Dispatch—Indonesia
Spending a lot of layover time on my journey to the Mentawais, l leafed through my passport and realized how patriotic the document really is.
It opens with a bold statement that made me feel special as a U.S. citizen:
“The Secretary of State of the United States of America hereby requests all whom it may concern to permit the citizen/national of the United States named herein to pass without delay or hindrance and in case of need to give all lawful aid and protection.”
The adjoining page contains the 1902 painting by Edward Percy Moran of Francis Scott Key viewing the bombardment of Baltimore from a British prison ship and a stanza from the poem he wrote that became our National Anthem:
“Oh say does that star spangled banner yet wave o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.”
Next, President Abraham Lincoln provides the following from his Gettysburg Address:
…”and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.”
Turning the page, there’s this from Martin Luther King, Jr.:
“We have a great dream. It started way back in 1776, and God grant that America will be true to her dream.”
The next page features President John F. Kennedy:
“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
President Theodore Roosevelt is up next:
“This is a new nation, based on a mighty continent, of boundless possibilities.”
President George Washington adds:
“Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair…”
Going further, there’s Daniel Webster:
“The principle of free government adheres to the American soil. It is bedded in it, immovable as its mountains.”
World War ll General and President Dwight D. Eisenhower states:
“Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in the world must first come to pass in the heart of America.”
President Lyndon B. Johnson is quoted:
“For this is what America is all about. It is the uncrossed desert and the unclimbed ridge. It is the star that is not reached and the harvest sleeping in the unplowed ground. Is our world gone? We say ‘Farewell.’ Is a new world coming? We welcome it—and we will bend it to the hopes of man.”
Next is from American astronaut Ellison S. Onizuka, who perished in the Space Shuttle Challenger:
“Every generation has the obligationto free men's minds for a look at new worlds...to look out from a higher plateau than the last generation.”
My passport includes the inscription on the Golden Spike, driven at Promontory, Utah, on the occasion of connecting America’s east and west by rail in 1869:
“May God continue the unity of our country as this railroad unites the two great oceans of the world.”
Embossed on the pages where the customs stamps of the countries you visit go are iconic representations of America. The first is the Declaration of Independence, our founding document that sets forth the concepts that make us the greatest nation on Earth. Along with it is Independence Hall in Philadelphia, where brave Patriots risked life, family, and future by signing it. My visa stamp from Jakarta, Indonesia's capital, is affixed over an image of the Liberty Bell, which rang out as a clarion of freedom to the rest of the world.
A magnificent sailing vessel and a lighthouse are presented, along with a paddle-wheel steamship, symbols of the nation’s great maritime heritage. A double page features the presidents on South Dakota’s Mt. Rushmore: Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln. The Great Plains, purple mountains, cacti, palm trees, buffaloes, eagles, and geese flying in a V formation are depicted, along with the pioneers who helped build our great nation: farmers and ranchers. A steam engine traverses a wooden bridge with telegraph lines stretching across it. On another page, Lady Liberty raises her lamp of freedom over New York Harbor. She faces a view of the Earth and the moon with a satellite bridging the gap between them. Underneath it are the closing words of educator Anna Julia Cooper:
“The cause of freedom is not the cause of a race or a sect, a party or a class—it is the cause of humankind, the very birthright of humanity.”
Sitting in a faraway country with my credentials in hand, l couldn’t help but think of our divided nation, split to its core by politics. I can only hope that the millions of people allowed to stream across the border from all over the world ascribe to the uniquely American ideals expressed on the pages of the United States passport.