Perspective

From outside the United States, many of our nation's political fears and conflicts seem weird and difficult to understand. While I was in Thailand, dependent on sketchy news in the foreign press and occasional reports on the international programs of CNN and the BBC, Congress finally pulled itself together and passed some version of Obama's health care reform bill. It was an exciting moment for me, but obviously not for the non-American world.

To overseas news services, Republican laments that America had gone socialist seemed quaint, just one more peculiar feature of American politics. They felt the same about Democratic exuberance over passage of the bill. Outside our own borders, universal health care, in one form or another, is taken for granted by virtually all developed nations. The foreign press was interested in the story only as representing a political triumph by Obama over the Republicans. They had virtually no interest in the actual provisions of the bill itself.

Travel is broadening in many respects. One quickly realizes that human happiness flourishes under many forms of political system. (So does political conflict, as the "Red shirt" demonstrations in Bangkok illustrated while I was there.) Excellent medical care and good government can co-exist -- do widely co-exist -- with health care programs far more "socialistic" than anything Congress has legislated, or even considered legislating.

And from a foreign perspective, calling Obama a "radical" or a "socialist" appears laughable. But I return home to a world where right wing fanatics clearly aren't laughing.