Nikki Haley tells graduates to be grateful they live in US

CLEMSON, S.C. (AP) — UN Ambassador Nikki Haley says today’s college graduates should be grateful to live in America.

“As a country we are experiencing something of a gratitude crisis today,” Haley said in her commencement address Thursday at Clemson University.

Haley, who was South Carolina’s governor before President Donald Trump appointed her UN Ambassador, offered two tips for living a life of what she called “active gratitude.”

First: Beware of social media. She said it makes people obsess with what they don’t have as others post their fake lives.

Second: “Be thankful to be alive in America in 2018. Every day at the United Nations, I deal with nations where people are not free,” Haley said.

“It is not that the United States is perfect. We’re not. But we have been given a great set of tools — freedom, the rule of law and respect for human rights — with which we can create a more perfect union.”

Haley, who graduated as an accounting major in 1994, expressed pride that her daughter, Rena, will be studying nursing at Clemson.

And she joked that her parents, who immigrated from India, would be proud to call her “doctor,” now that she’s received an honorary doctorate of humanities degree.

“This one is fancier,” she said, “but I have to say I worked a lot harder for the first one.”