[Rhodes22-list] Thanksgiving

[Rik Sandberg]

Brad,

Excellent, just plain EXCELLENT!

Happy Turkey Day :-)
Rik

brad haslett wrote:

>Here's something to give thanks for - the time between
>Turkey Day and Christmas is "nut cuttin" time in the
>supply chain delivery business, formerly known as air
>cargo.  I'm busy and and its only getting worse
>between now and 2005.  Besides, the CoraShen is going
>back in the water at the end of the week.  Folks,
>solve the world's problems without my input.
>
>Yeah!  Yeaaaaaah!  Enjoy!
>
>I'll be lurking but not responding.  Have a good
>Thanksgiving and Holiday Season.  If you don't hear
>from me by Chinese New Year's, just show up at our
>house.  Invitations and prior permission not
>necessary.  You too Bill!
>
>Here is a parting message from a writer I greatly
>respect.  Good luck, ya'll.  Brad
>
>+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
>America is under attack as never before -- not only
>from terrorists but also from people who provide a
>justification for terrorism. Islamic fundamentalists
>declare America the Great Satan. Europeans rail
>against American capitalism and American culture.
>South American activists denounce the United States
>for "neocolonialism" and oppression. 
>
>Anti-Americanism from abroad would not be such a
>problem if Americans were united in standing up for
>their own country. But in this country itself, there
>are those who blame America for most of the evils in
>the world. On the political left, many fault the
>United States for a history of slavery, and for
>continuing inequality and racism. Even on the right,
>traditionally the home of patriotism, we hear
>influential figures say that America has become so
>decadent that we are "slouching towards Gomorrah." 
>
>If these critics are right, then America should be
>destroyed. And who can dispute some of their
>particulars? This country did have a history of
>slavery and racism continues to exist. There is much
>in our culture that is vulgar and decadent. But the
>critics are wrong about America, because they are
>missing the big picture. In their indignation over the
>sins of America, they ignore what is unique and good
>about American civilization. 
>
>As an immigrant who has chosen to become an American
>citizen, I feel especially qualified to say what is
>special about America. Having grown up in a different
>society -- in my case, Bombay, India -- I am not only
>able to identify aspects of America that are invisible
>to the natives, but I am acutely conscious of the
>daily blessings that I enjoy in America. Here, then,
>is my list of the 10 great things about America. 
>
>-- America provides an amazingly good life for the
>ordinary guy. Rich people live well everywhere. But
>what distinguishes America is that it provides an
>impressively high standard of living for the "common
>man." We now live in a country where construction
>workers regularly pay $4 for a nonfat latte, where
>maids drive nice cars and where plumbers take their
>families on vacation to Europe. 
>
>Indeed, newcomers to the United States are struck by
>the amenities enjoyed by "poor" people. This fact was
>dramatized in the 1980s when CBS television broadcast
>a documentary, "People Like Us," intended to show the
>miseries of the poor during an ongoing recession. The
>Soviet Union also broadcast the documentary, with a
>view to embarrassing the Reagan administration. But by
>the testimony of former Soviet leaders, it had the
>opposite effect. Ordinary people across the Soviet
>Union saw that the poorest Americans have TV sets,
>microwave ovens and cars. They arrived at the same
>perception that I witnessed in an acquaintance of mine
>from Bombay who has been unsuccessfully trying to move
>to the United States. I asked him, "Why are you so
>eager to come to America?" He replied, "I really want
>to live in a country where the poor people are fat." 
>
>-- America offers more opportunity and social mobility
>than any other country, including the countries of
>Europe. America is the only country that has created a
>population of "self-made tycoons." Only in America
>could Pierre Omidyar, whose parents are Iranian and
>who grew up in Paris, have started a company like
>eBay. Only in America could Vinod Khosla, the son of
>an Indian army officer, become a leading venture
>capitalist, the shaper of the technology industry, and
>a billionaire to boot. Admittedly tycoons are not
>typical, but no country has created a better ladder
>than America for people to ascend from modest
>circumstances to success. 
>
>-- Work and trade are respectable in America.
>Historically most cultures have despised the merchant
>and the laborer, regarding the former as vile and
>corrupt and the latter as degraded and vulgar. Some
>cultures, such as that of ancient Greece and medieval
>Islam, even held that it is better to acquire things
>through plunder than through trade or contract labor.
>But the American founders altered this moral
>hierarchy. They established a society in which the
>life of the businessman, and of the people who worked
>for him, would be a noble calling. In the American
>view, there is nothing vile or degraded about serving
>your customers either as a CEO or as a waiter. The
>ordinary life of production and supporting a family is
>more highly valued in the United States than in any
>other country. America is the only country in the
