Proud to be an American

Across cultural, political, and geographic divides, we can all sing along to Born in the U.S.A., all cheer on the same Americans at the Olympics, and all feel pride when we look up at our flag on the Fourth of July. Though much may seem to divide us on a daily basis across the US, as Obama said in his acceptance speech, we are the United States of America. We share a sense of unity one may never find within the European Union. Think back to September 11, for instance: When the twin towers toppled, it wasn’t New York that was under attack but America. We all felt touched by the horrors of that day, whether from an urban central or the most rural stretches of America. I do believe our money reads well E Pluribus Unim: from many diverse backgrounds, we are one nation.

My Austrian friends were talking about how funny it seems to them that Americans are so proud of their nationality. They’re proud of being Austrian too, they said, but it’s not such a big deal. Just last week my Spanish friend was talking to me about differences between national responses to terrorist attacks in the US and Madrid and he too said that it seemed strange that Americans responded with such nationalistic pride, with flags suddenly appearing on windows, cars, and many articles of clothing. It is true: after the terrorist attacks, I proudly, perhaps even defiantly, placed a flag on my window and began wearing the stars and stripes with some degree of regularity.

It occurred to me that for us, nationality isn’t just something we were born into, and it’s not just something we can take for granted. Sure, I was born in New York, and my parents and even most of my grandparents were born into this citizenship, but in the not-so-distant past most Americans’ families made (and many are still making) great sacrifices so that we could call our country home. Our nationality is something earned.

And it was interesting to think about my nationality in this way. For goodness sake, the governor of California, as my friends pointed out, is an actor from Austria. The president-elect’s father was a Kenyan immigrant! Did you know that this year Kenya declared Thursday, November 6, the day after Obama’s victory was announced, as a national holiday in his honor? It sounds funny, but think about how powerful of an idea that is—you too can move from a country as small in the international political arena as Kenya and raise your child to be the leader of the most powerful country on earth. How many times in human history has this been possible?

Ours truly is a nationality unlike any other. There is no American “face,” no American genotype, and even fairly little in the way of national history and traditions. We are united in our differences, in our belief in the ideals upon which our nation was created, and in the faith that there will always come a brighter tomorrow. It’s a nationality which brings people together not so much around a shared past as a common focus on the future.

I think our nationality offers a fresh, exciting launching pad from which to explore the world. For us, anything is possible. True, this means that perhaps only in the US can you find laws such as the one in Pennsylvania which forbids citizens to sleep on top of their refrigerators on their front lawn. For more entertainment, you can always check out dumblaws.com as I did with my Austrian friends. America may sometimes be quite silly, but it’s also quite optimistic. We see ourselves as living in a land of endless possibility, an attitude which fosters a national optimism on which I thrive. Even if my country has made some awful mistakes, even when my government shames me and I watch my fellow countrymen maintain an embarrassing image of us overseas, I am incredibly proud to be an American. I am most certainly an American at heart and I always will be, no matter where I choose to live.