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The United States of America became the envy of the world because we welcomed the best and brightest minds from anywhere on the planet and gave them the opportunity to succeed.

The fact is, with every friendship you make, and every bond of trust you establish, you are shaping the image of America projected to the rest of the world. That is so important. So when you study abroad, you're actually helping to make America stronger.

In fact that is the struggle that most Americans - As rich as this country is, most Americans are very limited in their interaction with the world, unless the world comes to us in a very shocking way.

Americans are uneasy with their possessions, guilty about power, all of which is difficult for Europeans to perceive because they are themselves so truly materialistic, so versed in the uses of power.

Virtually everywhere in the world, people still wake up and want their country to be more like the United States than any other nation. We are the envy of the world because of what we stand for and how our democratic process, flawed as it may often seem to be, operates. We should take pride in that.

Americans need to educate themselves, from elementary school onward, about what their country has done abroad. And they need to play a more active role in ensuring that what the United States does abroad is not merely in keeping with a foreign policy elite's sense of realpolitik but also with the American public's own sense of American values.

Being an American is such a rich environment, because there's so many people from other countries and cultures, and through that you're able to see other people's experiences.

What makes the United States great, the reason people wanted to live in the United States, move here still, is because of our ability to innovate.

Foreignness is all around. Only in the heart of the heart of the country, namely the heart of the United States, can you avoid such a thing. In the center of an empire, you can think of your experience as universal. Outside the empire or on the fringes of the empire, you cannot.

The United States plays, for the most part, a constructive global role, and to the extent that that role shrinks, other countries, even those most critical of what America does abroad, will suffer.