What is an American? 

by Janie Cheaney

     American history has been a minefield of reinterpretation. The Stars and Stripes triggers anxiety. The Fourth of July calls for dirges. It's a civil war of words, testing whether any nation that debates its own existence can long endure. 

     A Frenchman wrote in 1782: "What then is an American, this new man? An American is heir to European arts and sciences but freed from European traditions and obligations. He is a man of property, entitled to the fruits of his labor."

     "He is a free agent in a classless society, owing no allegiance to a king or a church. Here, individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will cause great change in the world."

     He left to Americans to discover for ourselves who we are. We haven't figured it out yet. 

     Americans might be defined as individuals freed to act out their human nature. Human nature is complicated, as is American history. 

     Another Frenchman wrote the "glory and garbage of the universe" turned loose on a largely empty continent, will do glorious and garbagy things. Glorious are the innovations, material prosperity, and the opportunity to follow up on a good idea. Less so is the freedom to exercise greed and prejudice. 

     Americans aren't uniquely good or evil; we've just been uniquely unfettered. That's why John Adams said our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. We the people still believe that. The disagreement is over whose morality and what religion.