Stormrider and Alexis:

My two cents about what constitutes an “American:”

One can be a Marxist and still be an American. The problem is that Marxism is simply incompatible with the Founders original intent, which reflected the original intent of the majority of American colonists. Still, in our recent past, ardent American Marxists and progressives retained a certain “Americanness” and sense of country that is either waning or absent from modern American marxists and progressives. Our very President seems to be ambivalent about being an American.

Once progressivism took root in America, it acquired an American character, but its philosophy clashed with that of both the founders and a majority of Americans of the progressives’ own time. The original intent, the “Idea of America” rooted in Natural Law and Rights and the Constitution that was spawned by that idea, are still the best way to be “an American.” The ideas that took root among American intellectuals 100 years ago were in direct and deliberate contravention to the most fundamental aspects of Americanism that make this country great. Just because we’ve put up with Marxism and its offshoots for a century doesn’t mean we have to declare it a legitimate expression of Americanism. Keep in mind that American colonists wandered away from the original communitarianism and rigidity of the Puritans, thereby rejecting that notion of governance and social order by actual practice. Americans came to like what they had evolved to, and were thus ripe for rebellion when George III made his blunders.