[Rhodes22-list] Thanksgiving

[brad haslett]

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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