What Rashid Patch Believes
Actually meeting people from other nations, cultures, races, religions, is not only the only way to really understand them - it is the only way to really understand your own. "Citizen Diplomacy" is an essential part of everybody's education - a prerequisite course for the 21st century, were every phone call to anywhere on the surface of the earth is now a local call, where, with the coming of commercial spaceflight, every city in the world is only half an hour's travel away. We see in the daily news that Tahrir Square is just down the block from Wall Street and Oakland. There is far, far too much going on, far, far too fast, to expect diplomats and governments to do our diplomacy for us; they can't possibly keep up! There are far too few of them to cover our interests and concerns, and they are already overloaded just dealing with other governments! Governments can only ever follow the lead of the citizens - and, if citizens don't show them what to do, governments tend to get confused, obsessive, and in everybody's way. So let's get on with it!