What It Is To Be An American

What is an American? Is an American merely a person who is native to the United States? Belonging to, inhabiting, coming from, or forming part of the America's? How does one go about defining an American? Writers such as Patrick Henry, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Paine believed that freedom, work ethic, and patriotism were (and still are) some of the most important and only a sample of the many things that make up an American.
An important interpreter of Americana is Thomas Paine. Thomas Paine believed that an American is someone who is patriotic. He believed that, "He that stands it no…