The Blood of a Nation

Posted on Friday, 24 February | Comments

sclez:

gaeilgeblog:

irelandedition:

The United States is a new country, with most of its inhabitants only moving into the land within the last four hundred years. The country is a conglomerate of different cultures. While most would consider themselves to be American, many still look elsewhere for their traditions and stories. They look to where they originated, to the place their ancestors left to find new lives in the US. There aren’t any stories or beliefs, or monuments of great power native to the United States. The Native Americans living in the United States now, with their strong sense of culture and ingrained beliefs and traditions, are not natives to the United States. They are natives to the land, but not the country. Those that consider themselves American and dismiss past heritage, don’t have a rich pool of culture to draw upon. They have only the doctrine of the American ‘Pull Yourself Up By the Bootstraps’ Dream. It’s a culture now characterized by a Protestant work ethic and freedom. It’s all progress all the time, a constant search for the bigger and better.  There’s no strong roots of the past to keep the country anchored and leveled, but at the heart of nation, is something pure and worth being proud of, even if many have lost sight of it. To be American means to be descendant of those that came looking for a better quality of life for themselves and for you. America really is a country founded on the principles of freedom and love. 

People who say that the USA has no historic culture of its own confuse me.  I defy anyone to go to New Orleans and say that it doesn’t have its own culture, as distinctive as any of the cultures of Europe.  Within the same state of Louisiana, you then have the Cajun culture with it’s beautiful music, unique speech and wonderful way of life.  Further afield you have even more cultures. Mexican culture in the South-West, that brazen extroverted crowd up in New York, the hard-working cowboy-culture of Montana to name but a few.  What do people think European cultures are anyway?  They are more of a cultural continuum, each one affecting and being affected by its neighbours.  European cultures are just as much a mish-mash as American cultures are. America has just as much right to claim pride in its own culture as any other nation.  It just doesn’t.

The Americans really need to stop being so hard on themselves culturally.  Perhaps if they did, they’d stop using their mickey mouse version of our cultures and the Irish could stop being so exasperated with plastic paddies. 

IMPORTANT.