It's the end of another semester and that means essay time.
This week's entries: Using the American literature we have studied in this class and literature you have read on your own, write an essay explaining what you think it means to be an American.
Responses of note:
1) A true American is someone who feels pride for America and try to help with the environment or in any way that they. America has been through a lot, for example to Great the Depression, it was a time in which the stock market went down and not many people had jobs.
2) I think being an American means to actually being born here and not coming from another state.
3) I think to be an American is to live and be born in America; because to live in this continent means freedom.
4) Malcolm X views on the way to solve issues in the black community were violent. but he knew how to use rights he had has an american to get around the law.
I have learned much today about my country.
Funny thing ... I've always believed that the best summation is not in the Bill of Rights, nor the Constitution of America itself, but in the preamble of the Declaration of Independance. Namely:
ReplyDeleteWe hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
Of course, everyone talks about the rights, yet very few want to talk about the duties and responsibilities.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,--That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Of course, ignorance is bliss, and most people who immigrate here tend to be better Americans than those who were born here and take those rights and responsibilities for granted.
Maybe what it means to be an American is to only define what it means to you and not try to define it for anybody else...
ReplyDeleteIn our differences only do we fine what unites us.
Well yeah. That's the point of the essay. Based on the writings of Americans, what do you think it means to be American?
ReplyDeleteThat's what essays are for.
Honestly, Jake, I've had students try to use what you said as a reason they didn't do their paper.
They get a big old F for that.