I Don't Believe In An Afterlife. I

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.

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.

Although The United States Lost A Quarter Of A Million Men And Women, Civilians And Soldiers, In World War Ii, That's Considerably Less Than The Russians Lost In Soldiers At The Battle Of Stalingrad Alone. It's Important To Convey To Countries And To People And To Generations Who Have No Experience Of The 20th Century As It Was Lived In Europe Just How Catastrophic It Was.

My Generation Those Who Were Students In The Late 60s Was Always, In The Words Of The Who, Talking About Our Generation. That's What We Thought Of Ourselves, As The Most Important Thing Since Sliced Bread. And The "we" That We Meant Was Really The Western Europeans And American Generation. And As I Think Back I Suppose I Have A Sense Of Guilt On Behalf Of My Generation, A Sense That We Were Terribly Provincial And Didn't Understand The Really Important Stuff That Was Going On In Eastern Europe.

I Can Still Boss People Around. I Can Still Write. I Can Still Read. I Can Still Eat, And I Can Still Have Very Strong Views.