Dear Dr. Kissinger,
I
have recently been inspired by your descriptions, in your memoirs, of the men—Elsworth
Bunker, George Shultz, Gerald Ford, David Bruce, yourself—who, whatever their weaknesses, attempted to
live lives of service to the ideals of the United States. Some might call these 'Enlightenment' ideals: intellectual
honesty and openness, institutional fairness, personal humility, etc. Ideals which my
own generation of distracted millenials seems often to disdain as
hopelessly outmoded and bourgeois. Ideals which seem to have faded
domestically as a kind of pre-Enlightenment tribalism takes hold of the
national mood. Ideals which are unsustainable when intellectual authority
in our national discussion issues more from sectarian status than from quality
of evidence or argument.
Thus, it occurs to me to ask you in particular a question: if today one wished to
live a life of service to the Enlightenment ideals for which the United States
has at times been the standard-bearer in the world, how and where and with
whom might one do so?
I want to thank you as well, if I may, for the quality and indeed
the beauty of the writings you've left to posterity. I was born years
after you left office, and thus have a limited understanding of the visceral passions
inspired by the policies and personalities of your era. I barely remember
the Reagan administration. But you evoke in your memoirs, and elsewhere,
a world that feels richer than the merely technocratic one in which my
generation seems caught. You evoke a world underpinned by values
thrilling enough to be worth serving; I only wonder if there are institutions
in the world that continue to serve them, and if so, how an intelligent,
sincere young person might come to work on behalf of those institutions.
Sincerely,
Sean Murray
No comments:
Post a Comment