I Will Never, Ever Be Ashamed of Being an American

“A lot of us are ashamed of being Americans right now,” my classmate said. I am not.

Note: I wrote this for Independence Day a few years ago. Reading it now, I realize I wouldn’t change almost anything about it. If anything, the years since have only reinforced it. So I’m sharing it again. Happy 250th Birthday to the country I love.

The year is 2017. It’s early August.

I’m sitting in the first class of my first semester, on my first day back at school at my new college in Denver.

I’m taking the first step in the final stretch of finishing the degree I’ve been working on for the past 14 years.

The creaky air-conditioning unit on the ceiling whirs loudly atop our crappy modular building just west of the campus, right across the train tracks, in the shadow of Mile High Stadium, where the Denver Broncos play.

My first Journalism 101 class is now over. All of us students are packing up, collecting our pop quizzes, grabbing our bags, and heading out the door to our next class.

I stuff a folder in my backpack and grab my scooter from the back of the room as I overhear one of my classmates talking loud enough for everyone in the room to hear.

Unlike me, he appears young enough to actually belong in this 101-level course on the fundamentals of journalism. He’s right where he should be as a brand-new student, probably in his first semester ever at any college.

I feel so out of place here as a husband and father of five in my 30s, carrying a neon blue Razor scooter to transport myself from the bus depot at Union Station to the college campus, which only makes all of this seem that much more ridiculous.

This is my first class at this college, but it’s certainly not my first class.

This is now the fourth college I’ve attended as I try to bring my seemingly endless college career to a close. For over a dozen years, I’ve been trying to eat this elephant one bite at a time, and I’m totally desperate to finally… just… get… it… done…

My very-loud classmate is saying something I can’t quite make out: something clearly political, but that’s all I can tell.

“Something, something… politicians… something, something… Donald Trump…” he says, I think, but I’m not sure. I wasn’t paying attention until just now.

“That’s how people view Americans these days. But I want to tell them: ‘A lot of us are ashamed of being Americans right now.’”

I pause, unsure if I actually heard him correctly.

Yes, that’s exactly what he said, I decide.

I hop on my scooter and start kicking my way back to the main campus for my next class. As I pump my leg to motor myself uphill, I just can’t get this strange sentence out of my head.

I’m an American living in America who was just sitting in an American classroom, surrounded by American classmates, at an American university paid for by American taxpayers.

We American journalism students just learned about the most basic elements of journalism: seeking truth and reporting it, headlines, ledes, subheds, nut grafs, inverted pyramids, and, most importantly, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The last item in that list is what enables everything that precedes it: our sacred right to the freedom of speech. It’s the part of our constitution that prevents the government from “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”

In this class, where we’re studying and celebrating the virtue of a free press as the cornerstone of our nation and our liberty, this Constitutional protection is the most relevant—arguably the single most important—guarantee in all of America’s founding documents and one of America’s crowning achievements in its governmental structure.

Yet I just heard a young man say that not only was he “ashamed of being an American”—he said that “a lot” of us were.

What?

He knew not what he was saying.

Or if he did, he certainly was not speaking for me.

Also, why did he say, “Right now?”

Was he saying that Donald Trump being the president of the United States was enough to make him ashamed? If so, how short-sighted and pathetically shallow.

I wasn’t a huge fan of Trump’s antics as president. In this very class, I even wrote a paper critical of an utterly idiotic tweet he posted with a nonsensical word, or typo, or secret code with a cryptic meaning… or whatever the hell his staffers pretended it was.

“Despite all the negative press, covfefe” was probably the dumbest sentence written by any American president, ever, I wrote.

I stand by that. It was infuriatingly stupid.

Just about everything Trump was tweeting at the time was dumb. I constantly shook my head at all the swirling news stories revolving around the question: “Did you see what Trump just tweeted?” All of that was extremely embarrassing.

But what, pray tell, did that have to do with being an American?

Absolutely nothing.

I know that in my generation, it’s not only acceptable to hate America (as it was in my parents’ generation); it’s fashionable. Many people—Americans even—spew their rage at America while living off the fat of this great land.

That they can’t see just how ironic this is, especially on a college campus, is something they should be ashamed of.

But being an American is not.

I can’t blame this kid too much: he was a young, single man, and young, single men say a lot of dumb things all the time. Spouting off ignorant opinions on the first day of school is totally on brand for someone in his shoes.

But still, this phrase sticks in my craw, and I can’t get it out of my head.

I kept thinking about it for the rest of the day, the rest of the week, the rest of the month, and the rest of the semester.

“A lot of us are ashamed of being Americans right now.”

I cannot possibly imagine saying something like that.

I am absolutely, positively not ashamed of being an American.

Not now.

Not in the past.

Not in the future.

Not ever.

So, here I sit, once again, on the verge of another Independence Day, many years later, and I’m still affirming my conviction.

I will never, ever be ashamed of being an American.

That does not mean I’m never ashamed of what Americans do or what happens in America. Of course, there’s plenty of that to go around.

I was ashamed of the many college professors I had over the years who enjoyed tenured job security at an American university—an unimaginable luxury—living off the people’s taxes yet rolling their eyes at the very idea of American exceptionalism.

I was ashamed of Bill Clinton committing adultery in the White House, when I was younger, then lying about it, then getting impeached over it, then causing an international scandal about it, with all kinds of disgusting, sordid details and jokes I wish I had never heard.

