The View from Thayne’s Corner


         What is ‘American’?

   Fortunately enormous advances have occurred in messaging since the days of the Pony Express because no equine breed has yet been developed sturdy enough to carry today’s daily load produced for electronic devices, USPS and Fed-Ex.

   Recently one message, worth reading and passing along, made it through the daily blizzard of junk e-mail.

   Some of us have a tendency to believe that the good ol ’USA developed as an exclusive white, Caucasian Christian club to which outsiders are given membership occasionally when additional workers are needed in factories, on farms, and warm bodies added to the armed services—a notion undoubtedly held by some foreigners as well. 

   The following, from e-mail gleanings, may come closer to what being an American really means.

                                       To Kill an American

   “You probably missed this in the rush of news, but there was actually a report that someone in Pakistan had published in a newspaper, an offer of a reward to anyone who killed an American, any American.
   So an Australian dentist wrote an editorial the following day to let everyone know what an American is, so they would know when they found one.”

   ‘An American is English, French, Italian, Irish, German, Spanish, Polish, Russian or Greek.  An American may also be Canadian, Mexican, African, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Australian, Iranian, Asian, or Arab, or Pakistani of Afghan.

   ‘An American may also be a Comanche, Cherokee, Osage, Blackfoot, Navaho, Apache, Seminole or one of the many other tribes known as Native Americans.

   ‘An American is Christian or he could be Jewish, Buddhist or Muslim.  In fact there are more Muslims in America than in Afghanistan.  The only difference is that in America they are free to worship as each of them chooses.
 
  ‘An American is also free to believe in no religion.  For that he will answer only to God, not to the government or to armed thugs claiming to speak for the government and for God.
 
  ‘An American lives in the most prosperous land in the history of the world.  The root of that prosperity can be found in the Declaration of Independence, which recognizes the God given right of each person to the pursuit of happiness. 
 
  ‘An American is generous.  Americans have helped out just about every other nation in the world in their time of need, never asking a thing in return.  When Afghanistan was over-run by the Soviet army 20 years ago, Americans came with arms and supplies to enable the people to win back their country!
 
  ‘As of the morning of September 11, Americans had given more than any other nation to the poor in Afghanistan.  Americans welcome the best of everything . . the best food, the best services . . . But they also welcome the least.
 
  ‘The national symbol of America, the Statue of Liberty, welcomes your tired and your poor, the wretched refuse of your teeming shores, the homeless, tempest tossed.  These in fact are the people who built America.

   ‘Some of them were working in the Twin Towers the morning of September 11, 2001 earning a better life for their families.  It’s been told that the World Trade Center victims were from at least 30 different countries, cultures and first languages, including those that aided and abetted the terrorists.
 
  ‘So you can try to kill and American if you must.  Hitler did.  So did General Tojo, Stalin, Mao Tse-tung and other blood-thirsty tyrants in the world.  But in doing so you would just be killing yourself because Americans are not a particular people from a particular place.  They are the embodiment of the human spirit of freedom.  Everyone who holds that spirit, everywhere, is an American.’