19/02/2006 7:06:43 pm
American Heritage. As I was jogging today in a suddely very cold but crystal-clear and sunny Washington, DC, two thoughts struck me. First, the presence of history in everyday life. I passed the ugly Watergate buildning (with its ugly history), the Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam Memorial (where some kind of cermony was going on), the World War II Memorial ("Americans came to liberate, not to conquer" - true then and today), the Washington Monument, etc. Americans have a direct link to their history and it defines much of what they are and what they want the country to become.

Second, I thought about people I talked to these days in restaurants or a pub that defined themselves as "Finnish", "from Poland", "Norwegian", etc. I think none of them were actually born in these countries and hardly were their parents. But their family originally comes from there, which they are very interested in and proud of. America is an inclusive society, an immigrant country. You can be Irish and American at the same time.

So different from Europe! You can never become a Frenchman or a Swede. Neither can your children if they are born there, they will be second-generation immigrants. You will always be a foreigner, perhaps trying to hide your origin to aviod problems. This ethnic definition of citizenship and basis for the state is one main cause of many of Europe′s problems.