Who Said It?
[posted by Callimachus]
If you seek the roots of what I conceive to be the neo-conservative movement in modern American politics, seek no further. It is in there. It is what Dean Acheson dismissed as the "crusading spirit" in American public life. And assuredly, since Reconstruction, it has led into the difficult places (Robinson Jeffers called them "blood lakes") where we find our tasks outrun our patience in ourselves.
But it also is the only spirit that also, coherently, can say:
The American covenant called on us to help show the way for the liberation of man. And that is today our goal. Thus, if as a nation there is much outside our control, as a people no stranger is outside our hope.
Change has brought new meaning to that old mission. We can never again stand aside, prideful in isolation. Terrific dangers and troubles that we once called "foreign" now constantly live among us. If American lives must end, and American treasure be spilled, in countries we barely know, that is the price that change has demanded of conviction and of our enduring covenant.
If you seek the roots of what I conceive to be the neo-conservative movement in modern American politics, seek no further. It is in there. It is what Dean Acheson dismissed as the "crusading spirit" in American public life. And assuredly, since Reconstruction, it has led into the difficult places (Robinson Jeffers called them "blood lakes") where we find our tasks outrun our patience in ourselves.
But it also is the only spirit that also, coherently, can say:
In a land of great wealth, families must not live in hopeless poverty. In a land rich in harvest, children just must not go hungry. In a land of healing miracles, neighbors must not suffer and die unattended. In a great land of learning and scholars, young people must be taught to read and write.
For the more than 30 years that I have served this Nation, I have believed that this injustice to our people, this waste of our resources, was our real enemy. For 30 years or more, with the resources I have had, I have vigilantly fought against it. I have learned, and I know, that it will not surrender easily.
But change has given us new weapons. Before this generation of Americans is finished, this enemy will not only retreat--it will be conquered.
Justice requires us to remember that when any citizen denies his fellow, saying, "His color is not mine," or "His beliefs are strange and different," in that moment he betrays America, though his forebears created this Nation.
