What does it mean to be an American?

What does it really mean to be an American? the tradition sense of the saying is apple pie, baseball, Toyota and freedom and maybe it used to be but since I was born every one of these things has been trashed in their literal and symbolic meaning. Is freedom a terror alert level over orange? Is freedom being frisked every time you go to the airport and is freedom not even being able to get a birth certificate without 14 hours worth of paperwork and a background check? The bottom line is that all of these things are just the way of the government of putting fear into all of our hearts and souls through bad things that have happened in the past and making people feel a false sense of security while they are taking away the little liberty's that we take for granted, but when will it stop? When we have to have a passport to go state to state? Or when we need a background check to check out a library book? It doesn't seem that there will be an end until the American people start to realize that all of their rights are slowly being taken away. Apple pie used to mean everything that is good about america but know it's just roped into the whole obesity hysteria and now its not even an enjoyable treat without the threat of heart disease being shoved down your throat. Baseball the great american past time has been demolished by steroids and every player wanting to make 10 million dollars a year and won't play if they can't get it, because people have lost the drive that they used to have and their gas tank has changed from love of the game to money and its tarnishing the good name of what it means. Finally Toyota used to embody the spirit of America but know all of that spirit is replaced by the hysteria of high gas prices and global warming it makes me sad to think that through all of these fear tactic that are used in the news and in mass media that one day soon America won't be the world power anymore and China will take that throne and communism will be the new democracy, and i have no doubt that one day maybe not even in my lifetime it will happen because every world power ever has been dethroned. 

We as people have many things in common a love for reality shows and the need for companionship and even  letting people fill all of our heads with conjecture and hearsay that doesn't have any real in it but people still believe it because of blind stereotypes, like when it came out that "Barock Obama is a Muslim" even though there's no proof and he says that he is a Cristian people just can't seem to take him at his word and it just doesn't make sense . 

If people could just learn to think for themselves then maybe America can turn out of this downturn it's in but if they can't and just listen to what Joe Republican or Sally Democrat tells you what to do and don't listen to the issues for yourself my friends America is in a bad bad way.