The Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy has a great phrase about how Americans should interact with the rest of the world (I'm paraphrasing a bit): "We have to stop thinking of America solely as an exporter of great ideas and realize that we should be an importer of them as well" (He's a Republican??!!). If there were a thesis statement to this book that wasn't written by Rick Steves, you could not do much better than this, for this is what this book as all about: Learning to travel not just for recreational enjoyment, but intellectual enrichment as well.
The book is broken down into sections that demonstrate how different sections of the world handle socioeconomic situations differently than we do in America. He most certainly is not blind to American advantages, despite what his conservative critics will say. He speaks about how he finds it "disheartening" to see extreme theocracy being embraced in curriculums at Iranian universities, institutions he (rightly) believes should be open to challenging the status quo. He also speaks of how it is far easier to make a better profit owning a small business like his in America, as opposed to the regulatory hurdles of EU nations.
At the same time, he makes it clear that the rest of the world thinks about things globally and constantly interact with each other far more often and effectively than citizens of the U.S. do, and he's absolutely right. Some of it can be explained by American geographic isolation, but also because we are conditioned by many influences to fear or dismiss what we don't immediately know or understand. One of the greatest truisms he offers: "The very people who would most benefit from international travel - those who needlessly fear people and places they don't understand - decide to stay home." Sadly, he's right. The most pro-American, uber-patriotic people I know who constantly assert the US is the best country in the world have never been overseas, and they certainly don't plan to either. Yet they KNOW America is #1 because, well...they want to believe it. Those are the people who Rick Steves' message is intended to reach.
The best part about this book is the fact that it is not a how-to guide. It is not a book that tells you specifically how to "travel as a political act" with step-by-step instructions. Rather, it is a collection of stories and dispatches from the author's experiences that is meant to encourage travelers to make their own memories and experiences and use what they learn when they get back, both the good lessons AND the bad. If you're a seasoned traveler who enjoys learning from other cultures, you'll probably find yourself nodding in agreement constantly. I know I did, for my best memories of traveling in South Africa consist of talking to locals in pubs and other places about the recently disposed (at the time) apartheid system. Hearing the perspectives of people of all races certainly helped me put in perspective how we as Americans deal with national problems and how we can always be learning from successes and failures abroad. These are the lessons that Rick Steves asks us to apply to our lives. It shows how politics has the awesome power to shape the kind of society that we would like to see, and to also be weary of the pitfalls of misuse. The result is a book that is more inspirational than preachy, and it is far more successful and enjoyable because of it.
Thomas Jefferson said travel "...makes Americans less happy, but much wiser." Voltaire wrote that we should "Refuse to be happy on the condition of being ignorant, imbecilic, and insulated." The best use of traveling is to learn and apply, for it would surely do our country well if a broader perspective was achieved because we, and our politics, would be much better for it. Most writers outside the political arena don't dare inject politics into their work, for the understandable reason that those who disagree with their politics will be turned off and they'll lose a good deal of prospective customers. All I can say is, THANK GOODNESS that Rick Steves has the courage to throw that notion out the window.
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