Proud to be an America

by Richard L. Weaver II, Ph.D.

Just for the fun of it, I pulled out a 20 Chinese Yuen at a cash register in a local store, and because I had just returned home from China, I told the cashier where I got the money, and she said, “You know, I’ve never had any desire to leave this country.”  I responded saying, “It is a positive experience, and it makes you proud to be an American.”
    
Of course, I didn’t have the time to explain my statement, but what I said to the clerk made me stop and think about it.  How does it make me proud to be an American?
    
There are three caveats regarding my comments.  First, they are based on my personal perspective only.  Second, they are generally based on this one experience abroad, even though I have traveled around the world, lived in Pakistan for fourteen-and-a-half months, and taught at several universities in Australia.  Third, they are generalizations.  They capture my feelings at this moment, within a week of my return from twenty-three days abroad.  
    
Also, I must mention the reference base for my observations.  Perrysburg, Ohio, where I have lived for more than 35 years, is a suburb of Toledo, Ohio.  It is a small town where most residents are educated, literate, well-informed, and either middle or upper class.
    
On the 16-day cruise, my wife and I visited nine large Asian cities: Bangkok, Thailand, Singapore, Saigon and Nha Trang, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Taipai, Taiwan, Okinawa, Japan, and Shanghai and Beijing, China.  Although each of these cities has qualities similar to the others, each has a unique and distinct quality all its own, and in the observations that follow, I do not want to suggest that I am grouping these cities or considering them a single entity.  Grouping them is unfair.  For example, there is a radical difference between all of these cities and Saigon.  Singapore, too, offers a situation that is radically different from all of the others.  (I have written separate essays on my experiences in each of these nine cities, and they are published elsewhere.)
    
Why am I proud to be an American?  There is no question (in my mind) that travel abroad makes you proud to be an American, because with no experiences outside of our country, it is hard to appreciate what it is that makes us special—special enough to make me want to write about it.
    
The first element that makes me proud to be an American is that I can go almost anywhere in the U.S. and know that I can drink the water.  I cannot believe, for example, that in Beijing, the capitol of China, where over 15 million people live, you cannot drink the water.  Anywhere!  The residents boil their water before drinking it, and many depend on bottled water.  Even in the luxurious hotels, bottled water is provided, and you are warned not to drink it from the tap.
    
The second element that makes me proud to be an American is that I can go almost anywhere in the U.S., and there is little or no pollution.  Of course our large cities suffer from pollution problems, but the nine cities I visited each has serious pollution problems.  In Hong Kong, we never had a day when we could clearly see all the buildings.  Every one of the cities we visited have heavy pollution, and Beijing (once again) is the worst polluted city in the world.  Often, as you drive from the dock area into the city, you can see the cloud of smog that envelopes the city.  As we approached Istanbul, a couple of years ago, the gray-yellow mass that hung over the city was obvious, thick, and covered the city like a large, dirty comforter.
    
The third element is litter, dirt, and poverty.  I don’t want to suggest we don’t have areas of our country that are affected by litter, dirt, and poverty, but I have never seen as much of each in one place as I saw when traveling from the dock (Phu My) into Saigon.  There are unlikely to be many places in the U.S. where residents use the side of the road as a dump, where residents (millions of them) live from hand-to-mouth on a daily basis, where the air is filled with swirling dust, dirt, and exhaust emissions, and where small open-front stores selling all kinds of goods, including fruit, vegetables, and other foods—and even restaurants—cannot help but be contaminated by the dirt, litter, and pollution.  
    
In addition to Vietnam, nations such as Cambodia, Laos, Burma, and East Timor rank near the bottom of global development lists.  Across Southeast Asia, more than 1 billion people live on less than $2.00 U.S. per day.
    
The fourth element—and this could, and perhaps should, be listed first—is our freedom.  In Taiwan, we were told by our tour guide, Jan de Vries, that the people cannot own land.  All the land is owned by the government, and people can only rent it.  In Singapore, it is against the law to chew gum in public—and the law in this pristine, litter-free place is enforced ruthlessly.  In Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Beijing, the media is owned by the government, and although things are more open today than ten or twenty years ago, free speech is limited, and there is no open political debate or discussion.  If you think what you see is democracy because it looks free and open, think again: it isn’t.  A political junkie like myself who enjoys the free and open discussion of politics and relishes the controversy displayed in the media would go nuts in these countries—and maybe be imprisoned.
    
As the fifth element (and beyond), I want to group a number of things that I observed that make me proud to be an American.  I like our malls and shopping centers for their cleanliness and fixed prices; I have experienced enough dirty markets and bazaars where there are no fixed prices, where you must bargain for everything, and where hawkers grab at you, yell at you, and try to pull you into their shops.  I like speaking English and enjoy interacting with people who at the very least have English as a second or third language.  Although I enjoy seeing street vendors, they are rampant in Bangkok, and the local people depend on them for food and snacks.  Their stalls, stands, or carts are generally dirty and poorly maintained.  In the U.S. they would be banned as a health hazard.  I like our sanitation and health standards.  Although not always maintained as well as they could be, I love our interstates, highways, and roads.  The roads in Saigon are horrendous, and the streets within most of these large cities were never constructed for the amount of traffic they bear.  It is overwhelming, and in Bangkok and Saigon, motor cycles and scooters are preferred, and few drivers respect the rights of pedestrians—anywhere.
    
My list could go on to mention 5,000-year-old traditions and beliefs, populations density, societies that depend on class consciousness, or the garishness of religious symbols, but I want to add a final note.  We enjoy traveling widely, and our trip to Southeast Asia was no exception.  Just because I observed differences between cultures, does not mean I disliked anything I observed.  It comes back to the old cliche: “Nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.”  “While no nation is greater than another,” one writer on the Internet said when I Googled, “Proud to be an American,” “and no nationality is superior to another, I am happy to be among those who call the United States their home.” .My conclusion is simple: “It sure makes you proud to be an American.”
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At “The Heritage Foundation” website, the article there by Walter Lohman, “Guidelines for U.S. Policy in Southeast Asia,” (March 20, 2007), will give you phenomenal perspective and interesting insights as to why the U.S. has an interest in this particular area of the world.  This article is valuable and offers an eye-opening examination of Southeast Asia.

At the website “Encyclopedia.com,” I found the following comment, which I quote here (f.y.i.), in full: “SOUTHEAST ASIA EXHIBITS TREMENDOUS CULTURAL AND RELIGIOUS diversity; all the major religions of the world can be found in the region. It is also marked by vast economic disparities. At one end of the spectrum is Singapore, which has a standard of living higher than that of Spain or Portugal. At the other end are countries like Laos and Burma (Myanmar), which are desperately poor. There is also a great deal of variety in the types of political systems that characterize the region. The Philippines is a democracy, the Republic of Vietnam a one-party state, and Brunei a semi-feudal …“ The rest of the article is available at HighBeam Research, and I did not read it.
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Copyright March, 2011, by And Then Some Publishing, LLC.