I was ashamed of many of the people I met in my college experience who insulted my religion, my sex, and my race: the numerous teachers, administrators, and faculty members whose angry rants against “Christians,” “conservatives,” “white men,” and some imagined “patriarchy” were almost a daily event.

I was ashamed of the quality of our presidential candidates, who seem to get worse with every election cycle, even though we’re also told each time, “This is the most important election of our lifetimes,” every four years.

But I am not, will not be, and cannot be ashamed of being an American.

I am blessed to be an American.

I am thankful to be an American.

It’s because of many people who came to America, who helped build America, and who keep America running today, that I can call myself an American.

I think of people like Abraham Stauffer, my 6th great-grandfather, who fought against the British in the Revolutionary War and helped establish this country.

Or Andrew McElwee, my 2nd great-grandfather, who fought for America in France during WWI… to say nothing of my grandfather (and namesake), Ron Stauffer, who was a pilot in the U.S. Air Force during the Cold War and Cuban Missile Crisis.

There are so many others throughout my family tree, on both the German and Irish sides, who served this country in many ways, in both public and private service over the decades and centuries, that I can barely count them.

To say I’m ashamed of being an American would be to insult every single one of them.

The German side of my family came to America from Switzerland, escaping religious persecution in the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation.

The Irish side of my family came to America to escape starvation in the aftermath of the Irish Potato Famine (and religious persecution from the Protestant British).

To them, America was a beacon of hope: a promise of survival. Their last chance.

As Swiss Mennonites and Irish Catholics, both would have literally praised God when they arrived here: Jesus was their spiritual salvation; America was their physical salvation.

They came to America and became Americans.

They chose to become Americans.

They wanted to become Americans.

They fought to become Americans.

That is nothing to be ashamed of.

Several years ago, I visited Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. I went to look for the historical traces of my ancestors, and I saw firsthand where my wife’s family first set foot on American soil, seeking refuge.

In my house, we have a special place in our hearts for Ellis Island in particular: when my wife’s great-grandfather Salvatore came to America from Italy, he was so thankful to be here that he named his son Ellis. Ellis, in turn, named his own son Ellis, Jr.

So, on a daily basis, our family is reminded of how we came here to America…. and became Americans. Ellis Island—and what it represents—is a monument to everything great about America, and it’s what gave my wife and, by extension, my five children, the gift of life.

In fact, Salvatore was so insistent on becoming an American that he even renounced his Italian citizenship, right before Ellis was born, so that he could become an American citizen.

Interestingly, he was not legally required to. But he chose to anyway.

He also chose the American moniker “Sam” instead of Salvatore, and his wife, Giovanna, went by “Jennie.”

Why? To become Americans.

To look American. To sound American. To be American.

To simply be “Sam and Jennie,” from Tacony, Philadelphia, as American as Apple Pie.

Today, Ellis Island is nothing more than a museum. But the fact that we have had a porous southern border for decades that has essentially become the de facto port of entry for the “tired… poor… huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” for the “wretched refuse” of the teeming shores of a hundred other countries proves that the dream is still very much alive.

This border crisis by itself is proof that nobody should be ashamed of being an American. People from all over the globe are risking their lives to get in, often paying everything they have despite the very real threat to life and limb, and even breaking the law to get here.

Why?

To become Americans.

Like Daniel Stauffer, Andrew McElwee, Salvatore Menditto, and Giovanna Picarelli, and many other people in my family tree and in the family trees of millions of other Americans.

Again, that doesn’t mean I’ll never be ashamed of America’s actions. America has much to atone for. I’m not some jingoistic cheerleader who celebrates everything America does—right or wrong—from the sidelines.

But we truly live in an exceptional country.

The same year I started going back to school in Denver, I was working for a coding boot camp in Boulder. That summer, a coworker and I went to represent our boot camp at a local “Startup Week,” and I sat in the audience listening to a panel discussion about finding employment opportunities in America.

One of the panelists used part of her time to talk about just how hard it was “to be Queer in America” and how she had felt the need to “hide her true self” in the workplace at times in her career.

I found it incredibly ironic how she later described taking work trips to other countries overseas, especially in the Middle East, where being openly homosexual was a crime punishable by death.

Strangely, neither she nor anybody in the audience seemed to notice the gigantic cognitive dissonance in her complaint that her lifestyle was “difficult” here in America, yet was flatly illegal in other countries where she literally had to hide her identity for fear of being arrested or murdered, unlike in America, where neither of those things was true.

I’m ashamed of a lot of other dumb things that result from the excesses of American culture: TV shows like the Kardashians, anorexic fashion models, rampant obesity, epidemics of homelessness and fentanyl addiction, war-profiteering politicians in Washington, the open celebration of debauchery, race riots, violent protestors, the glorification of blood and gore in video games and movies, and… a lot more.

But every country has its problems, and America is no different. At least here, we have the power and ability to change things.

During election years, in particular, I’m reminded of this: my father and I are both citizens of the Republic of Ireland—also, ostensibly, a free country —yet we cannot vote in any elections. We are denied suffrage because we don’t currently live there.

As far as Ireland is concerned, we are literally second-class citizens.

Yet that’s not the reality in America. As American citizens, we have the right to vote in every election, always, no matter where in the world we may live, via the absentee ballot. That is something to be grateful for.

There are many things to be embarrassed about or even ashamed of when you look at the actions of many countries, including America, at various times.

But I will never be ashamed of being an American.

I don’t care who’s in charge.

I don’t care what’s on the news right now.

I don’t care what literally anybody else on Earth thinks.

Never.

Ever.

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