He died in 1994. By then, the Treasury Department had lifted its ban on traveling to Vietnam, just as casually as it had earlier imposed it. Government, after all, is our servant, not our master. And one of the ways in which we, the masters, select our government is by traveling internationally to test the wisdom of the foreign policy practiced by a particular administration. We journey to view conditions in other countries, meet their citizens, ask questions and listen, communicate.
Travel is thus a form of education, perhaps the very best form of education.
Absent the most compelling wartime conditions, government has no more right to interfere with that educational process than it has to prevent us from listening to a lecture, attending a course, or reading a book. Astonishingly, these views about the importance of travel do not seem to be shared by the majority of Americans. Witness the complete lack of any public reaction at the time to the steps taken against Lindblad, or even any tangible concern on the part of travel professionals. Not a peep. That would have surprised a great many people, and yet it was the Trading with the Enemy Act upon which the Treasury Department based its asserted power to prevent organizations like Lindblad's from operating tours to Vietnam, Cuba, and elsewhere.