American travel fund
Interesting quote from Rick Steves, a well known European traveler:
“I think if the world knew what was good for it, it would establish a fund to pay for Americans all to have a free trip for six weeks, anywhere they wanted around the world upon graduation. It would be the best investment the world could ever make. Because right now an America that is threatened by, fearful of and misunderstands the rest of the world is a costly thing on this planet.”
From this article with Seattle Times. The entire article is rather enlightening.
3 Responses
Couldn’t agree more with the sentiment. Anyone want to join me next August for a trip to Bolivia???
If you were going to Italy, then I might be able to convince my wife to go, but I don’t think she would go for Bolivia… especially after your incident with the riot… er, I mean, demonstration.
From the interview:
“RS: I’m going to share examples of the value of travel broadening your perspective and how important in a post-9/11 world that is. Because we live in a society that’s using fear as a tactic to confuse us, and powerful people profit from our confusion.”
I thought this was fascinating. It seems that all we see on TV shows and the news, movies, etc. is information, stories, to make us fearful and not only of foreign enemies or portions of our government, but of everyone in our neighborhood. The vast majority of stories that are talked about promote an attitude of fear. There seems to be an underlying intent to instill isolation and fear of everything.