[lit-ideas] Words of Wisdom
- From: "John McCreery" <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2006 12:25:48 +0900
I am reading David McCulloch's _Truman_ and on page 756, I come across
these words, spoken by Secretary of State Dean Acheson in December,
1949. The Russians had tested their first atomic bomb. With the
founding of the Peoples Republic of China, China had turned Communist.
McCarthyism was on the rise. And this is what he said,
"Today you hear much talk of absolutes...people say that two systems
as different as ours and that of the Russians cannot exist in the same
world...that one is good and one is evil, and good and evil cannot
exist in the world....Good and evil have existed in this world since
Adam and Eve went out of the Garden of Eden.
"The proper search is for limited ends which soon enough educate us in
the complexities of the tasks which face us. That is what all of us
mut learn to do in the United States; to limit objectives, to get
ourselves away from the search for the absolute, to find out what is
within our powers....We must respect our opponents. We must understand
that for a long, long period of time they will continue to believe as
they do, and that for a long, long period of time we will both inhabit
this spinning ball in the great void of the universe."
Amen, brother. Amen.
--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd.
55-13-202 Miyagaya, Nishi-ku
Yokohama 220-0006, JAPAN
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