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An American is anyone who loves life enough to want the best that it has to offer. Americans look to more than the next meal; they look to the future, the long term, a better tomorrow.
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An American is anyone who understands that to achieve the best in life requires action, exertion, effort. Americans aren’t idle daydreamers; they take the initiative.
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An American is anyone who understands the need to use one’s mind and wits to meet life’s challenges. You don’t need college to know that you have to use your brain as well as your brawn to make your way in America.
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An American is anyone who understands that achieving the best in life requires risks. Immigrants have no assurance of success in a new land with different habits, institutions and language. They leave friends, relatives and familiar places, often risking their lives to cross oceans and hostile country to reach their new homes. But they, like all Americans, understand that the timid achieve nothing and forgo even that which sustains us through the worst of times: hope.
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The nature of Americans explains the precious opportunity that has drawn millions to these shores. The Declaration states that all men are endowed “with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
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Americans seek economic prosperity, leaving behind the resentment in other countries that is aimed at those who better their material condition. Throughout the world and throughout history, millions of individuals have endured poverty with dignity. But there is no inherent dignity in poverty. Individuals came to America to farm their own farms and run their own enterprises.
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Americans seek personal liberty, to live as they see fit, to worship as they please. Americans seek freedom from the use of power wielded arbitrarily by whoever holds the political sword.
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in plain language:
An American is English, French, Italian, Irish, German, Spanish, Polish,
Russian or Greek. An American may also be Mexican, African, Indian, Chinese,
Japanese, Australian, Iranian, Asian, Arab, Pakistani, or Afghan. An
American may also be a Cherokee, Osage, Blackfoot, Navaho, Apache, 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 is from 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 man and woman 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. When Afghanistan was overrun 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. The best products, the best books, the best music, the best
food, the best athletes.
Americans welcome the best, but they also welcome the least. The national
symbol of America 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 in
the morning of September 11, earning a better life for their families. *
So you can try to kill an American if you must. Hitler did. So did General
Tojo, and Stalin, and Mao Tse-Tung, and every bloodthirsty tyrant in the
history of 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 to
that spirit, everywhere, is an American.
So look around you. You may find more Americans in your land than you
thought were there. One day they will rise up and overthrow the old,
ignorant, tired tyrants that trouble too many lands. Then those lands, too,
will join the community of free and prosperous nations. And America will
welcome them!
Pass this around the World!
GOD BLESS OUR WONDERFUL NATION
