"There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all... 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, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic... There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else." Teddy Roosevelt
(What do you think? VN8)
Just a little bit of trivia: Did you know that Teddy Roosevelt was a trendsetter. Roosevelt’s Wikipedia entry has a list of presidential firsts, including the first president to refer to the presidential mansion as the White House, host a black man at a White House dinner, appoint a Jewish person as a cabinet member, travel outside the United States while in office, and fly in an airplane. He was also the first American to ever win a Nobel Prize, for Peace in 1906.
"Speak softly and carry a big stick." President Theodore Roosevelt
No comments:
Post a Comment