case of Canadians, I think that both nations are defined more by an ideal than by an ethnicity or religion. I think that the three Anglophone daughter-nations of England are all, more or less, in the same boat with America and Canada being the most dramatic. We are products--in ways that, say, a German may not be--of the English and Scottish Enlightenment. The fact that so many of us hold so loosely to nationalism is one symptom of what I'm talking about. Sure, the Star Spangled Banner can make me choke up, but I’m basically neutral about the flag. The Constitution, on the other hand, I hold dear with a feeling that borders on the religious. Flawed as it is, incomplete as it is, I still think it is a remarkable document, a crowning achievement not just of Europe but of humanity. This is what makes me an American--as I've told people who are far more jingoistic than I am "when I was in the military, I didn't take an oath to the flag nor did I take an oath to whatever temporary occupant was living in the White House. I took an oath to the Constitution. To me America is two really important things--her people and her laws. The land is nice but take the people and the laws, move them to Central Europe and we would still have America. Take away the people and the laws and whatever remained on this soil would not be America.
Cheers
Aj