Dedicated to Hispanic Heritage and Diversity Issues
          Publication of the Society of Hispanic Historical and Ancestral Research 
http://members.aol.com/shhar      714-894-8161

 "The world would act more like a human family if people did more genealogy."
U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch, June 2003

UNITED STATES

National WWII Memorial, Washington, D.C.   
http://www.wwiimemorial.com  
Sent by Joan De Soto 

The National World War II Memorial will be the first national memorial dedicated to all who served during World War II. The memorial, which will be established by the American Battle Monuments Commission, will honor all military veterans of the war, the citizens on the home front, the nation at large, and the high moral purpose and idealism that motivated the nation's call to arms. The Second World War will be the only 20th century event commemorated on the Mall’s central axis. 

National World War II Memorial, 2300 Clarendon Boulevard, Suite 501 
Arlington, Virginia 22201   Or call:    1-800-639-4WW2    e-mail: custsvc@wwiimemorial

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Americans who served in World War II or supported the war effort at home can now add their names to an online registry.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/07/03/veterans.registry.ap/index.html

Organized by the American Battle Monuments Commission, the Web-based list is an effort to extend recognition to as many as 16 million Americans who served in uniform during the Second World War. It is being launched almost a year before the dedication of the first national monument to World War II veterans, slated for May 29, 2004 -- Memorial Day weekend -- on the National Mall. 

The registry is open not only to veterans, but to "any American that served in the armed forces or contributed to the war effort on the home front, whether in factories and shipyards or farms and neighborhoods," the commission said in a news release. 

The registry is accessible on the National World War II Memorial Web site, or by calling the commission toll-free at 1-800-639-4WW2. Anyone can submit names and registration is free. 

Support the Memorials  You may support Valor Remembered's efforts to create these memorials through financial contribution, volunteer service, contribution of historic information, documents and photos, or simply by inviting your family and friends to visit Valor Remembered's website. http://www.valorremembered.org

Valor Remembered Foundation
1105 Gannon Drive, Plano, TX 75025   -   972.283.0097
webmaster@valorremembered.org
Sent by Walter Herbeck  epherbeck@juno.com

First published in a monumental bilingual edition on Independence Day, 1986. Widely hailed as the best translations of the historic texts as attested by many prominent individuals, including former U.S. Chief Justice Warren Burger who was presented with a copy at his office in Washington, and President Ronald Reagan who said:  Your edition of three of America’s greatest documents is a most meaningful addition to my library and will serve as a reminder of your friendship and goodwill.

Presentation of the book the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution in English and Spanish to members of the U.S. Senate at the Capitol Rotunda, July, 1986. The book was signed by 3000 Hispanic-Americans in tribute to the United States.  These are some of the comments received on the occasion of the publishing of America’s Charters of Freedom in English and Spanish, Independence Day, 1986. 

Prof. Vega is an able, dedicated and zealous patriot, with a deep concern that Spanish-speaking people would understand and appreciate the esteemed writings of our Founding Fathers.     
                                                  Senator Gerald Cardinale

Prof. Vega, a Bergen County resident, has distinguished himself as an individual interested in the promotion of better understanding and relations between Hispanics and the community at large.  His translation, edition and publication work throughout the years has assisted his goal of unity. As Governor, I take great pride in commending your work. New Jersey is proud of the achievements of this New Jersey citizen. I salute you and hope that you will continue your fine work for many years to come.  
                                                  Jim Florio, former Governor of New Jersey

Prof. Vega deserves to be commended for his fine contribution to the body of bilingual literature. His work will provide the non-English proficient Hispanics in this country and abroad an opportunity to read these important documents and perhaps to appreciate the foundations of our country and our democratic society. His initiative is a novel venture which replicates with such accuracy and authenticity the spirit of the original documents.  
                                                          T.H. Bell, former U.S. Secretary of Education

