"Citizens by birth or choice of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations." --George Washington

"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 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.

“… For an American citizen to vote as a German-American, an Irish-American, or an English-American, is to be a traitor to American institutions; and those hyphenated Americans who terrorize American politicians by threats of the foreign vote are engaged in treason to the American Republic. " –Theodore Roosevelt, 1915

So, too, would I include those would refer to themselves as: African-American, Hispanic-American, Arab-American, Asian-American, et al. We are one people of many ethnicities, but one unique culture: American. If you feel you cannot refer to yourself as such without hyphenation, then do as Roosevelt suggested and leave. (Thanks to Rick for the link.)

“It is almost pathetic to see the emerging lineup of Democratic presidential hopefuls slobbering all over themselves in search of a defining issue —anything—to justify their pursuit of the land’s highest office. When you watch these guys explaining their decisions to run you can’t help but get the impression they are trying to convince themselves they have a legitimate reason to displace an exceedingly popular president during wartime.

“…Unless things go way south with the war and the economy, Democrats will be in trouble because they have no constructive solutions. So they’ll fall back on their tired strategy of demonizing Republicans and scaring and dividing voters, along economic, race, gender and religious lines. The more bereft they are of ideas, the nastier they will get. Which means it’s not going to be pretty.” —David Limbaugh

“The first thing to keep in mind is that it is almost impossible to cut any tax without making the people who pay that tax richer. And, rich people pay a lot more taxes than poor people do.

“According to the Tax Foundation, more than five out of every six dollars collected by the federal government were paid by the top 25 percent of taxpayers. You need a gross adjusted income of $55,225 to qualify as a member of the top quarter. Now, if all these people qualify as ‘rich,’ so be it. If cutting their taxes makes them richer, so be that, too.

“The top 1 percent, by the way, pay 37 percent of the total income taxes collected by the federal government. Democrats keep talking about how little poor people will get from an income tax cut. That’s true—because poor people pay so little in income taxes.

“How about creating a tax system in this country that makes everybody feel like they’re paying their fair share? I don’t want to raise taxes on anybody—I want to cut them for everybody. But having a system where vast segments of the working population are clients of the government and a small number are funders of it is not only institutionalized class warfare, it’s the exact opposite of shared sacrifice.” —Jonah Goldberg [emphasis added]

"The central question in this debate is not whether government should decide how much money it will allow us to keep. Rather, it is how much of our money we will allow the government to spend." —Cal Thomas

A return to the constitutionally-granted powers of the federal government would go a long way toward bringing down the tax burden on all Americans.

Friday’s Federalist opined on President Bush’s proposed economic policy, and this gem on tax cut vernacular:

"And Sociocrats depend on one tactical tool--control the debate using their army of sycophants in the Leftmedia. Together, the political and chattering tribes conspire to control the debate by manipulating the vernacular: government spending becomes 'investment,' tax cuts 'cost' the government, letting you keep your money become 'a rebate,' and they ask questions like can government 'afford the tax cuts' and suggest that reducing taxes causes deficits when anyone with half a wit knows that spending causes deficits."

“Western values are superior to all others. Why? The indispensable achievement of the West was the concept of individual rights. It’s the idea that individuals have certain inalienable rights and individuals do not exist to serve government but governments exist to protect these inalienable rights. It took until the 17th century for that idea to arrive on the scene and mostly through the works of English philosophers such as John Locke and David Hume.

“While Western values are superior to all others, one need not be a Westerner to hold Western values. A person can be Chinese, Japanese, Jewish, African or Arab and hold Western values. It’s no accident that Western values of reason and individual rights have produced unprecedented health, life expectancy, wealth and comfort for the ordinary person. There’s an indisputable positive relationship between liberty and standards of living.

“Western values are by no means secure. They’re under ruthless attack by the academic elite on college campuses across America. These people want to replace personal liberty with government control; they want to replace equality with entitlement; they want to halt progress in the name of protecting the environment. As such, they pose a much greater threat to our way of life than any terrorist or rogue nation. Multiculturalism and diversity are a cancer on our society, and, ironically, with our tax dollars and charitable donations, we’re feeding it.” —Walter Williams

“It is vitally important that we recognize that there is a law higher than that of the state or the will of the majority. There is a higher law than that which springs from the fallible minds of men. This law, insofar as it has been revealed to us and can be ascertained through reason, is the basis of our natural rights. While many people look at the long and horrific history of religious wars and the lethal violence of religious fanaticism, so woefully evident in our own age, and see religion as a threat to liberty, the Founders of our republic understood that God was the ultimate source of our liberty.

“…By the standards of those who file lawsuits to remove Christmas displays from government buildings–or to remove the phrase ‘under God’ from the Pledge of Allegiance–the very people who framed and ratified the First Amendment they appeal to were guilty of creating some kind of theocracy. Of course, the constitutional republic of our Founders was nothing of the sort. A system based on God-given rights does not inherently deny the rights of an unbeliever anymore than we deny the rights of a socialist to own private property or profit from the free-market economy.

“The acknowledgement that human beings and the institutions they create are imperfect acknowledges the imperfections of professing Christians and members of other religious traditions. The idea that government powers should be limited, defined and divided acts as a check against all potential tyrants and offers protection to all potential victims. Forgetting the link between faith and freedom leaves all our liberty less secure.” —W. James Antle III

“We were hoping for a big and bold tax cut from President Bush and, by George, we got one. Yesterday Mr. Bush drew a bead on the twin shibboleths of bad tax policy–the fear of budget deficits and of benefiting middle- and upper-income workers–and pulled the trigger.”

[…]

“The President deserves credit for ignoring all of the Beltway trimmers and risking the political capital he won in November in pursuit of a large policy ambition. His proposal is one worth fighting for.”

[…]

“Mr. Bush’s proposal would reduce tax revenue over the next decade, though far less if the growth effects are figured in. And the possibility has already brought out the flock of self-styled ‘deficit hawks.’ Pay no attention. Currently the budget deficit is 1.5% of GDP and projections for the next year or so are around 2%. These figures amount to a whole lot of nothing both in historical terms and when compared with the potential growth of the economy.”

[…]

“The notion put forward by the deficit hawks that this will send interest rates to the sky and the economy six feet under is deeply silly. Deficits are the result of weak or negative economic growth, not the other way around. The best way to close a deficit is through strong economic growth.”

[…]

“Mr. Bush is offering, on balance, an excellent program to prevent the economy from weakening amid the short-term uncertainties of war and expensive oil. And by wringing out some of the tax barriers to economic efficiency, he is also creating the conditions for better long-term growth. A bull’s-eye, for sure.”

—The Wall Street Journal

"There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men." —Edmund Burke

“But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.” —John Adams

“A group of people may have rights, but it is their responsibility, and theirs alone, to defend or safeguard such rights.” —Murray N. Rothbard