Here’s a question we patriotic Americans should be asking ourselves: What does it mean to be an “American”?
Why, you might ask, should we ask ourselves this question? After all, the definition of the word “American,” when applied to people, isn’t really relevant to the political values of most Americans. To take myself as an example, I want more safety, more freedom and more prosperity, health and happiness for all American citizens – and I’m content to accept the simple idea that all American citizens are “Americans,” period.
But for a small minority of people who have a disproportionate influence in our media, the question of who is “American” and who isn’t — or the question of who is “more American” and who is “less American” — is key to the way they think about politics. They see the word “American” as a term that can include some American citizens and exclude others, and they are intent on subtly imposing their definition on the rest of us as a way to increase their power.
We can’t afford to sit back and let their insidious usages infect our everyday conversation until the word itself — “American” – becomes a symbol of their destructive ideas. We must think, very deliberately, about how we define the word “American,” so we can defend ourselves and our country.
An obvious example of how media elites are trying to use the word “American” to undermine their political enemies was revealed by the Atlantic Monthly’s Joshua Green, who recently wrote an article about Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, and also published a collection of memos written by Clinton’s top campaign strategists. Clinton’s uber-strategist was a man named Mark Penn, the CEO of the public relations firm Burson-Marsteller. Penn wrote a memo in late March 2007 suggesting Obama was “less American” than Clinton. Here’s an excerpt:
All of these articles about his boyhood in Indonesia and his life in Hawaii are geared towards showing his background is diverse, multicultural and putting that in a new light.
Save it for 2050.
It also exposes a very strong weakness for him — his roots to basic American values and culture are at best limited. I cannot imagine America electing a president during a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values. He told the people of NH yesterday he has a Kansas accent because his mother was from there. His mother lived in many states as far as we can tell — but this is an example of the nonsense he uses to cover this up.
How could we give some life to this contrast without going negative:
Every speech should contain the line you were born in the middle of America to the middle class in the middle of the last century. And talk about the basic bargain as about the deeply held American values you grew up with, learned as a child and that drive you today. Values of fairness, compassion, responsibility, giving back.
Let’s explicitly own “American” in our programs, the speeches and the values. He doesn’t. Make this a new American Century, the American Strategic Energy Fund. Let’s use our logo to make some flags we can give out. Let’s add flag symbols to the background.
We are never going to say anything about his background — we have to show the value of ours when it comes to making decisions, understanding the needs of most Americans — the invisible Americans.
Let’s be clear: Obama’s mother was American. His father, a native of Kenya, abandoned the family when Obama was two years old. Obama lived in Indonesia from ages 6 to 10, but otherwise he spent his entire life living in the United States. He grew up in Hawaii, attended Americans schools including Columbia University and Harvard University, and taught the U.S. Constitution at the University of Chicago Law School.
So why does Penn claim to think Obama’s “roots to basic American values and culture are at best limited”? Why does Penn claim to think Obama is “not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values?”
It’s important to note that Penn is not framing his argument in ethnic or genetic terms — which would be a more blatant invocation of Nazi ideology — but rather in terms of Obama’s “values” and “culture” — but Penn doesn’t specifically explain what leads him to believe that Obama’s “values” are “limited” in their American-ness.
Setting aside what spooky thoughts might be rattling around inside Penn’s brain, it’s easy to understand Obama’s vulnerability to being called “un-American” in a general election. First of all, right-wingers use the word “un-American” to describe Democrats and liberals in general. Right-wingers like to draw a link between liberals and Marxists, thereby identifying liberals with America’s enemies during the Cold War. And ever since the 1960s, right-wingers have called liberals “un-American” because of the left-wing’s opposition to the Vietnam War.
Furthermore, people on the religious right who consider America a “Christian nation” consider atheism “un-American,” and atheism is more popular among liberals. Add to that Obama’s mixed race, his foreign father, his middle name — “HUSSEIN!” — and it’s clear why people think they can get away with suggesting that Obama isn’t American enough to be president.
But Penn doesn’t embrace the right-wing’s characterization of all liberals as “un-American,” nor does he point directly to Obama’s religion or ethnicity to show why Obama isn’t “American” enough. Instead, Penn uses words such as “values” and “culture.”
So here’s the question we should be asking. If someone shares the “values” and “culture” of Barack Obama, does that mean this person’s connection to American values and culture is “at best limited”? If you care about the things that Obama cares about and enjoy the things that Obama enjoys, are you not as “American” as someone like Clinton, who was “born in the middle of America”?
This is what I beleive: To use the word “American” to diminish Barack Obama is disgusting and terrifying. It is a perversion of the ideas we patriotic Americans value most. As far as I’m concerned, Hillary Clinton owes this country an apology.