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Are you an American?

Before you answer that, let me ask you something else. Are you sure you know what it means to be American?

When I look at articles and feeds, sometimes I really do feel as if everyone in the eUSA has forgotten what it means to be American. People claim that they are American just because they were born here. They claim that because people were born outside of the states those people can’t be American. Well let me share a secret with you eAmerica.

Being American isn’t about where you were born, it isn’t about where you live. Being American is about spirit. I feel like some people here in the eUSA have forgotten that. They’ve lost their way and they need to find their way back, so let me give you something to listen to while you read the rest of the article. Let’s hope these two songs can help you remember a little of what you may have forgotten.

Song #1
Song #2

So let me ask you my fellow “eAmericans”. Do you remember what it means to be American? Do you remember what it means to have the American Spirit? Earlier I said, “being American isn’t about where you were born…being American is about spirit”. I maintain that position. You can’t be American just because you were born here, and not being born here doesn’t make you not an American as some people seem to think.

The American Spirit is something that is difficult to describe. It isn’t a single way of thinking. It isn’t a way of life. It isn’t like that at all. The American spirit is a way of feeling and doing. The American spirit is getting up after you’ve been knocked down even when you have no energy left to fight. The American spirit is charging a machine gun position to save a little girls life. The American spirit is charging into a burning building while it is falling down because there is someone that needs your help. The American spirit is standing your ground and moving forward even when the odds are stacked against you. That is the American spirit, that is what it means to be an American. Being American is about getting back up, doing what needs to be done, doing what you know in your heart is the right thing to do. Being American isn’t about birth, it is about spirit and sometimes I think people have forgotten that.

To give some examples of the American Spirit I’ll tell you some stories about my own life. I’ll tell you about some of the people I’ve known in life, and I’ll tell you about some of the things they did that makes me certain they are American.

I volunteer at a fire station. People think pulling people out of burning buildings is an everyday thing for us. Well that may be true in cities or something, but where I live, that just isn’t how it works. Most buildings that go up around here are one-story buildings, so everyone can normally get out of them before we even get there. One call I went on though wasn’t like that. It was a warehouse. We thought everyone was out, the manager of the facility even told us that everyone was out. About one hour into the call, the roof of the building started to buckle. That was a sign to us that the building was coming down. When the building starts to come down, we all back up and just wait for it to happen. We were told that everyone was out of the building, so we were all just planning on letting the building fall, putting out the embers and then packing up. Unfortunately the manager of that place was an idiot. One of the guys said he heard something. Chief wouldn’t let anyone back inside because it was collapsing. This guy though, he was something else. He ran back into the building, despite the fact that it was collapsing. He didn’t take his SCBA tank, didn’t put on his mask, didn’t put on his helmet (he had taken them off when the building started to collapse and everyone pulled back). He just ran in there. I’ll tell you something, it is a good thing he did because he went in alone, but he didn’t come out alone. He came out of there carrying a woman. She was conscious, but she was torn up pretty bad. When the fire had first started she had been knocked down and pinned by a falling container that had been left in a bad position by a guy running away from his forklift. One of her legs, three of her ribs, and her wrist were broken. About 2 or 3 minutes after they came out, the building came down. Now let me tell you something about the woman who had been left inside. She has two children. Her husband had been killed in 2004 in Afghanistan. Her parents had died just a couple years before that and she was the only family her children had left. If that man hadn’t run into the building to save her, her children would have been left orphans with nowhere to go at the ages of 10 and 12. That man was truly an American.

The other story I want to share with you is the story of a guy who lived in my neighborhood. He was a good friend. He moved from Portugal to the US when he was 15. He signed up with the USMC at the age of 18 after graduating from high school. He moved to our neighborhood when he received orders to the nearby base (it is about 15min away). He was 25 when he moved here. I never met him until he moved to the neighborhood and my parents invited him to a cookout we had for the whole neighborhood. After that cookout, he became a family friend. I saw him every couple days if not every day. After 4 years he received new orders and was shipped to Afghanistan. Before he left, he told me something that I didn’t believe at the time. He told me that he was pretty sure he wouldn’t be coming home again. I asked him what he meant, but he just shook his head. Well, he was right. When he came home, he was in a coffin. Do you want to know what happened to him? I’m going to tell you whether you want to or not. Now, I would like to note that I only have what the official reports said, so I’m not 100% if this is all that happened or not. Apparently his squad fell under fire while out on patrol. It was going well for the most part, no casualties and the attackers were starting to fall back. That is when something went wrong though. According to the reports, a young girl (not even a teenager yet according to the marines in the squad) was got in the middle of the fight. I’m not sure if she was left or what, but apparently she was in a car and had this terrified look. Well, my friend from Portugal wasn’t the kind of guy to let a scared little girl go on being scared. He charged up to the car with no cover and got her. On his way back he was shot 3 times. Once in the arm, one grazed his calf, and the other hit him in the back. He got all the way back to his squad before collapsing. The bullet that had hit him in the back had gone through his liver. He bled out before help could get there. That man was born in Portugal, but he was sure as hell an American.

I told you these stories to hopefully remind you all of what it means to be American because that is what we need right now. We don’t need people arguing about stupid stuff. We need people getting things done. We need people willing to stand up and do what needs to be done for the good of the eUSA. We don’t need heroes, we don’t need politicians, we just need Americans.

Being American isn’t about where you’re born. It isn’t about anything tangible or easily comprehended like that. Being American is in your spirit, it is something that you just have. You don’t work to get it, you don’t train it, you don’t try for it, it is just there. Every American, if they really are American, has this spirit. Whether they are born in the states or not, every American has this spirit. It is the spirit of going further, doing more, fighting harder. It is the spirit that makes a man who has been knocked down 10 times keep getting up. It is the spirit that makes a person willing to give their life for something greater than themselves. To quote the 2nd song, it the spirit that led to this line “heroes prove with liberating strife, who more than self their country loved, and mercy more than life”. Americans aren’t just people who were born and raised here, they are people willing to do anything to do what they know is right.

That is the American spirit, that is what it means to be American. So I ask you again people of the eUSA:

Are you an American?

Vote this article if you can answer yes to that question. Let’s show eSerbia that they can’t break America. Let’s show them that no matter how many times they knock us down, we WILL get back up again.