These translated documents, which have served to form and preserve our "great experiment," will be invaluable resources to the millions of Spanish-speaking residents of our nation. You are to be commended for your role in this most worthy effort.
                                            Ruth J. Winerfeld, former Chair, League of Women Voters

The editor of the Commission’s newsletter provided the enclosed copies reporting your presentation to Chief Justice Burger. If a picture is worth 10,000 words, your presentation was a major story! (I’m serious because there is heavy competition each month for space in the newsletter.) 
                                            Donald E. Reilly, 
                     Commission on the Bicentennial of the United States Constitution (1987)

Similar comments were also received, among others, from:
The U.S. Senate
The U.S. House of Representatives
The U.S. Department of Defense
The Library of Congress
The U.S. Bicentennial Commission
The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation
The Council for the Advancement of Citizenship
The American Federation of Teachers
The American Library Association
The Center for Civic Education
The United Nations
The City of New York
The Governors and Chief Justices of New York and New Jersey
The Chief Justice of New York and New Jersey
Many U.S. senators and congressmen and mayors from cities across the country
The New York City Public Library
The Newark Public Library
The Lion’s Club and a host of universities and colleges, including Columbia University, Rutgers University, the University of Arizona, Montclair State University, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Seton Hall

University, and many others. It was also widely covered in over 150 national newspapers and magazines, as well as the national broadcast media, including ABC News. Following the unprecedented success of this first edition, it was subsequently published in three more editions, and now in a new fourth edition with all four documents contained in one single volume.

Book details:  Format size: 6 x 9. Pages: 100
Cover: full color, text in black, illustrated.  List: $18.95

Carlos B. Vega is a professor at Montclair State University in New Jersey and author of a total of 34 books. His latest publications include: The Truth Must Be Told: How Spain And Hispanics Helped Build The United States, published in 2002, and Conquistadoras: Mujeres heroicas de la conquista de América, to be published Fall, 03. 

Carlos L. Vega was also a professor for many years at some of America’s leading universities and author of several books dealing with a wide range of subjects.

Published by:  Villamel Publishing Company
7311 Boulevard East
North Bergen, New Jersey 07047  U.S.A.
201.868.6750.     Electronic address: Spain37@att.net

Other titles authored by Carlos B. Vega (partial list)
-Vega’s English-Spanish Dictionary of Everyday Criminal and Legal Terms. 
-English-Spanish Instant Medical Dictionary. -Diccionario básico de términos literarios y gramaticales (Basic Dictionary of Literary and Grammatical Terms.)
-Éxito [ en el trabajo ] – Success at Work. 
-Spanish for the Prisons. 
-Conquistadoras: Mujeres heroicas de la conquista de América (Leading Women in the conquest of America.) Fall 03.
-The Truth Must Be Told: How Spain And Hispanics Helped Build The United States.

For information regarding any of the titles mentioned above, please contact the publisher. For orders contact: LEA Book Distributors, 170-23 83^rd Avenue, Jamaica Hills, New York 11432 
718. 291.9891   718.291.9830 (fax)
Or visits their website: http://www.LEABOOKS.COM
:

This web site is simply fabulous!!  Kudos to the San Jose Mercury News, Friday, July 4, 2003
Sent by Lorri Frain  lorri.frain@lmco.com

Family Research Abstract of the Week: Model Citizens

  World Congress of Families Update, Online!
    15 July 2003, Volume 04 Issue 28
      A Free Email Newsletter
secretariat@worldcongress.org

Has America lost the distinctive sense of civic involvement that once so impressed Alexis de Tocqueville? Unsettled by this question, sociologist Corey L.M. Keyes of Emory University recently set out to assess current levels of "social civility" in the United States. Contemplating survey data on "the amount and frequency of volunteering, civic association membership, voting, and religious participation in the United States," Keyes looked for signs of "social incivility (or 'a-civility')" in nationally representative survey data collected by the MacArthur Foundation during 1995 and 1996.

