I'm a first generation American. My grandparents, my parents and their siblings, emigrated from Eastern Europe. They were lucky to escape. The pogroms forced them out. The other family members who did not get out were exterminated in the death camps during WW2.
My parents and their siblings were desperately poor and all but my father, the youngest, had to drop out of school by 8th grade to go to work to support the family. The family always placed a high value on education and the public schools of earlier times were incubators of opportunity. Imagine a free public education of a very high order!
Nearly all the cousins got a college degree, or higher, and all rose into the middle and upper middle class. Not bad for one generation.
America broke the mold. A child was not trapped from birth in the caste, or occupation, of its forebears. In America you can reach your goals and pursue your own version of happiness.
We have a miracle here, the first in history. Our founding fathers left us a legacy and we owe a huge debt of gratitude to them. We must protect it by pushing back against WOKE, CRT, and fake history. We must be careful and thoughtful in our choice of elected representatives. We are currently learning the horrible results of not choosing wisely.
I was four when my mom came over from Cuba, my father was a political prisoner. She didn't know English, she didn't have a high school degree, she didn't even know how to type. She worked as a maid and took a bus to learn English and office skills at night. I remember the day she was fired from her first office job because of her "broken English". She kept learning, got another job, and retired at 65 as a homeowner and traveler. I could only imagine all the challenges she overcame. But she made it because opportunity here is endless. I hear all those who believe that America is unfair and terrible and I suppose to them it is. How sad that they've created their own prison while living in a garden.
It's quite interesting to note the contrast of those who come from other places, where things really are bad, and how they write about America, vs. those who (I assume) were born here. The former seem to really understand how much this country has to offer. The latter still seem to want to pick nits because things are not perfect.
Whatever roll of the cosmic dice landed my life in America, I thank it daily. From the time I was a graveyard shift diner waitress in the ‘90s to graduating college to working in NYC, I am grateful for the opportunities found here. Yes, we have problems. Some seem insurmountable and others of our own making, but I remain optimistic.
Happy 4th to the team at Common Sense and the readers!
As a child of Indian immigrants, I grew up hearing much of what is echoed here. Even now, some 40 years after coming here, my father points out that for as rough a period as we are going through, and as many things as need fixing, we ought to look around and realize low lucky we are in relation to many other places on Earth. May God bless the USA, and may she long endure. :)
"The best thing that will ever happen to you is that you were born in America," my father always told me. I didn't understand him then, but I do now. Happy 4th Bari and Nellie!
A terrific sampling of essays about the virtues of America. What a great way to kick off the Fourth! Thanks, Bari, for making Common Sense such a valuable journal. You are forging the path for a new way of journalism in this great (and of course flawed) country. Keep up the exceptional work!
As a long-haired college student in the 60’s and 70’s, I loathed much about my country the way many young students seem to today. None of this is unusual at that age. But then I traveled abroad. I had little money and did lots of menial jobs, working on farms and sometimes sleeping on the streets. I was gone for years, visited many countries, learned a number of languages and had many memorable experiences as you might imagine. I rarely encountered Americans. The greatest gift was seeing life through the lives of others, and seeing first hand what worked and what didn’t, spread across a multitude of cultures, ethnicities and geographies. I finally returned home, a huge fan of America’s land of opportunity that is our country. With that deepened understanding of what’s out there, and despite our own imperfections, I remain a huge fan decades later, and will always be so.
My mom's story and her parents' is one of many. My maternal grandparents left Spain for what they thought would be a better life in Cuba. No such luck. Arriving in Staten Island, NY, circa 1915, they were the first wave of my relatives who later fled Cuba under Batista, Fidel et al. My grandfather had a hand-rolled Cuban cigar shop (pre OFAC sanctions); he and my grandmother taught themselves English by reading the "funnies," listening to the radio, and gossiping with Mrs. Sideski, another immigrant whose English was by then proficient. My grandma learned enough English that, when Orson Welles read War of the Worlds on the radio, she thought the end was nigh. My grandfather kept reading the paper. My mom almost got pulled from high school, where she was an honor student, because there was no money for bus fare. A stepbrother intervened. Long story short, at the age of 42 (another story), when I was 11 years old, my mom graduated with honors from Montclair State University, NJ (thanks, dad, for doing the dishes) and went on to teach high school for almost two decades. My grandparents and my mom never asked for anything. And they loved America. Happy Fourth.
