I'm a carpetbagger. Always have been, really. While growing up, I lived in seven cities in five states in three time zones. Since college, I've in six states (two repeaters, so my state total is now nine). I've lived in big cities and small towns. I've lived in urban neighborhoods, rural neighborhoods, immigrant neighborhoods, college neighborhoods, well-off neighborhoods and poor neighborhoods. It's safe to say that I've been around.

I've known all kinds of people--most of them decidedly different than me. There are lots of labels that might describe the people I've met, but there's only one that describes them all: Americans.

That's right. We're all Americans. And there's no such thing as a good American or a bad American. There's no such thing as a "real" American, as there is certainly no such thing as an "unreal" American.

I've met plenty of Americans who aren't (or weren't at the time) citizens. I have a fair number of friends who have become naturalized since I met them. But they were Americans before they took the oath of citizenship. They came to America for a better life, and they found it.

One friend always eats pizza on the anniversary of the day she arrived in this country, because that was her family's first meal. I love that tradition, both for its silliness and the very serious story that went with it.

Our friend spent years in this country as an illegal immigrant, though since she came from eastern Europe she had few problems attending college or getting jobs. But the truth of the matter is that she was an American for almost two decades before she became a citizen.

But this "real" American jibe isn't being hurled at immigrants. The folks throwing these words around assume that everyone "knows" that immigrants aren't Americans. As it happens, the "unreal" Americans, the "anti-Americans," are people like me, folks who were lucky enough to be born citizens. Because we don't happen to share a certain political point of view, some folks want to deny us our American heritage. I'd say this gets me mad, but it doesn't. It makes me sad.

The greatest thing about our country is the fact that it is not made up of one dominant ethnic group. And I'm not talking about race. If you look at many of the wars around the world, they're being fought by people who look and, in many case, think much the same way as their enemies. It's just that these people have been taught to hate, and so they do.

There's plenty of hatred in America, but by and large we seem to get along. Our differences are what make this country the strong and flexible nation that it is. The beauty of our people is that we are, often enough, smart enough to embrace new ideas that work, no matter their source. We may be in many ways a fundamentally conservative country, but that doesn't mean we're static.

In fact, the opposite is true. We spend inordinate amounts of energy remaking ourselves. If you haven't been to Washington in the last 20 years, you probably wouldn't recognize it. Large chunks of downtown have been razed and rebuilt, and entire sections of the city have undergone complete transformation. This change isn't all good, of course, but it stands as proof of our dynamic nature. Americans may be conservative, but they don't stand still.

And so Sarah Palin is a good American. As is John McCain. And Barack Obama. And Joe Biden. And Ralph Nader. And, yes, even William Ayers. Almost every American wants to see a better America. That is the driving force behind our almost constant motion.

Now we've fallen into the worse economic crisis in some 70 years. The only way we'll dig ourselves out is by tapping that vaunted American perpetual motion machine. That is the dynamo that provides the drive that makes us great.

There are good people, bad people and a whole lot of us in between. But when you talk about our nation, there are only Americans. And America would not be America without the contribution of every single American.

In all my travels, in all the places I've lived, I've never met an unreal American. And I bet you haven't, either.

Jon Worley is proud to be an American, even if he doesn't much like Lee Greenwood.