Sunday, July 7, 2013 | 2 a.m.
View more of the Sun's opinion section
View more of the Sun's opinion section
What does it mean to be an American? To me, it means ... having the space, opportunity and freedom to be left alone.
Settlers and immigrants, except African slaves and indentured servants, only wanted to escape the withering noose of religious persecution and limits often placed on one’s “station” and “worth” in society. Indentured servants signed up and agreed to contracts of seven years of servitude out of a yearning for a freedom they would never have known in the Old World.
To be an American is to be John Wayne, Abraham Lincoln, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, George Armstrong Custer, George Washington and John Adams, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon, the Kennedys, Lt. Col. Oliver North, Elvis Presley, Harry Reid and Brian Sandoval ... Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. ... the Knights of Columbus, the KKK, the NAACP, the ACLU, Barack Obama ...
All of these and many more is what it means to be an American.
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