Hyphenated Americanism

I recently read a thread on favorite Presidents. While thinking about my favorite, I had no difficulty identifying one President that I despise; Bill Clinton. Clinton ushered in the age of Political Correctness in this country, giving credence and support to what was once a derogatory (and well deserved) slight...The Hyphenated American. In the course of a few short years, Americans no longer considered themselves Americans. They decided the only way to give their lives any real meaning, and in order to play the discrimination/racism cards to the hilt, was to hyphenate themselves; thus placing their Americanism on the second rung of the ladder of identity. Hispanic-Americans, Asian-Americans, Italian-Americans, African-Americans...the list goes on ad-nasuem.

I am an American. No embellishment necessary. American. Period. I am also a no-nonsense type of guy, much like my favorite President is Teddy Roosevelt. He was a hard charging, take no prisoners, carry a big stick type of man. His speech on Americanism to the Knights of Columbus in 1915 says it all:

"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... 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... There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else."

Which begs the questions, What is it about my fellow countrymen today and their inability to accept being truly American? Why did simply being an American become a bad thing and what part of being an American do they not get?