Why I like Tom Friedman

He is consistently positive about the prospects for America’s contining to stand at the forefront of nations, economically, politically, and otherwise. Friedman’s column in the New York Times today is a perfect example of why I always enjoy reading what he has to say.

He describes his daughter’s graduation ceremony at a fairly large high school in Maryland. The roster of grads was very diverse:

The commencement was my daughter Natalie’s, the high school was Montgomery Blair in Silver Spring, Md. There were some 700 kids receiving their diplomas, and as I sat there for two hours listening to each one’s name pronounced, I became both fascinated and touched by the stunning diversity — race, religion, ethnicity — of the graduating class. I knew my daughter’s school was diverse, but I had no idea it was this diverse.

He goes on to say that there may be many reasons to feel pesemistic about the future of America: the war in Iraq, fiscal irresponsibility, and waning educational success. And then he turns it around again:

But if there is one reason to still be optimistic about America it is represented by the stunning diversity of the Montgomery Blair class of 2006. America is still the world’s greatest human magnet. We are not the only country that embraces diversity, but there is something about our free society and free market that still attracts people like no other. Our greatest asset is our ability to still cream off not only the first-round intellectual draft choices from around the world but the low-skilled-high-aspiring ones as well, and that is the main reason that I am not yet ready to cede the 21st century to China. Our Chinese will still beat their Chinese. […] It is hard to watch a graduation like this and not think about our enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan — the Taliban, Islamo-totalitarians like bin Laden and Zarqawi, and the retrograde regimes that support them. Their whole mind-set is about how to purify their world from “the other,” from diversity, from “infidels.” With enough brutality, they may win in Iraq. I still hope not But they will never win the future — because as soon as their oil wells run dry, their societies will be as barren, bland and unproductive as their deserts. Our oil wells, by contrast, will still be pumping. They’re right there, hiding in plain sight, in the Blair commencement book…