At a recent entrepreneurs meeting the speaker mentioned that if you can't succeed in America you can't really succeed anywhere else. The audience which was feeling somewhat down with earlier talk of the slow economy, got galvanized and started making active plans for the next thing they were going to do for their businesses. On 4th of July CNN has it's 100 Great things about America and it was wonderful to see that "opportunity"topped the list. Just to add to this long list from this blog is the rapid globalization you see in American life in the last 10 years.
Lots of evidence of globalization on main street America if you look. Ethnic food,music,culture and views are not only accepted but celebrated. Every newscast has some global news content,not that evident just a couple of years ago. People are learning Chinese or at least enthusiastically eat Chinese food. They have some familiarity with India's Bollywood music and baby boomers seem to know that the turmeric in Indian curry might help with keeping Alzheimer's disease at bay and yoga and meditation is a good way to reduce stress.
More recent and amazing is the shift in the US public opinion on Afghanistan. Within days of the killing of Osama Bin Laden there was virtually no further discussion on the topic and the focus shifted to the US economy and the need to do something more quickly about it. "Fix roads in the US first rather than fix roads in Afghanistan" was the message . So why is this a signal of globalization of the American spirit?
Probably because Americans have put 911 behind them, something most other cultures would find hard to do.
Americans want to be able to both integrate and compete in a global world and good roads help in competing. They empathize with the Afghans but feel that folks everywhere need to put their own house in order. This ability to move on to the next challenge (incidentally the economy on this July 4th) makes America great according to this blog.
Wishing blog readers a Happy 4th of July!