After weighing the data, Keyes acknowledges the evidence that "Americans were less involved [in civic responsibilities] at the close of the 20th century than they were in the middle of that century." Yet he rejects as "unwarranted" the conclusion that "the United States has little or no social civility," pointing to data indicating that Americans still "have a great sense of duty and obligation to society." Still, Keyes concedes that social civility does not appear to be "distributed equally in the U.S. population." Marital status, for instance, strongly predicts the level of civic involvement for American adults. In Keyes's data, "married adults were 1.3 times more likely than unmarried adults to have volunteered [to perform social service], and married adults averaged 1.4 times more volunteer hours than unmarried individuals" (p < .01 for both comparisons). Statistical tests also show that parents are almost twice as likely as childless adults to volunteer for social service (Odds Ratio of 1.8; p < .001).

Such data enable Keyes to render a composite portrait of "the exemplar of an adult most likely to volunteer" as "an older and married parent who attends religious services weekly." In contrast, the adult "least likely to volunteer" is "a younger, unmarried, childless adult who never attends religious services." Looking at his topic more broadly, Keyes identifies "the exemplar of civic social responsibility [as] an older and more educated female who is relatively wealthy, married, and attends religious services weekly." Predictably, then, the "antithesis of civic social responsibility is a younger and less educated male who is unmarried (or separated) with little income and does not attend religious services."

Highlighting the "robust" association between religion and marital status in predicting higher levels of social civility, Keyes reports that "religiousness explained upwards of 30% of the relationship of marital status with civic responsibility, social concern for others, and voluntary social involvement."

Keyes acknowledges that some observers fear that the United States is fast becoming "a country of rude, selfish, and uncaring individuals who are overly materialistic and unethical." His findings indicate that any hope of giving America a different and better national character, one which preserves the civic impulses that Tocqueville found so laudable, rests largely on the married and the pious.

(Source: Corey L.M. Keyes, "Social Civility in the United States," Sociological Inquiry 72[2002]: 393-408.)

California Senator Dunn Speaks Out On 1930s Injustices to Mexicans in US  
Sent by Zeke Hernandez  zekeher@juno.com
 
Apology Sought for Latino 'Repatriation' Drive in '30s

- Many U.S. citizens who were sent to Mexico consider suing for reparations.
By Gregg Jones, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, Tuesday, July 15, 2003

Emilia Castaneda remembers the first years of her life as being a typical Depression-era childhood — hard times leavened with simple joys in the East Los Angeles melting pot that was Boyle Heights.

Now 77, she still conjures up treasured snapshots in her mind's eye: the duplex on Folsom Street that her father bought with his earnings as a bricklayer; her Japanese American girlfriends; and the elementary school on Malabar Street where she recited the Pledge of Allegiance every morning.

For Castaneda, that world ended in nightmarish fashion one day in 1935. In a campaign carried out by Los Angeles County and city authorities, in cooperation with federal immigration officials, the Castanedas and hundreds of other families of Mexican descent were loaded aboard a train and moved to Mexico — part of a decade-long, nationwide effort to reduce unemployment and public welfare rolls by forcing more than 1 million Mexicans and Mexican Americans to leave the United States, scholars said.

State Sen. Joseph Dunn (D-Santa Ana) and a Los Angeles law firm are launching an effort this week to win reparations and an apology for victims of that largely forgotten campaign. Inspired by the Reagan administration's compensation of Japanese Americans who were interned during World War II — a program established under the threat of a class-action lawsuit — Dunn will preside over a Senate hearing today that will examine the 1930s removal of Mexicans and Mexican Americans.

Dunn is also preparing legislation that would extend the statute of limitations for victims who wish to file claims for damages, commission a state study and ask Congress to review the issue.

"It's important for us as a society to recognize the wrong that was committed," Dunn said. "The best approach would be for Congress to enact a reparations program similar to that which was done for victims of the Japanese American internment."

