Voting: A Privilege to Hold Dear

My wife came from Vietnam “the hard way.” She was on the run from the Communists, in and out of prison and on and out again. Hiding in her own house like Ann Frank with fear of capture.

She and about 50 others spent 22 days in an open boat without food. Their only fresh water was rainwater collected in little cups. Four people died.

After reaching the Philippines, my wife, mixed into a horde of other Vietnamese refugees, overwhelmed the Philippine government. They built small huts in a kind of “stalag” to house the refuges for ten years.

Saigon fell and was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in 1975. My wife made it to safety in the United States in 1998!

The root cause of many of the politically-based issues in America are due to the fact MOST Americans have never fought a war, been bombed, been imprisoned by a totalitarian government, or lived under anything but freedom.

They do not appreciate what America is...and take for granted, what we have and the sacrifices that have been made to earn and keep it. And, of course, we have our socialists who are trying their best to redefine America as a socialist state adrift in liberalism.

If Americans were as good at voting and being involved with their government as they are at sucking up the benefit of living in America, we would have a better government, far more dedicated to running America as it was designed to be, and far more accountable to the people that are America....

This was emailed to me from a FReeper Regular who calls himself ThanhPhero. Many of the local Việt Kiều feel the same way about voting. I have heard many horrific stories. One lady's last memory of VN was, at 14 in 1975, climbing the cargo netting on a freighter in the Sài Gòn River with her infant cousin on her back and seeing another cousin drop off to be crushed between the hull and the wharf. The most poignant story is that of a lady who was born in a refugee camp in the Phillipines and whose mother was born in a refugee camp outside of Đà Nãng in 1954. When one of the boat people dies he is honored especially by the ones who have come out peacefully by legally emigrating later on. There are not many of the men of 75 left. I have been to too many funerals over the last 5 years.I went to a funeral in 94 for a woman who was over ninety when she got on a boat in 75. She was born in 1880. Her Sinh 1880-Chết 1994 stone is the most photographed marker in this whole part of the state.

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