I wonder whether my liberal neighbors know how fortunate we are.

Guest op-ed by Jessica Kanzer @ NYTimes.com, July 3

[....] Sometimes I wonder whether my liberal neighbors know how fortunate our kids are — how fortunate we all are.

“All is not lost,” I want to remind them when they are consumed by news about the distressing state of our nation. We have the right to criticize, to vote, to dissent — and to leave if we so choose.

I’m not sure they can understand what it’s like to live without freedom. They didn’t receive warnings from the KGB, the precursor to imprisonment. They never lost family members to government work camps. They got to explore, to rebel, to make up their own minds. Our children have the luxury of individuality.

My childhood was vastly different from Charlie and Gigi’s. It’s as if I came from another planet [....] My family left the Soviet Union in May of 1989, after the Reagan administration pressured Mikhail Gorbachev to allow Soviet Jewry to emigrate. We waited in Austria, then in Italy, to be granted asylum by the United States [....]