SOME writers have recently expressed the opinion that the people of the CNMI have not received a sufficient education in American history and the principles of democracy and citizenship.
I disagree. It seems to me that the CNMI people are getting an excellent practical education on those topics right now — the kind of education that comes not from books, but from first-hand experience.
Anyone living in the CNMI these days is seeing real American history unfold before their eyes, allowing us to understand, clearly and directly from our own experience, what is only ancient history to schoolchildren in the states. We in the CNMI can see quite clearly, for example, what it really meant to the people of the American colonies when the British Parliament revoked colonial charters guaranteeing self-rule; when it enacted laws destructive of colonial interests and ignored repeated petitions from colonists against them; when it declared itself to have authority to legislate for the colonies “in all cases whatsoever,” despite being accountable only to its own constituents in Britain, who neither understood nor shared American concerns.
More than anyone living in modern-day Virginia or Massachusetts, we in the CNMI know what John Adams meant when he wrote: “The right to be governed by laws made by persons in whose election they had a voice is a most essential right, which discriminates freemen from vassals.” That is not dry political theory here. We are living it on a daily basis.
Yes, we in the CNMI are getting the best possible education in what it really means to be Americans. It is our fellow citizens in Congress who may require some further study on the subject.

JED HOREY
As Matuis, Saipan