"There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism..."

"...The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities.”

This is a quote from an address President Theodore Roosevelt gave to the New York Knights of Columbus on October 12, 1915. The man nailed it right on the head nearly a hundred years ago! You'd think he was pscychic or something, huh? Here's a few more for you.

“Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or leave the country.”

“We can have no "50-50" allegiance in this country. Either a man is an American and nothing else, or he is not an American at all.”

I cannot tell you how much I agree with those last two quotes! I agree with all of them, but the last two about learning English and having a '50-50 allegiance' are two of my favorite quotes of all time!

These quotes pretty much sum up why I hate the use of hyphenated terms when speaking of one's nationality, and why I absolutely refuse to use them. To claim to be of a nationality in which being an American is listed SECOND is, to me, abhorrent and reprehensible. This tells me in no uncertain terms that the person using a hyphenated term to describe their nationality is more proud of the first country in the title than they are of being an American, and that just absolutely goes against everything I believe in! I am an American FIRST and FOREMOST, and that's all there is to it.

Were I to subscribe to the use of hyphenated labels as some folks do, I could call myself all kinds of things. My grandmother on my father's side had the last name of Martin, so I could call myself an "Irish-American." My father's family name comes from Scotland as does my mother's family name of Burkett, so I could call myself a "Scottish-American."

But I don't do this. I absolutely REFUSE to do this, and for one simple reason: I am an AMERICAN, I am an American FIRST and FOREMOST, and that simple fact takes a back seat to NO ONE or NOTHING!

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that you should ignore your family history and heritage - not at all! But instead of using that insulting and unpatriotic hyphenated term, why not just say that you're an American of whatever descent? Like me, I'm an American of Scottish and Irish descent; my wife is an American of Italian descent. But we're both AMERICANS, first and foremost.

And that's the point. I, for one, have ALWAYS been proud of America and of being an American, unlike our about-to-be-inaugurated president and his wife. No matter what America does, I'll always be proud of my country and will defend her with my last ounce of strength and to my last breath.

I'll talk about the "learn English within five years" quote later in the week.

IHC