>world where we call the waiter "sir," as if he were a
>knight. 
>
>-- America has achieved greater social equality than
>any other society. True, there are large inequalities
>of income and wealth in America. In purely economic
>terms, Europe is more egalitarian. But Americans are
>socially more equal than any other people, and this is
>unaffected by economic disparities. Alexis de
>Tocqueville noticed this egalitarianism a century and
>a half ago and it is, if anything, more prevalent
>today. For all his riches, Bill Gates could not
>approach the typical American and say, "Here's a $100
>bill. I'll give it to you if you kiss my feet." Most
>likely, the person would tell Gates to go to hell! The
>American view is that the rich guy may have more
>money, but he isn't in any fundamental sense better
>than anyone else. 
>
>-- People live longer, fuller lives in America.
>Although protesters rail against the American version
>of technological capitalism at trade meetings around
>the world, in reality the American system has given
>citizens many more years of life, and the means to
>live more intensely and actively. In 1900, the life
>expectancy in America was around 50 years; today, it
>is more than 75 years. Advances in medicine and
>agriculture are mainly responsible for the change.
>This extension of the life span means more years to
>enjoy life, more free time to devote to a good cause,
>and more occasions to do things with the
>grandchildren. In many countries, people who are old
>seem to have nothing to do: they just wait to die. In
>America the old are incredibly vigorous, and people in
>their seventies pursue the pleasures of life,
>including remarriage and sexual gratification, with a
>zeal that I find unnerving. 
>
>-- In America the destiny of the young is not given to
>them, but created by them. Not long ago, I asked
>myself, "What would my life have been like if I had
>never come to the United States?" If I had remained in
>India, I would probably have lived my whole life
>within a five-mile radius of where I was born. I would
>undoubtedly have married a woman of my identical
>religious and socioeconomic background. I would almost
>certainly have become a medical doctor, or an
>engineer, or a computer programmer. I would have
>socialized entirely within my ethic community. I would
>have a whole set of opinions that could be predicted
>in advance; indeed, they would not be very different
>from what my father believed, or his father before
>him. In sum, my destiny would to a large degree have
>been given to me. 
>
>In America, I have seen my life take a radically
>different course. In college I became interested in
>literature and politics, and I resolved to make a
>career as a writer. I married a woman whose ancestry
>is English, French, Scotch-Irish, German and American
>Indian. In my twenties I found myself working as a
>policy analyst in the White House, even though I was
>not an American citizen. No other country, I am sure,
>would have permitted a foreigner to work in its inner
>citadel of government. 
>
>In most countries in the world, your fate and your
>identity are handed to you; in America, you determine
>them for yourself. America is a country where you get
>to write the script of your own life. Your life is
>like a blank sheet of paper, and you are the artist.
>This notion of being the architect of your own destiny
>is the incredibly powerful idea that is behind the
>worldwide appeal of America. Young people especially
>find irresistible the prospect of authoring the
>narrative of their own lives. 
>
>-- America has gone further than any other society in
>establishing equality of rights. There is nothing
>distinctively American about slavery or bigotry.
>Slavery has existed in virtually every culture, and
>xenophobia, prejudice and discrimination are worldwide
>phenomena. Western civilization is the only
>civilization to mount a principled campaign against
>slavery; no country expended more treasure and blood
>to get rid of slavery than the United States. While
>racism remains a problem, this country has made
>strenuous efforts to eradicate discrimination, even to
>the extent of enacting policies that give legal
>preference in university admissions, jobs, and
>government contracts to members of minority groups.
>Such policies remain controversial, but the point is
>that it is extremely unlikely that a racist society
>would have permitted such policies in the first place.
>And surely African Americans like Jesse Jackson are
>vastly better off living in America than they would be
>if they were to live in, say, Ethiopia or Somalia. 
>
>-- America has found a solution to the problem of
>religious and ethnic conflict that continues to divide
>and terrorize much of the world. Visitors to places
>like New York are amazed to see the way in which Serbs
>and Croatians, Sikhs and Hindus, Irish Catholics and
>Irish Protestants, Jews and Palestinians, 
>
>all seem to work and live together in harmony. How is
>this possible when these same groups are spearing each
>other and burning each other's homes in so many places
>in the world? 
>
>The American answer is twofold. First, separate the
>spheres of religion and government so that no religion
>is given official preference but all are free to
>practice their faith as they wish. Second, do not
>extend rights to racial or ethnic groups but only to
