For a long time I believed what was taught to me by my grandmother. She is a prideful yet practical woman, loving of the finer things though still a farm girl at heart. She is proud of many things but nothing more than her family. She had drilled into me just who my ancestors were and why I should be proud of them. To her, their history in this country is what makes her American. This seemed reasonable to me.
The older I get, the more interesting all things become. One ancestor sentenced another unrelated ancestor to death for witchcraft. A few ancestors fought in the Revolution, but also a few were loyalists. Some owned slaves, some fought Indians, others became such friends with Indians that their homes were safe from attack in King Philip's and the French and Indian wars. Two families arrived on
Mayflower and one young man of 16,
William Harlow, appeared in Plymouth out of nowhere! Going back to Europe I have some ancestors who were saints and kings, some who were bastards, some who were traitors, others outright tyrants like Erik Blood Axe (now there's a family name I should resurrect) who killed three of his brothers to ascend the throne of Norway over 1100 years ago. Ancestry like this isn't remotely unusual for most Americans, but what is unusual is that it is so well documented and that I know about it. Such is the privilege of being able to afford full time genealogists.
Their stories astound me. My eighth g. grandmother led a party of workmen, some hired Indians, together with a household's worth of goods and livestock and sailed from Staten Island to Orange county, New York to settle a patent. She was the first white woman to live in the county and she did it all at the age of 16 and without a husband. Her name was
Sarah Wells.
My sixth g. grandmother fought at Forty Fort, manning a cannon when her husband fell in battle. She survived the massacre by playing dead and later refugeed here to Orange county where she met her new husband and stayed. Her name was Adeline Terry.
Richard Smith, my seventh g. grandfather supposedly made a deal with the Indians of Long Island that he would be given all the land which he could encircle in one day while riding a bull. Being wily, Smith waited for the summer solstice and then rode from dawn to dusk on the bull, stopped for lunch, and the resulting area became Smithtown, NY.
To me, this was impressive stuff. It gave me the impression that, "I was here first." I felt lordly, aristocratic, and (frankly) better than everyone else who couldn't match my pedigree.
So large and full is the ship of fools that it can be difficult to know you're even a passenger.
As I grew, my horizons broadened, my thought processes became more independent, and I began to read voraciously about the Voltaire, the Enlightenment, and the founding of the country. Travel made me meet people from all over the country, see and experience new things, and think new thoughts.
Today I count myself as an American not by virtue of birth or pedigree, but by the ineluctable conclusion that Americans are united by hope. The ennui of the old world has no place here. Our ancestors surrendered their lives as they knew them, took leave of family they knew they would never see or perhaps even contact ever again, and journeyed out to the New World in hope that they would be free to be who they wanted and live how they wanted. Hardship was in inexhaustible supply yet they stayed. Some prospered, others met with ruination.
If Americans believe they live in the greatest country in the world then it is because their parents and ancestors from the old world tell them so. Always we are told how lucky we are to live here, how much was sacrificed to come here to make a better life, how no other nation offers so many freedoms.
An American carries that hope everywhere, even her deepest native critics make their criticisms in hope to change the inequities they see in the American systems of society. If there is no hope, then why else would they bother? Though it's been said before, Americans are optimists even at our most pessimistic. We attempt to always change the status quo to something that better suits what we wish our country to be. We are a nation of nationalities, a United Nations of people with little relation to each other beyond the single ideal that America is a slate always capable of being erased and redrawn; we compete with each other, sometimes winning, sometimes losing, occasionally uniting and then only in tragedy.
We are not a monolithic culture. We are not Disneyland, we are not Las Vegas, we are not Madonna nor Nike nor McDonald's. To see us singularly by our commerce is to see only obliquely and I think that's no mistake. We do not offer just one culture, but many. American culture is syncretic, ineffable in execution yet pervasive in effect. Despite what the Finnish gentleman says, America has contributed enormously to all the arts, on occasion creating whole new genres that find world-wide popularity. No single cultural achievement is the product of the nation as a whole, only of a single part of the nation. Perhaps that is why, when those outside America seek a single definition of it, they are left only with considering her government and her business.
I dearly love our constitution, consider it a brilliant piece of work, think it should only be tampered with on the most gravest of occasions. If anything binds us it is that one thing though I believe most Americans would cite the flag, our alleged
shared history, or Judeo-Christian ethics.
People around the world still come here flat broke, legally or illegally. Some come with skills and knowledge of immense value, others with nothing more than their two hands and a strong back. We are a place to dream of, to flee to, to visit, to become rich, to practice faith without persecution. America is a place as much to be enjoyed as exploited. Other countries are more prosperous, have more freedoms, have fewer problems, yet America still stands, even if tarnished of late, as place where hope reigns above all other things.
Far smarter men and women than I have had a say in their views of America. I've selected a few to share to prove that the opinions of America are as varied as the nation itself.