As part of the campaign, a class-action lawsuit is being prepared and could be filed as early as today in Los Angeles Superior Court, seeking unspecified damages from the city and county of Los Angeles, the state of California and possibly other defendants, said attorney Raymond P. Boucher, of the 
Los Angeles law firm of Kiesel, Boucher & Larson. The plaintiffs will allege that their constitutional rights were violated by the removal effort, Boucher said.

Scholars estimate that 60% of the people sent to Mexico in the 1930s "repatriation" campaign were U.S. citizens. One was Castaneda.

"Somebody could say, 'We were wrong for the injustices committed to you and apologize for what was done,' " said Castaneda, now a resident of Riverside. "Maybe other people who are still in 
Mexico would hear about this and would come back."

Civil rights advocates say the issue resonates far beyond the victims.

"We learn from lessons of the past," said Dale Shimasaki, former director of the Civil Liberties Public Education Fund, a program created by the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 to educate people about 
the Japanese American internment.

The foundation for Dunn's effort was laid by two Southern California scholars: Francisco Balderrama, a Cal State L.A. professor of Chicano studies and history, and Raymond Rodriguez, 
a retired history professor from Long Beach City College. They pooled their passion and years of research to write the 1995 book "Decade of Betrayal."

Many Mexican nationals who were forced to leave the United States in the 1930s had been encouraged to come here by industries in need of cheap, reliable labor.

By the eve of the Great Depression in the late 1920s, the subject of Mexican labor had become a point of regional political rivalry. Agricultural producers in the South had begun to advocate immigration  quotas for Mexican nationals. But those same Mexican nationals had been an important source of labor in California's agricultural industry, which had emerged as competition for Southern agriculture.

The onset of the Depression, however, created far broader support for action against Mexican and Mexican American laborers. By 1930, worsening unemployment and growing demands for public aid brought a backlash.

In Washington, Republican President Herbert Hoover initiated a "repatriation" program in 1930. Federal support ended when Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in 1933, but state 
and local governments continued their efforts throughout the decade.

Across the country, Mexicans — or people suspected of being Mexican — were stopped on the streets and asked to show papers to prove their right to be in the United States. The campaign 
spread to pool halls, parks — such as Los Angeles' La Placita — and other gathering places.

Lengthy Documents

The organizers of the Los Angeles campaign — including county and city officials and business groups — generated hundreds of pages of documents in their effort, many of which were reviewed 
recently by The Times. By 1931, Los Angeles County officials estimated that 60,000 people were receiving public aid. More than 6,000 of them were listed as foreign nationals, most of them classified as "Mexicans," a term loosely used at the time to refer to Mexican nationals and Mexican Americans.

W.F. Watkins, a local supervisor for the federal Bureau of Immigration, described in a 1931 memorandum to superiors how the Welfare Office of the Los Angeles County Charities Department 
was attempting to cut its costs by arranging "the voluntary return to Mexico of indigent citizens of that country or those who are a burden upon the public here," with free transportation to the Mexican border. Railroads agreed to carry the deportees for half  the usual fare, paid by California counties and cities.

With the first trains scheduled to leave in mid-February 1931, Watkins reported that "tentative plans contemplate the handling of additional trains each 10 days or two weeks following, depending upon conditions. Local officials hope to rid this locality of a great financial burden through the voluntary 
return of such aliens."

Documents suggest — and victims and scholars assert — that people were pressured and even threatened into joining the exodus. Organizers of the campaign planted stories in The Times and other publications that warned of a massive roundup by immigration authorities. In a June 17, 1931, memorandum to superiors in Washington, Walter E. Carr, the Los Angeles district director of immigration, blamed state and local authorities and groups such as the Los Angeles Chamber of 
Commerce for the stories.

Carr said "thousands upon thousands of Mexican aliens" had been "literally scared out of Southern California by the various propaganda and activities over which this service had no control."