>individuals; in this way, all are equal in the eyes of
>the law, opportunity is open to anyone who can take
>advantage of it, and everybody who embraces the
>American way of life can "become American." 
>
>Of course there are exceptions to these core
>principles, even in America. Racial preferences are
>one such exception, which explains why they are
>controversial. But in general, America is the only
>country in the world that extends full membership to
>outsiders. The typical American could come to India, 
>
>live for 40 years, and take Indian citizenship. But he
>could not "become Indian." He wouldn't see himself
>that way, nor would most Indians see him that way. In
>America, by contrast, hundreds of millions have come
>from far-flung shores and over time they, or at least
>their children, have in a profound and full sense
>"become American." 
>
>-- America has the kindest, gentlest foreign policy of
>any great power in world history. Critics of the
>United States are likely to react to this truth with
>sputtering outrage. They will point to long-standing
>American support for a Latin or Middle Eastern despot,
>or the unjust internment of the Japanese during World
>War II, or America's reluctance to impose sanctions on
>South Africa's apartheid regime. However one feels
>about these particular cases, let us concede to the
>critics the point that America is not always in the
>right. 
>
>What the critics leave out is the other side of the
>ledger. Twice in the 20th century, the United States
>saved the world -- first from the Nazi threat, then
>from Soviet totalitarianism. What would have been the
>world's fate if America had not existed? After
>destroying Germany and Japan in World War II, the
>United States proceeded to rebuild both countries, and
>today they are American allies. Now we are doing the
>same thing in Afghanistan and Iraq. Consider, too, how
>magnanimous the United States has been to the former
>Soviet Union after its victory in the Cold War. For
>the most part America is an abstaining superpower; it
>shows no real interest in conquering and subjugating
>the rest of the world. (Imagine how the Soviets would
>have acted if they had won the Cold War.) On occasion
>the United States intervenes to overthrow a tyrannical
>regime or to halt massive human rights abuses in
>another country, but it never stays to rule that
>country. In Grenada, Haiti and Bosnia, the United
>States got in and then it got out. Moreover, when
>America does get into a war, as in Iraq, its troops
>are supremely careful to avoid targeting civilians and
>to minimize collateral damage. Even as America bombed
>the Taliban infrastructure and hideouts, U.S. planes
>dropped food to avert hardship and starvation of
>Afghan civilians. What other country does these
>things? 
>
>-- America, the freest nation on Earth, is also the
>most virtuous nation on Earth. This point seems
>counterintuitive, given the amount of conspicuous
>vulgarity, vice and immorality in America. Some
>Islamic fundamentalists argue that their regimes are
>morally superior to the United States because they
>seek to foster virtue among the citizens. Virtue,
>these fundamentalists argue, is a higher principle
>than liberty. 
>
>Indeed it is. And let us admit that in a free society,
>freedom will frequently be used badly. Freedom, by
>definition, includes the freedom to do good or evil,
>to act nobly or basely. But if freedom brings out the
>worst in people, it also brings out the best. The
>millions of Americans who live decent, 
>
>praiseworthy lives desire our highest admiration
>because they have opted for the good when the good is
>not the only available option. Even amid the
>temptations of a rich and free society, they have
>remained on the straight path. Their virtue has
>special luster because it is freely chosen. 
>
>By contrast, the societies that many Islamic
>fundamentalists seek would eliminate the possibility
>of virtue. If the supply of virtue is insufficient in
>a free society like America, it is almost nonexistent
>in an unfree society like Iran's. The reason is that
>coerced virtues are not virtues at all. Consider the
>woman who is required to wear a veil. There is no
>modesty in this, 
>
>because she is being compelled. Compulsion cannot
>produce virtue, it can only produce the outward
>semblance of virtue. Thus a free society like
>America's is not merely more prosperous, more varied,
>more peaceful, and more tolerant -- it is also morally
>superior to the theocratic and authoritarian regimes
>that America's enemies advocate. 
>
>"To make us love our country," Edmund Burke once said,
>"our country ought to be lovely." Burke's point is
>that we should love our country not just because it is
>ours, but also because it is good. America is far from
>perfect, and there is lots of room for improvement. In
>spite of its flaws, however, American life as it is
>lived today is the best life that our world has to
>offer. Ultimately America is worthy of our love and
>sacrifice because, more than any other society, it
>makes possible the good life, and the life that is
>good. 
>
>Dinesh D'Souza's "What's So Great About America" has
>just been published in paperback by Penguin Books. He
>is the Rishwain Fellow at the Hoover Institution at
>Stanford University. E-mail: thedsouzas at aol.com. 
>
>
>
>
>		
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