A few weeks ago I was fortunate enough to attend a conference with some big name speakers. The first day, we heard from former President George W. Bush. On the second day we heard from the former British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.
Bush’s speech was anecdotal and funny. He found a voice with the audience that, I think, if he’d had at the White House he would have found a far greater amount of popularity. He vehemently defended many of his most controversial decisions and went so far as to offer information that many in the audience had not heard before…which seriously affected my view of his presidency. The next day when Brown spoke the mood was more business like as the conference was filled with financial professionals and Brown was the former British finance minister. He was still jovial but in speaking on much more ‘bread and butter’ topics he found two opportunities to share this thought:
I’m proud of you and of the things you have done in this country. I’m proud of America.
The audience was moved and took the time to clap and cheer. I doubt that many really understood though where Brown was coming from. He didn’t care about the size of our economy or the might of our military. He probably has never had the [mis]fortune to see a US flag turned into a tank top and I know for certain he’s never tried Jillian’s delicious bison chili. As the talk went on he explained, tactfully, where he and his compliments came from and he did what any British politician does…quote Winston Churchill.
–You can always count on America to do the right thing…after they’ve tried everything else. —Winston Churchill.
As cynical as that statement is and sounds, it’s right. All over the world we’ve met people who have been awed in some way by something America has done. In Cape Town, it was the hospice worker who raved of the value of the AIDS drugs that were being provided for free. In Colombia, one man remarked to me that he had a friend in the US…Obama. In Munich a man outside a beer hall stopped Jillian to tell her about how US servicemen would rip their uniforms on purpose so they could pay his mother to mend the seams.
My proudest “America” moment came before our big trip ever began. We were back in Washington, DC at the annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival. During the festival a US state, foreign country and government agency showcase themselves on the national mall for a few weeks around Independence Day. This particular year, the agency was NASA while the foreign country was Bhutan. I’ll never forget walking into the tent with the space suits, watching as one of the Bhutanese archers I had just watched shoot his arrows, stood silently with a boot in his hands. Here he was, about as far away from his village in the Himalaya as he thought possible, holding a boot that had been on the moon.
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