Hyphenated Americans

I try not to be overtly political in this blog, but occasionally it seeps into my keyboard, and - well, it just comes out.

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all... The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic... There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.

This is a quote from an American President. Can you guess which one? I'll give you a moment.


Theodore Roosevelt said it in a speech in 1915. His reasons had more to do with alliances forming in World War I than anything.

He said this almost 100 years ago, and yet, in some ways parts of it still ring true.