There are recurring, almost predictable, reminders of the exceptional
country we are privileged to share that happens inside the classes I teach at
UT Arlington’s graduate program in the School of Urban and Public Affairs.
Most of the time these incidences involve international students – young
adults who are here to learn and then return to their homeland with a
determination to improve the quality of life for their fellow countrymen.
The remarkable thing about this experience is that it is about everyday
things we take for granted. When questions like these arise, it also often
causes American students to react. Sometimes they express surprise, and other
times it moves them to recount their blessings.
In all my classes, regardless of the
course topic, I use part of the first class session to review the basics of the
form and structure of our government. That’s because the application of the
course material in real life is possible to a great extent because of our
freedom -- freedom that has been deliberately created by the most remarkable
design of self-government in all human history and for which an awful price has
been paid to preserve.
The most difficult part of our system
to fully grasp by many students from foreign lands is the limitation on the
powers of the president that they didn’t realize existed.
They see our president as the most
powerful person on earth and can’t imagine that he isn’t in total control of
the people of the United States. They assume he is, and that he rules without
interference from anyone or anything.
When they discover the genius of our
system that deliberately restricts his power so that he cannot behave like a
monarch, or a dictator, or as an absolute ruler, they are often disbelieving.
Tyranny aside, they just can’t relate to such limitations on the president of
the world’s greatest democracy.
I’ve held after-class discussions to
answer questions about our system of three separate but equal branches of our
national government. We talk about the legislative branch where the laws are
made and funding of the work of the government is authorized.
Students discover that the president
has no power to simply declare a law into being. They learn he does not have
the key to the public treasury to spend as he wishes.
I explain that the judicial branch is
the arbiter of disputes within the government where the ultimate judgment is
made on the test of whether some action of the government is authorized by our
Constitution or not.
That judges have the power to strike
down an action of the president is a realization that takes a while to develop
in their minds.
But when this all sinks in, the
reaction is almost universal. They smile.
As the semester progresses, other
things happen that prompt me to have a moment of sober reflection on our
collective good fortune in the land where opportunity for the betterment of
life has been seized and multiplied.
Once, when discussing our nation’s
energy policy and talking about the debate over the use of our natural
resources being all about sustainability and wise decision-making, I
acknowledged the raised hand of a brown skinned young man from a country with a
name I cannot pronounce.
He explained that his community’s
discussion was all about how to obtain electricity that lasted more than two
hours a day. He described that those two hours occurred randomly and without
notice once in a 24-hour period.
So, if the lights came on at 3 a.m.,
everybody interrupted their sleep and sprang into action doing the things that
required electrical power around the home and hoped they would get it finished
before it went dark again.
Another student once commented,
during my discussion about the green roof experiment atop the UT Arlington
science building, that his community had perfected that practice long ago.
He told us that all the homes where
he lived had mud roofs and could grow all manner and kind of plants ranging
from ordinary grass to the food they needed.
And then there was the engineering
student who talked about his mission in life to learn about the methods of the
management of human waste. His plan was to return to his home country with that
knowledge and find a way to develop an even rudimentary waste disposal system.
His passion was driven by his desire
to bring change so that so many children would not die in their early years of
life from disease borne by unsanitary conditions. He described the constant
presence of sewage in the streets of his town.
When he asked how we Americans had
solved this problem, I explained the process of adopting laws, innovating
methods and developing technology that led to longer, healthier lives for the
people of our country.
His sad response was simply that none
of that was possible where he lived because the totalitarian ruler of his
country controlled all of that. The student’s hope was that if he found a way
to make things better without his government’s approval that he would not get
arrested.
The next time I flushed the toilet
after that discussion, I didn’t just assume it worked the way it did because
that was what was supposed to happen.
Richard Greene is a former
Arlington mayor, served as an appointee of Pres. George W. Bush as Regional
Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and currently is an
adjunct professor in UT Arlington’s Graduate School of Urban and Public
Affairs.
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