I have the extraordinary privilege of living in this remarkable country—the one that welcomed us as penniless, stateless immigrants, some deacades ago.
Kindly note the attached photograph. The small American flag decal affixed to the inside right corner of my windshield—and identical ones before it—has /have occupied the windshields of every automobile I have ever owned, from the first to the one I drive today.
God have mercy on anyone who dares disparage that small expression of my patriotism.
Or gratitude, more precisely.
As a child, I heard whispers of the great America. The dream destination for nearly everyone around the world. The place where the streets were paved with gold and the fences were made of sausages.
When our destitute but profoundly grateful feet finally touched the soil of the United States of America, we discovered on the very first day that reality differed from the mythology. There is nothing quite like living in a two-dollar-a-night hooker motel in downtown Los Angeles—courtesy of a relief agency—to revise one’s assumptions.
But…
I spend much time speaking and writing about success. The always asked question: Is America the land of opportunity? Was it ever? Is it still?
My answer, to this day, remains an emphatic YES!
With an equally emphatic qualification.
There is no place on earth where you are afforded a greater opportunity to succeed.
Nor one where you will work harder to get there.
That is my opinion.
More accurately, it is an earned conviction.
Finally, I remain genuinely angered by what I call The Perversity of Privilege.
I am aware that billions around the world, given the opportunity, would come to this country immediately—with little more than the clothes on their backs.
Then there are the privileged American misanthropes who wear the privilege of citizenship as if it were an entitlement rather than an inheritance requiring stewardship. They exploit that privilege by spewing contempt for the very country that affords it. By laboring to discredit it. Even to diminish it.
There is another path.
Count yourself among those who choose to applaud it, criticize it where necessary, and work to improve it through useful deeds rather than corrosive grievance.
Patriotism is not blind worship. It is gratitude put to work. It is gratitude joined to responsibility.
So there.
Thoughts on our anniversaries.
