Young Americans need to appreciate the good fortune they take for granted

New York Post ^ | 3 Jul, 2021 | Ryan Fazio

[MtnClimber]

A friend of mine who immigrated to the United States from one of the poorest countries in the world, Haiti, once joked to me, “Do you know why I love the US? Toilet.” He laughs easily. He grew up without one. His family didn’t have electricity until he was a teenager.

At the age of 7, my Polish step-grandfather and his family were taken at night by Stalin’s secret police to the Siberian labor camps, after the Soviets and Nazis partitioned the country in 1939, simply because his father was a low-level military officer in Poland. Over six years with his family in the prison camps, he saw — and smelled — hundreds of people drop dead from starvation, exhaustion and disease around him. Somehow he made it out alive and fled to the US. Tens of millions of Soviet prisoners never had that chance.

An old college professor of mine who was born under a communist police state in the Czech Republic used to preach to his American students studying abroad in Prague, “Yours is the country of individual freedom. You should be proud of what it has given the world.” He and his countrymen have now enjoyed decades of relative prosperity and freedom under the Pax Americana.

But, as we approach another Independence Day, why are fewer Americans proud of that legacy? And why do many of us often think what we have here — wealth, freedom and safety — is normal in the course of human history or even in the world today? A little perspective is in order.

[gloryblaze]

The thing is that even mature Americans don’t appreciate what they have, so we can’t look forward to people outgrowing their youthful ignorance when they grow up any more. Look how fast mature blacks were convinced that they were still really slaves when they thought they were doing just dandy.

[CrimsonTidegirl]

“Swear allegiance to the flag,
Whatever flag they offer;
Never hint at what you really feel.
Teach the children quietly,
For, someday, sons and daughters
Will rise up and fight while we stood still.

Silent Running
Mike and the Mechanics”

I never dreamed that “Silent Running” would be so prophetic. When the song was popular, I would think of the Soviet Union and other Communist countries.

Yet, here we are.