Over a half century ago, Walter Lipmann, then arguably the most famous columnist in the country, wrote, “Those in high places are more than the administrators of government bureaus. They are more than the writers of laws. They are the custodians of the nation’s ideals, of its permanent hopes, of the faith that makes a nation out of the mere aggregation of individuals.”
It is this perspective that makes Donald Trump's presidency so dangerous.
So does this which Lipmann wrote eighty years ago, in 1940: “Our civilization can be maintained and restored only by remembering and rediscovering the truths, and by reestablishing the virtuous habits on which it was founded. There is no use looking into the blank future for some new and fancy revelation of what man needs in order to live.”
“The revelation has been made. By it man conquered the jungle about him and the barbarian within him. The elemental principles of work and sacrifice and duty—and the transcendent criteria of truth, justice, and righteousness—and the grace of love and charity are the things which have made men free…only in this profound, this stern, in this tested wisdom shall we find once more the light and the courage we need.”
That is about as well as it can be said.
As is this quotation from novelist, Joseph Conrad: “What one lives for may be uncertain; how one lives is not. Man should live nobly, though he does not see any practical reason for it, simply because in the mysterious, inexplicable mixture of beauty and ugliness…in which he finds himself, he must be on the side of the virtuous and the beautiful.”
There's a sadly shrinking importance placed by too many of our political leaders on the value of serving the nation today. Both parties focus on policies to benefit and "excite" their base versus work together to benefit the country overall. I hope we can reverse that trend over time.
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