All Modern U.s. Presidents Are Perforce Politicians,

If We Have Learned Nothing Else From The 20th Century, We Should At Least Have Grasped That The More Perfect The Answer, The More Terrifying Its Consequences. Incremental Improvements Upon Unsatisfactory Circumstances Are The Best That We Can Hope For, And Probably All We Should Seek.

I Worry That We Have Forgotten That The De-ideologized, De-politicized, Uncontentious Public Space Of The Last 50 Years As Europeans Have Experienced It Is Not The Normal Human Condition. We Shall Be Sorry To Have Abandoned A Little Too Quickly The Institutions That Were Set Up By Our Parents And Grandparents To Protect Themselves Against A Return Of The Bad Old World. Because The Bad Old World Can Still Come Back To Haunt You.

Yugoslavia Served As A Reminder That The Lessons Of World War Two Were Only Partially Learned. There's A Great Line Someone Wrote In The Middle Of The 1990s, At The Time When Clinton Was Agonizing About Whether Or Not To Go Into Bosnia: "everyone Says, 'never Again. Never Again.' But All They Really Mean Is Never Again Will Germans Kill Jews In The Streets Of Warsaw".

We No Longer Ask Of A Judicial Ruling Or A Legislative Act: Is It Good? Is It Fair? Is It Just? Is It Right? Will It Help Bring About A Better Society Or A Better World? Those Used To Be The Political Questions, Even If They Invited No Easy Answers. We Must Learn Once Again To Pose Them.

We Have Responsibilities For Others, Not Just Across Space But Across Time. We Have Responsibilities To People Who Came Before Us. They Left Us A World Of Institutions, Ideas Or Possibilities For Which We, In Turn, Owe Them Something. One Of The Things We Owe Them Is Not To Squander Them.