Member-only story
What is the United States to you?
I grew up in Poland, when it was a part of the Soviet Bloc. In my late teens I frequented a discussion group that our priest organized for youngsters. I recall that on a few occasions the priest looked at me with disbelief, saying that my views and my way of arguing were so American. I had no idea what he was talking about, but he might have, as he had just returned from a two-year trip to Chicago.
While at college, during a public meeting with a local politician, I asked a challenging question. This triggered a flood of tough questions from others. I got in trouble for igniting political turmoil. Someone pretending to be my friend took me aside and advised me that I had behaved as if we were in America. “This is Poland, not America,” he said. There were more incidents of this kind, and I remember them so vividly, as I was puzzled. At that time, I spoke no English, and my knowledge about the United States of America was superficial.
It was a few years later, when reading a Polish translation of “Democracy in America” by Alexis de Tocqueville, I figured it why I was called an American despite the fact that I had never left Poland and spoke no English. I realized that America is not a country like any other, but a concept of a society where men are free from government coercion.
