I am a dude and I know dudes usually get threatened by angry feminists, etc., but your comparison of Hillary to Ripley was great and true. I saw a clip on The Daily Show doing just that the day after she spoke at the DNC and they featured a clip of Ripley screaming what you wrote in your article and, yes, Hillary does conjure those notions of protection and safety that that moment did. She is a fighter and she is tough and strong - more capable of protecting America than John, Sarah, or Barack (and I support Barack). Conversely, the image of Bill being the one to soothe and calm was also accurate, I felt.

In any event, I never thought about Sarah's candidacy as a threat to feminism, but your article makes a number of valid points to that effect. It is a threat to feminism in its traditional sense in that it probably would redefine it for a number of generations of people. Yes, it wouldn't be Hillary, who, as you note, embodies a very specific, traditional form of feminism, but it would nonetheless be a woman in the White House. At the end of the day, that would be a good thing no matter how you look at it. That being said, I completely disagree with her policies and stances on issues.

Thanks for writing the article.

I mostly agree with your assessment that Americans do not travel abroad and are lazy when given the opportunity to do so. Actually, one of the more interesting insights I have come across from foreigners who have visited the states is that our country is so big that there is really no need to leave it.

Upon careful consideration, this is essentially true. When you think about it, we have just about every type of weather and geography. Although this is really no excuse for our more or less total lack of curiosity in all things foreign, it does go a far way in justifying at least some percentage of it.

Also, I'd like to address the 2002 survey you mentioned. To give those poor Americans foolish enough to answer that survey the benefit of the doubt, that was 2002, a year after the buildings came down. It is now six years later and it is arguable that much of the populace, even if still widely untraveled, has been forced to learn more about the world. Even though I'm sure a substantial number of us would still be hard pressed to locate Afghanistan on a map (I couldn't and I've flown over it), I think it is pretty undeniable that we've been forced to learn a lot more about the world in the past seven years not because we wanted to, but because the world has forced us to.

Yet this does not address the concern you raised in your article: namely that such a wide swathe of the country would be comfortable with Gov. Palin having gotten her passport just last year. Is it really critical for us to have traveled outside the country in order to be an effective leader or, barring that, an effective person? I submit that, at least within our society, it is not. I think a useful measure in answering a question like this is asking whether the activity is critical to leading a successful life. In this case, it is not. Yes, you can argue that a number of other activities are also not critical to existence in America, none of which I'll go into now, but the real question we should ask ourselves in light of the essentially unnecessary nature of travel is what it contributes to our lives to make so many of us who have traveled argue (snobbishly in the minds of others) that it is necessary?

Inevitably all the usual answers about enriched perspectives, a rich understanding of the vast tapestry that is humanity, and an appreciation of where exactly we fit on the totem pole of global society come to mind, but they do not really do justice to what benefits travel brings you. You meet people, you learn that you can be just as happy in one place as another (or in some cases not), you see that not everyone will see you the same way. In sum, you become a different person, which is the real value of travel. You don't come back the same as when you left.

In relation to whether travel is critical for our leaders, the answer is an unequivocal yes. To those who would disagree and call me elitist, well, in the spirit of being ineloquent, you're just plain wrong. A leader who does nor travel is a leader who is rarely capable of understanding the world outside his or her country. This is not a guess. It is a fact, especially in today's world when so many of our existences hinge on the actions of another.