The Vietnamese Jeweler
Paul Bock, 2023
Today I went to a jeweler to have some rings and earrings cleaned and polished.
I have known this gentleman for about 25 years: his jewelry store was in the same city where we used to live a long time ago. Kiet Huynh is Vietnamese; he is an exceptionally talented and successful designer; he has his own line of fine jewelry.
I believe it was no accident that today after “doing business” I stayed a bit longer and we talked about design, art and photography. As we got deeper in this subject, he brought out a scrapbook, to show me some of his older designs. As I was thumbing through his scrapbook, I came across a photo of him and his brother, when they were about 10 years old. In this photo, which was taken by the US Immigration Service in 1982, the two brothers are proudly displaying their immigration numbers, written on a large cardboard, with their names and several other letters and codes, for identification purposes by Immigration officers.
I did not know until this day that these two brothers had escaped from communist Vietnam in 1982, along with thousands of “boat people”, and were stranded in a wooden boat on the ocean, waiting to die. The boat was jam packed with people, and after weeks on the sea it had run out of fuel and potable water. Many people on this boat had died, and the two boys expected a similar fate. Only their prayers kept them alive, without water, in the excruciating heat and relentless sunshine, surrounded by dead and dying people. Their father has been taken away one night by the communists, never to return, just like tens of thousands of people in other communist countries.
He was telling me stories of the communist regime, which was no news for me: they are the same everywhere; people forcibly transported into “reeducation camps”, nationalization (read confiscation) of all businesses and assets, several successive “monetary stabilizations”, whereby the communist government assured “equality”, meaning that everybody became equally poor and destitute, working for the government for subsistence wages. Of course, he mentioned, they had free health care and free college education, and he added that his father once had said he’d rather paid for health care and education, if he had a decent income, than working for nothing and being forced to say praise to the communists for the “free” healthcare and “free” education.
He arrived in the USA without speaking a word of English, and nine years later, when I first met him, he was the owner of a successful jewelry store and design studio. It was uplifting to hear this man praising the freedom and opportunity our country had provided him, which allowed him to start and own his business, own property, live where he wanted to live, and say what he wanted to say.
He had drawn a frightening parallel between the communists and some Americans who, just like the communists and socialists, believe in the Marxist-Leninist doctrine, with their goal to assure being in power at any cost. They are in it for themselves and exploit the masses as a vehicle to stay in power.
As I was listening to him, I remembered many years ago, as I came to the USA on a Swissair 747 jetliner, how fortunate I was. I thank our loving God every day for guiding us home, helping us every day along the way. I like the America we found here in 1974, and I am concerned as I watch our country becoming increasingly like the country I had left. The communist and socialist ideology is based on lies and deception, and is based on promising free health care, free education, free housing for everybody. Everybody likes that, don’t they, free stuff, something for nothing.
Of course, economically this is not sustainable, so they believe in the redistribution of wealth, which the communists did, by nationalization, confiscation, and taxation. It seemed to have worked for a while, although back in the early 70’s, as a young engineer it was not hard for me to see that their economic policies were not sustainable. Witness the demise of the Soviet Union and of the Eastern European countries, as they collapsed economically when there was no more wealth left to be redistributed.
When I went to college, we were forced to study for several years Marxism-Leninism, and by doing so I came to better understand their motivations, methods and goals. They were the ones who invented “speech and thought control” (PC and media control), who ostracized (and finally eliminated) anyone who voiced opinions other than the officially accepted ones.
Our country is at a fork in the road and the leaning to the left is a dangerous one. I have seen and lived in an oppressive, communist controlled regime and risked everything to escape from it. I looked at America, to paraphrase Ronald Reagan, this shining city on the hill, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Now I see forces that attempt to divide our country, pitting certain groups against others, creating racial tensions and hatred where there should be love and understanding; exiling God from the public discourse, curtailing liberties and creating a set of citizens who are above the law. I am concerned.
I love our country, just as I did when I first arrived on these shores.
God bless America.
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