Let Them Come to America

When I look back on my youth I can remember, in part, how I thought. I realize at my age that I was incredibly idealistic. This is not to say that I have changed much in my ideology, I am an American and I have lived with freedom and prosperity all of my life. I grew up during the Vietnam War. I was a child then but I can remember, in the sanctity of my middle-class home, the nightly news coverage of what was taking place. I remember the LIFE magazine sitting on our coffee table, the story of My Lai featured on the cover. I remember my mother telling me that I wasn't permitted to look at this issue. Of course when they were away, that's exactly what I did. I did not understand it then, as I do now, but I knew that it was wrong, and I knew that it was bad. The Vietnam mystique has remained with me ever since.

You during your youth, lived within a country twisted by poverty and confusion. I see the conditions as a breeding ground for deception and exploitation as a result of your desire for freedom (since you had never truly experienced it within your lifetime). I have read many books covering the accounts of those caught in the oppression of Communism. Within those accounts run many common threads: lies, deception, broken promises, confusion, and many, many regrets. Frankly, I have never understood the ideology, but have explained it to myself simply as fools begetting fools.

You have tasted both worlds, and I know that you have come to an understanding of what it means to be free. Governments neither can nor ever will provide freedom and prosperity to the people. Governments will never offer Liberty, but rather they can protect liberty. This is what Democracy has accomplished in the United States, and Democracy is what the United States failed to accomplish in Vietnam.

I can faintly remember the statements of John F. Kennedy in Berlin, Germany shortly after the creation of the Berlin Wall. If I remember correctly he appealed to a free world not understanding to oppression of communism in his statment: "Let them come to Berlin."

Well, to the world oppressed by communism:

"Let them come to America."