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travel and culture if they don't learn a second language. C'est
la vie. Many Americans won't learn a second language. Tant
pis.
Please let me make it clear that no matter how jingoistic
I might sound, there is no country which I would not want
to live in for a month, and if I could be safe and dry, for a
year. (I grew up in West Texas and just don't want to live for
months on end in a rainy jungle with bugs everywhere. Sorry,
Seattle.) I've mentioned it more than once, so you can guess
already that I have a very special place in my heart for India,
where I went on my honeymoon, and have been twice since.
of all the places I've seen, India is where you can be farthest
from America (I've never been to China). And of course you
may know that it was not difficult for us to visit ten cities in
India with ten different languages and — this is something
that Americans don't appreciate the difficulty of — ten alphabets.
(I know there are similarities but learning the first one is
hard.) So I could spend thirty years in new Delhi and not understand
everything I want to know, and then drive two hours
west and start all over in Rajasthan. You run out of thirty year
blocks of time pretty quickly; I'm quite likely on my last such
block. I would literally burst into tears if I somehow learned
that I would never see Paris again, or that I would never see
Tokyo or Rio for the first time.
And yet, I do believe in an American exceptionalism that
flows in great part from our system of government. I know
there's an accepted and specific scholarly definition for that
term, but I think it's fair to point out that exceptional does
not mean "uniquely and permanently superior to all" in the
vernacular. It means "really, really good." I believe the Communist
Lovecraft was right, and that the US had some unique
advantages that freed us from some of the historical problems
that Communism was a response to. I don't believe that it
should be taken to mean that the US has any supernaturally
guided mission to lead the world as a political force. But the
ideas that made American exceptional are ideas that other
countries will find advantageous if and when they do adopt
them. We set a good example. There is a future just ahead
in which fifty nations are just as rich and safe and comfortable
and well educated as we are today, and some day a world
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