The Everchanging Nation

America: The Everchanging Nation From notoriously racist Thomas Jefferson to Barack Obama, a former president accredited with the title as a civil rights activist, the United States of America is a country filled to the brim with ever-evolving people, politics, and ideals. If one was to ask three different people to define America, they would most likely receive three completely different responses. It is a broad subject that is affected chiefly by personal experience, so to define this country is no easy task. Defining America aids in the country always remaining true to what it is, and the people in it true to who they are. America is a process in which its citizens learn, build, and create its norms. This process is seen in many aspects …show more content…
That is a claim J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur seems to agree with as shown in his famous account of life in the American Republic, Letters From an American Farmer, when he says, “we are the most perfect society now existing in the world. Here man is free; as he ought to be; nor is this pleasing equality so transitory as many others are.” This notion presents the idealistic America, what the country was founded on and would, in a perfect world, still be defined as today. Though as history books relay accounts of slavery and internment, it is only natural that that model be reevaluated. Additionally, there is the issue concerning the difference between a definition and a personal belief. Crèvecœur may have had what he sees as a perfect experience with America, but is that the case for everybody? Anna Quindlen presents another quintessential view of this nation in her article “Quilt of a Country,” “That’s because it was built of bits and pieces that seem discordant, like the crazy quilts that have been one of its folk-art forms, velvet and calico and checks and brocades. Out of many, one. That is the ideal.” And that it is, the prototypical idea, but it raises the question: how often and how effectively is that concept brought to life? In reality, with so many incompatible, disparate cultures and races and beliefs, this is a country that struggles to truly unify. America does have attributes that set it apart, but it is improbable that any common citizen would characterize this country as the

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