Americans need to realize how blessed they compared to the rest of the world.

Question: What can America learn from the rest of the world?

Mike Gravel: That we were blessed. We’re blessed with a continental size country. We were safe from the wars. And so . . . and what we need to learn is to look at other parts of the world and recognize what they’ve suffered. Particularly the European community. I think it’s to be admired. They’re trying to get their act together after the scourge of the Second World War. They have suffered. They don’t want to go back that way. China has gone through a similar situation; and they, in my mind, are trying to handle the problem and move forward. I become president, I would try to pull together China, Japan, Korea, the Arab world, Russia, Brazil, the EU, pull them in as partners – because this is where the power of the world is economically – and restructure the UN so that it is a representative body for the world. And that way have some ability to deal with problems on a global level. We Americans get so selfish, and “Oh, this is an American problem.” It’s not. Most of the problems are global problems. They’re problems that beset human beings, and they need to be corrected so that we human beings do a better job than we have been doing in terms of human governance.

Recorded on: 10/23/07