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I’m a little miffed by this remark.

My great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents came here from Ireland, Sweden, and Germany in the late 1800’s. While I respect and celebrate my European heritage, I’ve never been to any of these countries and I consider myself 100% AMERICAN. Everyone in my family is AMERICAN, and we recognize no other allegience.

Now if I’m 100% American and you’re more American than I am (by virtue of having had family here longer), then how can you be more than 100% American?

This is baffling to me. Please explain.

Most of the non-British Northwestern European immigrants to America (Dutch, Germans, Irish, Scandinavians) arrived in the United States before Ellis Island opened in 1892. The great wave of these people arrived in the mid-1800s, although there were substantial German and Dutch settlements in this country before our War for Independence, as well as the Scots-Irish, Irish Protestants mostly of Scottish ancestry. The immigrants who came through Ellis Island were largely Italian or Eastern European in origin.

“Now if I’m 100% American and you’re more American than I am (by virtue of having had family here longer), then how can you be more than 100% American?”

I haven’t said a word about anyone being more American than anyone else, and I don’t think anyone in the thread has. That’s strictly something that some have inferred based on what some posters said about when their ancestors came here. The discussion has been about the emphasis on different periods in American history.

In the PC world, PC people are more comfortable talking about Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty than about Jamestown and confrontations with American Indians and all that came before the late nineteenth century. So, that’s what we get in the MSM, while the nation’s real history is seldom mentioned. Without the earlier history, the history 270 years later wouldn’t have, couldn’t have happened as it did. Without the earlier US history, what’s now the USA would likely just be an extension of Mexico and the culture that sprung from Spain and the Indians in the Western Hemisphere.

Why would anyone be “miffed” by someone else discussing their family’s history in America. Reread the thread and see when and how any mention of some being more American than others first appeared.