Life in the Brazos.com

Ram Galindo
Bryan, Texas

America -The World's Best Venue for Value Creation

As surely as a human is able to think, a human is able to dream. I have never met anyone who, at one point or another during life, didn't have a dream. People have dreams of self-improvement in Cochabamba, Budapest, Copenhagen, Jerusalem and Shanghai. It matters little where they are born. What matters is whether or not there is a climate propitious for development of the dream. Then it becomes fundamentally important whether one is in Bolivia, Hungary, Denmark, The Holy Land or China. After spending a lifetime reading, traveling, talking with well informed persons and actually doing business and living in some of these countries, I find it impossible not to conclude that America is by far the brightest shining beacon of hope in the world.

The genius of America is to provide the environment where any person can pursue a dream of achievement and enjoy its results. I, like many millions before and after me, saw the light of that beacon and deciphered its message. America is a machine of hope and prosperity. Like any working organism, it must be maintained and improved.

The central idea of my writings on this column is to describe how, slowly but surely, a life's journey ties in with a growing awareness of how such a social machine was conceived and continues to evolve, and how each of us must strive to preserve it.

Although my comments will be filled with examples of my interactions with people who have affected and shaped my life, they will distill into the origin and application of certain public policies that give structure to the American social compact. By describing aspects of these interactions, I will seek to lift the veil that often obscures the thesis about America's genius. I will first shed light on how this genius came to exist. My approach will include reviewing historical events or periods; interpreting the accomplishments of some of the architects who helped build the pyramid of human progress; describing some of the lessons I received from contemporary role models; and sometimes recounting my own stories. They will give texture to the fabric of America's social compact.

America gives people a safe harbor to pursue a dream. And therein, in that simple fact, resides the strength of the American influence under which we live today. All visionaries want to follow their dream in an environment that, under the rule of law, offers freedom, opportunity, stability and, most importantly, the right to enjoy the benefits of their creations. America offers that opportunity to the world. That is the fundamental strength of America. My stories, experiences and commentaries on public policy will illustrate how America became the best place for dreams to come true. To preserve the conditions that make America the safe harbor for self-reliant dreamers should be very important to all thinking Americans. Notwithstanding where one is born, understanding and embracing this responsibility is an essential step in becoming a useful American.

Nothing of this grand vision of the genius of America had even begun to take shape in my mind when I first arrived at New York. On a hot afternoon of mid-July 1956, as a seventeen-year-old dressed in my woolen suit appropriate for the winter season in the Southern hemisphere that I had just left, I sat on the sidewalk of Idlewild (now J. F. Kennedy) International Airport with tears in my eyes. I had just left the safe, loving care of my family for the first time in my life.

Suddenly, I had entered a strange new world for which I was not quite ready. It had been a sad good-by to Mom, Dad, brothers, sisters, relatives and friends. I had left a small town where everyone knew everybody and for generations the same extended families had been neighbors - sometimes friends, often antagonists. Everything was in walking distance from anywhere. Literally, it was not easy to meet a stranger, there weren't many. Loneliness was not common. The memory of the crowd seeing me off at Cochabamba's (Bolivia) airport burned in my mind as an indelible picture.

Though when I left home I thought that I knew enough English to get along in an English speaking country, the reality of this delusion slapped me on the face when I got off the plane. In New York, as I was surrounded by hundreds of strange new people of whose existence I had had intellectual knowledge but whose presence I had never experienced before, I felt very lonely as I began to sample my new reality. My past was now just memories. I did not understand what was being said, could not read many written signs, did not know how to use the newfangled machines that I saw working when someone put a coin in them. I did not know how to make a phone call, could not find the right train to get to Manhattan, much less tell someone what I needed. I was homesick, lost and overwhelmed. It almost seemed that the crowd, like a hungry beast, could actually devour a fresh newcomer.

Lugging my artisan-made leather suitcase, I made my new suit wet with sweat and ruined my new shirt and tie, which worried me because I had just received them as a going away gift from my parents. I was afraid darkness would come before I learned what to do. Fortunately, my best friend of my high school class had preceded me by a few weeks and, knowing that I arrived that day had come to look for me. Eventually he found me. With his help, by nighttime I was installed in a windowless room on the 47^th floor of a building on the Upper West Side. I was very proud to have found a place to stay. The next morning I began exploring New York.

Neither historical nor geopolitical thinking were in my mind at that time, but my admiration for America, which had been the moving force that attracted me in the first place, began to grow by personal experience. In a few days I learned the words to order something else to eat other than ham and eggs and began to develop a sense for the cost of things, as measured by the dollar and the work needed to earn a dollar.