In California and Michigan — where thousands of Mexicans and Mexican Americans worked in the fledgling automobile industry — there were proposals to summarily deport anyone who couldn't 
produce on demand evidence of legal entry into the United States.

To increase pressure on Mexicans and Mexican Americans to leave the United States, state, county and municipal governments denied employment on relief projects to out-of-work foreign nationals, and private businesses denied jobs to people "because they looked like aliens," Carr wrote.

"All of these matters were given wide publicity, not only in the public press, but through a whispering campaign which gathered strength as time went on until the Mexican population was led to believe, in many instances, that Mexicans were not wanted in California and that all would be deported whether they were legally here or not," Carr wrote.

Emilia Castaneda said she was too young to recall the early stages of the campaign. But she remembers well the hardships of the Depression and lining up to receive public aid, including a 
blue-checked dress that she called her Weber's dress because it reminded her of the wrapper on a loaf of Weber's bread.

The campaign against foreign labor put her father out of work. By the time her mother died of tuberculosis in May 1935, the family didn't have money to buy flowers for the grave.

Shortly afterward, her father informed Emilia and her older brother that "he had to return to Mexico," she said. "They were forcing us to return."

She remembers going in the darkness to the train station with a trunk packed with their belongings.

"We cried and cried," she said. "I had never been to Mexico. We were leaving everything behind."

They were packed onto a train that rumbled across the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico for what seemed to her like an eternity before arriving in El Paso and being ushered across the border into Mexico.

They returned to her father's home state of Durango. She was shocked by the poverty and primitive conditions as they moved from one relative to another, living in rooms with dirt floors, without plumbing or running water.

A New Life

Their relatives and classmates referred to them derisively as the repatriadas.

She had to drop out of school to help provide for the family — cooking and washing clothes for her father and brother and working as a domestic.

After mastering Spanish — a language she had been forbidden to speak back at her Malabar Street school — she began corresponding with her godmother in Los Angeles. Eventually, her godmother 
obtained a copy of Castaneda's birth certificate and sent it to her so she could show it to U.S. immigration officials when she tried to cross the border.

When the national economy needed workers during World War II, immigration attitudes changed and Castaneda returned in 1944 at age 17, catching a train from El Paso to Los Angeles. She found 
work at a candy factory and then a glass factory, and eventually married a co-worker in 1949.

Castaneda said she hopes that the campaign to publicize the issue will at least educate Americans about what happened to families like hers.

Dunn said the issue is still relevant because of the ongoing debate over immigration, especially during times of economic difficulty. "The deportation program of the 1930s is not a proud chapter in American history," Dunn said. "Hopefully, by acknowledging this, we can minimize the likelihood of unjustly treating future immigrants to this great nation."  

 Mexican Americans who were forced from California to Mexico.

"Many of these people lost their homes and property," he said. "It's a chapter that needs to be corrected, and the dignity returned to this large group of people."

 violated both the constitutional and legal rights of Mexicans and Mexican Americans.

"It's a bedrock principle of U.S. immigration law that U.S. citizens cannot be removed" from the United States, he said. "This is why this episode is so troubling to me." 

Extracts: Tempting Latino tastes

The Fresno Bee - July 6, 2003 
The reporter can be reached at dpollock@fresnobee.com or 441-6364. Posted on HispanicOnline.com
http://www.hispaniconline.com/buss&finn/article.html?SMContentIndex=0&SMContentSet=0

Extensive article with advertisers not only appealing to Hispanics in their outreach, but trying to change food habits.  

The California Latino 5 a Day Campaign encourages eating five servings of fruits and vegetables daily and calls attention to the fact that the state's Hispanics have an especially high rate of heart disease, cancer, stroke and diabetes.

Sometimes the pitch for Hispanic consumption goes hand in hand with a pitch about health concerns. For instance, Irene Cabanas with Integrated Marketing Works in Irvine works with the California Avocado Commission to tout the use of guacamole and fresh avocados. The commission hired a doctor who is reassuring shoppers that the fruit can be used as a substitute for sour cream, cheese or mayonnaise.

