My belief is that an American citizen is someone who isn’t temporarily “in love” with our country, but will forever put our country above his or her own nation of birth or any other country for that matter. I think that Gevevoeur was right on with his definition of what it means to be an American. To me, Americans are proud, loyal and strong. I also don’t necessarily believe that only humans can represent America. Like in the videos we watched during class, landmarks are very symbolic of what our country means and what it means to be an actual American. The Statue of Liberty, for example, to me represents freedom. In one of the poems that we read, the Statue of Liberty was depicted as the welcoming entrance to freedom for all of the immigrants. It is symbols like this that help to make up what it really means to be an American. America is the country it is because of all of the immigrants. An American is proud to be one and I believe that if someone is going to proudly stand by our country and love it as their own, regardless of their heritage, they too can be identified as Americans as well.
