We see the present with the eyes of the past, and the past with the eyes of the present. This is a truism: but one that is nonetheless worth repeating at a time when it is fashionable to believe that we live in a posthistoric age, that the past has little to tell us that is new or that is true. But what is fashionable is not correct, for all that we know comes from the past, from some kind of a past; all of our knowledge is essentially past-knowledge, whether we are conscious of this or not. Politics, for example, is not only inseparable from historical interpretation: it is a certain kind of historical interpretation. And since this interpretation is a living and changing thing in our minds (for "history," contrary to the generally accepted view, is not a static account of past periods) the interpretation involves, inevitably, the changing and moving "present": it is part and parcel of the movement of ideas. And the problem of how ideas move nowadays has preoccupied my mind (note the implicit meaning of the word pre-occupy) for a long time.

I am setting this down on February 26th as the reverberations of our trip seem to be subsiding. I want also to pay a certain ironic tribute to the visit and presence of a State Department official who arrived here this afternoon and treated me to an hour and a half of small talk and double talk. He is so young, and so completely cut to the bureaucratic cloth, that I found him excelling beyond praise in the old game of which Socrates spoke. That is to say, he is skilled at making the worse cause appear the better.

The idealists and crusaders of every age and era develop certain underlying attitudes and values which, while connected with the specific goals they struggle to attain, are clearly distinct from them. Often these attitudes and values grow out of their effort to obtain more limited and specific goals. However, many of the participants in today's turmoil, and particularly the younger ones, seem to have little in the way of a general program — though they often protest against specific acts or situations — but instead proclaim that unless the nation and the world adopt a new set of values no particular set of reforms will leave a lasting imprint.

We can count on injustice in human affairs; on the presence of privilege, exploitation and violence. Violence, which in its ability to turn a human being into a thing, a corpse, offers the final unalterable injustice.

But we can count, too, on men and on social movements to challenge, and by challenging to limit, this grim reality. In one time a revived religious or political tradition, in another a movement of the oppressed, but in every time, men affirming dignity and brotherhood and the superiority of the human person over all the political, economic and social mechanisms which oppress him.

In the language and literature of politics there are few concepts at once as important and as confused as the idea of human rights.

The testimony to its importance is convincing. Countless men have died in the name of human rights. Entire societies have been formed with some vision of human rights as the central social creed, while other societies have been thoroughly disrupted by internal elements pursuing such rights. And today the politics of many nations and much of the politics among nations is carried on in verbal categories of human rights.

But if the significance of the notion of human rights is evident, the fact of disagreement about its meaning is no less clear.

It seems to be that this year above all years we shall not want to or be able to confine ourselves to the examination of our instruction and guidance or purely the educational program. We are obliged to relate what we teach and how we teach, and the way in which we and our students live and study together, to the large and very serious concerns of our society in these most unquiet times.

Anyone who witnessed the recent events in Chicago must be more concerned than ever about the state of the union. Everyone who saw the violence in the streets and the incivility of the political scene indoors was shocked. But the tragedy is that few could have been surprised.

World attention has been drawn in recent years to the intensification of organized militant action by Africans against the white ruling powers of southern Africa. The incidents have been sporadic, inadequately organized and equipped, doomed to fail from the outset. Nevertheless the governments have responded with comprehensive legislative and executive action to maintain “law and order” — undoubtedly a legitimate responsibility of any government, but one presumably to be reached by means that accord with norms of justice and the rule of law. Thirty-six men from South West Africa are currently being tried in South Africa for some allegedly terrorist activities on the basis of a law reflective more of a government that intends to maintain power by any means than one that is cognizant of standards of justice with which it, as much as any individual, should comply.

Several recent books have been looked upon at the United Nations with varying degrees of interest and enthusiasm. Since the U.N. is in the U.S., and since its life is dependent upon the U.S. Government, it is natural that any utterances by prominent U.S. officials about the role of the U.N. in American foreign policy are read with fascination, trepidation and at times bewilderment. And indeed George W. Ball's The Discipline of Power was read at the U.N. with morbid fascination, bewilderment and despair. Unlike all previous heads of a U.S. delegation to the U.N., Ambassador Ball was the first who had not been a public figure, and he had no U.S. constituency.

These past years have rung with growing clashes of arms and men. Surely we can observe with more than literary justice that our generation is filled with wars and rumors of war, with violence, strife and hatred. Even though psychologically and spiritually we pass from Nigeria to Palestine to Vietnam to China, and even to Detroit, we are uneasily aware that the scope of unrest today is both world-wide and of universal significance. No one can long remain objective and calm in the face of our news media which make the whole planet so visible before us. We are often tempted to wish that Asian news still had to be sent to San Francisco via a slow-moving clipper ship rather than via instantaneous radio and television.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the good news that in Christ God has broken down the walls of division between God and man, and therefore also between man and man.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ declares that Christ is the truth who sets men free from all false hopes of grasping freedom for themselves, and that Christ liberates them from a pursuit of false securities.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ declares that, in the crucifixion of Jesus, sin has been forgiven, and that God has met and mastered the forces that threaten to isolate man and destroy him.

I think that Dr. Rostow imposes upon the present situation a mistaken view of “dangers and challenges and possibilities.” As I understand him, he thinks of the war in Vietnam as a war against aggression or against “wars of national liberation” which, if successful, will help humanity to turn a corner and to enter upon a more stable and peaceful stage of history. On the contrary, this war causes us to miss opportunities to create some conditions for peace through agreements with the Soviet Union as the other major nuclear power, to improve through cooperation with the Soviet Union the actual institutions of world order represented primarily by the United Nations.

Are we in a watershed period in the world community today? It is impossible to say. In polities, particularly in international relations, there is a general tendency to speak of turning points, basic shifts, or watersheds. This is understandable. Of all forms of politics, foreign affairs is most fraught with danger and frustration. Affairs stumble from crisis to crisis; tension is the common element. Thus concerned men are constantly searching the signs of the times for a genuine turning point in foreign affairs.

The basic problem in locating and defining such a turning point is the lack of perspective. It is easier to look backward and to note the fundamental shifts that occurred in foreign affairs than it is to mark a contemporary watershed. The problem is how far back one must look before there is sufficient perspective to analyze both the emergence and the consequence of a basic change in the world situation. A man who can do that in contemporary affairs is a political prophet, but there are few such prophets.

The metaphysics of violence has been wrongly restricted to describe illicit and illegal application of physical force. In the common estimation of men, violence is associated with "riots in the streets," muggings, rape, murder, and other such forms of injury. These are certainly forms of violence but they are the symptomatic forms of violence arising from deeper, more underlining causes, both covert and overt.

Exploration of the role of churches in foreign policy debates is shot through with complexities. As a prerequisite for discussion of the role of churches in any secular matter, or even in many moral or religions discussions, precision is demanded in the meaning of the word “Church.” Yves Congar suggests that perhaps nine times out of ten the word “Church” signifies the hierarchy of bishops. In an effort to eliminate one complicating factor from an already bewildering array of difficulties it might be well to attempt a definition of the episcopacy. While acknowledging that the definition may compound the complexities, it is offered as a point of reference for later discussion of the major topic.