By Mike Koetting July 8, 2025
Another Fourth of July rolled around and there was new grist for the perennial question of how I feel about being an American.
Being an American is, foremost, a legal definition laying out certain rights and responsibilities. Becoming an American was easy for me: I was born here. And since, at least so far, I haven’t wanted to leave, I am still an American. Of course, the legal fact doesn’t shed light on how I feel about this.
At one level, how I feel about being an American is kind of an unconscious, automatic response to being part of a group, a community larger than me. I always cheer for American teams to win in the Olympics. There are also certain patriotic tropes and evocations that never fail to move me. Lincoln’s Second Inaugural address, for example. Or Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land.” I suspect this deep-seated sense of “home” will stay with me no matter what.
But these group instincts are nowhere near as important as the more analytical view of what I believe America stands for and how that is being realized, or not, at the moment.
Continue reading “Being an American Right Now”
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