What is an American? Is one a particular race, color or creed or belief or ideal?

An American is anyone who loves life enough to want the best that it has to offer. Americans are not automatically satisfied with their current situation. We want to be more than financially poor and we want to be better off our ancestors. Plus we look more into the future than the next meal; Americans are in it for the long term to create a better tomorrow.

An American is anyone who understands that to achieve the best in life requires action, exertion, effort and not be an idle daydreamer and you must take the initiative. What an American understands is the need to use one’s mind and wits to meet life’s challenges.

We understand that by reaching for the best things in life requires risks to achieve them. Those who immigrate here find out fast that there is no assurance of success in this country with our different habits, institutions and language.

As Americans we understand that the timid achieve nothing and forgo hope; which can sustain us through the worst of times. Our Declaration of Independence makes the bold statement that all men (/women) “are endowed with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” We as a people have always endeavored to find economic prosperity, while at the same time not resenting those who are better off than us.

And we as a people seek and thrive on our personal liberties. Such as to live as we see fit, to worship as we please to and we try to avoid arbitrarily wielded power by the political establishment through the power of voting.

Americans are a people who look to our Constitution and the Declaration of Independence as the framework of our society. We are individuals who wish to be united by our love of freedom and liberty, respect for others rights and a very clearly stated conviction that we have rights that no government or person can take away from us.

Unfortunately many of us have gone astray from these ideals and seek to change our country into some utopia of political correctness that lacks the truisms that ring throughout our land. They wish to spread our freedoms to others who have not earned them and dilute what it is to be an American. I for one am not a flag waving patriot, but just a humble citizen of the greatest country on the face of this planet. Those super patriots do not represent the bulk of Americans nor are they the ideals for which this country is based on. While those who I will call the Wishy-washy who want to automatically endow anyone who comes here with all the rights therein of a lawful citizen.

Neither of these two should be desirable to any true American, may our country’s flag wave proudly over the land of the free and the brave!

That is my opinion- Jumpin Jersey Mike