What makes someone an American?

Channel your inner student and answer the question: What makes someone an American?

Is it (a) someone who takes their cap off, puts their right hand over their heart and belts the National Anthem at an American sporting event?

Is it (b) someone who "proudly" hangs the American flag from their house, or vehicle?

Is it (c) someone who unconditionally defends the U.S. Constitution?

Or, is it (d) all of the above?

Actually, it's (e) none of the above.

Just because you engage in any or all of the above activities makes you nothing more than an individual who lives in the United States of America. But it doesn't make you an American.

Being an American, rather, is about promoting fundamental justice and freedom for all. It's about taking from this country only as much as you give back to it. It's about taking advantage of collaborating with fellow Americans to achieve the nation's goals, instead of simply taking advantage of other Americans in order to achieve your own goals -- like indubitably meeting the so-called bottom line.

In the capitalistic cathedral known as the (good ole) U-S-of-A, jobs are shipped overseas to maximize profits and minimize domestic job growth. The working class citizens -- who make up the economic backbone of this country -- are slaves of the ruling class, whipped by incessant propaganda that equates wealth to happiness and poverty to a modern-day, self-imposed lynching.

Well here's the (non-financial) bottom line: If we want to continue to move "forward" as individuals who merely live in this land mass we call the United States of America, rather than embody what it truly means to be an American, Chinese history teachers will one day ask their students, "What is one way to describe the United States of America?"

One of the correct answers will be: the Roman Empire 2.0.