As I’ve watched the election and now the inauguration from overseas, I keep getting choked up. Like so many people, I have high hopes for the new administration and wish them well, not only for the good of the US, but for all of us living around the globe who need the US leading wisely on so many crucial issues.

If the character flaws of Americans — myself included — were highlighted so intensely by the last administration, one hopes that the distinctive American character strengths that seem so evident in Obama prove to be the bedrock of a new way forward. In several weeks, I start to teach my ‘Culture and Human Rights’ course, and I will gladly have to rewrite sections of several lectures, just one area where my optimism about the future is growing. Although I try to refrain from political comment, it’s hard not to be happy as a scientist and human rights researcher that we are already seeing signs of an end to the last American Dark Age.

With a lump in my throat, a proud ex-pat, Greg

Here’s one section: “Now the Obama-Robinson family’s move to the White House seems like a symbolic end point for the once-firm idea that people of different backgrounds should not date, marry or bear children… Initially, some of the unions in the Obama family caused consternation. “What can you say when your son announces he’s going to marry a Mzungu?” said Sarah Obama in an interview, using the Swahili term for “white person.” But it was too late, she said, because the couple was deeply in love. Now, the relatives say, their family feels natural and right to them, that they think of each other as individuals, not as members of groups.”

Don’t forget Steve Sailer, “America’s Half-Blood Prince: Barack Obama’s Story of Race and Inheritance“