On Growing Up American

The United States, the most successful economy in the history of the world, is THE Land of Opportunity. It is different, not because of money, not because of military, but because of people.

The US by make-up is a nation of immigrants who left their homes, their lives, their comfort, venturing out into an unknown in order to seek a new life, a new path, a better opportunity.

Most have come with little to nothing, and built one of the most successful nations in the history of the world. We grew up with stories like “The Little Train that Could.” “The Bad News Bears”, “The Mighty Ducks,” stories of the common and non-special doing the extraordinary. We cheered with “Rocky,” and the “Karate Kid” and dared to share their dreams.

We dreamed as kids of being sports stars, astronauts, presidents. We grew not afraid of risk nor failure.

We are resilient, competitive, progressive. We don’t think of ourselves as the best, but compete as if we were.

We don’t wait for someone to tell us what we can do. We go until we’re told we can’t

We look for opportunities; we don’t wait for hand outs.

The US is a country where:

· Dreaming is encouraged

· Creativity is seen as a blessing rather than a lack of discipline

· We are motivated and put energies into rising above the competition rather than bringing it down

· Discrimination is confronted and dealt with rather than ignored and suppressed

· Opportunity is limited to your performance not your station, certification or special relationship.

· We learn to compete from an early age, and understand chance, loss, and winning.

· Performance outweighs relationship in competition.

· People are not afraid to hope, not scared to shoot for the stars, and willing to raise the bar.

· Culture supports opportunity, because if we don’t take it, someone else will.

· Individuality is celebrated.

So when our leaders create policies of penalty rather than opportunity; when they believe the people serve them, rather serving the people; when they believe the people want hand outs rather than choice, when they believe were satisfied with arbitrary distribution rather than fair competition, when they think we will simply give up after failure rather than push on and persevere, and when they think we NEED them…

It is clear….they are not American regardless of what their passport says, they don’t think American, and don’t understand the American spirit.