What kind of hyphanated American are you?

Have you ever thought about it? There are some Americans who have their own niche. They aren't simply Americans, they are special Americans. They get a hyphenated designation in front of the fact that they are Americans.

It's no longer good enough to just be an American, to truly achieve status you must get the hyphen or you apparently don't rate. Without the hyphen? You are just a generic off the rack American and someone not worthy of the interest of anyone.

So what kind of hyphen do you have? Are you an Italian America? Or an Irish America? Or maybe you are a Swiss American?  Am I getting warm?  What about German Americans and French Americans and Samoan Americans and Japanese Americans? Or Aleutian Americans Where are they all at?

It seems to me that regardless of who you are or what your heritage may be, by definition you and I should easily qualify for hyphenation, but we don't We aren't members of those special classes of privileged hyphens. Those like the African Americans, and Muslim Americas, and Mexican Americans and Latin Americans. And don't forget the Gay and Lesbian Americans.

I guess if you aren't in one of those special classes of Americans, you simply don't rate. Unless of course you have found yourself in the catch all class of hyphenated American and you are disabled. Then you might actually have arrived among the others. You are a disabled American. And someone might actually refer to you by your hyphenated name.

But in the interim, you won't see anyone asking for a show of hands on the Polish Americans in the crowd. Or the Caucasian Americans. We all come from different parts of the world too, but the problem is, our countries of origin don't rate in the big picture of socialist egalitarianism. No one gives a damn about Danish Americans or Greek Americans or Swedish Americans. And the reason no one cares? Those Americans don't exist in the world of secular humanism. Those Americans are just Americans and therefore, they don't rate any special designations when the egalitarians are handing out their privileges of equality.

There is only one exception to all of this hyphenation that I am familiar with, the Amish.
The Amish don't even get to be called Americans, they are simply the Amish.  Meanwhile, there are no references to Jewish Americans or Christian Americans or Protestant Americans or Catholic Americans, but we seem to have tons of Muslim Americans.

We are told that the first amendment protects us against government sponsorship of religions, yet when it comes to the followers of Islam, they seem to get a pass. They get their hyphenation and we damn well better remember it. Or else one of their support organizations will use our law and our courts to punish us for being so insensitive as to think that we might actually be equal.

In Europe there don't appear to be these hyphenated classes. When Europeans look at an American, they see an American. Love us or hate us, we are Americans to them. Which causes me to wonder. I wonder how many Anglo French there are roaming around France and how many French Italians are residents of Rome. And there must be more than a few Swiss Maltese and Danish Spaniards.

So what do you think? What should the rest of us in the melting pot of America be called. Are we not good enough to be considered just Americans?  Having served this country for over thirty years of my life in defense of our freedoms, I often wonder just what I was defending and protecting. As each day passes I see more and more alienation of Americans and more and more embrace of aliens.

We are told this is only fair and that we need to be more tolerant, but isn't that supposed to work both ways? I read an article today that said that the US Constitution was no longer the sought after model of developing countries. After over one hundred years as the mode of freedom and government to be sought after globally, we are now being pushed to the side in favor of other forms of constitutional government. I wonder why. Was it something we said? Or is it what we allow to be said about ourselves. Is it what we have allowed our nation to become that now offends and turns off the rest of the world.

The world that once followed America and wanted to be just like us, now looks upon us as something they want to keep away from. I believe that a lot of those sentiments are directly attributable to how we see and market ourselves globally. America has spent the last fifty years destroying everything that once made this nation great. We are now second best or worse in the eyes of many corners of the world and the really sad part is, we did it to ourselves.

We did it by embracing that which is the most alien of all concepts to those who thrive. We threw off our historical desires to thrive and achieve and we opted for just being average, off the rack, one size fits all everybody wins, that's only fair. And in the end, all we have accomplished is to diminish our standing both at home and abroad.

We are mere shadows of our former selves now, because we are no longer Americans. We are now hyphenated, politically correct, egalitarian hipsters and regardless of what we think of our image of ourselves, the world is seeing us for what we have become.

We literally need a super hero to become our Captain America and pull us back from the great abyss and return us to that point when Ronald Reagan led us and looked upon us as that shining city on a hill. Those days are post script and each day that we delay in re-claiming our heritage and our pride, the farther distant our memories of freedom will become.

In the mean time, as we slip slowly fro the world stage, I keep hoping that other Americans will join those like myself who see the problem and want to see this nation returned to its former greatness.

I keep hoping. So I guess that makes me a "hoping American."