BE OUR GUEST: AMERICANS SHOULD LEAVE THEIR ROOTS AT THE DOOR

Michael A. Session resides in Cape Girardeau with his family. He is a native of Stoddard County and is currently a graudate student at Southeast Missouri State University.

Think for a moment of yourself as simply an American, not a generic Asian-American, Black-American or White-American, just an American.

Now ask yourself, Who and what is an American? How and where do we find our identity? When we speak of "we the people" whom do we include? What traits of character or temperament do we hold in common?

To paraphrase V.S. Pritchett, there may not be an American caricature (i.e. blonde hair with blue eyes or tall, dark and handsome) but there is the emotion of being American. It's a feeling of nostalgia for some undetermined future when humanity will have improved itself beyond recognition and when all will be well.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, "The principle on which this country was founded and by which it has always been governed is that Americanism is a matter of the mind and heart; Americanism is not, and never was, a matter of race or ancestry. A good American is one who is loyal to this country and to our creed of liberty and democracy".

Essentially, America is an aggregatio mentuim (Meeting of the minds), or in the words of George F. Will, "a consensual association of culturally diverse people." A nation dedicated to a self-evident `proposition' that "all persons are created equal in the right to freedom."

Americans from the moment of conception was a mix composition, dating back to the American Revolution to the triumphant forces of Desert Storm. Americans accept our racial and cultural differences as the odds we are obliged to overcome not perpetuated. As John Quincy Adams poignantly stated to a German baron concerning emigrants, "They must cast off the European (and I would add African, Asiatic and Latino) skin never to resume it. They must look forward to their posterity rather than backward to their ancestors".

Historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., summarized America as the creation of a national identity, carried forward by individuals who, in forsaking old loyalties join together in creating a unique national character based on common political ideals and shared experiences. Thus, the point of being American is not the preservation of old cultures, but a perpetual construction of a common American culture through ethnic synthesis. In short, America calls for the subordination of primordial bonds to universal values.

The individual American spirit was captured by former President Ronald Reagan when he spoke, "We are always about becoming, not being; about the prospects for the future, not about the inheritance of the past." Essayist Lewis H. Lapham wrote, "We are a nations of parvenus, all bound to the hopes of tomorrow, or next week, or next year." Lapham continues, "Men and women in American life start out in one place and end up in another, never quite knowing how they got there, perpetually expecting the unexpected.

The American experience is one of improvisation. In the words of historian Daniel Boorstin, "No prudent man dared to be too certain of exactly who he was or what he was about; everyone had to be prepared to become someone else. To be ready for such perilous transmigration was to become an American". Who else is the American hero, but a wandering pilgrim who goes forth on a perpetual quest?

If "America is about nothing else, it is about the invention of the self. Because we have little use for history or class privilege, we find ourselves set adrift at birth in an existential void, inheriting nothing except the obligation to construct a plausible self." By virtue of our obligation of self invention, Americans focus self-critically inward.

Whether its improving our spelling, learning a second language or the Herculean task of freeing ourselves of sin, Americans are goaded toward perfection through personal growth. Of course Americans are not perfect, but its our eternal quest as individuals and as a nation.

"The American ideal is an existential one," notes L.H. Lapham. "It isn't that we believe that every American is as perceptive or as accomplished as any other, but we insist on the preservation of a decent and mutual respect, not only for the rich and famous, but toward everyone because they are our fellow citizens".

"Our virtues conform to the terms and conditions of an arduous and speculative individual journey." Americans are eternal optimists who value the companionable nobleness of helpfulness, forgiveness, kindliness and tolerance. It has been said that if everything in the world was done rationally, two-thirds of the world's problems would be solved. If we saw one another as just Americans we would put to rest, once and for all, a preponderance of our problems.

America is indeed the "great experiment" of an unparalleled, epic proportion. While other nations and places (Canada, Southern Europe and Africa) are being torn apart, America still remains (with tensions) as "one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all".