What We've Been Up To: I was not born for DDR

Monday, April 6, 2009

I was not born for DDR

There are two kinds of people in this world:
-Those born to win at "Dance Dance Revolution"
-Those who are not

I learned recently when the hurdlers joined us for pizza and introduced me to the game that I fall into the latter category. Not only were they all much more agile than I was at this endeavor, but they made it look easy. Whereas each athlete could last for several minutes and in many cases, several rounds, I only lasted several steps. All this time I thought I had some kind of rhythmic abilities and yet now I picture myself more on the same level as Elaine from Seinfeld (a show which most of my hurdlers probably have never seen - sigh). Oh well, I am consoling myself in the assumption that they have nothing better to do with their time than go home and practice this game until their feet are calloused and have sweated through their shirts. Sour grapes maybe, but it's all I've got.

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. This is just as true of the man who puts “native” before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance. But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as any one else. 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. The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country. The man who calls himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the land to which he feels his real heart-allegiance, the better it will be for every good American.
-Theodore Roosevelt

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Monday, April 6, 2009

I was not born for DDR