In order to participate in the GunBroker Member forums, you must be logged in with your GunBroker.com account. Click the sign-in button at the top right of the forums page to get connected.
Hyphenated Americans
idsman75
Member Posts: 13,398 ✭✭✭
I know this subject is beat to death but something dawned on me while I was making a long drive today. Actually, most of my personal revelation and reflections occur while I drive long distances (which is probably why I like to drive so much).
I am the descendant of Dutch folk. Both sides of my family immigrated from the Netherlands in the early 20th century. To call myself a Dutch-American would be ABSOLUTELY appalling to me. I am ashamed of present-day Holland and its rapid decline towards immorality. This is why I am boggled over the notion that so many Americans consider themselves "hyphenated". They insist on being referred in terms that place the nation of their origin before the word "American". Many of these hyphenated Americans have nations of origin that are far worse than present day Holland. It blows my mind that they would want to create such associations with the name "American".
Would anyone care to enlighten me?
SSG idsman75, U.S. ARMY
I am the descendant of Dutch folk. Both sides of my family immigrated from the Netherlands in the early 20th century. To call myself a Dutch-American would be ABSOLUTELY appalling to me. I am ashamed of present-day Holland and its rapid decline towards immorality. This is why I am boggled over the notion that so many Americans consider themselves "hyphenated". They insist on being referred in terms that place the nation of their origin before the word "American". Many of these hyphenated Americans have nations of origin that are far worse than present day Holland. It blows my mind that they would want to create such associations with the name "American".
Would anyone care to enlighten me?
SSG idsman75, U.S. ARMY
Comments
doc
I dont give my guns without somebody getting hurt!
I'm Irish. I would not call myself an Irish-American. That's silly. That implies I was a citizen in Ireland and lived there for awhile before I came here. It also implies I care more about my Irish heritage than I do about my American citizenship.
You're black. I'm white. My heritage is in Ireland, yours is in Africa. I come from a long line of drunken sheep-herders. That guy over there, he's a Polack. That other dude there's an Indian.
So drop the hyphen, willya? It's pretentious, and makes you look like you wish you were back at your ancestral home in Uganda.
http://www.tmorg-forums.com/
I am interested in people's national origins and I think it is insulting when someone replies simply and snootily, "I am American!"
Then there are the folks who are obviously FROM foreign country then they get insulted when you ask from where.
Example: I went to a doctor in the US, last time I was home who was Chinese, I could tell by the name, but I wondered from where.
At first he dodged the question by simply saying "I'm Chinese", I said, " Yes, but from where?" (Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, or the mainland?) He got agitated, gave me a fierce look and said "Hong Kong."
"Oh! Kowloon, Wan Chai, the New Territories?", I probed. It turned out that I usally stay in a hotel near where he was born. He warmed considerably after that.
I know it might sound like I gave him the third degree but it was just casual talk.
Why so damn sensitive?
I find this is true even with other Americans I encounter here. They act as if it's an insult that I ask what state they're from. Some won't even answer.
Then there are the ones who won't even make eye contact as we pass each other on the street.
Growing up in central Illinois where people would like as not wave or nod their heads as you were in each in a car passing at 60 miles an hour makes this behavior all the weirder to me. I mean .......all these people can't be from New York City!
There was another thread talking about rude gun dealers, but I think people are getting ruder and more self-isolating everywhere.
Feed your heads!
Don't accept it.
Don't stay silent about it.
Don't tolerate it.
And take every opertunity to point out how stupid it is.
Lt
"We become what we habitually do. If we act rightly, we become upright men. If we habitually act wrongly, or weakly, we become weak and corrupt" - *ARISTOTLE*
**Like Grandad used to say--"It'll feel better when it quits hurtin"
I note a lot of Americans; proud to be American, Americans still talk about the war of Northern Aggression. Hmmmm, probably I am missing something but then sweet tea gags me too.
Why not let ever-body be what they want to be, does it matter if it is not just the same as us?
Do not mistake my kindness for weakness.
IALEFI, ASLET, NRA, and proud owner of a pair of S&W revolvers.
"We welcome the German or Irishman who becomes an American. We have no use for the German or Irishman who remains such. We do not wish German-American and Irish-Americans who figure as such in our social and political life; we want only Americans, and, provided they are such, we do not care if they are of native Irish or German ancestry. We have no room in any healthy American community for a German-American vote or an Irish American vote, and it is contemptible demagogy to put planks into any party platform with the purpose of catching such a vote. We have no room for any people who do not act and vote simply as Americans, and nothing else."
Theodore Roosevelt
"True Americanism"
From the Forum April 1897
Funny, I bet you couldn't get a politician from any political party to write that essay a hundred years later.
Woods
How big a boy are ya?
Edited by - woodsrunner on 05/17/2002 11:55:04
This nonsense started with blacks and later spread to the hispanics. And that's all it is - nonsense.
PC=BS
I think the hypenated crapola started when the world started becoming so impersonal. Back in the 40's and 50's we knew every family within a couple of blocks of home. This gradually disappeared over the last 40 years until many of us don't know the names of the people who live next door or across the street. It's this impersonal society that has made many people feel as though they must do something to retain their identity. Thus the emergence of the hyphens. Merely an attachment to something familiar. ie. the past.
Mudge the unhyphenated American
I can't come to work today. The voices said, STAY HOME AND CLEAN THE GUNS!
I think I am now
He Dog the Mudgeinated-American
"But when someone's loyalty to these other descriptive words exceeds their loyalty to this nation, I figure they can damn well go somewhere else to live, and with a hearty kick to the behind to help them on their way.. And, BTW, we speak English, not (fill in the blank), so learn the language just as you would expect us to learn yours if we went to live in the place from which you came. Don't like it? Too #$%^&* bad!"
What can I say to that?
Woodsrunner:
"We have no room for any people who do not act and vote simply as Americans, and nothing else."
Theodore Roosevelt
"True Americanism"
From the Forum April 1897
Amen, brother. What a truly great American. We should carve this man's face into a mountainside somewhere or something...
I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.--Voltaire~Secret Select Society Of Suave Stylish Smoking Jackets~
I would've never referred to myself as an Okie to begin with...I shouldn't bash OK, the fact that it sucks keeps Texas from floating off into the gulf of mexico.