Americans adventuring far beyond the USA’s 100-mile jurisdictional limits, continue their commitment to the democratic ideals our country of origin epitomizes.  Emigres we are, but expats, no. The promise of the American experiment is imprinted in our national character and our personal imaginations. Thomas Jefferson maintained that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”  America’s Civil War in the first century after and the anything-but-passive struggle for civil rights reform in the 1960s might appear to have hustled our journey, in Martin Luther King’s phrase, along the long arc of the moral universe.  Yet examined carefully history shows not war but civics which actualizes and achieves progress.  Voting, by a citizenry well and truly informed, nourishes liberty far better than bloodshed. Democrats Abroad’s mission to promote voting by American patriots around the world meaningfully supports the US and shines the powerful light of Democracy to every corner of the world.

My wife and I moved with our dog to Lisboa nearly five years ago.  One of our daughters lives here, also.  I am a retired attorney from Sarasota, Florida where I was active in  numerous community and political affairs and look forward to working with associated American-cum-Portuguese patriots.