The Exceptional Nation
Much has been written about America, the exceptional nation. And if there is one thing that makes us exceptional among all the world’s nations it must be the sort of thing I read about in today’s NYTimes, in an article entitled, Boy Who Fled Vietnam War Returns as U.S. Officer.
Cmdr. H. B. Le visited family members in his home town of Hue, Vietnam.
“Cmdr. H. B. Le, the first Vietnamese-American to command a United States Navy destroyer, had just stepped ashore on a formal port call, making an emotional return to Vietnam for the first time since he fled as a boy on a fishing boat at the end of the war in 1975.”
I’m sure this sort of thing happens elsewhere, but I know it happens more here, and so much more that it probably plays a big role in making us what we are.
There are of course a myriad of less attractive things that are also very much our nation, and these things are much written about, but for this moment let’s not think about them but let’s savor this truly “exceptional” although quite ordinary moment in the life of the country.
And to read this, and to think there are those already here who would set themselves up as somehow having more right to be here than all those like Cmdr. H. B. who would come here. Let’s hope, as we revise our immigration policies, that these people won’t be heard.
