COMMENTARY: America gets greater the farther away you go

If you really want to appreciate America, leave. That’s right. Get out. Go somewhere you’ve never been for two weeks. See how the rest of the world lives. It’s not until you travel out of the United States that you really learn how wonderful and great our country is.

I just came back from a trip to Spain, France and Italy on a cruise ship that I took with my wife, Colleen, and 40 of her travel clients. I’ve been lucky to travel with her to many foreign places while she does her job.

I’ve been to the best cities and countries in Europe. Paris, Madrid, Rome, Budapest. I have been to more exotic places like Cairo, Singapore and Taiwan.

You obviously can learn a lot more by traveling to another country that you’ll never learn in a million years of watching videos or reading books.

It’s great to meet their people and learn about their history and culture. But some of their rules and policies are not quite as liberal as good old USA’s.

For instance, when you go to Cairo, you are impressed to learn that Egypt has no drug problem. Then you find out it’s because if you’re caught trafficking heroin or cocaine, you can get the death penalty. Ditto for illegal drug traffickers caught in the squeaky-clean city of Singapore. Its authoritarian government is so strict there’s a mandatory death penalty for trafficking more than 30 grams of heroin.

Singapore is infamous. Just spitting on the sidewalk can still get you fined nearly a thousand U.S. dollars or tossed in jail and importing and selling chewing gum is illegal.

Learning about those kinds of negative things while traveling in another country makes you extra-grateful you’re an American. So does paying $7.68 for a gallon of gasoline in Italy or Spain, which makes California’s outrageous $4.50 price per gallon look like a bargain.

Sometimes when you live in a city such as Los Angeles or New York and never leave, it’s easy for us to forget how great America is. All you see and hear about in the local and national media are complaints and problems and crises — too little affordable housing here, too much crime there, too many illegal immigrants here …

But if you go far away and see what other countries are like and see for yourself what their people have or don’t have, you’ll get it. You’ll get America’s greatness. You’ll be reminded of the freedom and prosperity we have. And you’ll understand why millions of foreigners today are still willing to risk their lives or pay a fortune to get here.

Because so many Americans never travel outside of their home states, cities or even area codes, they begin to think everywhere in America is just like their neighborhoods. They have no idea what it’s really like to live in L.A. or New York or why tens of millions live there. Everything they hear about those places from the news and entertainment media is negative or outrageous.

Traveling in the United States — especially by car — is the best way to understand how free America is, how big and beautiful it is, how rich and healthy it is and how good its people are. And traveling to foreign countries is one of the best ways to appreciate the greatness of America.

It’s why every time I return from one of my trips overseas with Colleen, I go, “Oh my God, I’m home. It’s so great to be American.”

Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation. Send comments to reagan@caglecartoons.com and follow @reaganworld on Twitter.