I've been living abroad (Singapore) on a Fulbright grant for the past five months. This was my first Fourth spent outside the U.S. I spent much of the day reflecting on just how many things I'll no longer take for granted, having truly spent meaningful time away from the country. I'm looking forward to returning home in a few months, with a healthy jolt of renewed patriotism.
Thanks Bari and the Common Sense team for everything you do and for sharing these great essays! Happy Fourth of July everyone!
I was born and raised in Mexico, which I think is one of the main factors that inoculated me against this “woke” ideology. My kids now have a state-mandated critical pedagogy “framework” that is based in the writings of a critical race theorist (Ladson-Billings). For all the language this “culturally responsive framework” uses about empowering what it refers to as “historically marginalized voices” (which in the intersectional model the framework uses certainly includes immigrants of various races/ethnicities), it fails to take one very obvious issue into consideration: so many of us immigrants truly hate the current politicization of education. This is certainly true of a number of Asian and Hispanic immigrants, many who share negative experiences living under dictatorships. Yet, when immigrants speak up against politicized education, we are dismissed as “white adjacent” or “white supremacists” regardless of the color of our skin or how we truly feel about multiculturalism. It is so very insulting! It feels like an utter scam, a bait and switch of the worst kind. I don’t want my kids to grow up thinking that this country is irredimible.
Happy Independence Day to all on this site! As an immigrant and now, naturalized citizen, I am truly grateful to be living in this amazing country.
But I am also terrified of the onslaught from the Left trying to destroy the Constitutional rights that make the USA so special. They're pushing for the USA to become the exact type of collectivist society from which my family fled. If the younger generation were forced to spend time in countries where people don't have any individual rights, they might actually appreciate what they've taken for granted in this country. Perhaps then, they might think twice about biting the hand that grants them freedom and stop inventing perpetual grievances.
"Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone"
Those of us who belong to families who came here hundreds of years ago need to read this and hear the voices of our forefathers and foremothers, for they must have felt the same.
So glad my very first Substack that I subscribed to many months ago was this one. Bari even responded once to an email.
I like to take time everyday, but especially on July 4th, to thank my lucky stars I was born in this country. It really is the biggest privilege I have.
Best expression of the “notion of America” I have read in some time. Thank you, Bari, for this reminder of just how fortunate we are to be a part of this little experiment. Grace notes that sing together so well.
I'm a first generation American. My grandparents, my parents and their siblings, emigrated from Eastern Europe. They were lucky to escape. The pogroms forced them out. The other family members who did not get out were exterminated in the death camps during WW2.
My parents and their siblings were desperately poor and all but my father, the youngest, had to drop out of school by 8th grade to go to work to support the family. The family always placed a high value on education and the public schools of earlier times were incubators of opportunity. Imagine a free public education of a very high order!
Nearly all the cousins got a college degree, or higher, and all rose into the middle and upper middle class. Not bad for one generation.
America broke the mold. A child was not trapped from birth in the caste, or occupation, of its forebears. In America you can reach your goals and pursue your own version of happiness.
We have a miracle here, the first in history. Our founding fathers left us a legacy and we owe a huge debt of gratitude to them. We must protect it by pushing back against WOKE, CRT, and fake history. We must be careful and thoughtful in our choice of elected representatives. We are currently learning the horrible results of not choosing wisely.
Happy Fourth of July.
I was four when my mom came over from Cuba, my father was a political prisoner. She didn't know English, she didn't have a high school degree, she didn't even know how to type. She worked as a maid and took a bus to learn English and office skills at night. I remember the day she was fired from her first office job because of her "broken English". She kept learning, got another job, and retired at 65 as a homeowner and traveler. I could only imagine all the challenges she overcame. But she made it because opportunity here is endless. I hear all those who believe that America is unfair and terrible and I suppose to them it is. How sad that they've created their own prison while living in a garden.
It's quite interesting to note the contrast of those who come from other places, where things really are bad, and how they write about America, vs. those who (I assume) were born here. The former seem to really understand how much this country has to offer. The latter still seem to want to pick nits because things are not perfect.
Whatever roll of the cosmic dice landed my life in America, I thank it daily. From the time I was a graveyard shift diner waitress in the ‘90s to graduating college to working in NYC, I am grateful for the opportunities found here. Yes, we have problems. Some seem insurmountable and others of our own making, but I remain optimistic.
Happy 4th to the team at Common Sense and the readers!
As a child of Indian immigrants, I grew up hearing much of what is echoed here. Even now, some 40 years after coming here, my father points out that for as rough a period as we are going through, and as many things as need fixing, we ought to look around and realize low lucky we are in relation to many other places on Earth. May God bless the USA, and may she long endure. :)
"The best thing that will ever happen to you is that you were born in America," my father always told me. I didn't understand him then, but I do now. Happy 4th Bari and Nellie!
