Autobiography - The Galindo Group

Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 78
EVERY PERSON COUNTS.
After moving back to Texas to establish my own home, I became ever more aware of
the importance of each individual in the course of world business. Sen. Gramm was
fond of reminding his audiences that each individual listening to him may be the reason
why Soviet Russia lost the cold war. He explains that several of the critical laws passed
by the Senate during President Reagan’s years were passed by one vote, his vote. He
would not have been elected Senator had he not won an earlier election as a
Congressman by just a few votes. Reminding his audience that the absence of just a
few of the present might have caused his defeat, and thus, perhaps caused America’s
defeat, he makes the point of the importance each one of us has in the preservation of
freedom. It is sobering how much truth there is to the importance of each individual!
As promptly as it was statutorily possible after my return to the U. S., I applied and was
sworn-in as a citizen of the United States of America on May 30, 1978. This was the
culmination of a process that I had started eighteen years earlier on August 28, 1960,
when, after my graduation from college I applied for, and was granted, permanent
residency in this country. Soon thereafter, on October 21, 1960, I continued the process
by filing a declaration of my intent to become a citizen and by registering for the
Selective Service Board under No. 41 61 38 299. My board repeatedly determined that
my occupation as an engineer with critical skills was more important to the country than
drafting me for the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis or sending me to Viet Nam, and
therefore I was never called to active duty. Naturalization gave official sanction to a
process of ideological identification that had been taking place in my mind for longer
than eighteen years, and without which, no matter how legal, these papers now would
only be superficial. However, in the eyes of those who didn’t know me I had just earned
the merits to allow my full participation in the political process, which I was eager to try.
One of the issues that our Founding Fathers debated somewhat acrimoniously in the
summer of 1787, was the one related to qualifications required to hold federal elective
office. One of the most distinguished delegates, Alexander Hamilton, had accumulated
a great record as a soldier during the Revolutionary War, was very well educated and
perhaps one of the smartest of them all. His keen understanding of the principle that
power emanates from wealth and that therefore wealth is needed to maintain order led
him to create what more than a century later, in 1913, became the Federal Reserve
Bank. It made him a true precursor of modern day monetary economists.
However, to a good many delegates, Hamilton appeared a little bit too sympathetic to
groups and individuals bent on using the new opportunities of debt repayment, foreign
trade and land speculation for extraneous greedy purposes. Hamilton was also seen as
too friendly to the recently displaced British interests still willing to trade with America.
These same groups appeared to be implicated in the precursor events that ultimately
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