Defining the America Culture

Since the immigration debate began heating up, there have been some thought-provoking ideas about the common culture that we Americans share. It is a culture believed to be important as a means by which we identify ourselves distinctly as Americans. It is a culture believed to be unique as well as one into which all immigrants should strive to assimilate themselves.

It would be difficult to completely disagree with such ideas. After all, even if we as a society can find ourselves celebrating such a diversity of cultures that serves to distinguish our various traditions and backgrounds, there is still a commonality that we must necessarily share if we are to identify ourselves as a unified nation even if it is nothing more than a common language. Instead, we are spending untold amounts giving, for instance, driver license tests in several different languages as all the street signs are printed in English.

Aside from what we as a nation must be prepared to do in order to protect our borders and control immigration – and I believe we must as a matter of national security – immigration and the problem of illegal immigrants are not what has been haunting me. Rather, I have been trying desperately to identify this “American culture” that many seek to protect. I suppose this unique culture can mean different things to different people, but a nation with a common purpose must necessarily be united in one form or fashion.

So what is the one unique thing that binds us together as a nation? Even as diverse a population as there is in the United States, there must also surely be one common theme that exists within the hearts and minds of Americans, that theme that distinctly cries out, “THIS IS AN AMERICAN (dream)!”

That’s it, isn’t it? The “American Dream”. It is that one simple ideal to which each American citizen, and even aliens who come to this country, aspires and works to achieve. Even the “American Dream” can be as diverse as the populace that seeks to identify the ideal for itself. We dream, we plan, we hope, we desire, we work, and we save so that one day we can claim for ourselves that piece of the “American Dream”.

So what is the “American Dream”? Is it home or land ownership? Is it education for our children? Is it other property not necessarily with lasting value but with an intrinsic value to us as Americans that we can lay claim to it as our piece of the “Dream” and call it our own American ideal? Or is it something as simple and yet as profound as “liberty”; the right to do and to be as we choose to do or be? Or to choose not to participate in the so-called rat race that has driven many a good American to an early grave?

The more I reflect and explore, the more the American ideal sounds like consumerism. The ideal and the quality of the dream may have as much to do with how much we can acquire and accumulate as it has to do with our right to do so.

Even beyond this is the amount and quality of “stuff” we can gather for ourselves and our families and even our old age. We have continued debates about an acceptable and mandated minimum wage while we lament about the high cost of goods and services we seek to acquire. Even as we do this, we cry out about those who would enter into this country illegally and take “our” jobs and then continue to pray for those who are unfairly exploited while we secretly are thankful that someone is out there holding down the cost of these goods and services we can no longer live without.

It would appear that the unique American culture has more to do with what we can do for ourselves rather than what we can for one another such as welcoming a stranger and giving not only of our abundance but also of ourselves. It may be that our culture, however unique, could use a shot of this culture and that so that we may learn more about what it takes to build up our communities rather than build up for ourselves that which can be taken from us without warning.

It may be that our American culture demands a $50,000.00 standard of living on a $35,000.00 paycheck. The American culture being what it is may have more to do with a sense of entitlement by which we justify our horse-choking debt loads and inability to pay what we owe, much less share what we have.

It does not seem to be enough to simply seek the ideal. It seems to me that we must first identify this ideal to determine whether or not we are truly prepared to live within such a society and then demand assimilation from others to share in the same.