The Privilege and Responsibility of American Citizenship

I have never lived in any other country but America. But, my parents did, and they would tell me how much better life is in America than in the China they left in 1947.

They came with nothing to lose and with everything to gain.

In America people like my parents could begin life anew with little or nothing; and, with patience, and hard work, they could achieve far beyond anything they could have hoped to achieve had they stayed in their native land.

Most of what my parents ever hoped for was the opportunity to support their family with the necessities of life in safety, absent of the squalor, disease, and misery they knew when they lived under a weak political system.

My parents knew ˜without fully understanding the principal reason why˜ America offers people that opportunity.

As a student of history, I came to understand just what that reason is: America is unique from all other nations in the history of the world. America secures to the individual the greatest liberty the world has ever known in the history of mankind.