A terrific sampling of essays about the virtues of America. What a great way to kick off the Fourth! Thanks, Bari, for making Common Sense such a valuable journal. You are forging the path for a new way of journalism in this great (and of course flawed) country. Keep up the exceptional work!
As a long-haired college student in the 60’s and 70’s, I loathed much about my country the way many young students seem to today. None of this is unusual at that age. But then I traveled abroad. I had little money and did lots of menial jobs, working on farms and sometimes sleeping on the streets. I was gone for years, visited many countries, learned a number of languages and had many memorable experiences as you might imagine. I rarely encountered Americans. The greatest gift was seeing life through the lives of others, and seeing first hand what worked and what didn’t, spread across a multitude of cultures, ethnicities and geographies. I finally returned home, a huge fan of America’s land of opportunity that is our country. With that deepened understanding of what’s out there, and despite our own imperfections, I remain a huge fan decades later, and will always be so.
My mom's story and her parents' is one of many. My maternal grandparents left Spain for what they thought would be a better life in Cuba. No such luck. Arriving in Staten Island, NY, circa 1915, they were the first wave of my relatives who later fled Cuba under Batista, Fidel et al. My grandfather had a hand-rolled Cuban cigar shop (pre OFAC sanctions); he and my grandmother taught themselves English by reading the "funnies," listening to the radio, and gossiping with Mrs. Sideski, another immigrant whose English was by then proficient. My grandma learned enough English that, when Orson Welles read War of the Worlds on the radio, she thought the end was nigh. My grandfather kept reading the paper. My mom almost got pulled from high school, where she was an honor student, because there was no money for bus fare. A stepbrother intervened. Long story short, at the age of 42 (another story), when I was 11 years old, my mom graduated with honors from Montclair State University, NJ (thanks, dad, for doing the dishes) and went on to teach high school for almost two decades. My grandparents and my mom never asked for anything. And they loved America. Happy Fourth.
I've been living abroad (Singapore) on a Fulbright grant for the past five months. This was my first Fourth spent outside the U.S. I spent much of the day reflecting on just how many things I'll no longer take for granted, having truly spent meaningful time away from the country. I'm looking forward to returning home in a few months, with a healthy jolt of renewed patriotism.
Thanks Bari and the Common Sense team for everything you do and for sharing these great essays! Happy Fourth of July everyone!
I was born and raised in Mexico, which I think is one of the main factors that inoculated me against this “woke” ideology. My kids now have a state-mandated critical pedagogy “framework” that is based in the writings of a critical race theorist (Ladson-Billings). For all the language this “culturally responsive framework” uses about empowering what it refers to as “historically marginalized voices” (which in the intersectional model the framework uses certainly includes immigrants of various races/ethnicities), it fails to take one very obvious issue into consideration: so many of us immigrants truly hate the current politicization of education. This is certainly true of a number of Asian and Hispanic immigrants, many who share negative experiences living under dictatorships. Yet, when immigrants speak up against politicized education, we are dismissed as “white adjacent” or “white supremacists” regardless of the color of our skin or how we truly feel about multiculturalism. It is so very insulting! It feels like an utter scam, a bait and switch of the worst kind. I don’t want my kids to grow up thinking that this country is irredimible.
Happy Independence Day to all on this site! As an immigrant and now, naturalized citizen, I am truly grateful to be living in this amazing country.
But I am also terrified of the onslaught from the Left trying to destroy the Constitutional rights that make the USA so special. They're pushing for the USA to become the exact type of collectivist society from which my family fled. If the younger generation were forced to spend time in countries where people don't have any individual rights, they might actually appreciate what they've taken for granted in this country. Perhaps then, they might think twice about biting the hand that grants them freedom and stop inventing perpetual grievances.
"Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone"
Brought tears to my eyes!
Those of us who belong to families who came here hundreds of years ago need to read this and hear the voices of our forefathers and foremothers, for they must have felt the same.
So glad my very first Substack that I subscribed to many months ago was this one. Bari even responded once to an email.
I like to take time everyday, but especially on July 4th, to thank my lucky stars I was born in this country. It really is the biggest privilege I have.
Best wishes to all today.
Best expression of the “notion of America” I have read in some time. Thank you, Bari, for this reminder of just how fortunate we are to be a part of this little experiment. Grace notes that sing together so well.
Just beautiful and as a first generation immigrant I couldn’t agree more!