When I was fifteen, I learned that under executive order 9066 led to the forced internment of hundreds of thousands of people of Japanese descent living in the United States.

When I was thirty three, I learned that Japan annexed Korea from 1910 and the Koreans lived under Japanese rule until 1945.

When George W. Bush ran for president, many of the ’so-called’ liberal elite criticized him because — despite his family’s wealth — he had only been to Europe one time.

I thought the criticism unfair.  Most Americans — poor, working, and middle class, had not traveled extensively to Europe or otherwise.  Most people hadn’t made their post high school/college backpacking trek through Europe — hosteling and using cheap Eurorail passes.  Many had not done their junior year abroad, won a post graduate fellowship to Oxford or the Sorbonne.  Few had taught English in Asia or South/Central America.

The folks who’d had precisely these opportunities were criticizing, our then president to be, because he hadn’t done what few Americans had done.

The older I get and the more I have learned that travel can expose you to different people, different ways of thinking, and you can learn more about human culture.

Most people of the world, however, don’t travel more than a few miles from their home and we must always remember that.