There's No Room for Hyphenated Americans

“There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism.”
President Teddy Roosevelt, 1915

The statement is more to the point today than it has ever been in the history of this country. We are more diverse today than ever and the attentions of the American citizen are pulled to so many other things before we think of our country. We become Americans on the 4th of July and Labor Day and Thanksgiving and during the Olympics or World Cup. The rest of the time we’re middle-class, middle-aged, minority, sub-urban, Republicrats who follow the Tarheels, Cowboys, Lakers, or Red Sox AND DON’T YOU FORGET IT, PAL! We’re Irish on St. Patrick’s Day, Mexican on Cinco de Mayo, Christian on Christmas and patriotic on Memorial and Veteran’s Day. With all the things that we hang our identity on, it’s no wonder that we think we need hyphens.

Still, there is the intent of President Roosevelt’s statement. Let me give you a little background to what was going on at the time he said it and why. In 1915, World War I had been going on for a year. Roosevelt was six years out of the White House but still a prominent political figure. The U.S. had yet to enter into the war…that would happen in 1917. There was a good deal of pressure being placed on politicians by Irish-Americans and German-Americans who had an interest in getting the U.S. military involved in the war in support of their homeland nations. In case you don’t remember your history, Ireland and Germany were on different sides of the war.

Teddy wanted to make it clear that nationalism of American citizens to homeland nations threatened the greater good of this nation. The U.S. took a stance of neutrality at the beginning of WWI and it was Roosevelt’s contention that if we entered into the conflict, it should be for reasons befitting this nation’s welfare, not loyalties of its citizens to their ‘homeland’. While the speech and its intent spoke to divisions among Americans of European Descent (see how much a pain that is to say), it is just as true now that we have significant populations from every continent and many more nations.

At the time of this writing, our country is going back and forth over issues of political party, class, race, gender, nationalism and region. Whichever of these issues plays the loudest for you will likely be what drives your decision on whom to vote for. That is politics as usual. That is why candidates pander to you regarding far more issues than they have interest or ability to address. That is not going to help us get out of the collective mess that we find ourselves in. We’ve got to address our nation’s infrastructure, economy, industry, security, education system, and healthcare. None of those issues are hyphen specific. These issues affect us all.

For those who are able to vote, please pay attention to current events and the policies that our government candidates propose. Oh, and do one more thing for me…GO VOTE! For those who are unable to vote stay involved and get others to vote.

(Paraphrased from the original speech)
“The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling special-interest groups, an intricate knot of nationalities, political parties, races, ethnicities, genders and other interest, each preserving its separate loyalty, each at heart feeling more sympathy with members of that interest group, than with the other citizens of the American Republic.”

You can find the entire speech at the following location:
http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/trquotes.html