The United States of America has been dubbed the land of opportunity and freedom; and over the course of history immigrants have fled to escape prejudice and oppression. America has become a melting pot of cultures, where opinions and beliefs that intermingle with each other lead to conflict and pride. Average Americans have an innate personality that sets them apart from the rest of the world, that the country created today has become an entire world in itself. To be an American is to have a great sense of patriotism, to value ones individualism, and to be materialistic.
Patriotism is a trait that all Americans express. Theodore Roosevelt explains in “True Americanism” that “the fact yet remains that to be a first-class American is fifty-fold better than to
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Bharati Mukherjee writes in her essay titled “American Dreamer” that “[citizens have] the chance to acknowledge that … values are likely to change”. She references “those values” as the ones from her strict Indian heritage and appreciates the freedom that America gives her to recreate her own identity as an immigrant coming to the U.S. Not one American is exactly alike due to the freedom that allows them to pursue individualism. Citizens are allowed to have different opinions and beliefs from one another, which imbeds the value placed on being individual. Moreover, Colin Woodward writes in his article “Up In Arms” that “in every town, city, and state you’ll likely find a full range of political opinions and social preferences”. Though seen as a country in itself, the United States is divided into multiple nations based on lifestyle and opinion. The individuality that citizens value is powerful enough to create divisions in the country. People can easily differentiate one from another and some are even open to adapt to even more change. Americans understand and emphasize their differences well enough to value the nation as independently