on that city on the hill
Vaniver encourages us all to be more American, and gives us advice on how to do so. I grant that Canada and Europe would be better off if we were some double digit percentage more American. Still, some of the advice rubs at me.
The Americans like to say that their nation was built on the backs of immigrants, and that's true. The US harvests the best of us from across the world, the ones who were loved and nurtured by their families and their home nations. They grow up healthy and well-adjusted, ambitious enough to reach higher, comfortable enough to find risk thrilling instead of terrifying. Some of them have stories like mine. And they move to the US because that's where all the other smart ambitious people are, and make a good life for themselves, and leave their mark on the world.
And I don't know, if you think of the full, global scale of this—remittances, NATO security guarantees, retirements in low-COL tropical countries with decent medical care—perhaps it all works out in the end, a nice stable equilibrium where the rest of the world acts like America's cradle and old age home, and partakes in the spoils of its wealth and innovation in the meantime.
Magic happens in rooms that are full of only the smartest and most ambitious; I can't argue with the results in good faith. Still, I'm ambivalent about emulating a nation that depends on attracting the brightest of other people's children, and I'm not sure how well it replicates. There is still the rest of us. And they deserve a future, too.