Berven says the Latino outreach has proved a nice complement to conventional beef marketing effort: "Latinos are more willing to spend time on meal preparations. Convenience items are not a big issue."

Selling to Mexico is another market:  "We are trying desperately to get into Mexico," says Kenton Kidd, president of the California Apple Commission in Fresno.  Kidd says, pointing out that Washington ships 6 million boxes of apples each year to Mexico. "We have the potential in several years to be shipping a million boxes there, about $15 million-$20 million worth of apples, without hurting their industry."

Daily News – Bilingual Ed Needs More from Mayor Mike
Abstract by Latino Opinions, Raul Damas  (703) 299-6255  http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ideas_opinions/story/97524p-88305c.html

Part of the disappointment [with Bloomberg] stems from what [he] said during his campaign when he suggested bilingual education's days were numbered. "There must be total immersion for youngsters," candidate Bloomberg said in 2001. But that's not what he said last week. Instead, English learners will receive 40% of their instruction in English initially and then gradually increase, with the rest of the day taught in students' native languages. This is an improvement over the bilingual programs in which students remain in separate classrooms and are taught exclusively in their native languages. But it's hardly immersion.

Houston Chronicle – “Subprime” Loan Sharks Target Latinos
Abstract by Latino Opinions, Raul Damas  (703) 299-6255
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ideas_opinions/story/97524p-88305c.html

Some U.S. banks and lenders still make their money by helping families get into homes. Others profit from loans that regularly force families out of their homes. In recent years, those lenders have been aggressively pushing large numbers of homeowners in our neighborhoods into high-cost refinance loans that strip equity and often end in foreclosure.  While elected officials have begun to recognize the damage caused by predatory home loans, most of the worst abuses remain completely legal, and some of the biggest mortgage lenders continue to make predatory loans. Just ask Jessie and William Navarro, who have lived in their home in Phoenix for 30 years. William works for the local Catholic diocese while Jessie recently retired. A few years ago, they refinanced their mortgage with Norwest Financial in order to make a few improvements, like adding a patio. But the loan, a high-cost or "subprime" loan, included an outrageously high interest rate and huge fees that cost them over $7,000 of their home equity. When Wells Fargo, a well-known bank and the country's biggest mortgage lender, bought Norwest, you might expect things would have improved for the Navarros. Instead, they got worse.

When Jim Carroll, an international motivational futurist, consultant and keynote speaker, recently delivered a speech on Economic Development in the Wired World, he made some very powerful statements about the role the Internet will play in our future. Some of his conclusions include the following:

• Technology improvements, particularly with emerging satellite technologies — will render irrelevant the old distinction between urban and rural environments.
• Communities which can best create a ‘buzz’ as to their telecommunication attributes will be those who best succeed in the emerging wired economy.
• Success will only come to those communities which can foster a creative approach between industry, business, government and academia in their approach to the opportunity afforded by the wired economy.
• Traditional rural industries — fishing, farming, agriculture, tourism — will be forever altered by the wired world. The success of a community with these industries will come to hinge not only on developments in world markets — but on the ability of local industry to play a role in the wired economy

10 things to celebrate/Why I'm an anti-anti-American
by Dinesh D'Souza, June 29, 2003
San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday, June 29, 2003 
Sent by Joaquin Gracida jcg2002@k-online.com

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@aol.com.  

[[ Editor:  Written by native of Bombay, India, the essay is a beautiful reminder of why we should all be grateful for living in the United States.  The uniqueness of the American spirit is observed as an outsider, and makes one wonder if immigrants are changed by the American spirit, or they come because they share the basic desire to live in freedom. ]]

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. 

(1) 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."

(2)  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.

(3)  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.

(3)  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.

(4) 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.

(5)  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.

(6)  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.

(7)  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."

(8) 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? 

(9) 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