America Must Maintain Its Principles of Freedom For All

Grass Valley Union ^ | October 29, 2011 | Igor Birman

[calif_reaganite]

I have to confess a little bit of envy. I find myself in the company of the very fortunate, for you have known freedom all of your lives. Upon further reflection though, I must admit that fortune has been very kind to me as well, seeing how I've come to know freedom against all odds — thousands of miles away from the United States as a boy in the heart of the Soviet Union.

I remember vividly the week before my parents, my brother, my grandmother and I left Moscow for the United States. As we went to say good-bye to my uncle in St. Petersburg, Russian authorities ransacked our little apartment full of boxes and bags packed with our meager belongings, looking for any cursory reason to rescind our exit visas.

Over the years that my parents sought to leave, we became accustomed to an occasional search: coming home to find an open drawer in the kitchen, bookshelves tinkered with, or the doormat muddied by strange feet.

But that week, we returned from St. Petersburg to a scene of utter chaos with toppled furniture and torn-up boxes, their once neatly-folded contents now punctuating the dull gray carpet with specks of color. My mom and especially my dad, whose doctorate in physics had subjected him to decades of surveillance, were stoic. In this insult they saw yet another manifestation of an increasingly desperate tyranny.

My brother, however, was only 6 years old at the time and he was apoplectic, clinging to my mother and sobbing hysterically. And then she said these words to Eugene, which are forever etched in my memory: “Don't cry sweetie,” she told him in a soft yet confident voice. “Don't be upset. In just two days we are leaving for America. This won't ever happen there.”

[TwoSwords]

Impressive people. God bless.