All Immigrants Are Born on the Fourth of July | The Free Press
- Our history belongs to me no less than to any Mayflower descendant. Maybe more, writes Martin Gurri, since I knew too well the alternative to freedom. - By Martin Gurri
"I arrived in the United States as a child from Cuba, and immediately realized things were different here...
...And for those of you who love to sneer at “consumerism,” let me repeat a story I have told before. A Cuban woman, a recent refugee, entered a supermarket in Miami and proceeded toburst into tears. Surrounded by such a dazzling display of goods, her heart broke, she said, when she thought of the people she had left behind in Cuba, who had so little.
The opposite of consumerism isn’t authenticity—it’s penury.
It’s scarcity and hunger.
We are fortunate and exceptional that most of our problems stem from abundance.
This amazing history is the property of every American—and it was the legacy that confronted me when I first arrived in this country.
- But here’s the strange thing: fairly quickly, without my knowing how, I started to think of it as my legacy. I internalized the evolution of freedom the U.S. represents.
It belonged to me no less than to any Mayflower descendant—maybe more, since I knew too well the alternative to freedom...
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